Ancestral home – more

We left this morning early for the village, Shan Cun 杉 村, where our ancestral home is located. We drove out of town along the Min river for awhile. It was a chilly sunny morning and mist was coming off of the glassy smooth water. Just east of a hydro-electric dam we crossed the river and began driving north into the mountains. It was a long winding road that snaked it’s way back into the mountains and after about 90 minutes brought us to the village. It is difficult to capture in words the travel back into the mountains. On one hand, I had an odd feeling of going into the past, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of deja vu as well which played funny tricks in my mind. The road was filled with sharp turns and switchbacks as it crawls back into the mountains and up the slopes. The deja vu I realized was from my teen years driving to the beach in Marin County, California. The road over Mt. Tam is similar, although better. But the feeling was the same, particularly because we were in a van like a VW bus with the front wheels beneath the driver. So, as you turn around a sharp turn, you feel as if you are going to plummet off the road and down the mountain because there’s nothing in front of you. Oddly, that feeling stirred up memories of driving in “The Van” as a teenager. The Van was Jeff Pflueger’s van that often was our primary source of transportation in high school. Overall, a very odd mix of memories and feelings to say the least.

Beyond the odd memories, the mountains were also extremely picturesque. Terraced fields of rice were cut into the sides of the mountains. Streams could be seen down in the base of the valleys.

We were accompanied by Mao Wei-yue 毛蔚樾 whose grandfather was the brother to my great-great grandfather and his son (Mao Qiquan 毛起泉), daughter (Mao Min-qing 毛敏清) and her husband. Mao Wei-yue and Mao Qiquan routinely visit the home a few times each year to look after it and to pay respects to our ancestors. Respects are paid with prayers, lighting of candles, burning incense, burning money, and lighting fire crackers.

Prayers and incense include some ritual bows while holding incense which each of us performed (3 bows) and the burning of money is done using ritualistic paper that represents money. The money is so your ancestors have money to spend in the afterlife. The firecrackers are to scare away bad spirits. We performed these rituals at our ancestral home, the Memorial Hall and family grave.

The village has about 4000 residents, most of whom have the Mao family name. It is a poor village where agriculture is the primary vocation, although there are signs that things will be changing in the near future. The road leading back to the village is being upgraded. We were told had we arrived a week or two later, we would not have been able to visit because the road crew would have been working. In addition, when we arrived at the village, I took note that I had 5 bars on my cell phone. I didn’t get a data network signal, but later I was told that there is Internet access in the village.

Upon arrival at the home, I realized that I had misunderstood what had occurred as far as the renovations that my father had written about. I still need to get some more details from him to get a better sense of the history of the place. Anyway, the home is still in the same condition as photos I had seen before. I hadn’t made a clear distinction in my mind before between the home and the Memorial Hall.

The home is a two story wooden structure surrounded by a stone wall. In the front is a garden space and in the rear it opens to a hilly garden that is still used by local residents for farming. The rooms are small. In one is an old wooden bed and another has a basic kitchen setup. The home has been upgraded with electricity, so there are a few simple light fixtures.

Mao Min-qing’s husband has stayed at the home in the summer to look after the place and to oversee the renovations that were done to the Memorial Hall.

I did not venture upstairs because I was told the floors may not be stable anymore. On the left side of the first floor, there is open space rather than a room. You can walk around that side to the back as well as walk through the center doorway. Downstairs there are rooms on either side of a central open space with a wall that separate front from back. Stairs on one side of this divider lead upstairs. The upstairs rooms extend to the left and right. Beneath the second floor on one end is an open space. I’m not sure what that space was used for, but I could imagine that it could have been any number of utility space for drying foods, to doing laundry or perhps were just outside sitting spaces. Since there was no furniture outside, it’s hard to know how the spaced was used.

On the divider wall in the center are still hanging photos of a number of family including my great grandfather Mao Zhong Fang and his wife (who I remember from my early childhood). In fact my great grandmother is the first person who I remember ever knowing who died. I don’t remember where I was but I do distinctly remember being told that she had passed away.

I remember meeting her in New Jersey when I could not have been more than 4 years old. She gave me a Chinese doll that I remember that I either broke or got muddy. Something like that, but I remember something bad happened to it and I know I felt bad about it.

