Going Back To My Roots

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September 15th 2017

Published: October 3rd 2017

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Delek Delek

Ruishi Lou

In the village of Jinjiangli, Ruishi Lou was the most spectacular of all the diaolous I saw and was my favourite.

I have always wanted to to know more about my roots in China, so I vowed that the day I ever set foot in the country, that I would try and find out more about where I came from. I knew that I still had family in Guangdong province but knew little about exactly where and who they were until I visited my aunt in Kuala Lumpur about four months ago.

While in KL, I discovered that on my grandfather's side, that I had relatives living near the town of Kaiping, about three hours from Guangzhou. I was thinking about visiting Kaiping anyway, since there are some unique watchtowers or diaolou in the area that are supposed to be some of the most interesting things to see in China. So when I found out that I now had relatives in the area, Kaiping then became a must-visit.
My aunt had put me in touch with Uncle Alex, who in turn put me in touch with Auntie Suiching, who came to visit me with her daughter in Guangzhou. Now it was time for me to meet Uncle Alex himself.

Apparently, news of my impending visit was making waves in Kaiping and almost everyone there related

My Great Grandfather

Photo of my great grandfather Situ Shao Jun hanging up in my ancestral house in Tian Ran. He was square one for my branch of the family.

to me was apparently very keen to see me and that there would be a huge reception for me there once I arrived. I was a little nervous to be honest. My Mandarin serves practical purposes only at best and I speak no Cantonese at all; apparently apart from Uncle Alex, none of my relatives in Kaiping speak any English and I wasn't quite sure how good Uncle Alex's was either. Would I be able to understand or learn enough to make a visit worthwhile? Would I be inconveniencing a whole lot of people?
Uncle Alex lives and works in Foshan, just half an hour by metro away from Guangzhou, so the plan was to meet him there, from where he would take me down to Kaiping to meet the family. I was going to visit Foshan for a day trip anyway so this was fine with me.

The day we met up was a rollercoaster one. I've been short on sleep ever since leaving Yangshuo and had been too busy to catch any of it up. I ended up missing my alarm and was running an hour late by the time I left the hostel in Guangzhou.
Neither

Streets Of Chikan

The colour, architecture and condition of the buildings in Chikan evoked Havana.

Hostelworld, Booking.com or Agoda had any suitable accommodation in Foshan so I ended up making a booking on Chinese website CTrip. The place I booked had a high rating but I couldn't read any of the Chinese reviews so I felt I was taking a little bit of a lucky dip with the place. I had received no directions on how to find place, it wasn't on maps.me or Google Maps, but there was a location pinned on Apple Maps. There was an address in English, thank goodness.
Arriving at the metro station in Foshan, I knew it was nearby but walking to the Apple Maps location, there was nothing there resembling a hostel. I was on the right street but was looking for no.701; seeing that the numbers around me were single digit ones, I knew that this address had to be wrong. Several locals I asked had never heard of the place. Stuck outside in the hot sun, I literally could not find the place. I was now one-and-a-half hours late for my meeting with Uncle Alex who must now be wondering what the hell is going on.
I now had to use my precious phone credit, only

The Family

Relatives came from far and wide to Tian Ran to see me and my visit brought everyone together. It was an honour and a privilege to have been received the way I was and is something I will always hold dear.

to be used in emergencies, to give him a call. But my calls wouldn't connect. Hmmm. I needed wifi now so I could contact him via WeChat, the Chinese version of WhatsApp. I passed a McDonald's and once I was connected, I received several messages from Uncle Alex including a photo of him waiting...at a McDonald's! A guy is tapping furiously on the window. Found him! What luck!
We then set about finding this hostel which even with Uncle Alex's local language skills, was literally impossible. So he calls the hostel and a guy comes to fetch us. The place is basically in a top floor flat and there are no signs or anything indicating its existence. Turns out the place doesn't have a hostel licence so needs to be impossible to find - even for its guests!

Ever since watching the kung-fu flick Ip Man on a bus ride in Burma, Foshan has been a place of interest. The real life gongfu master Ip Man - who is portrayed by Donnie Yen in the film and is the real life Wing Chun (a special form of kung-fu established and made popular by Ip Man) master of a certain

Kung Fu Artist

Putting on a performance at the Zumiao Temple in Foshan.

