The last day of my trip in China: Guangzhou airport

I am home now, trying to recover from the rampant acne breakout on my face, the backache from sleeping for two months on hard Chinese beds with a spinal fusion, and last but certainly not least, JET LAG. The worst jet lag of my life… Sigh. Between all the excitement of coming home, visiting doctors, and writing my summer travel report for the Williams fellowships office, I didn’t have time to write about my last few days of gallivanting in Guangzhou with my aunt and my cousin, going back to Kaiping to visit Taishan with Laura, and Laura visiting my mom’s village to pass the Ghost Festival.

Thanks for the great end to my summer travel fellowship, Laura! Good luck at your conference in Japan later this week and have a safe trip back home and back to school!

I am irrecoverably behind on this blog now… my summer travel fellowship is over… but before I conclude this blog, I still need to write my complete review of all the products I used in my struggle against the Chinese mosquitos. But before THAT post, I want to talk about someone I met at the Guangzhou airport.

~

So my flight back home was at 12:50AM August 19th, which meant I needed to be at the airport the evening of August 18th.

After checking in my overweight bag and grumpily paying the fine, I headed to the entrance to boarding. Outside the entrance, a black man was saying in accented Mandarin, “Entering? (进去吗？),” to the people around him, but everyone was ignoring him.

Thinking that he was just asking for directions to the gates, I replied to him in Mandarin, “Yes, entering here for the planes. (对呀，这里进去上飞机。)” But I was embarrassed of my Mandarin, so I added in English, “Airplane.”

He nodded and then said, “Entering.”

Then he said in English, “Help my sister.”

The black man began to lead me away from the entrance of to boarding. I already began to feel a bit nervous about getting tricked or kidnapped and then getting killed by my mom for being stupid enough to follow a stranger, but then I reminded myself to be reasonable and fair; there were a lot of people around in the airport. It was safe. I’ll just follow him and see what help he needed.

“You will help my sister,” the man said again.

He led me to an area away from the boarding gates, where there was another black man. The first black man said something in an African language to the second man while gesturing at me. The first black man said to me in English, “You will help our sister enter.”

“Oh… okay. I guess I can accompany her through the gates if she needs help,” I said uncertainly, thinking that maybe they were worried their sister would get lost or wouldn’t understand Chinese instructions, and I happened to speak English and might help translate or something.

A black girl who was busy talking on the phone in another language appeared, and the second black man said again to me, “You will help her go through.”

He took the girl’s suitcase and pulled some shoes out to transfer to an orange grocery bag. He rearranged some of the girl’s things all the while the girl continued talking on the phone in an African language. I was feeling more and more nervous, and then he said, “You will go through with my sister. You will enter with this bag and she will take it from you on the other side.”

He wanted me to take the grocery bag through the security for the girl.

“Uh, no, I won’t. I’m not going to take anything for you. I’ll enter through with her, but I won’t take anything!”

“It’s OK. You will carry it through for her. You will help her!”

I was extremely suspicious and pretty annoyed that they kept saying “you will, you will!” like it wasn’t even a question. They never even said please!

“No! I won’t carry it for her!”

“Please! There is nothing wrong! She just has too many!” The second black man insisted.

“What’s inside the bag?” I demanded.

The second black man threw his hands up and said, “There’s nothing! It’s just shoes! And…” And to show me, he pulled out the shoes and showed me this big pile of gold-colored medals in plastic wrap.

“No, I …”

I really didn’t want to. I didn’t want to because I was afraid of getting into trouble. I was afraid there would be drugs in the grocery bag. I was afraid their sister was taking illegal haul out of the country. I was afraid I would helping them commit crimes.

It’s hard for me to remember exactly now, but somehow I agreed to help them because even though I was afraid of all those things, I couldn’t actually see any of it before my eyes, it was all in my head. So EXTREMELY reluctantly, I took the heavy orange grocery bag and began following the girl (who at this point had finally finished talking on the phone) to the entrance to the boarding gates.

“Thank you,” the two men said to me, waving us off as we walked away.

The girl in front of me looked back at me apologetically to say, “Thank you. I’m sorry about them.”

