Guest blogger Yvonne Wu (Yo's older sister)
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| Ping, Yo, and Yvonne loving the bus we took around the Hunan countryside with our relatives |
Our visit
to Hunan has been meaningful and memorable beyond expectations. Connecting with our cousins and their
families, and with our ancestral roots, was an unforgettable experience shared
with Yolanda, Neil, Oscar, Ruby, Ping, Chris, and with my Maddy, Lindsey and
Clara. Some things we learned about our
family:
· Although I’ve always known that the
Wu family assigns each member of a generation the identical middle name, based
on the corresponding word from a Chinese poem, I now understand why this
practice is so crucial. When we visited
our rural ancestral village in 石门, a 6
hour drive from Changsha, we were met by a crowd of relatives who explained
that everyone on each side of the mountain is part of the Wu clan in some
fashion. Thus, when people meet each
other, they introduce themselves first by saying what generation they are from,
which thankfully is easily communicated by saying one’s middle name. How else would one keep track of who everyone is?
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| First grade classroom at school in Shimen, where our dad donated a science wing |
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| Oscar, Ruby and Clara joined the Young Pioneers |
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| Autograph time |
A. A random peasant at the side of the road
while waiting for the bus turned out to be . . . a relative of course! I’ll let Yolanda tell that story.
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| One of many meals we had in Hunan |
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| Night market in Shimen |
· The Wu family has a strong gene for
athletics, energy and zest for life. The athletic gene kept popping up everywhere. Following
a 20 hour train ride from Kunming to Changsha, Shu Shu (my father’s brother) played
ping pong for 2 hours, then met us at the hotel where he introduced himself to
our teenage girls by doing 10-20 push ups on the floor, with his legs propped
up on the couch. At 80 years of age!!
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| Shu shu connecting with his grand nieces |
We later watched
him move like a sprightly 25 year old while out-slamming all sorts of brawny
young men at ping pong. When asked how
he keeps so fit, he goes into great detail explaining the complex set of
exercises that he himself devised, to be practiced 364 days a year, all the while showing off his hula dance-like
moves. When asked how many years he has
been doing these exercises, he claims “Since I was about 20”.
My
cousins Xiao Guang and Xiao Yun are both “quite the specimen”, put so aptly by
Chris. Yo and I both admitted to having a crush on them when we met them in
1979 as teenagers (Chinese men can have muscles like that?!)。 Xiao Guang at age 61 is ranked 5th in the nation for his age
group in freestyle swimming, and 8th in the nation for back-stroke. Since
you are no longer able to compete after age 65, due to government concerns over
safety, he is trying hard to improve his rankings in the coming years. Somewhat
to our teenage daughters’ and son’s dismay, he showed up at 6 am at their hotel
room, waited a whole hour until he heard someone stirring, then knocked on the
door. When Lindsey emerged bleary-eyed, he
exclaimed repeatedly “let’s go for a run!”
Both he and his brother swim daily, including in freezing water during
the winter, which they claim cures everything from high blood pressure to
diabetes, and to which Xiao Guang attributes the fact that he has never been
sick in his whole life. In fact he does
not know what it feels like to be sick.
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| Chris, Xiao Guang, Xiao Yun, Ping, Ruby and Clara |
The
kids loved swimming with them at an Olympic size pool that their friend opened privately
and filled with fresh water just for us, and they especially enjoyed kayaking
and swimming in the YiYang river. Of
course, the brothers own their own kayaks, are known for their kayaking skills that
they demonstrated for us while flipping over and over in the river, and they
often lead group trips down challenging rapids. In fact, I learned from Lindsey
that Xiao Yun is ranked “Number 1” in the nation among all age groups for kayaking.
The “Water Bird” device that Xiao Guang
demonstrated deserves a blog post of its own—he was the only one who could
“fly” on the water using this metal device that defies description. Oh, and by the way, both brothers are avid
mountain bikers, nationally ranked in badminton (we cheered them on in
competition, and of course they both won), basketball stars, and the list just goes
on and on.
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| Xiao Guang was the master of this aquatic pogo stick |
The number of athletes in our family is quite astonishing -- it can't be
just by chance! This relative is a
nationally ranked ping pong player, and the best player in all of Ningbo (Fa
Shen’s oldest daughter); that relative claimed first place (broke records?) in
high school track events (Xiao Peng’s son); I felt a major connection with Xiao
Ting who runs every morning after dropping her daughter off at school, and who was
feeling out of sorts from not exercising enough in Hunan (an invigorating run
in Olympic Park together with Xiao Ting, Ping, NaNa and myself was restorative
for all); and NaNa is surely the most athletic, beautiful, energetic and
fun-loving niece I could imaging having in China. An extended wait in front of the hotel for a
lingering relative would often turn into a multi-generational volleyball
session, something our bus driver said was a first for him in his many years of
driving a tour bus.
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| Volleyball break |
· According to Shu Shu, the first “Wu”
came 10 generations ago from Hubei while fleeing a famine. Our ancestors on both sides were mostly land
owners, scholars or government officials.