Bruce Lee - is from this very city and the place even stars in the opening scenes of the movie. Unfortunately there is little left of the beautiful, period town depicted in the film and modern Foshan resembles any other Chinese city these days with its clean footpaths and gentrified buildings. But there are still pockets of old Foshan dotted around, including the Zumiao Temple, within which are memorial halls to Ip Man and another arguably even bigger kung-fu legend in Wong Fei Hong. While inside the beautiful grounds which also contains a Confucius temple, we also managed to catch a live kung-fu performance. Watching these demonstrations in such surrounds, I suddenly had another one of those travelling moments where I remembered where I was and that I was now experiencing the China I had always seen and heard about.
Similarly gorgeous in a way that only the Japanese or Chinese can manage, were the Liang Gardens, a private home and garden of a wealthy family. There were ponds, bridges, fountains and fruit trees all immaculately kept and just screamed zen.
Lastly, we visited the Nanfeng Ancient Kiln Artists' Village, a traditional ceramics-producing village that has been preserved as a

Liang Gardens

Elegant in a way that only the Chinese or Japanese can manage, the Liang Gardens in Foshan are a peaceful oasis in the centre of the city.

tourist attraction right in the middle of the city. This village within a city felt similar to Taipa Village in Macau except much more authentic, with it's rustic, lantern-decorated alleys. Almost all of the buildings have been converted into chic ceramic shops. The highlight however is seeing the old "dragon kilns"; huge sloping tunnels built onto a hill that act as furnaces for baking all the clay works.

Something that I didn't know Foshan was also famous for apart from being the home of two kung-fu masters and a hotbed of ceramics production, is the fact that it is also a hub for furniture production as Uncle Alex drove me along a 5km-long road full of furniture shops. There is even a furniture exhibition centre on this road, with a massive, plush Sofitel connected to it. Apparently people come here from all over the world to buy wholesale furniture. Who knew?
My uncle is involved in this business as he took me to his own tidy factory. Rather than watch sofas being made however, Uncle Alex drew the Seto family tree out for me. Uncle Alex's English has been better than expected and I was absolutely fascinated about everything

Dragon Kiln

Foshan is famous for its Ming dynasty ceramics production. This is a huge sloping kiln that was used to bake clay works.

that he was telling me. For example, I discovered that my grandfather was just one of a family of nine children produced by my great grandfather and his two wives and that one of his brothers - so one of my grand-uncles - was an officer in the Kuomintang, who had exiled himself to Taiwan.
Now that I knew who was who in my family, I was quite excited about meeting them.

Back at the hostel, one of the volunteers spoke decent English as did two of my dorm mates from Hong Kong. We all had a good ol' chat but while these guys could all speak English, the majority of the people I have met in hostels did not. It left me thinking once again, what a different experience I would've had if I had bothered improving my Mandarin to a conversational level before coming here. I have discovered that young people in this country are perhaps not all that different to the young people in Western countries and it was a shame that I haven't been able to make the most of this opportunity I had to really immerse myself with the locals. With some awesome hangout

Ancestral Alley

This is the narrow alley where my grandfather's childhood home is in Tian Ran.

areas, two cute cats, one cute pug and an easygoing vibe, I could see why this hostel has got such a high rating.

If immersion with locals was what I was after though, then I perhaps was about as authentic an experience as one could get.
It was nice to travel by car rather than bus or train for a change and in an hour, Uncle Alex had driven me from Foshan to Kaiping. There isn't really much to the city itself, which hasn't had as much investment as other cities, and its standout feature seemed to be the rows and rows of Communist style apartment blocks that lined the roads. Uncle Alex describes the pace of life in Kaiping as "leisurely" with most residents simply living off the remittances received from overseas family members. It did seem like a bit of a ghost town to be honest. However the real draw for tourists - and for me in particular - lay just outside of the city.

While I was in KL, my aunt took me through the photos of the last visit that she and my grandfather made to Kaiping before he sadly passed away. As we passed through the

My Ancestral Home

This is the house where my grandfather grew up in Tian Ran, near Kaiping.

village gate, pulled up by the rectangular pond and entered the narrow alley towards my grandfather's old house, everything looked exactly like they did in the pictures. In the old house, I was greeted by four relatives including Uncle Alex's father, who is the last of my grandfather's eight siblings who is still alive and looking a very healthy seventy-eight years of age. Despite never having met me before, I was greeted like a long lost son. The 92 year-old wife of one of my grand-uncles grabbed my arm, reluctant to let it go.
Generosity is a trait that definitely runs in my family and the folks I had just met were no different; even giving me a hong-bao (red packet filled with money) each, despite not really having that much. Much as I didn't want to accept it, I simply couldn't insult them by not taking them.
I was then showed a row of five pictures on the wall - the one in the centre was Situ Shao Jun; my great grandfather. He was the one that started the entire branch of the family tree that Uncle Alex drew up for me the night before. He was square one.