Inside, I thought to myself, “YOU SHOULD BE SORRY!!! This is so troublesome!!!” I didn’t reply to her as we approached the security guards at the entrance. A security lady approached us and she tested the weight of the black girl’s handbag, her backpack, and her carry-on suitcase by lifting each one briefly with a hand. Then she waved for the girl to enter. When it came to me, with my backpack, camera bag and shoulder bag, and the orange grocery bag, the security lady just nodded me in with hardly a glance.

“Go.”

I blinked at the overly obvious discrimination.

As we filed into the long lines to wait for the bag X-rays and all those other fun security measures, the girl nervously turned back at me and asked, “Where are you from?”

“…Well, technically I am from here. But I live in the United States.”

“You are American?”

“Yeah. Where are you from?”

“I am from Ghana. I am studying here.”

“Oh…” I said. “You study in Guangzhou?”

“Yes. I study at Jiangsu University.”

I shook my head, because I knew a total of five university names in the entirety of China, one of which was Wuyi University, where Professor Selia Tan teaches. The girl dug for her wallet and she opened it to show me her student ID card. It was a practiced motion. I nodded slowly.

“What do you study?”

“Accounting,” she answered curtly in a trembling voice, and she shuffled forward in the line. I followed her. The girl seemed really nervous, and a little afraid. I felt like she was a teensy bit afraid of me. We waited for a little while longer in silence. The orange grocery bag was heavy, which annoyed me.

Then the girl spoke again, shakily, “I thought I was going to cry out there.”

She sounded like she was going to cry in here.

“I guess you’ll miss your brothers a lot, huh?”

“They aren’t my brothers,” she clarified. “They were strangers. I don’t know them at all. They were just trying to help me.”

WHAT! My jaw dropped.

“What?! They aren’t your brothers?!” I was so shocked! But, they were so urgent to find me–to the point of being rude!–and so urgent to send me through with her!

“No, they aren’t my brothers. But yeah, back there I didn’t know what I was going to do…”

I digested this as we shuffled forward in the lines.

“Do you speak the same language as those two men?”

“No, we do not. They are from Nigeria. They were communicating with me in English. People in Ghana have a different language than people in Nigeria,” she explained. Her voice began to grow more firm, more normal. “I think they speak a language called Igbo…”

After a moment, I asked her, “What are all the medals for?” I was referring to the giant pile of medals in the orange grocery bag I was carrying.

“They are for the gospel choir of a church back home. For wearing,” she said.

“Oh…”

“It’s different here for us. It’s easier for you. They look at you and they don’t think anymore and they’ll let you go through. But for us, we have to take off everything, they check everything. But when you have a country with a lot of black people… who misbehave… when they just do whatever and they don’t care about the law, then people will look at all of us with black skin and think that we are all just the same.”

The more she spoke, the more her voice began to tremble again.

“But I am a guest in someone else’s country after all, so I have to live with their rules…” she added.

I grimaced.

“It’s the same in America. It’s the worst in American airports if you look arab or indian, because, well, you know…we had the terrorist attacks…”

She nodded, understanding.

“Those people out there were really nice,” I said, referring to the two black men who helped her to find someone to take her bag through security.

“Yeah, they were,” she agreed absently. “My flight is at 11:20. I hope I make it.” It was about 10:15PM at this point.

“Are you going home?”

“Yes, I am going home for vacation.” She replied. Then she added, “I have not been home for two years.”

“Oh my gosh! That’s so long! Were you able to talk with your family during this time, though? Do you video chat…”

“Skype. Yes, we can Skype,” she said curtly.

I wasn’t sure exactly which applications or websites were usable in China, since in my early experience, ALL of the applications and websites that I used were blocked, which led to my purchase of a VPN. I told her this.

“Oh yes, China blocks a lot of websites. But I don’t have a VPN. I just use a browser called Epic. It can access any website, no matter that China blocks it. It’s for free.”

We reached the machines, where we placed our bags on the belt. I put the orange grocery bag down first, and it flopped onto the girl’s backpack. She rightened it as I divested myself of my real bags to put on the belt. The girl diligently took off her shoes and jacket to go through the metal detector. I kept on my shoes out of laziness, and the security guards waved me through.

