I went to 拜神

I went to bai shen (拜神) a couple of days ago. Which we should distinguish from bai shan (拜山), something that you’d do on qing ming (清明) in the mountains.

My dad’s brother and my dad’s uncle went back to visit the family ancestral homes and I gave them a call and asked if I could tag along. They live in San Francisco. I have no memory of everybody, but everyone was really nice. My dad’s brother, or my uncle, brought back two of his daughters, Queenie and Carrie. They speak the Kaiping dialect, though I think they don’t speak Cantonese. They seem really sweet.

My dad’s cousin, Auntie Hong, pinched my cheek and said, “Look, these two were born in America and they still speak the Kaiping dialect! And you were born here, Mei Mei!”

“Yes, yes, Auntie Hong…”

Here I am, fumbling around.

I dragged Shionyi with me because I was shy. I didn’t know anybody. And she took it as an opportunity to check out what overseas Chinese from Kaiping do to pay respects to ancestors. CJ told her to take a lot of photos but she thought maybe not… I told her go ahead and take as many photos as she wanted.

We got to enter the diaolou! I was so happy! There was a room full of birdcages. Another room was full of suitcases. This diaolou was apparently built by my grandpa’s grandpas. They came back from Canada. This is the first time that I’ve heard of overseas migration in my family outside of our generation.

This is the altar on the top level of the diaolou. The one of the right is my grandpa. I’m not really sure who the one on the left is, though we are most likely related.

My dad’s uncle tells me that they used to live in the diaolou when they were younger. My grandpa and the other grandpa lived on the top floors, one half for each, because they were the eldest.

This village is in the Chikan township, and during the Sino-Japanese wars, the Japanese sighted the diaolou of this village from the Chikan waterfront. My great-uncle says that when the Japanese saw the defensive watchtowers, which were constructed for bandits, they advanced into this countryside, thinking it to be a military base. They even shot cannons at the diaolou! There were two big holes in this diaolou. And from the outside, you can see the brick repair work for one of the holes.