Mom and Dad arrived in Hong Kong on Aug. 21st after their visit to see Anice in Japan (see
Dad's entry on his impressions of Japan) and yes, they did come bearing my favourite cereal and chocolate bars!! During the first few days here, they managed to get their HKID card hassle-free, visit me at
Treasure Island, see the world's largest outdoor Buddha at Ngong Ping and visit a few relatives.
Today we went to pay our respects to my dad's maternal grandparents. Situated in one of HK's largest shrines, we arrived early in the morning, bearing flowers, to meet up with our other relatives. Dad has not stepped foot in HK since 1977 (Mom was here back in 2000 on her way back from China), and so it was an emotional reunion with his aunties and uncles.
The entire place was simply beautiful, with colourlful temples, a turtle and fish pond, lovely sculptures and walkways and what makes it extra serene is the pleasant smell of burning incense from every direction. With the slight drizzle of rain and mist rising from the mountains, the atmosphere was just right for the occasion.
Dad's aunt and uncle recounted stories about their childhood, the occupation, how their mother had died at a very young age from illness and stress, leaving their father to care for 4 young children. He opted to never marry again so as to not have to worry about bringing in a 'wicked stepmother' to his children. Living in constant fear during the war, he burned all the family photographs so that the enemy could never get hold of them and track them down.
And so, unfortunately, there are no pictures of my grandmother and her siblings until after the war ended. However, fortunately, he forgot one photograph taken of his new bride when she was 19 years old. This is the one that is now forever immortalized on plaque number 336, beside the picture of her devoted husband.
We did the customary three bows and then tried to find the site where my Aunt (Mom's oldest sister) has her 'grave'. I should clarify here that they aren't actually graves as we know it, where the body is buried there. In fact, it is just a plaque with the name and sometimes picture of the deceased, symbolizing the grave itself. Usually the person has been creamated or that he/she's been buried in a plot too far away to visit on a regular basis.
Having only met my Aunt once when i was one year old, she died of breast cancer ten years ago, leaving beind two sons (my cousins who are now in Toronto). We were only given scant information from another Aunt of where her grave was and after a lot of searching, we found it with the help of the office worker (see pic of Mom looking for the grave). There are dozens of rooms on site, each with hundreds of people's graves inside.
As each room is given a name, you must know at least the room name in order to look up who you want. This shrine is so popular, that not only do tour groups come to visit the place, but the actual value of one of the shrine's room can be more than a modern condominium building due to the high cost of each grave. Side note: I read in the paper this week that because cost for a proper burial site has skyrocketed in HK, people are taking out mortgages for their own plots while they are still alive!
After a delicious
dimsum meal we all trooped up to Dad's Uncle's,
Sok Gong, apartment where we paid respects to my Dad's paternal grandparents. They have a mini shrine in their house so there is no need to trek all the way up to the New Territories to visit the actual grave site. This is very common among the older generation of Chinese people; it also allows them to pray everyday to their spirits as well as offer some
siu-mai (smoked bbq pork meat, chicken, duck) to their ancestors. We performed a tea-pouring ritual, offered colourful crepe paper as a blessing and then trooped down to the open courtyard to burn them (see pic).
It is customary to offer the spirits things from the living world so that they can use them in the afterlife. It is not unusual to see paper money, paper Ferraris, paper houses and even paper Heineken bottles being burned! Apparently people have been known to have died from toxic chemicals in their flat from attempting such burning ceremonies.
Afterwards we were treated to a little show from
Sok Gong who has been learning the
er-hu for a mere few hours but managed to make beautiful melodies nonetheless (see pic). He was still quite a lively fellow, although his vision was slowly deteriorating and he had to walk with a cane. He loves to tell stories of the past and he certainly didn't spare any that day!
A horrific story from his childhood was when my grandfather (Dad's dad) was already serving on a navy ship as a cook when one day
Sok Gong went out to buy bread with his 3 younger siblings. A bomb fell directly in front of them, killing the 3 children instantly. Luckily
Sok Gong was not injured, but he had the unimagineable task of returning home to tell his mother the devastating news. He was 17 years old at the time. He decided to join the army and eventually worked his way up to serve under one of China's most-feared generals.
Overall, the day was full of new revelations about my family and history. It was a happy reunion for my parents and that, to me, was a joy to see. I'm also very happy that Matt got to meet these relatives of mine and, even though most of what was said went over his head, he charmed everyone with his heavily Mainland-accented-Cantonese and they in turn embraced him as a member of the family.
i'm sitting here, online, reading the news, reading blogs, basically wasting time at Pacific Coffee, waiting for orchestra rehearsal to begin. it's times like these that i realize i'm still impatient when it comes to waiting for time to pass.
the hardest bit is perhaps coming in halfway through their semester and not knowing their names. i remember those painful first few weeks in Zhuozhou where i struggled to commit to memory the names of my students. chinese names are something of a nuisance to pronounce, especially if you don't know how to read the characters or aren't sure of the tones.
