swatao? tegswa? taejiu?

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During my CNY reunion dinner my Aunt made a comment about having me over to Shantou when the school holidays hit if i have not found a job by then. The immediate thought that flew into my mind was 'Wow! I'll be dead if i have not found a job in one month's time!' And here I am now, standing at the immigration queue in Shantou. I suppose this is a good thing; i would not have stayed with my relatives if my Aunt was not with me. Afterall, I have never met or spoke with any them.. I mean... i knew they existed but I did not know their names, age or how many of them where there. They, my relatives, are the kids of my late grandma's younger brother. Which also means that, yes, to call them kids is highly in-appropriate. The family relations are complicated and we shall see if you have figured it out at the end.

As soon as immigration was cleared , I picked up my trusty yellow backpack from the conveyor and smiled as I waited for my Aunt's funky lugguage to arrive. Once it came to us, we excitedly wheeled our trolley towards to the exit. A uniformed man waved me over to the side and demanded to check the contents of my smaller backpack. He chanced upon my read - Paul Threoux's The Old Patagonian Express and gave it a hard stare. He flipped through it, decided it was harmless, chucked it back in and waved me off.

I smiled to myself quietly as I walked off remembering what my cousin said about how strict the Chinese are with propaganda. As we stepped out into the arrival hall, all I could hear was the Teochew language; my grandma's language. There were 4men greeting my Aunt and smiling at me. My relatives. That's all I could gather. One was seemingly younger but I could not place their relationships. While I was brought up by my grandma speaking in Taejiu, it has been 7 years since I has anyone to converse with in that forgotten language. Thus, although I could understand what they were saying, I refrained from speaking, only an occasional nod and a smile every now and then.

The ride back to one of their houses was suppose to be 30minutes but the airport is not a place they frequent and we got lost. Alot of asking for directions and 2hours later, we were finally in the area of Chaozhou. We stopped at a restaurant owned by one of the relative's friend for dinner. It was cheap and good minus the weird looking 'prawn' thingy which I refuse to try and my Aunt did not enjoy. At dinner, we were joined by young boy who I figured out was somebody's son. The ride to the driver's house after dinner was quick as we are on roads where everyone was familar with. We were showed to our room for our duration of stay, left out bags and headed back down to the living room for chit chats.

The driver; the owner of the house, was Xi Peng, one of my Uncles. He brewed us some traditional kung fu tea as they spoke and I listened and nodded. His tea of choice was the Tie Guan Yin which has a medium body with a woody aftertaste. We were joined by a older lady who is my grandma's brother's wife whom I was told to address as 'lao kim' . After serveral cups of tea, it was finally bed time...

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