My Olympic souvenirs, fresh from Beijing!
Fu Niu LeLe (mascot of the BJ Paralympic) phone strip. It will go nicely with the pink LG KC550 I am going to get. I hope LeLe will get along well with Elmo.
A 4G JingJing USB. The pink strip comes with LeLe though. Don't know what to do with it yet as I have several smaller USB drives, but combining them all together might not be good from the security angel.
Broken branches in Heng Fa Chuen. The first picture is the same view as taken from my bedroom window, although it's taken on the street. And more importantly, the first picture is not "out of focus" as in most of my other pictures. It's so windy yesterday noon that I couldn't really stand up right.
So we have been talking about Grandma and Grandpa. Have you ever thought of how they got married?
The Marriage
I think you won't reckon they met each other naturally, dated, married and had kids. This is a version from my mom, who claims that she heard about it from Grandpa when she's just married (or even before she's married).
Grandpa had school in HK. When someone's decided to have Grandma married Grandpa, they sent someone to HK to ask Grandpa to return to Kaiping and get married. However, Grandpa refused. He said he had to finish school first. Hence, Great-Great Grandma (Grandma of Grandpa!) pretended she's sick and sent someone to ask Grandpa back to visit her. When Grandpa's back, everything (including the wedding banquet) was there waiting for him!
So here we are. Grandpa said before they were married, he had secretly gone to Grandma's school to have a peek of her :)
When Grandma was married, I think she's only 17, and she still didn't know how to wash her hair. Hence her grandma told her to find an excuse to return to the maiden home when she wanted to wash her hair, so that Great-great Grandma could wash her hair for her.
The Relocation
Grandpa used to be a truck driver. When the Community Party came into power in 1949, Grandpa was working in HK. Later one day when Grandma received the info that she could join Grandpa in HK, she bought train tickets and left with Goo-ma, Uncles 3, 4 and 5 immediately without bringing any luggage nor telling anyone in the neighbourhood. It's only later that Great Grandma, Dad and Uncle 2 stowed away to HK to join them. Aunts 7, 8, 9 and Uncle 10 were born in HK.
Quiz 8
We haven't had a quiz for a while. This time, again, can you figure out who's who in the two pictures? The first one is pretty easy, but there're some controversies in the second one. May be we will need to ask those MIGHT be in the picture.
***** *****
This should be the last post for the hard copy of the Facts and the Myths of the Tse Family, or I won't be able to send you the books before Christmas. However, the on-line version will continue provided I am not running out of topics.
By taping all the glass doors and windows :)
Typhoon NURI is expected to be the strongest typhoon this year, and hit HK head-on. With only the Typhoon Signal No.1 on, I could barely open the door down stair when I was back home this evening.
We have made different contingency plans in the office today, in case we are stuck home tomorrow. This includes packing stuffs to work at home tomorrow.
One of the many ways that HK joins in the BJ Olympic manic is to set up big TVs, both indoor and outdoor, to show the live broadcast so that people can cheer together.
We have one in Heng Fa Chuen too. Even in the morning, there are lots of people. Beside the TV area, there's a small Italian grocery store, selling also gelato (kids' favourites here). I hope they can make a little fortune these two weeks.
I myself is trying my best not to watch any, to avoid the sub-standard narrators and the rather irrational nationalism.
Now, the Tse's are (or will be) scattered around different part of Australia, Canada and China. Our hometown, however, is in Kaiping (開平), a county-level city in the Guangdong province of Southern China.
Kaiping
Kaiping has a long tradition of sending their people to work overseas, in particular the North America. At the end of the 19th century to the early part of the 20th century, Kaiping was poor and had a serious problem of banditry. Hence, people went to work overseas and send back money to support the families.
I think this explains why we have been in Canada for so many generations.
In the old days, we were a landlord in the village. Because Great-Great Grandpa and Great Grandpa worked in Canada, and sent money back to support the country, we were able to survive a number of political turmoils at the turn of the 20th century. But of course, we finally fled to HK like many others did in the 1940s-50s when the communist party came in to power.