We gathered our bags and went forward.

~

I lost touch with her not long after that point, though I was able to say a brief goodbye and wish her luck. I went to find her gate but most of the passengers had already boarded. I regret not getting her name. I really hope she made it home safely.

赤子之心 – The Pure Heart

Tonight my cousin invited me to watch The Voice of China (中国新歌声) with him so I could improve my Chinese. The Voice of China is the Chinese version of The Voice, or La Plus Belle Voix, or all the other shows with the four professionals who press a button to turn their seats around to approve of the voice they’re listening to…

不求任何人满意， 只要对得起自己

I won’t ask to please anybody, I only need to be able to do right by myself

We watched this girl sing a song called “追梦赤子心.” Here are the lyrics with a passable English translation.

I asked my cousin what Chi (赤) meant, since this is also the same Chi as the one in Chikan (赤坎), the township where my mom’s village is. My cousin said he had no idea about the Chi character by itself, since he’s only ever heard this word used with the expression “赤子之心,” and so I asked him what that phrase meant, but he couldn’t explain it, so we looked it up.

~

I’m thinking about serendipitous, spiritual coincidences. Because it was only this morning, that I noticed something about the cover of one of the books that I purchased before I left Kaiping.

This book, titled 平凡赤子心, is one of Professor Selia Tan’s books. The title means something along the lines of “Ordinary Chi Zi Xin,” or “Ordinary Pure Heart.” The title of the book comes from the title of one of the chapters in the book. I think that it is also a play on the word “Chi (赤),” because I think this book is about several Tan family members whose ancestral home was in the Lanhou Village (岚厚村) in the Chikan Township.

I mean, I think. I’m not sure because I can’t actually read this book yet, and I am only guessing from the few words that I can recognise.

Anyways, the thing I noticed this morning was not the word Chi (赤). It was the photo of the building on the front cover!

I’ve seen this building before!

Only a week ago!

My great uncle took me to look at it!

Yep. My mom’s village is also the Lanhou Village (岚厚村). And my mom’s last name is also Tan.

I showed the book cover to my uncle, and he laughed.

“I used to sleep in this building every night for five years.”

“What?! Why were you living in this mansion?”

“Mansion! This used to be a granary! We stored our grains here! After we dried them, we’d store them on the left side of the mansion. That was Lanhou One. Lanhou Two is the right side. Your great-uncle and I were the ones who slept on the left side. But it was mostly me. I know this building very well.”

I wish I could read Chinese! Then I could have been of some help at Cangdong, then I could have been of some help for Professor Tan.

But I think that Professor Tan and I have some yuan (缘). We’re from the same township, possibly the same ancestors. She likes architecture, and I think I like architecture, too. Only a couple of weeks ago, she even said that when she was younger she had bad acne like me!

I want to study Chinese diaspora art and architecture, too.

I need to start by reading all the PDFs that Laura gave me.

Qixi 七夕: a photo post

Today my aunt took me to Zhu Village (珠村) to look at the Qixi festivities. We saw it covered on TV. Jim had also advised me to see Zhu Village during Qixi, but my cousin (表妹) said I shouldn’t go on the 9th because that’s when everyone will go, and it will be super crowded. So we went this weekend.

We prayed at each temple.

The decorations at the altars of the gods were delicate and pretty.

Traditionally, girls make super delicate and intricate works of art that involve threading to present to temple gods and goddesses. It’s a ritual for showing off their domestic skills as well as to offer something for the gods and goddesses to send them happiness in the form of a good marriage life…

Well, this is what I read on Wikipedia. I miss everyone back at Cangdong. Their Chinese culture lessons are so much better than Wikipedia.

Some ladies were working on some more decorations to sell as souvenirs. I bought three little frogs from a grandma.

I feel so lucky to come here at this time.

I saw so many different renditions of the cowherd and the weaver girl meeting on the bridge of magpies.