Making Offerings

I make offerings to Guanyin, Master Kwan and my great family ancestor at the family shrine in Tian Ran.

His photo was flanked by amazing, photo-like drawings of his two wives; my grandfather being the fourth son of the first wife. Two more of his sons - #2 and #6 - made up the other two pictures.
I am then led to the top floor of the house where I then burn incense, burn some fake money and say my prayers in front of a shrine offering my sacrifice - in this case three bowls of rice, a basket of apples, three small cups of rice whiskey and an entire cooked chicken - to Guanyin (Chinese goddess of mercy who originated from Buddhism), Master Guan (an ancient, deified general from the Han dynasty) and my great ancestor respectively. Firecrackers are then let off in the alleyway to complete the ritual - the ritual that signifies a descendent returning to his ancestral home.
Uncle Alex's father then tells me that what I have done by coming here is important; that no matter where I have been, where I go and wherever I end up, that it is important to know where your roots are and where you have come from. And that was when it hit me; this old, humble

Tian Ran Gate

This is the gate to my ancestral village of Tian Ran.

brick house in a tiny, tight village in rural China, in which my grandfather grew up, was where it all started for me. I had come back to where it all began. I had come back to my roots.

As more and more relatives started to arrive, my hand drawn family tree was becoming really handy in identifying who they were and how they fitted into the grand scheme of things. The tree was massive; and it only represented a quarter of my heritage! I was amazed at how much there was still to be discovered about my roots! I won't try to explain who I met - I'm still trying to get my own head around some of it - as it is pret-ty complicated and probably isn't too interesting for the majority of readers. But what was clear was that everyone who could come - including two relatives who had driven three hours from Zhuhai - came to see me and they were all excited to do so.

I perhaps shouldn't be surprised that my relatives are from Kaiping; the city and the county it is in has more people living overseas than there are in

Family Shrine

Many Chinese homes will have a shrine like this which is dedicated to the family's ancestors. This one is inside a diaolou in Li Garden near Kaiping.

the city and county itself.
Back in the early-mid 19th century, the combination of overpopulation in the local area, a lack of arable land, the economic opening of China to the West, the proximity of Kaiping to the Western colonial outposts of Canton, Hong Kong and Macau, along with opportunities to make a better living overseas, saw a lot of Kaipingnese flock to the US, Canada and Australia as "coolies", or labourers. The emigrant's families would then also go out to join them. San Francisco in fact, now has the biggest Chinese population outside of China, with many coming from Kaiping.
Surprisingly, there are quite a few Chinese in Venezuela as well; this is due to a burgeoning trade relationship that has developed over the last twenty years, where China has traded credit and investment in Venezuela, in exchange for oil. Perhaps both countries' history on the Communist side of world politics also played a part.

But it was this unlikely relationship between China and Venezuela which bizarrely ensured that communication with my relatives didn't turn out to be as challenging as I thought it would. Not only could Uncle Alex speak enough English to explain everything I wanted to

My Great Great Grandfather's Grave

Between Tian Ran and Chikan, the location of the grave was rather odd; just off a footpath on the bank of a creek and overgrown with weed. It was a good burial site for feng shui apparently.

know, but I was pleasantly surprised to discover that one of his cousins - Uncle Tony - has spent the last thirteen years living and working in Venezuela and was fluent in Spanish! He spoke with a Latin American drawl as well as a Cantonese accent which made him difficult to understand at times but I was really happy and surprised with how my own Spanish held up and that I was able to have conversations almost as deep as the ones I was having with Uncle Alex. It certainly helped take the chaperone and translation load off Uncle Alex a bit. My mind had to work a bit harder though to keep up and it got tough at times trying to speak in three languages at the same time. In any case, I never ever thought that I'd be speaking more Spanish than Mandarin in China with my Chinese relatives in Kaiping! It was much easier for me to speak in Spanish than in Mandarin apart from when I inevitably got my wires crossed between the two languages and the odd time when I'd completely forget a simple word or conjugation.

As mentioned earlier, there are actually some

Seto Monument

Monument between Tian Ran and Chikan commemorating seven members of my family clan who held off the Japanese army for seven days holed up in the tower in the background.

amazing sights to see in the area around Kaiping and as I saw them, it occurred to me that I had never before been anywhere - let alone a popular tourist destination - where everything I was seeing and learning about had such a significant impact on me and my family history. For instance there is the story of Nanlou Tower where seven members from my family clan resisted the might of the Japanese army for seven days straight, holed up in Nanlou Tower during the Japanese occupation in World War II. In the beautiful town of Chikan, I learned that the town was split into two neighbourhoods; one section was where the Seto clan lived and the other was where the Kwan clan resided. The most famous Seto was a man named Situ Mei Tang, who was the founder of the Hung Shun Tong, an organisation established to support the growing number of Chinese workers in San Francisco. This morphed into the Zhigongtang, a Chinese political party. He also went on to hold a post in the Communist government back in China and had frequent communications with US president Theodore Roosevelt.

