I have been writing my childhood stories that happened before my living in Johor Bahru, the town I grew up. Many events are very vague to me now. The vaguest portion is the knowledge of my grandparents. My brother remembered our maternal grandfather was a very thin and tall person who was probably educated so that he could teach our mother to read and write. It is hard to imagine that our mother (adopted) could travel back and forth to Labis from “5 Miles” on any school day. He was buried at 6 miles Labis Road (see maps in "Edge of the Jungle"). My brother remembered that we visited his tomb on a Tomb Sweeping day (an important Chinese festival called Qinming) with our grandmother.
I learned that in my 2011 visit to Labis, the kids of my uncle, who was probably his nephew and came from a Lau family in China, still go to his tomb on Sweeping days which are traditionally for offspring to visit ancestors tombs. We did not have much connection with Lau family after the separation of our parents. My mother’s name on paper is Lau Tai and in Mandarin, she is Liu Daixi (sound like Daisy). After I made my paternal family search in our 2009-10 trips to China, I found out that my maternal grandmother lived with this Lau family when she went back to China. Below is the story about my paternal family search.
My knowledge of my paternal grandparents was almost zero before 2009. My father always told us that he came from Gaozhou (means High State, see map at left) and we were Gaozhou people. It was very common and important in oversea Chinese community to identify who you were and where you came from. Then you got to join the Chinese Association of your hometown and could get help when arriving in a strange place. There are still a lot of Associations in the US, particularly in Chinatowns, and around the world. Nowadays, they are rich in real estates and give free dinners to members on occasions.
Under the Qing dynasty, Xinyi County formed part of the commandery of Gaozhou. In 1995, Xinyi (means Believe Properly) became a county-level city under the Province. So we became the people of Xinyi which is 40 miles north of Gaozhou.
At the end of Qing dynasty, many poor farmers left Gaozhou area (including Xinyi) and took the sea route to come to Malaysia, and my father, when he was 12 years old, was one of them. Not sure he had joined the Gaozhou Association in Kuala Lumpur which was an old tin mining settlement.
My father told us that the name of his village was “Fulong Baishi” which I thought it meant “Lotus White Stone” in Cantonese (the town name is in front the village name, there is a Fulong town in Malaya). I first searched online and couldn’t find any village named Baishi (White Stone) in the area of Gaozhou.
In 2009, when internet became popular, many young internet friends helping me to find "Fulong Baishi". In Xinyi, we found a Fulong village under Baishi town which was not the way we wanted (see above map). Also Fulong means supporting the dragon with hands, a very sophisticated name for a farming village. Luckily a internet friend from Fulong called Little Sparrow wrote: Fulong was a big town before and used to govern Baishi but now it is under Baishi. Only older generation and oversea Chinese still use Fulong Baishi.
In September, my wife and I took a 10-hour sleeper bus ride, which was used mainly by far-away farmer-workers working in big city factories for global supply chains, to Xinyi, which was not accessed by any train or flights, from Shenzhen in the east of southern China. It was our first traveling in China on our own and never rode a sleeper bus before. We stayed in a hotel called “California Hotel”, recommended by internet friends, which was very nice and classy (see below 1st picture). At night they came to meet us and took me on a night motorcycle cruise to see the downtown.
The second morning, we had a news reporter to drive us around the city on a motorcycle and went to Jade-Kingdom Park which is on a hill (below 2nd picture). In afternoon we went to see the palace of former Great Hong Kingdom (1861-1864, below 3rd picture), a short-lived Chinese Christian theocratic absolute monarchy which sought to overthrow the Qing dynasty. People still live in these old buildings.
The next morning, we had 11 people riding in 2 cars and 1 motorcycle to go into local villages in the town of Baishi, which is 10 miles east of Xinyi, to find my relatives (see above map). We asked the old men with the same last name to come to meet us. Some of them came from working in the fields without shirts. After talking to them, we were disappointed for not being able to find my relatives in these villages.
Nonetheless, we went to a home of a 91 year old man (at Poping Village, later I found out our first ancestral hall was built here) who showed me a family tree book which was more or less edited by him (later I had a copy and found my ancestry in it). I started to understand how our ancestors settled in this area and this place is just beautiful, natural and green. The water is good and the air is very fresh. Bamboo trees are everywhere and the earth is red colored. However, I could not identify my ancestors in the book yet.
