May 3rd, 2010
So as a favor to my father I filled his shoes over this labor day weekend at my ancestral village in Zhao Qing (肇庆). The following is an account of the events that transpired in a humorous, reverent, and at times frustrated tone. You try explaining to every relative you run into (that’s basically the whole village for me) that your not planning to get married right away, why, and field the usual responses!
Back to the account. My trip started late Saturday morning – my cousin Yuki and I had tickets from nearby Nan Shan Yi Yuan (南山医院) “South Mountain Hospital” to Zhao Qing scheduled for a 10:30 departure. I arrived about 10:20 and Yuki met me with a McDonald’s breakfast (Yes, i know – I’m sorry!). They were out of sandwiches, though apparently had all the ingredients to compile one. That was revealed when i opened the breakfast tray to find two English muffin halves, a flat circular mass of scrambled eggs, and a sausage patty. The ingenuity necessary to combine them was left to the customer – this did not surprise me.
The bus arrived over 20min late. We were shoved around getting on the bus despite having assigned seats – it’s habitual, nothing to be done about it. I introduced myself to the fellow next to me as it was obvious we shared something in common – he was foreign. Agus? – can’t remember his name. An Australian bloke who worked for the Chamber of Commerce in Beijing (北京) – something to do with mining and other stuffs. He lived in Zhao Qing for about 5 years between ‘02-’07 – interesting stuff. He informed me a friend had told him the traffic getting into Zhao Qing was pretty tight so i might as well forget about the estimated trip time of 3 hours.
Australian guy turned out to be right – we arrived in a little over 4 hours. A kid threw up in the general path of following disembarking passengers – then in the pit where technicians stand when performing maintenance on the buses. I thought how that might pan out at a Jiffy Lube – more eventful I’m sure. Yuki and I waited a few minutes for her brother to arrive by car. We drove to their home nearby wherein I met her Grandma, half my height and speaking with an accent I was hopeless to decipher she began the customary task of force feeding me.
I ate as little as I could in order to achieve the proper level of respect without putting myself in a bloated position for the dinner coming in about an hour. I dropped my bag off upstairs, fiddled and failed to get online and was quickly ushered back outside to Yuki’s brothers car.
We drove to our ancestral village, I’d venture a guess at, 20 minutes away. There after making my rounds shaking hands, dropping a few lines of bad mandarin, and playing 20 min of b-ball with younger relatives – I ate again. Not an incline of hunger existed before the meal as I was barely hungry when I ate at the house earlier. The whole village ate together some 20 tables of relatives that I can only aspire one day to identify in our massive family tree. Duck, chicken, a couple veggies and some kind of fatty Chinese meatballs with rice, beer, tea, and soda if you preferred. I stuck to the water I bought nearby and again ate sparingly.
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The Entrance to the Village Eatery
After dinner the lights were popped on in our updated community home (next door to the community eatery). Yuki tried to tell me I might want to give money – though I’m unsure as here words formed neither questions nor statements. I called my father to decipher – she spoke with him, hung up, and provided me with no more clarification on the matter. I stewed – then wandered inside, no one seemed to be leaving yet anyway, and i sensed the mosquito squadrons were rallying to launch – and I’m typically a key target.
Inside, I came to learn, the community members were deliberating on community matters – cool! The matter at hand tonight was who was to manage the village accounting – they had an abacus on one of the two large tables inside – guess I should have known. Everything was conducted in Cantonese so I busied myself with a mini-war with the mosquitoes flying around. 1 point for me every time I killed one, 1 point for them every time they bit me. The committee voted making Yuki’s older brother the community accountant which he reluctantly accepted – an uncle in a red shirt had been passed over but he didn’t seem to upset over it. 7-0 me. Then everyone began putting cash on the table. My cousin (Yuki’s older brother) counted it and the money was placed in a plastic bag which my cousin tucked away. 15-0 + a bonus for a roach. Shortly after we departed for Yuki’s home. 21-0, i was feeling meagerly triumphant.
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A Picture from the opening ceremony of the new “Ho” family house on display inside.
After getting home food was again brought to the table, and you were wondering why I ate sparingly 
. I dodged with a request to take a shower. Afterwords I tried again with the internet – deduced it was something to do with my system – gave up. I then returned downstairs and was greeted with a plethora of junk food. I refused politely… though that dried sweet pork did look tasty. Uncle Henry and a couple of uncles I’m more familiar with came over and were immediately served with bowls, Zongzi (粽子), two trays of rice and veggie powder based dishes, and a couple bowls of local sliced fruit. I ate a bit – despite yelling at myself not to – the apple was particularly tasty. Then I moved onto trying the butter cookies and that seductive dried pork. The fact that it only had four natural ingredients and was imported was enough for me to justify diving in.