It felt kind of hopeful, kind of mysterious. Niu lang (牛郎) and Zhi nu  (织女) were in love and happy together for a time before they had to get torn apart, and then cruelly separated forever. They only get to meet once a year. And yet in these art works, they get to meet again, and again, and again.

An intro to Guangzhou

Guangzhou is so cool after the typhoon! I wish it would just keep raining until I leave China, even though I don’t have waterproof shoes.

So far, I have visited Shamian (沙面) Island, Tai Gu Warehouses (太古仓) , the Chen Family Ancestral Hall (陈家祠), and Huangpu (黄埔) Village. My aunt has taken me to see everything and she has been footing all the tasty meals… I feel bad for cutting into her housework time, but she seems to be happy to have the chance to visit more of Guangzhou.

I am so bu ke qi (不客气).

When we were visiting the Chen Family Ancestral Hall, there was a French couple behind us in line for tickets! I told them in terrible French to go to Kaiping to visit le temple d’ancêstres de la famille de Yu, Fengcaitang (风采堂). The lady was delighted to hear it anyway, but damn! If you don’t speak a language after two months, it deteriorates to almost nothing! It was so hard to work my way up to my level of French in May, and in two month’s time, I undid all my efforts. Wow.

The full price entrance fee is only 10 RMB, and if you have a student ID card, you could get half price. They have 50 minute Cantonese and Mandarin guided visits for 100 RMB, English guided visits for 150 RMB, and expert guided visits for 800 RMB.

Apparently the Chen Family Ancestral Hall was not for only one family. A ton of different Chen families gathered together to raise money to build this temple, and none of the families were related by blood. The Chen Family Ancestral Hall is, according to CJ, fairly traditional Chinese architecture. “中国传统.” But amongst all the Chen families, there were some overseas Chinese Chen families! And being in Guangzhou, the Chen Family Academy cannot escape the east-west cultural exchange. Here are some examples:

The iron pillars are untraditional. The stone entranceways with the fancy little arch are also untraditional. Glass is untraditional. And the cutest untraditions of them all are the two little upside down angels on the brick relief! The docent pointed out that these angels are not nude (which is untraditional for the west) and that they are wearing du dou (肚兜), which are traditional Chinese undergarments.

Our docent mentioned something about how at one point, the Chen Family Ancestral Hall was also used as a sort of rest stop for various Chen family members doing business. They would stay at the Ancestral Hall for some rest and repose before they went along with their travels again. Maybe I understood it wrong.

One of the things I absolutely adore about coming back to China is feeling like everyone is related. Shionyi and my aunt both have the surname of Yu (余), which is the same Yu as the Yu Family Ancestral Hall. Grandpa Deng and Rocky both have the surname of Deng (邓). My mom and Professor Selia Tan and the Kaiping Minister of Culture all have the last name of Tan (谭). And not to mention everyone who is named Xie (谢) or Guan (關) or Situ (司徒). It feels like we’re all a big family.

The other day, when the artists visited Cangdong Village to do their pieces for the November exhibition, there was one artist whose name was Chen (陈) as well. When he left, he said, “Little Chen (小陈), I’m leaving!”

It made me feel so happy!!! I’ve never been called Little Chen or Little Chan in my whole life!

Yesterday we went to the Huangpu village and saw the Huangpu Port. It looks so tiny! I could not see how ships from America and Europe landed in this little port for all of China for hundreds of years. My cousin says that they turned a large part of the water into land to develop. I’m not sure what this uncle is doing. I asked him if he was fishing but he ignored me. I see a lot of people fishing everywhere in Guangzhou. Just casually, guys in their flip flops and t-shirts with fishing poles…

This is my cousin, Runlin (谭润霖), and me. It’s been a long time.

(ALSO, AM I TANNER THAN MY COUSIN?! 😱 WHAT?! 💀 ok thanks Kaiping. 😞)

So my aunt and my cousin and I wandered around the Huangpu village all day, very carefreely eating snacks and the local foods. I had the Double Skinned Milk (双皮奶) that Jim wanted me to try back in Xinhui. I also tasted the ginger milk pudding (姜撞奶) that my aunt ordered. It reminded me of when Shionyi ordered ginger milk pudding in Chikan once upon a long time ago this summer.