There are questions about what to do for the long-term care of the home. It occupies a prime piece if real estate and clearly a large parcel of land that local residents would probably like to use. While China continues to have a strong attachment to it’s past it seems clear to me that forward progress and simple local pragmatism can easily outweigh the past as evidenced by the Three Gorges Dam project and stories about farmers taking apart parts of the Great Wall for the stones or to simply allow their livestock to feed on either side of the wall (recent Smithsonian Magazine article).

Throughout my tour of the home I could hear children. It turns out the home is just a few homes away from the primary school. We walked into the school on our way to the Memorial Hall which on the other side of the school. I peeked into two kindergarten classes. Similar to our visits last week the kids were curious to see visitors. Had we had more time I would have liked to visit the school and meet with the principal and teachers. Perhaps one day I’ll figure out a way to help the school since I’m sure most of the students are relatives in one way or another.

After driving to the village it is amazing to me that my great-grandfather was able to leave the village at all. At best a rudimentary version of the road existed back then (late 19th century), and passage would have been extrememly difficult and dangerous. As a result of his departure, however, our branch of the family has proven to be quite successful. In a place where average incomes likely do not exceed even 1000 Chinese yuan ($150 USD) it is a stark contrast to my generation which now includes a lawyer, 2 doctors, 2 engineers and myself and my sister who is about to graduate from college. I guess you could say our family is truly an expression of the classic “American Dream”.

Anyway, back to the rest of the visit. The Memorial Hall is a space dedicated to celebrating the town founders and some of the more recent noteable members of the family like my great-grandfather, Admiral Mao Zhong Fang. It has stood in the town for quite some time. My father guessed it might have been constructed as much as 100 years ago or more originally.

The Hall is an open-air courtyard with a covered space with a display that includes portraits of Mao Xian, the first Mao to come here and portraits of some of the other early decendants of his. In addition those other family celebrated here have photographs and stone plaques engraved with a description of the lives.

The whole renovation was done with funds raised both locally and from overseas family donations. One wall is dedicated to listing the contributors to the effort. The names listed, like all Chinese names begin with the family name. In this case, they are all Maos (毛). The second character is the generational name which in our family was planned out by someone well in the past. The generational names are predetermined for the next couple hundred years, and by comparing the names to the list you can see who has continued to follow the traditional naming in the family and give you some sense of where in the generations they exist. My name does not follow this traditional naming convention because when my great-grandfather left the village he likely became disconnected from that tradition, and therefore my grandfather and father also did not know of it.

An interesting tidbit at the Memorial Hall that may be nothing, but curiosity will force me to find out more…the bamboo that grows in the back of the Memorial Hall is square and not round. That is, rather than growing in cylindrical form, its more of a square with rounded corners. Perhaps its just a regular variation on bamboo, but it was different enough for my family to point it out to me.

From here we drove to the other end of town (not a long drive) to the family grave. It sits up on a hill that is used to farm rice and chili peppers. The family grave site was also restored when the Memorial Hall was restored. It is larger than many of the grave sites I’ve seen dotting the hills throughout China. It includes a small pond that ideally will contain fish, but this part of the project is still incomplete.

My father explained that he also purchased a small parcel of land along the road near the grave site to insure that we would have access to the site. It is currently undeveloped, but perhaps one day, we’ll have a small dwelling built on the site.

Overall, I found the experience to be really peaceful in a weird way. I’ve always felt a strong sense of belonging wherever I’ve been. I felt at home in Mill Valley, and used to think of John Gardiner’s Tennis Ranch as a home away from homes. Later, Maine replaced that, and Boothbay Harbor continues to have a special place in my being as a home away from home. But, seeing this place, and knowing its history absolutely gives me a different and concrete sense of home. Not that I could really imagine living in this village, but knowing that generations of my family dating back to the 15th century have lived in this village and in that home is a powerful feeling. I’m not sure I can put it into words, but particularly as an American, nothing existed in America in the 1400s really. Our family arrived and established this home before Columbus sailed.

I’m working on the photos, and hope to have more posted soon.

Tags: China, Shan Cun