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Post by douglaslam on Feb 26, 2009 2:35:58 GMT -5
The forum is rather quiet lately, not a great deal of braining teasing inquiries to test the mettle of our team of genealogy hunters. This is my cue to air another piece of my trivia.
For those of us who were born in China, it was a very traumatic experience to be uprooted and transplanted to a new land, young and alone. And I had no say in the decision making process. It was all decided for me.
After a two week voyage, I arrived in Sydney, to be greeted by an uncle whom I had never met, and then more assorted relatives, many spoke a kind of home-grown Cantonese. They were all strangers. I was hopelessly trapped, I knew then I was in it for the long haul, not knowing when I would return to Hong Kong or China. The overpowering sense of homesickness was indescribable.
As I came on a student visa, by right,I had no business in a free government school. The lax regulation or lack of it saw to it that I got a free education at the Aust. taxpayers' expense. My age was understated by over two and a half years. The rationale was to travel at half passage and not to be thrown at the deep end by spending a year in primary 6. I was only half way through primary 5 in HK. It was a net gain.
I had a truncated education in the turbulent early 50s in China. At times, I was barred from going to school because I was a class enemy. Our family was the oppressors, the landlords. It was all my grandfather's fault, for he worked so hard in BC Canada that he was able to build a new home and bought modest landholdings so that the family always had enough to eat and adequate shelter.
Early days in school means I had to endure taunts. Back then every non-Anglo kid was a wog or dago, and of course I was a ching chong. For my own good I,too, took on an anglicised name. The case to conform was strong. I was placed in 6C; 6A was for above average kids, 6B for average kids and C was for the slow learners. It couldn't be simpler. It was sheer torment not speaking any English, and not knowing what was going on in class. Back then it was sink or swim, no allowance given. I resorted to reading Chinese books to pass the time in class. And I came close to tears on many occasions. It took many weeks to dig myself out of the hole.
Fast forward eleven years to January 1973, it marked my first return visit to HK and China. It was my first plane trip on a Japan Airline DC 8, flying to HK via Manila. The excitement and anticipation were palpable, I had butterflies and sleepless nights right up to departure. The same excitement and eager anticipation were also keenly felt in HK and China. It was a case of a local boy made good, a gold mountain guest of sort coming home.
Though I belong to the latter part of the 20th century, I went abroad in the manner of the old timers. Travel and visa were facilitated by gum san jong (tyuti 1668 , could fill in the Chinese for us), a forerunner to the travel agent, but with a bigger function. Travel was by sea, falsified age, nominally a student, and only young and able-bodied male got sent away.
How different things are now.Do other members have a similar story to share?
Douglas
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Post by helen on Feb 26, 2009 3:14:15 GMT -5
Not my personal story - but my parent's story - My father was born in New Zealand. At the age of 14 he had to leave school to help his father in the gardens. At the age of 20 he came to the city to work and learn Chinese, for he had to go to China to find a wife. He was introduced to my Mother, who was 18, the eldest daughter of a poorish family. With the hint of communists coming her family decided her fate - she was to leave her family and travel to a far away place - and I doubt if she even knew where New Zealand was. Her new husband was only 23, and very very shy, and with a limited cantonese vocabulary. I often wonder how she felt, how she coped in small town New Zealand. My father died at the young age of 39, and she was left to raise a family of 4. We have a lot to thank our Mothers for.
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Post by douglaslam on Feb 26, 2009 4:24:58 GMT -5
Helen, I can appreciate how your mother would have felt coming to a strange land
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Post by douglaslam on Feb 26, 2009 4:35:45 GMT -5
But she did have a caring and loving husband. Your father would have been a tower of strength to her. Arranged marriages do work in most cases. They learnt to accept each other, plenty of give, and not expecting much in return. That is the secret. Your poor mother lived the life of a widow at such a young age. My own mother was also a widow for over 50 years.