I managed my way out of there and back upstairs to use one of my cousins computers to get online. I spent the rest of the night replying to e-mails and updating SNS sites as that was what i was limited to with the Chinese windows and an outdated IE. I hate IE. I ended up in bed around 1:30.
This morning i woke up – after ignoring a set of knocks on my door earlier – I knew all that fake sleeping I did during my high school years would pay off. I did a few sets of push ups, put on my pants, packed up, and made my way downstairs. Grandma brought food out before I even finished pouring myself a glass of water from the bubbler – she was on her game today. I managed to duck a few of the overeating offers including that dastardly dried pork before it was time to leave again for the village. I was given 5 Zongzi (粽子) to bring back with me – I knew my Dad liked them so i thought ‘aah what the hey – I’ll take a few.’
When we got back to the village a meal was being prepared. I busied myself with a little convo with my relatives before moseying over to the kids for a little fun. In my boredom I climbed the tree in their small playground and acted like a monkey to get them roused up – they loved that.
Back inside to eat, even more dishes this time. In addition to the dishes yesterday their was a pork dish, a fish dish, and a veggie w/Chinese sausage dish. I ate to about 70% and filled the rest with water. I transferred my baggage from my cousins car to my Uncle Henry’s before we set off for the day’s adventure.
The plan seemed humble enough – walk around the rice fields and climb the hills where our ancestors were buried, clean off the tombs, light some incense, bow 3 times, and chat along the way. The sun was keen on turning it into more of a trial and it waned on my tolerances. For instance my temperance for being constantly misunderstood by Yuki because in her excitement she answers my questions before they’ve been finished – averaging out in 5 wrong answers to every right one.
There were some interesting sites along the way – for instance the stocked ponds bordered on one side by a large ‘hen house’ housing nearly 1000 geese by my reckoning. The few dead fish i saw floating around didn’t make me feel real great about the food I just ate. Neither did watching the fish eat Geese droppings. At least it appears sustainable right? The highlight of the festive, if not fatiguing, ceremonies included; seemingly pathless venturing through overgrowth, firecrackers before leaving each site – try not hearing us now ancestors! – just in case the x odd billion yuan we burned over to you was insufficient, and wet rice fields with their rows upon rows of the country’s staple crop growing greenly all around me.
I did my best to help out though, just like in HK the week before, I was largely reduced to an awkwardly smiling onlooker. I bowed my bows, almost lost a leg on one of the higher hill paths – damn path was about a foot in width! – and made it back to village in one piece. I endured roughly 30 minutes of prodding about marriage and fended off invitations to stay another day before Uncle Henry was ready to leave. I was happy to get out of there as they were preparing another meal in the community eatery.
Home free back to Shenzhen!
One of my nieces – she was one of the most rambunctious
-End Story-
April 26th, 2010
There’s about 1000 spaces on each side of this hall – can you smell the money? – probably not the smell of incense is quite potent
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My Grandmother and Grandfather – the picture was recently updated to include both of them.
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Some people gathered outside waiting for their turn to bow and make offerings to their ancestors
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My Grandmother’s sister on another floor in the same temple.
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There were monkeys outside the tomb on these trees last time – no luck this time.
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I believe this is my father’s father’s brother’s brother but not not actually – need to ask about this one again.
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This was the last tomb I went to – monk inside reciting scripture and ringing a large bell gave it a nicer feeling than the commercial or government stops
And now some words I captured that day
Up the stairs to find the remains of my Grandfather. A familial obligation I did my best to perform humbly. On stainless steel tables inside the halls the older women of the family hurriedly prepare. Fruit – oranges mostly, bananas, rice, roasted meats – pork, chicken, duck – steamed buns, sweet sesame buns, veggies, paper money, and other niceties to be better appreciated by those enjoying their afterlife. I took 3 sticks of burning incense and, in line, payed my respects to my ancestor with three bows endured through eye-searing, lung clogging smoke. I finished quickly as the line demanded so. It was an exercise in efficiency as much as one of respect. I moved to a second room to repeat the gesture to my father’s cousins daughter’s mother – then to a lower level to once again bow with incense to my grandmother’s sister. I got 4 sticks of incense for the second bowing and 6 for the last from my uncle. It seems the significance of three was lost a little in this transaction. I softly inquired with my father about the significance of the entire act. “I think i need to invent another way for my children to pay their respects to me when I’m gone.” I supposed. I thought a nice dinner over meaningful discussions about family matters and biz would suffice. My father told me some people already were utilizing alternatives. There are sites where you can go and purchase virtual incense and the like and pay your respects virtually. Much more cost effective than purchasing a spot at this shrine to display your ashes – anywhere from 30000-100000+HK. That would ring a wall of 100 w x 13 h units (at an avg of 50k/box) in at 65,000,000HKD. There is well over a billion HK decorating the walls of this shrine. My father and I speculated there was almost certainly a business behind this operation. Real estate for the dead is a fine business indeed.
