I visited China and Hong Kong recently. It was nice to catch up with our family members again. I composed a photo video to share with my relatives of the visits to the village where I grew up and a few fascinating places I have visited over the years, thought my tai chi friends might like to see these too. Below are three places.
1. We will visit Anbu where our ancestors were, and I will show you, as far as possible, whatever is left of our ancestors’ house. We will see our village's ancestors' temple and meet the relatives there. The young lady who appeared often is my adapted daughter (also niece).
Nearby there is a fascinating village called Dragon Lake 龍湖. I heard of it when I was a kid, it was legendary. It is one of the very few places in China that is still well preserved, you will get a good feel of the skill, the art of building and cultures. I only visited it two years ago; it gave me a feeling of going back in time! Hardly any tourists, so it is quiet and unique. One of temples, was built for the owner’s mother because his mother was not one of the 'proper' wives. She was a house servant, then made concubine, so her spirit was not allowed to go to the ancestor’s official temple. During her life time she was discriminated against, just like my aunt. Her son had a discriminated life too. When he left for overseas like our ancestors, he became wealthy he sent money to build a temple for his mother - one entire temple just for her, as nice as the official clan's temple. My eyes were quite watery when I learned the story.
2. Chao Zhou is an ancient city with great historical value, it was the administrative centre of our region, used to be much larger than Shantou (now the second biggest city to Guangzhou). It has wall around the city, ruined but now rebuilt. the famous Eight Sceneries 潮州八景 starting from the West Lake (not the same as the one in Hanzhou but has its own beauty and exquisite features). A lot great work was done in recent years to rebuild the history and culture, but not yet overrun by tourists. You might have heard of the Han River 韓江,and the famous 18 boats bridge. They could not build a bridge on that river because the current was too strong. All bridges were destroyed. So, one ingenious engineer left the middle part of the river empty and filled it with 18 boats tied together. All these were recreated, and the river was clear and beautiful. They also rebuild the two huge iron cows on both side of the bridge to ward off the evil spirit.
3. Near Shantou there is an amazing Chen’s House. It was built by a rich Chinese man from Thailand, many years ago. He sent money back to build this huge house. What is special is that it was beautifully built by great craftsmen with a lot of character. The Chens were very kind employers. They paid every worker one silver dollar a day which was extremely generous in those days. No matter whether they did a full day's work or not they would get paid. If a worker were sick they would send the money to his home.
At one stage a whole block was not done to the satisfaction, so he had the whole thing demolished and rebuilt. It took many years to finish, but none of the Chen family ever had a chance to live there. Then the Communists came and by some miracle it was kept reasonably intact, and still has a nice energy and certainly much beauty.
Ещё видео!