We visited as many ancestral halls as we could. But a good amount of them were unfortunately closed. We visited this Beidi Temple (北蒂庙), which had a tree with a lot of wishes. I’ve only ever seen this in manga and anime! They were filled with wishes that were very traditional and Confucian and Chinese, such as “health to my parents.”

The whole grounds smelled like incense. The temple was very smoky. My aunt started to pray. I asked if we could make wishes. My cousin said, “Don’t be too careless with wish-making!” I asked why, and he said that if our wishes came true, we’d have to come back to the same temple to thank the gods.

Today I didn’t go anywhere touristy. I accompanied my aunt as she went soup ingredient shopping. She bought these little scorpions to make soup to help me detoxify. 😭 I am breaking out really, really, really badly. Like, this is probably the worst breakout I’ve had in my life. I’ve had really bad breakouts at school during finals seasons, but right now, I think I look the worst that I’ve ever looked. When ladies stopped to talk to my aunt, they would look at my face and recommend Chinese medicine soup ingredients to my aunt.

“Baihe (百合), lianzi (莲子), and a tiny bit of sugar…”

Ok, thanks everyone. So I look terrible. Alright.

A long aside: What is the Cangdong Project?

About two weeks ago, Jim and I were buying iced 王老吉 drinks from a local shop, and we were chatting with the shopowner. The auntie asked us if we were tourists from downtown Kaiping, and I said no, we were living at a hostel that used to be the old post office in Tangkou. She then asked us where we worked.

Jim said, “You know the village across from the Li Gardens (立圆)? Cangdong Village? We work there.”

“Oh, I know that village. I live in the next one over. But what sort of work do you do?”

“You know how there are two old ancestral halls? They look kind of like diaolou, really fancily decorated? Well, a professor named Selia Tan restored them. She’s from Kaiping, and she was the key person who helped write the Kaiping diaolou’s application for the UNESCO world heritage list.”

“Hm… Ok. So you do construction?”

“Haha, well, we do a bit of this and that every now and then. But usually, we just have a lot of students from all over the world coming to study at the restored ancestral hall.”

~

Besides Professor Selia Tan, The Cangdong Project is also led by business partners Rocky Dang and Peter Stuckey. They both live in Hong Kong but they both visit Kaiping and Cangdong fairly often. I have only recently met Peter, but what I understand about Rocky is that the Cangdong Project for him is a retirement experiment founded upon the respectable partnership between him and Professor Selia Tan. Their Cangdong Project promotes the common values of cultural heritage conservation, sustainable revitalisation and development, and community empowerment, all based in the particular location of Kaiping.

The Cangdong Project distinguishes its cultural conservation from cultural preservation. Preservation evokes museums and fossilizing concepts. I think that respecting and allowing for the natural continuity of people’s ways of lives is really important for Professor Tan. It’s not enough to clean up old buildings and restore them to their former glory. When Professor Tan first renovated buildings in Cangdong Village back in 2011, she and her students invited local builders and local artisans who still practiced fresco paintings, stucco decorations, and wood carvings to aid with the renovation projects. When Rocky talks about restoring new buildings, it seems to me that the most important question for him is what function would the newly renovated architecture be able to serve for the village, or possible visiting educators and students. And this is also why the China Citic bank’s buying out of Chikan is such a hot topic at the Cangdong Project – because they exemplify the exact opposite of what the Cangdong Project aspires towards when it comes to conservation. I have heard that Professor Tan could talk herself blue in the face about Citic and Chikan.

Sustainable revitalisation and development goes hand in hand with the whole idea of respecting people who still live in the place you want to develop. Developing an entire waterfront town into a tourism neighbourhood to improve the local economy sounds good until we understand that you plan to kick out all the people who live there and you’re going to raise the rent on all the poor shopkeepers who sell super low-price local goods. If a revitalisation project ends up neglecting a portion of the people (and it’s almost always usually the poorest, most wretched class of people) then it is not revitalisation. We call that gentrification.