February 3rd, 2009
What follows is a little late night catharsis and reflection -
I’m sure more things of this type will follow in time.
If your feeling sentimental dig right on in!
So it occurred to me today that perhaps a brief release might aid in my tollerance of my day to day life here in China. Perhaps a candid rant about my father would allow me to lesson the load on my back. We’ve come a long way as a father and son and though I am proud of what I have allowed myself to do on his/our behalf, though I understand – to some extent – why he has difficulty dealing with some parts of his past and himself, I cannot help but to be increadibly pissed off by his emotional ignorance at times. I can’t claim to completely understand it as I don’t know too much about his past. It is obvious that he has issues with his pride – issues that he may never fully confront. When aggrevated or irratable he reverts back to his usual capcious self – to the point that its not worth the effort to engage him. I remember a month or so ago when he came over to my desk complained in brief about something on my desk and then walked away. This however is something I’ve grown accustomed to as I’ve experienced so much of it growing up. I think what aggrevates me the most currently is his argumentative nature when conversing with me. I don’t know where it arises from but it is quite obvious that the default reaction to any declaration on my part is to object and/or disagree. It makes no difference what it is in particular that we’re talking about, I think simply the fact that I am the declarer merits this reaction. I suppose I can understand it in another way – when something is proposed to me from him I too adapt the stance of objection. However I moderate myself heavily, I’m much more apt to overcome that initial reaction. Perhaps it has something to do with the closeness of our relationship, the same can be said for much of my family – though that can easily be argued a result of the examples of interaction with loved ones we grew up around.
So what exactly is the original source of this disposition? Is it a cultural phenomenon? Is it a portion of his own past that somehow taught him this was the proper way to interact with those close to you? Perhaps some injury or defense mechanism operating from long before i was born. I can easily see its influence on his behavior and its effect on me and my brothers throughout my life. Of course he could never approve of anything I did, it was necessary that he chop me down whenever he could for whatever reason he could find. His tactic isn’t completely unsound its his lack of moderation that makes it a downright toxic influence to a developing individual. In many cases as i mentioned before it didn’t matter what the subject was or the circumstances surrounding the origination of a conversation/arguement – there was always something that could be disagreed with and argued over. I remember a time, when I was on harsher terms with my father, we were arguing about whether or not it was possible to “teach” certain characteristics or if they were in fact inate and there was little to be done about changing them. I began the conversation claiming that of course you could teach/reinforce any characteristic you’d like in your children – as a parent what you do and what you DON’T do all have the power to influence. He disagreed on some grounds or another. By the time we arrived at the store (forgot to mention we were driving to wal-mart ~15 min drive) he was arguing my side and i was arguing the other. This was no mistake I intentionally switched camps to prove a point – it didn’t matter where I sat or what I choose to talk about – far more often than not he was apt to disagree and argue. Adopting strong meaningful grounds for argument based on beliefs and experience as opposed to reactionary meaningless ones, and being able to discern those things not worth arguing about, would have made his parenting techniques much more effective.
Then there is the ever aggrevating rationalization he holds to explain my depression when I was in college. It must be due to genetics and the fact that I took the drug “Accutane,” god forbid he accept any blame for my experience growing up. It is so painfully obvious that this rationaliztion, like so many others, are completely self-serving. I told him for a long time I believed in the “nurture” side of the nature v. nurture argument but that as I had developed a stabler mindset I realized that that too was a self-serving rationalization of my character and experience. There is nothing absolute and difinitive about either side of that arguement and a unbiased, level-headed individual of a rational sort would have no trouble seeing the merit to both sides. Perhaps it inspires so much of a reaction out of me because its dismissive of my experience and acknowledges how little he listens to some of what I say when it comes to tender matters – where accepting what I say would be emotionally harmful to him. Even to this day I do and probably will always have to be the “bigger” person when it comes to some things. The other night as we came back from HK in a half-inebriated daze we were arguing about our family and whose ideas/perspective were valid and whose was not – I came to a point in the argument where he could say nothing in responce – I think something along the lines of him simply owning what he was and forgiving himself so we could all move on – perhaps it was someting else – I’m not certain. I could have continued to pound him with that point – I could have been beligerant – but I knew that what had been said was enough, that it was not right to take advantage of my power in that situation to berate him. That is not a luxury he would grant me, nor is it one that I believe he is even aware of me awarding him. At least its no longer detrimental, its just an irritant that must be tollerated and worked on from both sides. I must exercise tollerance and ignore certain trespasses whose intentions are well grounded. I am proud of my strength in his presence and know that it makes me a stronger person each day overcoming that challenge. I know who I am and strive to become who I want to be – I can face most anything with resilience, though of course I have my setbacks, my unwillingness to let them conquer me is whats most important.
