I've never been welcomed to a place in the style that we were greeted in that little village (pop. :50ish). The moment I hopped out of the taxi, people I'd never met before called my name and told me, "welcome home."
Backstory: About 10 years ago, the house my grandparents lived in collapsed and to show honor, my dad had a new house built where the old one used to stand.
Visiting this house was the weirdest thing ever. Here, in the middle of a village where they don't have running water, lies an empty three bedroom house with nothing but a shrine in the living room in honor of my paternal relatives. The remaining family members in the village maintain the building and light incense each morning at the shrine.
In celebration of my "return home" a chicken was slaughtered. These great aunts and great uncles that I never knew I had raise chickens for a living and barter them for vegetables and goods from other farmers in the village. Business is going pretty well, they've got about a couple hundred chicks and chickens that run around the village and the rice patties and a couple dogs (for gaurding, not eating).
After cooking the chicken and bringing out some food they had cooked earlier (roast pork and goose, chicken wings, and other chicken parts I didn't want to recognize) they told me it was time to visit the family graves. This is where things started getting a little uncomfortable. I followed my dad as we trekked through the village and past neighbors that spend their days farming and playing mahjong. We eventually hiked about a quarter of a mile before reaching the bottom of a foresty mountain. Wearing sweats and a t-shirt, I made my way through thick shrubbery and foliage, my arms around my face, climbing packed dirt formed into steps for a good 20 minutes until we arrived at these 12x12ft graves with packed step-dirt. We walking up other graves to get to them.
For an hour the family members stood at the graves lighting incense, fireworks and eating the food. They handed me some and would stare me down until I put it in my mouth. I would spit it out when no one was looking to avoid food poisoning.
When we finally made it back to the house, my mom was there sitting with one of the great uncles I had just met and he was wearing a San Francisco Pride t-shirt from 2000. I don't know how the heck something like that ended up in a this little village two hours out of the city, but I'm glad that even here, God is able to humor me.
That night we went back into town and I took a long shower, feeling itchy from climbing through who knows what. Adventure in Taishan: complete.
Bus station to get there
The "big city" of Taishan
Imagine the villages
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