Digging up the family roots(3)

Fulfilling a promise

In mid-2014, Colleen Yap, a third-generation Chinese-Singaporean, visited her ancestral home, a village of 5,000 residents in Fujian. Every resident had the surname Yap, and they all spoke the dialect she had grown up listening to.

"At my home in Singapore, we have a long wooden pole that my grandmother took with her when she left the mainland, where she used it to carry water from place to place. They talked about going back, although none of them had the chance to do so before they died," the 25-year-old said. "For me, the trip has fulfilled a promise between me and Dad - whose older sister got severely sick and passed away on the ship during the fateful journey 70 years ago - who made me learn ancient Chinese poems when I was small."

That feeling was shared by Liew Chee Wei, the grandson of Chinese immigrants to Malaysia, when he traveled to his ancestral home in Fujian last year. "Standing in the dilapidated room that my grandpa once slept in made me realize the courage and determination with which he had changed his own fate, and mine," the 37-year-old said. "For once, I saw the 'remark ability' of those seemingly unremarkable lives."

According to Hai Miao, who accompanied Fong during his trip to China, most of the visitors are emotionally overwhelmed, but some embrace their homecoming in a philosophical way.

"While walking on a country road, looking for the original site of the tomb of Mr. Fong's maternal great-grandfather, we passed by three old men, all in their 80s, and stopped to ask directions," he recalled. "It turned out that one of them was responsible for destroying the tomb in the 60s. He offered to help us.

"There, on the same patch of land stood a two-story brick house. I took a picture of them - Fong and the old man - in front of the house. No bitter feelings, no sense of regret. The man did what he did on the orders of the village head, probably to make room for more farmland," Hai said.

Success story

The Fong family saga is a success story. Unlike many of his first-generation immigrant peers in North America, who toiled to build the transnational railways, Fong's grandfather served as an interpreter between the laborers and their employers, having probably learned English from Jesuit missionaries who preached and opened schools in China. Fong's father studied at a university in Montreal, and later became associate chief engineer of the Quebec Hydro-Electric Commission. Fong himself became an academic and writer.

"Up until his retirement, my father was the company's only employee of Chinese descent," he said. "But we very rarely talked, so for me the trip was to make up for our lost conversations."

Looking back, Lie said two things about his family history really impressed him. The first was the discovery that his parents were very distant blood relatives, although they had absolutely no idea of that. The other was the complete lack of surprise shown by the locals when he visited his ancestral village.

"Why should they be surprised? When my ancestors left China, they never thought it would be forever," he said. "A homecoming is a must. It may be postponed, for one reason or another, but it's only a matter of time."