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Post by Ah Gin on Feb 26, 2009 18:42:45 GMT -5
Douglas, Helen,
I admire your courage and openness in talking about your family history. I know many overseas born still can't or will not talk about their family history to a third person, even if the third person is family members. There are many reasons of course. Distrust of the "Colonial Masters" {in changing the laws, again, to kick us out -- but to where as we were born here?} or the "System" in trying to make trouble for us and our offsprings.
Five or six years ago, when I met up with my half brother, I finally got him talking about his side of the story. It was hard and emotional for both of us. And I had clear instructions from him. "Do not talk about this outside the family". I respected his wishes. Interesting thing was, when he was rather ill, in hospital, I finally got to meet the rest of his family, in hospital (they are 90% ABC, rest grew up in California). They were just as delighted as I was, and our family got bigger and bigger. (We are using Geni to capture our Tree & Branches, and stories. Geni is working fine for us. Still plenty of work ahead. I digress.)
The thing I found heartening is that, in the old Chinese society (count me in), we never make a difference between "blood relatives" and"half relatives" if you know what I mean. At our Association in San Francisco, when we meet new chums (to us anyway) and when my brother introduced me as "my brother from Australia", everyone accepted that as meaning "blood brother" and not "half brother", as that term has little meaning in Chinese.
I am writing all this down -- Family History. It is an honour to continue with our Jiapu (Work in progress. It is bilingual. It is a mixture of the traditional Chinese Tree style and stories, in English. Target, my Aunt's birthday celebration, this October 2009, back at our Ancestral Home in Hoiping/Kaiping), handed down by my father, and before that, handed down by his grandfather.
Family history. It is good we have such a thing.
Regards, Ah Gin
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Post by tyuti1668 on Mar 1, 2009 8:50:27 GMT -5
(tyuti 1668 , could fill in the Chinese for us), a forerunner to the travel agent, but with a bigger function. Travel was ... Douglas gum san jong=“金山庄” Douglas, My family (great grandpa) had similar story using the bamboo stick as this article. Fortunately we are not class as "enemy" <Grandpa sold the land & had a failed business in HK & passed young>.
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Post by geoff on Mar 1, 2009 15:06:27 GMT -5
It is very interesting to hear each individual story, with no two being the same. Being born in Australia, I haven't had the traumatic experience of leaving one's family in China & the adjustments required to fit into a totally different society. I also experienced being called "ching chong chinaman" at primary school, eventhough we'd lived here over a hundred years longer than the other kids. One can't change one's physical features & I don't want to.
Your stories remind me of 2 relocations that my father endured. He was Aussie born but at 5 years old in 1928, he & his younger sister & 1 year old brother were left in China following their mother's death on a trip to China. Double whammy.....lost of his Mother & now living in a totally different society. He lived in China for 11 years before returning to Sydney aged 16 in 1939, with no knowledge of english. Eleven years earlier he had arrived in China with very little chinese. He tells me it was extremely difficult to adjust on return to Aust in 1939. He knew chinese but it was useless in his working life in Sydney. Back then, he was too old to attend school so he had to work for his father lifting & moving cases of fruit & lugging 112 pound sacks of potatoes. His ambition for his children was for them to achieve the highest possible Aussie education.
I agree with Ah Gin, we must record our family history for future generations to read.
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Post by helen on Mar 2, 2009 3:02:01 GMT -5
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Post by douglaslam on Mar 2, 2009 5:39:00 GMT -5
tyuti1668 usually gets the right Chinese characters that you are after. Thanks mate! Gum san jong were also a kind of half-way house (no, not the junkie, nutter or jailbird kind ) for gold mountain guests. They provided dormitory type of accommodation for those in transit waiting for shipping or sorting out travel arrangement for the last leg of the journey returning triumphantly to the villages. I am not sure if they served meals. I think they also did a little import/export business and documentation, freight forwarding and remittance, serving various thriving Chinese communities abroad. It was a very comprehensive service rendered. Has anyone a link on the history of gum san jong? The one that served my needs was right on the waterfront on HK Island. It had a 180 deg. water view of Victoria Harbour before further land reclamation. It, too, suffered the same fate of all the old buildings on HK's waterfront. Does anyone know the one I am talking about?