You may have noticed that I have

Seto Public Library

The Setos and the Kwans were rival clans living in the same town of Chikan; they always tried to out-do each other and this is my family clan's effort at a public library.

used the name "Situ" and "Seto" interchangeably; "Situ" is the Mandarin pinyin spelling and pronunciation of my surname while "Seto", as I normally spell it, is just one spelling variation of the Cantonese/Kaipingnese pronunciation of my surname. Words and names in Chinese have different spellings in English depending on pronunciation. Pronunciation differences can be due to the dialect spoken and/or even the individual pronunciation by a person. Therefore the English spelling of a Chinese surname is simply down to the interpretation of pronunciation, by the person recording the Chinese name in Roman alphabet for the first time.
I have mentioned how my mother's name of "Tee" is in fact the same as "Zheng"; more obviously, the surnames of Szeto, Seeto and Seto almost certainly all from the same clan. Though I never met a fellow "Seto" in New Zealand, there were Szetos and Seetos at my high school.

While my family's ancestral home resided in the village of Tian Ran, my great grandfather also had a residence in Chikan. This town literally down the road from Tian Ran is filled with beautiful old European-style buildings that were built by overseas Cantonese merchants in the 1920s. Walking through the town

Chikan

Crumbling yet gorgeous town just down the road from my ancestral village, where my great grandfather had a residence.

felt like a trip back in time and resembled Havana in many ways. Such is the town's beauty and sense of period nostalgia, that many Chinese films have been shot here. Perhaps also contributing to this charm is the fact that most of it currently resembles a ghost town. With the majority of the town's old residents having moved overseas, leaving their crumbling, derelict apartments and shops behind, the Communist government took notional custody of most of the town, including my great grandfather's old residence. My family can claim it back, but the claim is mired in complicated bureaucracy and they're unlikely to ever get it back.
And the residence may not be around for much longer; the government has sold the entire town to a property tycoon who will restore the place into a tourist town that will be repaired, restored and revamped into a modern incarnation of what it was. I've been to a few such places in China where old charming towns have been gentrified for commercial tourism and while I'll admit that the results are often pleasant and eye-pleasing, you do feel that these places are a tad crass, contrived and tacky and that the places

Gin & Jazz

Classic art deco facade of a bar in Chikan. A good example of the importing of Western tastes, both gin and jazz would've been popular back in Chikan's heyday in the early-mid 20th century.

have lost most of their charm and have sold their souls. If you get and beautiful old car and completely replace the engine, the wheels and the chassis, is it still the same car?
If you're of a left-leaning, liberal persuasion, then the fact that the government can sell an entire town to a tycoon has probably made your heart sink. The fact that the government have given Chikan's remaining residents a deadline to evacuate the town and their livelihoods will leave you outraged. It is to put it mildly, a bit fucking shit. Forced relocations for forced gentrification so that a few people can make a shit-ton of money is unfortunately not a trend restricted to countries with authoritarian governments. I was angry inside at the fact that somebody else was gonna make a load of cash off my heritage.

My meetings with my newfound relatives naturally, took place over a couple of dinners.
From these dinners, I learnt a couple of things; that in these parts, all cutlery is washed with hot Chinese tea before eating; and that my relatives were all speaking the local dialect of Kaipingnese, which is similar to Cantonese. Among the local culinary

Li Garden Dialous

The lush grounds of the Li Garden near Kaiping contains diaolous that were built in 1936 by a wealthy Chinese-American businessman.

delights I sampled were baozhifan (clay pot steamed rice), cheongfan (fried eggs wrapped in a soft sheet made of rice noodle), roast goose, offal noodles (exactly what it says it is) and perhaps the best pork spare ribs I've ever had.
One of my grand-uncles from a different branch of the family seemed particularly boisterous at the dinner table; he was lively and jolly and had a lot to say. I soon discovered that he was drinking this black liquid out of a glass bottle; it was a liqueur he makes himself from wine and cough medicine that he allows to ferment to about 40%!p(MISSING)roof. That explained a lot! He implored me to try some and I have to say it wasn't bad. It was like a lighter, home-brewed version of Jaegermeister. Wonder what it tastes like with Red Bull?

