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Fuzhou Ancestor's Graves
It was the best ancestor graves; it was the most pathetic caretaker
Perhaps the most important activity on this trip was go to visit our
ancestor's graves in Fuzhou with my father. My father is not a religious man.
However, he firmly believes that it's important to honor his ancestors. Out of
my Dad's four children, I'm the only one who has not yet visited the grave site.
Theresa and I appreciated the opportunity to be able to go back to China both to
fulfill my Dad's wishes and also to fulfill my curiosity of finding out a little
more about where I came from. Due to our numerous and illustrious ancestors, we
had to go two different sites on two different morning. Both mornings we took a
mini bus to visit the grave sites that are optimally placed on hillsides that
have a grand view of the field and river below and the distant mountains beyond.
All grave sites were all located according to Chinese Feng-Shui. My father
firmly believes that our good fortunes and excellent health are all attributed
to both our ancestors and our philanthropy and good deeds for others. I'm not
sure whether I believe all that; however, it cannot hurt! :-) We visited each
grave and honored each special tombstone. All those names and the poems that
extolled the virtues of some of great-grand, or whatever, fathers impressed me
but did not moved me emotionally until I came across the tombstone marking where
my aunt and my cousin whom I knew when I was growing up in Taiwan. So sad. My
cousin May was such a lively and vibrant person only to die in her prime. So sad
but I did not shed any tears. The tears were actually shed by this caretaker who
take advantage of the situation and each year insists on getting paid more and
more for less and less work. You should have seen the way she cried and pursued
my uncles and Dad for 30 minutes complaining about that she needed more money.
Well, she was pathetic. In fact we nicknamed her "queen" because she
is so demanding!
Day 1
Day 2
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