I feel special for engaging the help of a gum san jong, the old world way of going abroad. You may all call me an old timer.
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Post by tyuti1668 on Mar 2, 2009 7:26:18 GMT -5
Are you talking [url=http://maps.google.com.hk/?ie=UTF8&ll=22.286803,114.146318&spn=0.004179,0.006802&t=h&z=17 ]this[/url] area? Memories of 三角碼頭
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Post by helen on Mar 3, 2009 3:05:25 GMT -5
We had a place called Kwong Yee Loong in HK. I think it was a business set up by some Zengcheng people - with connections to NZ. They used to arrange guide into and back from China; sold all the dried foods that we all grew up with - dried oysters, salty fish, dried mushrooms (doong gu), shrimps (har mei), tinned abalone, dried vegetables, scallops, noodles. I think they had doss houses/dormitory for the migrants going back and forth. Even sold cheong sam and H K jackets.
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Post by douglaslam on Mar 3, 2009 5:30:56 GMT -5
tyui1668 Yes, I am sure it is near the pier you referred to. It is the name that I am after.
Helen, I think each county has it's own gum san jong, the people tend to prefer their own kinfolks to deal with their business.
Douglas
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Post by Woodson on Mar 3, 2009 21:58:15 GMT -5
There was a similar outfit in Vancouver 均安 which just about all the Chinese used its services on their way to and fro China. Remember seeing its signs in Chinatown well into the 1980s.
Reason I remember is my father used its service when my mother, sister and I came over. It was much more convenient and economical than for him to come all the way across the continent.
I was younger than Douglas and being a relatively insensitive type I didn't really had much difficulty adjusting. The fact that we, village folks (鄉下佬), made stops in Guangzhou and Hong Kong helped. Actually the biggest challenge was a Canadian-born Chinese neighbour of the same age. We never managed to get along as kids, teenagers or young adults.
Douglas, I remember the land reform days. Not really remember but the stories of the marathon sessions the accused had to endure. The objective was to squeeze money. That and the Korean war were my early memories of life in China.
May be you can confirm for me whether there was a shortage of oil and sugar inside China during the early 1950s. I have memories of my mother, aunts and other relatives attempted to make both items.
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Post by douglaslam on Mar 4, 2009 3:30:01 GMT -5
Woodson, I can confirm, there was general shortage of foodstuff I remember seeing the adults heating the blubber on a hot wok to extract oil. But I never experienced hunger. A joke circulating at the time was rice with two lap cheung sausages for dinner A great treat indeed!The sausages were in fact sweet potatoes cooked with the meagre ration of rice.
The land reform days were the darkest hours for our family. I lost my father, grandmother was made to attend humiliating "struggle sessions", to kneel on broken glass in the midday sun. Grandfther in Vancouver was bled dry emptying his savings to free grandmother. I was shunned or barred in school. Most kids were iussed with a red scarf as Mao's little pioneers. But not me. This was brutal to a little boy.
My family did not suffer more or less. The bitter aftertaste lingers when I see the fertile land and the fish pond my grandfather bought filled in and left vacant, overgrown by weed and strewn with rubbish. Of course, I have no proof of ownership, the deeds were burnt in the land reform days, what was left, the Red Guards and village bullies took care of it
But I got away, my mother lived to her nineties, and my love for China is no less. And I cherish the thought of re-building the house that my grandfather built, and spend my retirement there and Sydney.
Douglas
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Post by geoff on Mar 4, 2009 12:33:47 GMT -5
Hello Douglas, How did you come to choose Sydney as your new home?
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