80 years ago, my then-3-year-old maternal grandfather left the home he was born in and came with his parents to the Nanyang (Southeast Asia). He has no living memory of the house, nor of the quiet little village where his parents grew up and were married. Over the years, my great-grandmother frequently reminisced about the large family home she left behind, about the farm they had, and the relatives she never met again. Until this day, that was all my maternal grandfather- or any other member of the family- knew about Yongchun: stories told by an old lady who spent most of her years living in a tiny little apartment above a shophouse in China Street, Singapore.
Until today. We returned to Yongchun to find that, like all other villages, prosperity had transformed the village into a fast growing, prosperous town. Yongchun has an unusual number of residents who emigrated abroad, due to local bandits and government soldiers (it was the corrupt Guomindang running around), and as a result, the descendants of those emigrants who prospered abroad have returned to invest in the land of their forefathers. These descendants are spread all over Southeast Asia, and vastly outnumber the current residents of Yongchun, Despite not being a major town, Yongchun has her own skyscraper, full-fledged orchestra and massive public infrastructure- stadia, concert halls, and conference centres.
We picked up a local official who we had managed to contact via the Singapore-Yongchun association, and she acted as our guide, and helped us find the street where, she said, a very large house still existed where an Ong family (my mother's maiden name is Ong) still lived. True enough, it was there, and my great-grandmother was right: it was, for a peasant house in the 1900s, massive, with several internal courtyards and multiple wings. Thinking back to the tiny, rickety apartment that my great-grandmother lived in, it was no wonder she eloquently waxed nostalgia about the family home in China. We were welcomed in as long-lost relatives, and while my grandfather engaged in a long discussion with the residents so as to establish our exact relationship (very important), we looked around. It was very impressive. As with all China, modernity coexisted with tradition: charcoal burners next to digital washing machines in the kitchen, satellite television resting on an ancient cupboard. One of the family was so prosperous he had built a modern multistory apartment block for the family next to the house, and was so proud of it he wanted to give us a tour (we didn't have the time). I was amused by how the pigs lived in the same shed as the toilet, split by just a wall. It made sense to have all your waste and smells at the same location. It being a working day, only the very young and very old were home, so I didn't get to meet anyone my age. Still, it was exciting experiencing such a tangible and living connection with my past. We didn't stay long, but it was undeniably life-affecting to come face to face with the past one only knew in legend. My grandfather was the happiest, beaming broadly the rest of the trip.
A brief digression- prosperity has transformed rural China so quickly that these building projects have sprouted up in the middle of the villages or towns, leading to a mixture of modern buildings side-by-side or, more often, in front of tiny traditional houses and alleys. Driving down the main thoroughfare, it looks like you are in a city; make a turn off and suddenly you are back in the country, with farms and homesteads around you. It's a curious juxtaposition that exists everywhere. Even in Xiamen or Quanzhou, both of which traditionally were major cities, you can see still see small houses if you peek down an alley way, engulfed by major city blocks. In Yongchun, we stopped at a stall along the main road to buy some fruit. We asked for some mandarin oranges, which the seller didn't have. "Wait a moment!" she cried, and mounted her bicycle and dashed off. Our local guide explained that her farm was just a black away and she's go pick some from her trees and be right back. True enough, a few minutes later she was back, her bicycle basket laden with hastily picked oranges. After such effort, we were inclined to just buy some, but our guide pronounced them not as good as another stall a black away, and ushered us away to buy them there. Aiyah, jin pai seh (very embarrassed), but our guide was right. The other stall did have better oranges.
Final note: the patriarch of the house and my grandfather had the same great-great-grandfather, and their great-grandfathers were brothers. Thus I shared the same great-great-great-great-grandfather as some of the people in that house.
Posted by pj at October 22, 2004 02:14 PM