Returning Home

[A visit to Chaoyang, Guangzhou province, China; March 2008]

It was many years in the making but only took 3 days to put together. My Grandpa (or Gong Gong), as mentioned in previous posts, is at the ripe old age of 102.

I suppose when one has lived his number of years, one has had a lot of time to think about how to manage the closing years of his life. Although his mind is as sharp as a tack, and his health is relatively well considering his advanced years, at 102 years old he tends to wonder how he would bid his village farewell, his home country so many miles away that he left so many years ago. What would he do to protect the family he leaves behind, not just their lives, and also their afterlives? Has he done all that is fair and dutiful to his ancestors, and ensure that their legacy will be respected and lives on?

This sentiment of generational duty and piety, is not something that we, Generation X-ers, Y-ers, and whatever the new name is for the youth on the streets these days, will be able to fully understand. I don't think I would have even been able to appreciate half of the little bit I do now, if it wasn't for the years of living with Gong Gong, or the amount of history and family tradition that has been drummed into be since childhood.

Strange that the more I tried to break away from it when I was younger (and in some ways, even now), the stronger I am drawn to learn what it is.

"Returning Home", or "Huei2 Xiang1", as it is called in Mandarin, is a notion that is unique to immigrants and their future generations. These lost sheep are never really considered to have "left", but rather to have "come back". Although some of these ties are cemented with the rather materialistic glue of regular monetary contributions and annual holiday visits, even the surface ceremony has more meaning to me than just watching a re-play of "The Joy Luck Club".

I suppose it makes the stories that Gong Gong used to tell, suddenly take shape in front of me. HERE is the mountain that he said would mark the edge of his town; HERE is where Gong Gong slept every night after he came back from hard day's work as an apparentice. THERE is where Grandma had to tough out a life eating grass and sweet potatoes when the Japanese were in power. THERE is where 5 generations ago, a spat over an inheritance created in my Grandpa the will to pack up his bags and take a coach down to Xiamen (Amoy) and board a ship to the "Southern Seas" and make his life in Singapore.

Strangely it seems like a movie playing out in real life in front of me - but the main character is missing. Grandpa, who is so concerned about our visit and was anxiously waiting by the phone for our call that we had arrived safely, not in the airport nor the hotel, but in the village actually sitting down in the old family house and having tea with our relatives. That was when he wanted to hear from us, to hear our report that we had arrived safely, at home.

For me, there was a sentiment of returning home not just from generations of story-telling, but also because I was here, 15 years ago. In my father's generation of 5 sons and 4 daughters, he was the son that has returned to the village the most, with my grandpa (when he was still able to travel). Of the daughters-in-law, my mother was the only one that was ever back in the village. I was the only grandchild in the generation that had returned. So for all 3 of us, this was another returning, a way of reminding ourselves that despite years of living in Singapore, United States, Australia, Hong Kong, we still needed to return home.

The words remained the same, we could still speak the dialect, the home was like we remembered. Everyone looked older, more mature, some more haggard. Others have passed on. I showed pictures of Grandpa to the relatives, and the expressions on their faces were indescribable - a strange mix of grief and happiness and shock - as if to see a long-lost-thought-dead-relative come back to life. Such personal emotion that I felt intrusive to even take a photo of them.

I missed Gong Gong sorely on this trip. He was there in spirit with us but I know he wanted to be there in body too. He wasn't gone from this earth, but it felt, in a strange foreboding way, like he was. I wish he wasn't so stubborn (and so old) to fly - as much as I feel honored to be part of his eyes and ears, it would have been a much more valuable experience if he was here to see his old home again.

Then I remember what has changed about this place, and I think that it may be best for Grandpa to remember his home the way it was - and the way we are going to tell him that it is.