Kinmen 金門: Day 2

Since the Ming dynasty(1368-1644), Kinmen has been garnering a steady reputation for producing scholars and people of literary achievements. Under the ancient Imperial Examination system, the best and brightest from every province in China studied for rigorous tests to qualify for civil or military positions in government. The fact that a minor district such as Kinmen, then a part of 福建(Fujian) province, produced 44 進士 (jin shi) or PhDs, is a great source of pride to its inhabitants even today.

My 堂哥(tang ge: paternal cousin who's a child of an uncle/aunt older than one's father) who's hosting us is an accomplished writer and poet of some fame in Taiwan. His wife, my 堂嫂(tang sao), owns an art gallery and was a media personality of some sort in Taipei before she semi-retired. I shall Google them when I get back. He gave us a copy of one of his books, an anthology of poems composed from interviews with old Kuomintang soldiers.

The second day in Kinmen began shortly after midnight when the whining of mosquitoes woke me up. Gone were my hopes for a good night's sleep. Bite and suck all the blood you want but for goodness' sake don't make that infernal sound...

I had only dozed off minutes before; after convincing myself that the room I was sleeping alone in was just an ordinary bedroom and not a 100-year-old enclosure next to someone else's ancestral hall. Luckily the room had recently been given a makeover. New coat of paint, new roof made of thick wooden beams in the traditional style. The wood scent was pleasant and permeated every fabric in the room. The mattress was brand new and the bedding smelled of hot sun and the summer breeze.

In the end, after many battles with the blerdy bloodsuckers, like the Kuomintang, I strategically retreated to the courtyard and eventually went outside the premises for a stroll. That was when I happily discovered free WiFi outside the next-door 民宿 (min su: bed-and-breakfast) :) No one else was up and about at that unearthly hour. There was a nice breeze which soothed my fatigue a little. The village we are in, 瓊林(Qionglin), belongs to the 蔡(Cai) clan and the owner of the house we are staying at is related to my clan the 黃(Huang)s by marriage. 瓊林 seems prosperous enough but I haven't seen a lot of people between the ages of 5 and 50. Probably most of the young and able had moved to bigger towns and cities.

At around eight in the morning, my 堂哥 arrived with a hearty breakfast: 燒餅(shao bing: crispy oven-baked pancakes with sweet or savory filling); 豆漿(dou jiang: soy milk); 蛋餅(dan bing: soft folded pastry shells fried on a hot plate with egg); 包(bao: buns stuffed with red bean or lotus root paste) and 油條(you tiao: deep-fried dough strips). Yum.

After breakfast, we began making our rounds to every relative's house. First there was Ah Sung, the widow of another cousin. All her children had gone to Taiwan to work and she lives alone in Kinmen. There seemed to be some bad blood between her and my elderly uncle(堂哥's father) but thanks to 堂嫂's eloquence, awkwardness slowly turned into grudging acceptance of differences.

Uncle Shuiying's house in Houshuitou Village(後水頭村) was next. This was where my paternal grandfather was born and our "true" ancestral village. Nestled at the base of a hilly ridge, Uncle Shuiying and his extended family had been living there since my great-great-grandfather's time. When the Japanese invaded Kinmen, my grandfather fled to Southeast Asia, eventually returning to Kinmen for a few years after the war before leaving for Singapore again in the 1950s.

What does all these mean? Not sure... it's like having a ton of history books dumped on my head all at once. Villages that I'm supposed to call home but which I never knew existed, people whom I bear some sort of resemblance to, relatives popping out from all directions speaking a language that my grandparents spoke... after a while, I guess I need to get used to it.

"Hey, 3rd uncle twice removed, nice to meet you, I'm your nephew on our great-grandfather's 4th son's side of the family... how are the kids?" etc.

Uncle Shuiying is a businessman who seem rather fastidious about matters relating to ancestral traditions. He and his 3 sons and their families have been going around poring over ancestral records and uncovering ancestral graves all over Kinmen. Apparently this process has been hastened by an announcement from the Taiwanese government that they will claim any land in Kinmen that has not been officially registered by its residents.

Part of my father's reasons for this trip was to discuss the ownership and division of land left behind by my grandfather. As family feuds often form over matters of inheritance in Chinese clans, I wasn't very keen on mucking around in those shark-infested waters and focused more on learning about our ancestors.

Eventually my brother and I grabbed hold of Uncle Shuiying's eldest son and learned some very interesting things.

In short, during the 14th century(Ming dynasty), a member of the Ming Imperial Family liked Kinmen so much that he moved his family over from Quanzhou(泉州). I am this dude's 24th-generation descendant.

Waaaaitaminute, but my last name is not 朱(Zhu: last name of the Ming emperors)--my first reaction. So some ancestor of mine must have been raised to royal blood through marriage or merit. But I must have looked skeptical, so he showed us relevant entries in the family tree records and even some architectural features in my grandfather's old home.

In olden days, people used special roof decorations called
筒瓦(tong wa) to display official rank, much like the epaulets that soldiers wear on their shoulders. The more 筒瓦 one has on one's roof, the higher-ranking one is.

I went outside to take a look. Apparently most families have no 筒瓦, or at most three or five. On top of my grandfather's old residence, the WHOLE ROOF was lined with 筒瓦.

24 generations... even if each generation lasts about 30 years, that still takes me at least 720 years back in time. What lives, what fates, what joys and what miseries have all my forebears experienced? The 泉州 side of our clan's story is yet obscure and Uncle Shuiying's family are planning a trip there to discover more.

Imperial Family eh? How far your descendants have fallen, my ancestor...