When we keep treating people like their ways of living are not worth respecting, that their livelihoods are unimportant, well, they might begin to actually think that it is true. Professor Tan and Rocky seem to prefer the translation “community empowerment,” though I’m not sure what the Chinese is.

As young people, we all at one point entertain the thought that we’d like to do some good in the world. Some of us have the privilege of going on break-out trips to inner city neighbourhoods or visiting third world communities in other countries. But if we are critically thinking when we embark on these volunteering opportunities, we could find that our service efforts can be oddly unfulfilling, and may cause us to not only be bothered by our inadequacy to make a difference but even feel deeply disturbed by the simplicity with which we can walk away from people in real and drastic situations after doing basically nothing besides take pictures and eat the local food.

Alright, perhaps I am only speaking for myself. I am thinking about myself from only a couple of years ago. But what goes around comes around, and I feel like the question that I sent out to the universe those years ago has boomeranged back at me this summer. I think that observing the Cangdong Project has shed some light on those uncomfortable and inexpressible feelings that I had back then.

Effecting change on a community seems super important and noble, but if you don’t have the conscious permission and willing cooperation of the said community, you’re ridiculous. You’re not noble and you’re the opposite of important. You’re a just tourist with a savior complex.

How do you get conscious permission and willing cooperation of the community you want to change? Well, you might have to get down and dirty. Learn the Kaiping dialect (or, if you’re Professor Selia Tan, you were already raised to speak it). Live in the village. Make friends with the people whom you claim you care about. And learn about what they want. And help them get what they want, not what you want.

~

I also have to add how endlessly impressed I am that everyone who works at Cangdong Village understands the Kaiping dialect. Nobody at the Cangdong Village besides Professor Tan and Grandpa Deng (and technically me as well) are actually Kaiping people. Rocky is from Hong Kong and Vietnam. Peter is from Hong Kong and England. Nana is from Enping. Jim and Shionyi are from Xinhui. CJ is from Shenzhen and Zhuhai and Chaoshan.

~

Some photos of Cangdong people and visitors of Cangdong in action:

Professor Tan giving a seminar on local artifacts to a summer conference of Chinese high school students. She is standing under the sky well of one of the two ancestral halls in Cangdong Village.

CJ observing the progress of Master Hu, a local fresco and stucco decoration craftsman. He was live demonstrating in Cangdong Village’s He Ting (禾厅) for that same summer conference of high school kids.

A group of artists visited from Jiangmen, Guangzhou, and downtown Kaiping to do some plein air pieces on the architecture and landscape at Cangdong Village. I think Professor Tan invited them to organise an exhibition at Cangdong Village in November. Not included in the picture is the Cangdong village head Nuan Shu (暖叔, as in warm uncle!), and his visiting grandsons, all of whom were sitting next to me in the shade, also watching the artists at work.

~

But to be really real, most of the action at Cangdong actually just consists of CJ answering calls from the Kaiping County Minister of Culture asking him to receive government officials’ callings.

~

Disclaimer: This is what I have observed in the Cangdong Project in five-six weeks of close interaction with the Cangdong Project members at the Tangkou hostel. All observations are personal. Nothing I have written was ever approved by the Cangdong Project leaders. I may have misinterpreted or misunderstood things.

~

Updating on myself: the typhoon Nida has passed me by and I have arrived safely in Guangzhou this afternoon. (Or, yesterday afternoon. Eek, it’s after midnight already.) Onto the next chapter of my search for my undergraduate art history thesis slash postgraduate research grant material! I am once again irrevocably behind on updates! I might try to backtrack to write about visiting Xinhui with Tony and Jim, and also my solo visits to Majianglong and Jinjiangli, and also my visit to my mom’s village in Chikan … but the days pass me by faster than typhoon winds!

Moving and Pig Gods

It’s been a very busy week! We went to Xinhui and came back, and there are currently a lot of summer camp students and teachers suddenly at Tangkou and Cangdong, but the biggest change of all is that I have moved to Cangdong Village!