We visited the library room dedicated to my grandfather, and spent a
long time scrutinizing all the photos (Maddy was in one!), the family tree, and
all the calligraphy and paintings. We learned that even my father’s mother, who
died when my father was about 3, came from a relatively wealthy family of land
owners. Thus, given all the political
upheavals of the past generations, the following:
· Our family is a family of survivors (that is, all except for our grand
aunts who were butchered by the bandit He Long, who later became a communist hero,
and whose enormous statue we visited in Zhang Jia Jie). The survival stories are unforgettable. How do 3 siblings ages 9-13 in Xing Jiang (pretty
much a massive desert) survive on their own with nothing to eat for three years,
while their parents are taken away to an unknown fate? They climb trees to find birds, catch snakes
and fish with their own hands, while doing everything they can to fill their
stomachs 2/10ths of the way full, which is all that is needed to go on. How does a 14 year-old boy abandoned by his
family make his way in the world? By
walking day and night out of the countryside into the city, and then on to
another city, until he is picked to join the red army; then despite the lack of
higher education, through intense reading and self study, eventually by
becoming a prolific and intellectual writer and poet. If only I could understand the two poems he
wrote to commemorate and honor our family reunion this summer.
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| My dad and his younger brother, our shu shu, in 1979 |
· China is a country of
superlatives. Everything is “Number
1”. Zhang Jia Jie, admittedly one of the
most astonishingly beautiful mountainous regions in the world, was described on
a welcome sign as a “National AAAAA Tourist attraction”, where you can ride the
“Number 1” tallest elevator in the world (admittedly a very tall
elevator). My favorite stalagmite within
the enormous cave that took 2 hours
to walk through was the “Number 1” tallest stalagmite that is “Insured for 100
million RMB” according to the accompanying sign.
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| Zhang Zha Jie inspired Avatar |
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| Neil and the Chinese masses |
The unforgettable
evening musical show with the massive lit-up mountains as backdrop was
over-the-top impressive, moving, gorgeous, stunning... as Neil says, “only in
China.” The show depicted the age-old
love story about a “foxy lady,” and made me fall in love with the TuJia
minority folk songs, which our relatives subsequently sang in the bus and
restaurant.
· Speaking of singing, Karaoke was a
blast. Everyone from every generation
and cultural background got into the act, including 80-year-old Shu Shu who
belted out a revolutionary Mao Ze Dong song.
As for unexpected connections, Clara ran over to me afterwards to tell
me that she had to sing that song every day at Chinese language camp last
summer in Minnesota.
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| Shu shu singing the East is Red, with Shen Shen looking on |
· Our family, like most Chinese
families, worships our ancestors. We
visited our great grandfather’s gravesite, now sitting amidst sweet potato and
cornfields. The firecrackers were so
loud we had to cover our ears, so I'm sure they succeeded in waking the
spirits. By coming all the way from America with our husbands and
children to pay our respects to our ancestors who will now watch over us all,
Yolanda, Ping and I have brought good fortune, safety and well-being to our entire
extended family. After fleeing to Taiwan,
my grandfather desperately longed to return one day to his homeland. He even sketched pictures of the village he had
come from, and could describe the exact location where each of his ancestors is
buried. As my father explains, our
pilgrimage has helped to fulfill my grandfather’s dreams.
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| Younger generation in the library dedicated to their great grandfatther |
There is
so much more to tell. I will always
remember my conversations with Xiao Pei (turns out parenting a teenage girl is
equally challenging in all corners of the earth), and with her mother who
sacrificed her career for her family. Fortunately,
Yo, Ping, Neil, Chris and the kids have all been telling their own stories, and
contributing to our collective memories.
I invite everyone, young and old, to submit their beautiful emails, blog
posts, diary entries etc. to me, and I will try to put them together into one
large “memory book”.
I am
grateful to Yo and Neil for inspiring us to come to China, and to my parents
for enabling us to maintain and strengthen our connections with our relatives
in China. Our host and big sister Xiao
Qing gave an emotional good-bye speech on the bus during our final night. This strong and capable cousin, an impressive
orator and Vice Mayor of the city (not to mention strongest tree climber and
swimmer), expressed her extreme gratitude to my parents for all they have done
for her and her family over the years, since we first met up after China’s
opening in 1979. The amazing hospitality
she and her extended family bestowed upon us was largely an expression of their
thanks, and was instilled by a profound sense of family connection that I
believe every one of us shared on this trip.
She implored us, especially our children, not to forget our roots.
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| Saying goodbye was sad |
When we
first came to China in 1979, I had a vague sense of how attuned my parents were
to learning family histories and re-establishing connections, while I was mostly
interested in playing Frisbee and cards, and going swimming at the Friendship
Hotel. With the blink of an eye, I have now
become my parents, soaking up all that I can about my family, listening with
interest to anything and everything being told to me. Our kids are surely more mature than I was
back then—they maintained interest in much of what was going on, and asked
questions to seek answers that I could not provide. I hope they will always maintain this
interest in staying connected to their roots, and to their relatives in China. When they come back to China with their own
children one day, they will surely continue to spread the narratives of our
remarkable family and heritage.
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| Na Na and parents seeing us off at the airport |