The internet friends had kept looking for my relatives after we went back to the US. On the day of Halloween in 2009, they found my father's old home in a remote mountain area (Dawei Village, see above map). They visited my two cousins with their families that I didn't know and wrote a bunch of reports on the Xinyi hometown website. The breakthrough came from the discovery of a letter sent from Malaysia which was kept in the government archive by the lady reporter. Based upon the names in the letter, she wrote an article on news paper that led to my cousins who lived about 4 miles in the east of Baishi town.
In April of 2010, we went to visit my cousins in the area (called Dawei Pit in Google map, probably not the same name used in my father's time). It was hard to get in there because of a 2-mile rocky dirt off-road. It was a rainy day and our van got stuck in the mud, and the strangers from the nearby houses (not many of them in this area) came out to help to push the van. In the last leg of the driving, we had to get out of the car and let the relatives pushed it up to their houses (left picture).
We got to meet our 2 cousins, their wives and all their offspring (left pictures). Last year they obtained a loan from the government to re-build their houses that we came to visit. I don't know how they got their loan. Viewed from my internet friends pictures, the old house was a ruin. We requested they put in a sitting toilet (not common in remote villages in China). We stayed there for a week. It had mountain fogs every morning and feel very fresh when waking up.
I have so much to write about this trip that I have a blog doing it. Here I will mention mainly my grandparents. Based upon the name of my cousin's father, I could trace my ancestors in the family tree book. Our first ancestral settlement was at Yulongtan (Fish Dragon Beach, see above map) along the Huanghua River in the town of Baishi
My grandfather is Ng Hau-ling (in Cantonese and he is 8th generation) and my grandmother is Ms. Wong (traditionally Chinese only listed mother's last name to show what family she came from). Later I realized that my grandmother's family (Wongs) house is a little up on the left side of my father's house (see left picture). It turns up my grandmother’s nephew and his son (my second cousin), who told me later over the phone that his grandfather went to Malaya with my father but returned home fast because of illness, were also with us when I was not quite aware the relationship.
One afternoon we climbed up the hill behind the house. I was told that my grandmother was buried there. No tombstone or any marking of it. They just knew where it was. The neighbor's cow was also on the hill and my father had said his job was taking care of cow when he was young. All cows and chicken were running free here. There was no outside utilities or garbage collection here. Everything is natural.
We also visited Gaozhou, about 40 miles south of Xinyi. The key attraction is the temple of Lady Xian (circa 512-602, see left picture) who was the chieftain of the Li people in southern China and has been deified as “Saintly Mother of Lingnan (means mountain range south)”. Former Chinese Premier Zhou called her ” the First Heroine of China”. More than a thousand years ago, Li people disappeared from history and their artifacts were unearthed in Gaozhou (including Xinyi) area.
The descendants of Li people were probably mixed with local Han population or became other minorities living in other locations, like neighboring Guangxi and Hainan provinces. Guangxi contains the largest population of China’s ethnic minorities, in particular, the Zhuang people, who make up 32% of Guangxi population.
The Hlai people, one of the 56 ethnic groups officially recognized by China, living mainly on Hainan Island is probably closely related to Li people. Hlai was pronounced /lei/ in Middle Chinese.
The key letter obtained by the lady reporter was actually sent from our cousin (Ng Sing) living in Malaysia who was originally born in China. He is the oldest son of my uncle (father’s older brother Ng Hing) who came to Malaysia at very early and became very rich in the town of Sekinchan (means Suitable Planting Plantation in Chinese) located 16 miles north of Kuala Lumpur. This letter reconnected us to their family.
We actually went to attend, probably in 1960s, my cousin’s wedding in Sekinchan. I met him and my uncle the first time and also the only time, and totally lost all connection until this letter came out. In 2011, we made a trip to Sekinchan and met their descendants there. I will mention my father’s older brother in next write-up.
Left picture is the attending of our cousin’s wedding, probably in the 1960s, and I don’t know why my brother and I were missing in the group picture. The 2nd picture is our youngest cousin (Ng Hing’s daughter, sadly we lost her this year), her children and our second niece (Ng Sing’s daughter).
According to my newly acquainted cousin in China, my father and my grandmother’s younger brother, who went back after one year because of illness, were first joining our uncle when they came to Malaya. Don’t know when and how my father was working in tin mines and later in timbering. It seems he became prosperous in Labis.
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