Diaolou (碉樓)
One special feature of Kaiping is the thousands of Diaolous (see the picture). A Diaolou is a fortified multi-storey tower. Those worked overseas sent money back to build these towers, and also brought back the western architectural style. Apart from being a beautiful house, it also has a defensive purpose. See the balcony in the middle? Mom said there are holes on the floor, so that those standing on it can shoot through the holes thieves or other invaders underneath.
In 2007, Kaiping Diaolou and the village is added to the list of UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Our Cho Uk
So, are you wondering why my mom knows this little feature of a Diaolou? It's because our real "cho uk" is a Diaolou itself. The picture in this page is not from a tourists website nor from the UNESCO homepage, but our "cho uk". That means, when Goo-ma, Dad and the older uncles were still kids, they actually LIVED IN a world heritage site!
When I was a kid and Sara was still a baby, we were there once. All I can remember now is that the house was dark and full of cats! (Scary!) Mom said the stairs at the time was half broken and my feet then were way too short, and hence I had a hard time climbing the stairs.
Around our "cho uk", there's a gate made of good quality steel. When China was at war, the gate door was taken away to produce weapon. (There're different versions here. Mom said the gate door was taken away by us to support China at the Korean War in the 1950s. But I think I had heard Grandma saying that the door was taken away by the Japanese army during WWII.)
The Dialect
We Kaiping people speak a Taishan dialect (Taishan is another city next to Kaiping). Even today, when the older ones want to discuss something that don't want us to understand, they talk in the Taishan dialect. I don't know if they have ever realized that the Taishan dialect is actually not very different from Cantonese. I at least can understand 99%, if not 100%!
P.S. Sara had suggested right from the beginning to include this post in the series, but I had tried my very best to avoid it, cause I don't know much about our hometown. But since Rose had sent me this picture, I might as well give it a try.
Extended reading:
Kaiping in Wikipedia -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaiping
Diaolou in Wikipedia -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaolou
UNESCO World Heritage -- http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1112
Uncle and Aunt 2's house is a good place for treasure hunt. When I stayed there last December, I found my Autocad (Release 11!) book still on the shelf! That book is 16 years old and I used it at my first year of college!!!!!
The Treasure (1)
Comparing to what Rose had found, my Autocad book is nothing:
Cheque book of Great Grandpa's grocery store!
Great Grandpa had a grocery store in Edmonton. When he's getting old, Uncles 2 and 3 went to Edmonton to take care of him and also to inherit the grocery store. The brothers later on started their own career and therefore the grocery store was shut down at the end. It would be fun, I think, to check out the place where the grocery store had been some times :)
The Treasure (2)
The next item is even more exciting! Drum roll, please......
Pictures of young Grandma and young Grandpa!!!!!
For the top left picture, Rose said it stated at the back that Grandpa was 14 at the time. For the one in top right, it said on the picture that it was 1940 in HK. Mom said Grandpa went to school in HK, so that might be why the picture was taking here.
For Grandma's pictures, they were taken before Grandma and Grandpa were married. Great Grandpa used to put up these pictures, and told everyone that his daughter-in-law was prettier than any calendar girls!
The Tse's in Canada
I always thought Great Grandpa was the first one in Canada, but Grandma and Uncle 2 said it's Great-great Grandpa (i.e. Dad of Great Grandpa, Grandpa of Grandpa, or Great Grandpa of your parents :) who first landed on the Canadian soil.
Great-great Grandpa first settled in Saskatchewan, and opened a cafe. (Rose suspected it was the one in the picture above.) When Great Grandpa was a kid, he somehow got into trouble with another kid so they sent him to Great-great Grandpa as some kind of punishment or an "escape". Great Grandpa first helped in the cafe as well, and then returned to China to get married. Great Grandpa somehow relocated to Edmonton later and started the Jay Grocery.
When I was a kid, I heard a story about how Great Grandpa took a month to travel from China to Vancouver on a ship, and then another week from Vancouver to Edmonton on a carriage. But now with the Saskatchewan cafe kicking in, I am confused whether the week-long trip was to Edmonton or Saskatchewan.
So this wraps up the series on the modern "cho uk". Let's talk about the real "cho uk" next time.
P.S. Special thanks to Rose who digged out all these pictures and "researched" most of the content of this post from Grandma and Uncle 2. More of Rose's findings in the following posts.
