Tracing My Roots.

I didn't know where I'm originated from except I'm from Klang, born at Assunta Hospital in Petaling Jaya in the state of Selangor, in a country called Malaysia. In any place I go, anywhere in the world, I would proudly proclaimed I'm a Malaysian, even though I'm ethnically Chinese.

Recently, I went to China with my family to trace my roots.

It was an eye-opener experience for me.

My late grandfather came from the province of Fujian, China before World War 2 to escape poverty and hardships to the land "flowing with milk and honey" called Malaya. Hard work has always been my late grandfather key secret word when looking back on how blessed we are now.

We are from Haishen village, located in the city of Putian.

We stayed at our grand aunty's place in the village.

When I mentioned village, it's not as if they are living in some poverty stricken kampungs. This is because surrounding my grand aunty's place is factories, cabbages and apartment-like buildings.

Amazingly, this is a village where everything is combined into one.

They even have a beautiful scenery for you to stop by when you are riding a bicycle, just to have a pleasure look to satisfy your "urge".

At my grand aunty's place, I find the difficulty of getting normal drinking water. They only have hot water on this vacuum flask.

Unless of course I wanted to drink this hot water, I have to pour this hot water into a glass and wait for 15 or 20 minutes for it to turn warm. I wouldn't want to wait every time I want to drink water, so I have to buy 4 1.5L mineral water from a nearby mini-market.

Mind you, I walked a few kilometres carrying this 4 x 1.5L = 6 litres of water from the nearby mini-market to my grand aunty's place.

And my right hand looks like this after the walk.

Anyway, we were toured around the house.

And believe it or not, this is my great grandmother's bedroom. Err..... I didn't sleep here, just for your information. Kind of spooky.

Next, we toured around the village.

We saw a bunch of women washing clothes in the longkang. Yes, longkang, minus the urinated shit in the longkang.

As our village is in the province of Fujian, and which is 180km to Taiwan, separated by Taiwan Strait, the village is richly blessed with seafood such as oysters, crabs, prawns, fish, and any other sea creatures that you can think of.

As we walk along the street of this village, we saw a lot of women peeling the oyster shells out in the open. And they are doing this every single day.

So here is the result. A "mountain" full of oyster shells at one corner of the street.

Then we stumbled upon a primary school nearby.

We were curious, so we went inside. But the school kids in return were curious about us, wondering why are we entering the school premises.

A bunch of adults back to school? As this girl probably is thinking.

This is one of the classrooms. Hey look, adult in the classroom. We are not alone after all, hehe.

Unlike in Malaysia, where we have either the morning or afternoon session. Here, the school session starts early in the morning at 7.30am and ends at 5.00pm. No wonder the Chinese are so hardworking. Kiasu maybe.

After the school visits, we happened to know what the Chinese had for their recreation.

Playing snooker. But in the open. Well, maybe playing snooker is too stuffy inside, so probably they prefer an open air snooker. Can catch more air, just in case you are losing and are losing your breathe as well.

Then we went to this recreation park.

Up until now, I couldn't understand why there are 4 white horses at the entrance of the park. Maybe these 4 white horses are still waiting for their 4 horsemen, stuck playing in the recreation park.

From the village area, we ventured into the town area. And this is what I saw. Shockingly, but true. I saw a little girl, with her body hanging by a hook, spinning her body around on the side of a busy road. Two other guys seem to be with this little girl performing a "street show". When I was about to take my second photo of this little girl performing, the boy who is staring at the girl in this photo quickly took over and perform some other things. This is against human rights as this performance is endangering the life of this little girl. Moreover, this little girl should be in school, not in the street performing some dangerous stunts.

This is how the town area looks like. Very modernised. And this is only the town area, not the city. You can even see McDonald's from here.

Sadly, the economic gap between the rich and the poor are still wide. I saw an old lady looking for food in the rubbish bins in the broad daylight.

Our next destination is Meizhou Island which is famous for its Heavenly Express Palace-Meizhou Ancestral Temple. We went there via the ferry.

We have an unexpected regular visitor to the island. A sales lady who board the ferry, not to visit the island, but to sell "god knows what" things to us. Even though we bought some things from her, she still insists on buying the rest of her stuffs to us. This sales lady can beat any sales ladies in Malaysia. Persistency is the key.

Upon reaching the island, we have this vehicle to take us around the island. But we prefer to walk.

In Malaysia, it's a normal sight to see people taking their dogs for a walk, but in this island, it's a normal sight to see the people here taking their kambings for a walk.

This is basically the overall map of the Heavenly Express Palace-Meizhou Ancestral Temple.

When we reached the top of the temple, this is basically the view of the island. Quite an impressive view, isn't it?
And this is one of the views of the temple. It has quite a number of man-made statues all over the places. Here are some of the photos of the statues shown below :

This uncle took us back to Xiamen International Airport on our last day here and also few of our trips in China. I would highly recommend him to drive in the Formula 1 car racing. This is because he drives recklessly at an unlimited speed, honked everytime there's a close call or some drivers trying to get in his ways and yet bring us safely to our destination. He can replace Michael Schumacher as the next world best and fastest F-1 champion. Even Fernando Alonso would lose to him. Seriously, no joke.


Having said that, even though I know my roots, I'm still a Malaysian. Malaysia is where I called home. This, nobody can take away from me.