I miss my kin, though we’re not much for gooshy talk just spending time with my brothers is satisfying. I wish my life now didn’t require me to be so far away from them – I suppose it will in time only make us appreciate one another more. I hope they’ll be ok – materially I have few worries about my middle brother but there are pieces of his emotional self that do cause me some worry. There isn’t much I can do about it, he is too much like one side of me, like a big part of my father – analytic, stressed – dense and dissatisfied and not easily approachable when it comes to some matters. There is no talking to him about things which has already written off as not important enough to devote energy to and/or ridiculous – and I actually admire that to some extent, he is a strong person – a loving brother and son – and with a little work on his softer side to moderate that analytic engine of his he could be damn near unstopable. I wonder to what degree he has deconstructed himself – does he draw the link between his stance on how to deal with problems that he interpretes as pragmatically unsolvable and our father’s like methodology. My father’s choice to live in China, in effect abandoning his family – a problem which he didn’t see himself able to do anything about – clearly displays his disposition. I know he acknowledges or has at least begun to acknowledge how much of what he has done in his life and continues to do is to please my father – that is the very beginning of the ordeal I went through. Though I think he holds it against me to some extent – I hope that in time he will understand that it was simply the difference in our temperment and character that caused me to falter as I did growing up under the same roof as he did. I fight when he would write it off as an unnecessary waste of energy – it is how I’ve always been.
Jack, I guess I’m guilty of being less than I want to be as a brother to him at this point. I have about as much experience with his life now as my father did with his us after he moved back to China. I only know what I hear about whats going on in his life and what I saw when i was back for Christmas. I worry because of the ‘laziness’ though I do not believe in such a condition for people our age. I know there is a lot more to it than lack of energy or will. He is tenacious, passionate, articulate, but lost. So much like what I experienced in myself during that time period. He is unique but not unlike me in some fundamental ways. He doesn’t take care of himself. He doesn’t fight and engage, he has the ability but he remains by and large reactionary. It is not an easy thing to learn – the necessity of grapping with life and its challenges. I know the ineffectiveness of the methodology we adopt to motivate ourselves out of that condition – the voice of my father. I don’t think he’s come to experience a depression as deep as mine but I believe with very little uncertainty that he at the very least oscillates in and out of depression. Its obvious to me when I see how he spends his time and how he reacts to certain threats/challenges presented to him. I’m glad that he is at least seems approachable – I don’t know where he has set up his barriers and i don’t know if he’d trust me to enough to let me inside them – but he’s not as stoneheaded as Mat. He would really be in a tough place to move forward in life if he were both depressed and stoneheaded.
I suppose I should devote a sentance or two to yelling at my brothers for treating me as they did when I was dealing with my dad shit. Looking at me as if I were a problem, assuming that there was something wrong with me as opposed to challenging themselves to explore the possiblity that the causation of my condition lay in my experience of my father. I suppose its not much different from the other things they gave me shit for growing up, all the things that I experienced first and they chose to ridicule my responce to – only to end up doing the same thing when it came their turn. Best examples I can think of were when I learned to drive and when i crashed my car. They both in turn had similar experiences learning to drive and in time smashing their own vehicals. Guess the connection wasn’t so distinctly drawn in their minds.
I’m confident in time they will see what i went through as an act of love for my family – they will each of them benefit from how I challenged myself in that time and the peices of myself and my experince growing up that I overcame. Jack probably sooner than Mat if I had to guess. The insight and understanding of my family my ordeal granted me along with the strength and confidence I’ve grown into will provide me with the power to help them when they come to terms with their own personal battles. I believe those times will come to pass but I’m not without understanding that they may never come. I believe it best to be prepared for it so as to limit the damage if possible. I’ve saccraficed more than 3 years of my life dealing with these things – the voices and experiences of my upbringing as they played into who I was – and I’ll be damned if it costs my brothers more than it absolutely must.
As I see it everything I do I feel is for my family, I hope they respect and understand that in time. I fight my mother now for my family, I live here in China and challenge myself to continue fighting my father and develop myself for my family, in time if I have to I will fight both of my brothers for the sake of my family. I will work my ass off, be successful, fight the world so I can give back to my family. I fight myself daily to overcome my weaknesses so that I can occupy a position where I can give back to them – this is the core of my motivation which falls even before my own desires for success and riches – and they are already quite ambitious .