Shionyi, Tony and I moved out here with Jim because Rocky wanted us to experience living with the villagers for at least a couple of days. It’s not hard at all! When people hear that I’m going to live in the village, people think I am going to live in a cave or something. But it’s really not hard at all. The Cangdong village set up is great. Going to the bathroom is a bit tricky because going alone is scary in the dark and it’s so far, but other than that, it’s really comfortable in the house that they set up. There’s an air conditioner set up in every room. CJ and Jim used to live in the house that we’re living in for like a year, back when the Tangkou hostel wasn’t a hostel yet.

So now I am in the deep countryside. The only way I can get deeper into the countryside is if I dive into a fish pond. I mean, I was living in the countryside already, at the Tangkou hostel. But the Tangkou hostel is so hostel-y. It has a western-styled kitchen and two fridges and chocolate. And Grandpa Deng, the caretaker, takes care of all our meals. Out here, we have to bike to the market early in the morning to get breakfast and our own groceries, and we have to walk out of the house to the other end of the village to take our showers and to go to the bathroom.

It’s been a good time so far. I was so reluctant to move the first day. I wanted to move back after 3 nights. And now I kind of don’t really want to move back at all!

When we biked in the dark to Cangdong Village the first night after a last dinner at Tangkou, Nana and CJ and Grandpa Deng sent us off like our mom and dad and grandpa.

Here’s us cooking our meals on our own.

Or, to be more honest, here’s us helping Jim out where we can as he cooks for us.

A short shout out to Jim, for a) teaching me so damned much about Chinese history, culture, and art on top of everything CJ and everyone else has been teaching me, b) taking me out to see the coolest things in Sze Yap when CJ can’t, c) and always saying the exact right things to me, at the exact right time. Jim and I were born under the same stars, in different years. We are soul siblings.

I hope you all meet Jim. Or someone like Jim.

“What are those little guys, pigs?”
“…Devastating. Really devastating. To be relegated to a pig by you…!”
“What, they’re not pigs?”
“You’re a pig! Have you ever seen a pig with horns like that?!”
“Well, I thought they could be ears!”
“Have you ever seen a pig with ears that stick up like that?”
“…Maybe pig gods might have ears that stick up.”
“You’re a pig god!”

(They’re qilin, by the way.)

Morning at Chikan

Jim came back! He is visiting for a few days. He couldn’t stay away from Kaiping, couldn’t keep away from us.

This morning we finally went to the Chikan farmer’s market! Wah! Finally! I had wanted to go since the beginning of July! And now Tony is finally confident enough in his newly-learned bicycling for us all to go together. He practiced a lot all by himself at Mao’s Granaries during these hot afternoons. And we’re so lucky once again, with Jim as our guide.

Jim, Tony, Shionyi, and I set off at 7:35-ish, and we arrived at Chikan exactly at 8:00! But it took about 25 minutes to find the breakfast place. Once we arrived at the markets, it was so crowded that we had to wind our way through so many people. When Grandpa Deng later asked us how many people were at the markets, Jim replied that it wasn’t even the most people that he’s ever seen at the markets. He’s seen the Chikan farmer’s market even more crowded than today. He said that it can get so crowded that you can’t even walk through the streets! Which is why we had to pay attention to pickpockets. Grandpa Deng said that it’s busy these couple of days for farmers, because everyone is taking advantage of the sun to cut their grains, so if people go early to the market and take care of their business and get home to farm.

We had breakfast at the place a block down from the old church I talked about last time Jim took Sonia and me here. This plate was 2 yuan.

“You won’t have this anymore once Citic (中信) comes along!” Jim reminded us.

There are so many people in Chikan… The latter three images were taken in the same spot, with my phone pointing in three different directions.

We visited the old church with the Mao slogans again, because Tony wanted to see it again and Shionyi hasn’t seen it yet. Tony is interested in studying more of the traces of the cultural revolution in this area. He is really passionate about his home country. Though he studies in America, he is still Chinese, after all.

Jim brought our leftovers from the breakfast place for the dogs. He fed one, and the black one stopped barking! The one that didn’t like sweets kept barking at us. Jim is so prepared.