Speaking to Uncle Alex, it turned out that my grandmother on my father's side was also from the area, namely the village of Tangkou. While Setos and Kwans lived in Chikan, Fongs and Cheahs lived in Tangkou - which happened to be where two clusters of diaolous resided.
Diaolous are fortified towers and residences that were built by

Mingshi Lou

This diaolou in Zili featured in the kung-fu film Let The Bullets Fly.

returning overseas Chinese - who as mentioned earlier mainly came from this area - to flaunt wealth and protect their families against primarily bandits, and then the Japanese. The diaolous are dotted all over the Kaiping countryside and are elaborate structures combining traditional Chinese architecture and Western architecture brought back from overseas. The result are some of the most unique castle-like buildings you'll ever see.

Of the sights, Li Garden was a sprawling private residence back in its heyday and had beautiful artificial canals and immaculately maintained gardens with pavilions to boot.
The village of Zili has the biggest cluster of diaolous in the county including Mingshi Lou, which has a pavilion on its roof and which featured in the kung-fu film Let The Bullets Fly. Inside were a mix of hard wooden Chinese day-beds, upholstered Baroque sofas, Art Deco floor tiles and epic Chinese murals. There was an exhibition in Zili on the stories of overseas Chinese and how their descendants returned to trace their roots; this hit home for me, as I discovered I wasn't the only one having come here to connect with my heritage and because my grandfather and grandmother had done exactly what was

Zili Diaolous

Cluster of diaolous by the village of Zili.

being described in the exhibits when they left the area.
There was nobody at Jianjiangli - which had the best diaolous. Ruishi Lou with its nine stories is the tallest diaolou in Kaiping and with it's Byzantine roof and Roman dome is perhaps the most elaborate. It was definitely my favourite and was the only one that really wowed me with its fantastic weirdness. The Leaning Tower Of Nanxing was a little hard to find and wasn't that much to see in the end.

The sites are all rather spread out and I was originally going to get between them all on a bicycle but in Uncle Alex I had an unexpected chauffeur and tour guide. He saved me from a hard slog in the heat and the rain, as well as a lot of money as he has refused to let me pay for anything. He has given up so much time and money to look after me every step of the way and for that I have to give him my eternal thanks. I felt like he'd run under a bus for me.
As it was, such was the location of my ancestral village that I most

Close-Up Of Ruishi Lou

At nine storeys, Ruishi Lou is the Kaiping area's tallest diaolou as well as its most elaborate.

probably would've cycled right past it without realising, if I hadn't contacted my relatives. How crazy is that!
One other thing that I learnt on the road with Uncle Alex was that Chinese drivers definitely deserve their reputation as terrible drivers. They are simply oblivious to what is around them, almost as if they have shifted responsibility for their own safety onto you, so that you have to warn them if you're coming or have to avoid them if they get in your way.

While Uncle Alex insisted on paying for everything and driving me around, I insisted that I take care of my own accommodation. There are no hostels in Kaiping, only hotels, but luckily on CTrip, they were all reasonably priced. For just over £10 a night, I got the luxury option of a private hotel room in a classy and clean establishment, with twin beds, ensuite, acres of space and all the trimmings you'd expect to get for ten times the price. It was so nice to have my own space for a couple of nights after all the dorms I had been staying in where you have to put up with all the bad stuff

Inside A Diaolou At Li Garden Near Kaiping

All rather art-deco. I love it!

(inconsiderate, hoiking, Chinese guests) without any of the good stuff (socialising with your dorm mates and making friends).

To be honest, for the majority of my time in Kaiping, I didn't really understand what was going on but I could feel the warmth that all of my relatives had for me. Even an aunty in Shanxi (province between Xi'an and Beijing; in other words, over a thousand miles from Kaiping) wanted me to come and visit her. Everyone was just really happy to see one of their own make the effort to come and see them and to visit their roots. I felt that it was an important thing for me to do and it is hard to describe the feeling of connecting with some thing and some place that is such an important part of who you are.
We made one last stop at the village before Uncle Alex took me back to Foshan, which I felt was apt. One last look at where it all began. It did feel like a spiritual home. As Uncle Alex dropped me off at the metro station, I thanked him for everything he had done for me.
"No problem," he replied

Me & Uncle Alex

I will never forget the kindness and generosity afforded to me, as well as the time and money given up for me, by Uncle Alex, who guided me through the entire duration of my visit.

in his broken English.
I think he would liked to have expressed himself more deeply and eloquently, like he could in one of his own languages, but the sentence that he left me with explained why he and everyone else had done so much for someone they had never met before; "You are part of our family," he said.

回头见 (guong dong wah),
Derek

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