Day 10: Kaipeng (part 1)

Today was the day we searched for my grandparents' villages.

Kaiping is a small collection of villages about three hours from Guangzhou that spreads out among the farming country side. Our tour first took us to a preserved heritage site. The sign said "Zili Village" but I couldn't decide whether that meant it was named that or that was its type of village.

The buildings were tall and made of stone or brick. Every entrance was clad in iron gates and every window was shuttered and barred in iron. They really looked more like prisons with nice balcony decorations than homes. Apparently at the time these homes were lived in, banditry was a very large problem. Bandits would ride into the villages in this area and would raid the homes for whatever they had to offer. To protect themselves, the villagers built these home fortresses inside of which they would barricade themselves. The bars kept the bandits out and the shutters kept them safe from the bombs the bandits carried. The buildings were built tall with precarious stairs that would take you to the top. The steps were tall and each step would only accommodate half my foot so I had to walk sideways up the stairs in fear of falling down them. At the top of the building, you could look for long ways in every direction since the building's six stories(including the roof) towered over the surrounding farm land. The preserved building had a pile of rocks on the roof and were labeled as a self-defensive measure. There were also holes looking down from the roof where defenders could shoot at their attacking intruders, although these days the looked like they were more useful for drainage.

The insides of the buildings were preserved according to the time they were used. The furniture was wood and uncomfortable by todays standards. Signs with broken english prevented us from seeing how uncomfortable they really were. They had pictures on the walls worshipping their ancestors and small shrines beneath them. On the upper floors they had the bedrooms where the wooden posted beds would fill practically the whole room. The furniture was carved with images of dragons, clouds and bats to indicate this was a family of wealth in the village. One house even had a grammophone and a framed picture of a steamboat chugging its way to a better world.

Outside in the village below, chickens and goslings ran freely about among the vendors who sold fruit and assortments of toys and dried mushrooms. There was even a man herding a gaggle of geese through the fields flicking a long pole with a rag tied on the end of it like it was a giant metranome(sp?) that kept the pace of this slow lifestyle. It was rather refreshing walking through the village where the only real worry was stepping in goose shit.

Popo(chinese for my mother's mother) was getting a bit antsy by now and wanted to go. My mom had written down the name of the village that Gung-gung(my mother's father) was from and was asking the driver if he could find this place. He didn't really speak any English but could speak to my mom and Popo in cantonese, so from what I could make out, he kind of knew where to go but we had to ask multiple people along the way. We got out onto a four lane country highway lined by wooden horse fences and rice paddies, and after a few minutes, the driver hits the brakes and starts to go in reverse. I'm thinking 'holy shit' and making sure no one is behind us. Then about 10 yards back I see what we stopped for. It's a small dirt road not much wider than the bus and marked by a standing stone that's etched in chinese. The road gets narrower as we progress down it and eventually are looking down into rice paddies. I'm just hoping that we don't fall into them as we drive by. There are maybe two farmers out in the fields and stare as we drive by. About half a mile in and we come to a small collection of stone houses. They're built close together and bordered by a concrete slab that hangs over a large pond that probably serves as a water reservoir.

We stop the car and Popo and our translator get out to talk to a woman who has come out. I get out of the car and am listening to my grandma speaking quickly and there's lots of pointing going on. I ask my mom what's going on and apparently we're in the wrong town and that there's two towns with the same name. We pile back into the car and head back to the small town where we originally asked for directions and we pull over again to ask for directions. This time a man offers to show us the way. He hops onto his moped and we're on we're way.

The drive is not very far but I'm positive we wouldn't have found it without him showing us the way. The houses here are the same as the last village; stone and crowded together. There are more people out in front here. There's a man beating a fishing net with a stick, a couple old women and a kid walking around in front of the buildings. The pond here is emptied and there are men trodding through the mud and hosing it down. We get out of the car and my grandma starts talking to one of the old women there.

This was the right place. My grandma starts getting very excited and speaking only as cantonese people do; fast and loudly. My mom starts laughing really hard and I nudge her to ask her what's going on. She says, "Popo told her she married Gunggung and moved with him to China and she said 'You married Jack?! But you're so old!'". It's been 51 years since my grandma last set foot in this village, but seeing how this old woman and my grandma were holding hands and chattering away, you'd never think that she left. Apparently this old woman married my grandfather's best friend, and that was all the connection they needed to run around the village like some 80 year old little girls.

At home, we have some pictures near my parents room where they hang the photos from their original trip to China. My older brother, David, went with them and was something like 10 years old at the time. Among the photos is an old photo of a stone building which was taken a long time before the trip, but my mom always told me that it was the building that she was born in. After winding through the narrow alley ways, there stood the same stone building.

It was abandoned long ago and the surrounding garden had grown unchecked. I followed my mom around the building as she tried to get a better angle to shoot from. The rusted metal door to the building was ajar but swung freely as my grandma went into the building. I was rather apprehensive to go inside but as my dad and a couple of the older village members went in after her, I was like 'oookay, here we go'.

The building was unlit but the windows provided adequate light inside. Pots, bottles and debris were scattered about on the floor. Thick grey dust covered practically everything. Popo was nowhere to be seen but you could hear them upstairs. Like the preserved village we had visited just a couple hours before, the stairs were steep and shallow. I didn't trust the railing to the building and hugged the wall as I ascended. The rooms still held some of the original furniture that whoever lived here before didn't want or couldn't take. We climbed all the way to the top until we could look out over the village. Even after 51 years, Gunggung's house was still the tallest around. When we walked through the tower at the Zili Village, it's easy to separate yourself from history of the place. You tell yourself it's a long lost culture of people that lived out in the middle of nowhere where their main concerns in life have mostly been solved by the modern age, but here I am where my mother was born and where people that knew my grandfather still live today in a life that has been canonized by the government and visited by tourists.

On the way down, Popo even pointed out the room where my mom was born and the room where my great grandmother slept.

Without understanding a word of what was said, it was easy to see that my grandmother was moved to see the village she left over half a century ago. As we said our goodbyes to the villagers, my grandma pulled out whatever cash she had on her and gave it to her new best friend. My dad blew balloons for the two kids that curiously peaked out at the strangers that we were.

One of the old men recalled my mom before she and my grandma moved to Hong Kong. Apparently my mom had eaten at his home many times before. He offered to show us the way to my grandma's village which wasn't too far away.

... to be continued