The last time we were here, I didn’t know that this rundown church was the oldest church in Kaiping. Jim says that he heard Rocky say that a pastor still lives at this church, and even farms here, but I don’t believe it. How could a pastor let the holy architectural body look like this?

Anyways, we went back loaded with some new vegetables for the day’s meals. CJ and Nana are tired of bean sprouts and squash.

Along the road, Tony spotted this interesting sign, which says, “Taking care of girls is taking care of the people’s future.” It’s a public service announcement.

Tom0rrow Tony and I are tagging along with Jim as he heads back to Xinhui.

Slow Days

Grandpa Deng makes awesome breakfasts! But you have to get up early to enjoy it! Nana had taken a few days off to go home to Enping, and now she is back. She brought back snacks as well.

I’ve been thinking about applying to graduate school. I emailed Professor Adam Yuet Chau at Cambridge for advice on my undergraduate art history thesis topic. I told him about the Yu Family Ancestral Hall, the Chen Family Ancestral Hall (which I have yet to visit… but soon!), and also about what Laura suggested: a study on the subjects of ceramic and stucco carvings and frescoes above the doors and windows of diaolou as reflections of the ideals of Chinese diaspora.

But I’m really unprepared. I haven’t read and studied enough and I’m inexperienced. I don’t know so many things. I think I am lucky to even have these few ideas. But I don’t think they’re enough.

On another note, I have also learned that I have apparently been writing my Chinese name wrong all these years. Apparently I am supposed to write a (羊) for the top part and a separate (大) on the bottom. I wasn’t supposed to be writing the four horizontal strokes at the same time. Or whatever. Whatever.

CJ ordered a whiteboard from Beijing for the Cangdong Project, but I’ve been using it to teach English with Tony! For the first lesson, we watched the TEDed video of “The Art of the Metaphor,” and went through new vocabulary. For the second lesson, we all took turns practicing reading a scene from The Lion King and we went through pronunciation weaknesses. It’s been really fun. Nana, Shionyi, and CJ are great students!

After the The Lion King lesson, Nana recited the scene endlessly… from memory… she was really enamoured with it. It was the scene of Mufasa giving Simba a lesson on being king and on the Circle of Life.

“She has lost it (她走火入魔啦),” said Shionyi.

If the graduate school thing doesn’t pan out, I plan to teach. I am not too worried right now. I know I’ll worry when I get back to school, and I’m surrounded by people starting their businesses or going to New York or looking for consulting jobs left and right. But for now, I feel as free as a bird and as light as an arrow.

The fields near Liyuan and Cangdong are being prepared for a second round of grains!

Meanwhile, this is a photo that my mom sent me from California, that she asked me to show to Nana and Grandpa Deng. Overseas Chinese squash.

Even squash can be overseas! But still just as tasty.

 

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.

荣桂坊 and Red Bean Soup

Last night we went to Rongguifang Village again, because Tony hasn’t seen it yet. We biked there together!

The ducks have grown a lot! Time passes by so fast. Last I saw you, you were so little.

We saw a couple of funny things on the walls in the Diaolou. After Tony read this poem-looking text on the wall, he muttered the Chinese version of “what the hell” and walked out of the room.

I asked him what it meant and he only translated “打飞机” for me.

I made the fish ball curry for dinner! And half caramelized onions with a green bell pepper again. I needed to save my reputation after my failed attempt at the 小炒王 at lunch.

Shionyi and CJ are not fans of the sweetness, but I am. Fine! More for me!

It was raining really hard for dinner. There’s the incoming typhoons in Guangdong, after all.

A bird’s nest dropped onto the ground. CJ picked it up! It was wrapped around and around like a big grass egg. CJ is so daring, I watched him stick two fingers in to look for baby birds or eggs. But it was empty.

A relative dropped by Tangkou to visit me. I was really surprised. But CJ said that if I told him that I was living at the old post office, he could find the Tangkou hostel really easily if he had a chauffeur familiar with Kaiping.

After dinner, Shionyi finished her red bean tangshui and we made latte art on our soups using coconut milk.

CJ projected Now You See Me onto a wall with Chinese subtitles and I ended up watching the whole thing even though I’ve seen it before, and then I went to bed.