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https://theconversation.com/travelling-to-my-ancestral-home-in-china-unearthed-tragedy-tinged-by-the-climate-crisis-it-inspired-me-to-write-red-pockets-253987>
"My book
Red Pockets explores questions of inheritance: what we owe to
ancestors and to future generations, and what we owe to the places that we
inhabit.
It was inspired by visiting my ancestral village in Guangdong in south China,
after nearly a century of intergenerational separation due to migration, war
and revolution. My grandfather wrote about his childhood stay in this rice
village in his unpublished memoirs, and I had always wanted to see it.
In spring 2018, I finally found the chance, during a research trip to study the
impacts of petrochemical pollution in Guangdong.
My trip coincided with the Qingming festival in April, when people return to
their ancestral villages to sweep their relatives’ tombs, making offerings of
food, incense and burnt paper money to sustain them in the afterlife.
Remarkably, my ancestral village was still intact, among the rice fields and
western-style brick buildings, largely as my grandfather had described it. In
fact, there are many similar clan villages in Taishan country, which is known
as the “home of overseas Chinese”, due to its history of overseas emigration
during the western gold rushes of the late 19th century.
It was a moving yet unsettling experience, almost a comedy of errors,
navigating different cultural expectations. One of the oldest villagers still
remembered my family’s history, which turned out to have been troubled.
My ancestors had suffered untimely deaths, their tombs were lost, and our
ancestral house was expropriated during the Cultural Revolution in the late
1960s. To restore my family’s place in the village would be impossible: we
would have to build a new house and give all the clan villagers gifts of money
in lucky red pockets. Even then, nothing could repair the ruptures of the past
century.
Observing the Qingming tomb-sweeping rituals on the hills, I wondered: what
were the consequences of failing to sweep the tombs every spring?"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
