This morning, my grandma, her cousin, her cousin’s husband (the retired principal who I previously interviewed) and their grandson drove to Guanyin visit some relatives and old houses.
Our first stop was my grandma’s grandfather’s old home (so my great-great-grandfather’s home). He was a doctor and quite well-off, and his family lived in a type of house called si-he-yuan, a house with a courtyard surrounded by buildings on four sides, also called a quadrangle. Although the houses we visited had buildings on three sides.
As we drove in, we were greeted by large dogs running around and barking. My grandma’s cousin’s family lives there, and they have the dogs to protect the house. They were quite fierce, and I counted six of them. There were three at the front (pictured below), and there was another one right in front of the house (pictured above, resting in the shade)
The center room is a shrine for the ancestors, and there were large portraits of my great-great-grandparents. If you look closely at my great-great-grandfather’s portrait, he had long fingernails. Chinese doctors back then grew long fingernails so when they are measuring their patients’ pulse, their nails steady their hands.
The doors also had pictures of gods on them. These are door gods, and they are supposed to protect the house.
My grandma showed me around the house, and she talked about how as a kid she used to play in the courtyard, and about how people cooked back then.
Next we visited a relative of my grandma’s cousin (the one who we were traveling with). He is skilled in Hakka weaving. When we got there, there were a few people weaving baskets.
He owns many old Hakka artifacts, such as baskets, cages for holding ducks and chickens, cages for catching shrimp and lobsters, tea kettle warmers, etc. The middle picture is the tea kettle warmer, and it is lined with traditional Hakka floral fabric.
He has participated in a Hakka arts festival and showed us a hut with woven objects inside.
He also had a couple garages filled with old Hakka objects, including a millstone to grind rice and a thresher for harvested grains.
For lunch, we went to a nearby restaurant and ate Hakka foods like bantiao (soup with wide rice noodles) and duck with a sauce that is a mixture of soy sauce and orange flavor.
The restaurant is right next to a Buddhist temple that my grandma’s family used to live right next to. The temple has been around for probably 100 years, although it probably got renovated at some point. My grandma said that when she was little, her mother took her and her siblings to the temple to look at a picture of Hell. It depicted souls getting punished for bad things they did in their lives, such as liars getting their tongues cut off. My grandma said it scared her and her siblings from doing bad things. Unfortunately, the picture is no longer there. The temple was beautiful though.
We also stopped by to look at a lighthouse and the coast, which had a lot of wind turbines nearby.
Finally, we went to Mr. Zhang’s old home. It was also a quadrangle. Mr. Zhang and his wife go there every week to sweep the house and to burn incense for their ancestors. Their house was not as big as my great-great-grandfather’s house, but it was quite organized. They have family photos on the walls with labels next to them about who the people in the photos were, and the old Hakka artifacts are also labeled. Since they grew up in the Japanese occupation era, they also had some old newspapers from World War II.
They showed us around their house and told us about the artifacts, including old wardrobes that belonged to their parents, wine vessels, dishes and more. After they paid respects to their ancestors, we went home.
In the evening, I interviewed two students. Fortunately, they live really nearby, so we met at a tea shop called Lattea that is a two-minute walk from where my grandma lives. Unfortunately, the music was quite loud in there, so we moved to the park across the street to do the interview. They are both half Hakka and don’t know the language well, but they learned Hakka in elementary school because now elementary schools have mother tongue education. However, they said what they learned was not helpful because it just taught the Hakka language from a book and did not teach practical phrases.
Afterwards, I went on a walk with my grandma.
And that’s my day. I definitely learned much today about my family history and Hakka culture from long ago. It’s amazing to see people so dedicated to preserving family history and culture.