Fuzhou Family

Here's the promised recap of our visit to China in November of 2003 and the visit to my dad's side of the family in Fuzhou, capital of Fujian province.

When we arrived mid-afternoon in Fuzhou we were greeted by my cousin, Chiu Ping, who is slightly older than I am. Chiu Ping is married, and has a son, Zhenning who recently graduated from college (I've written about him elsewhere). He arrived at the airport in Fuzhou with my uncle (my dad's older brother) to pick us up. He had rented a typical Chinese minivan to haul us (my parents, Lars, and I) back to Fuzhou from the airport. The airport itself is a good hour outside of the city.

Unlike American minivans designed to seat 7 in comfort, the Chinese minivans are all about hauling people. The typical van could hold 10 or 12 people (of course in very close quarters). We piled our luggage into the minivan and made the trip into Fuzhou. Although it was early November, the weather remained hot and muggy in this southern coastal city.

The trip into the city was dotted with conversation between my dad, mom, uncle and cousin. Lars and I watched the scenery roll by and gasped at the typical outrageous driving maneuvers when they happened. Very few Chinese adhere to rules of the road, whether they are driver, pedestrian or bicycle rider. You'd swear you were about to get into an accident, but it would almost seem like artwork, how everyone gets around each other in traffic, without causing an catastrophe.

We stopped first at the hotel, to get us checked in, and give us a little bit of rest. Fuzhou, as a city hasn't quite caught up to the worldliness of Beijing and Shanghai, so the hotels there were Chinese owned. There was is Holiday Inn (like we stayed at both in Beijing and Shanghai) in Fuzhou. Instead we were booked into the Fujian Interncontinental Hotel (no relationship to the Intercontinental chain of hotels). Rated locally as the four star hotel, unfortunately, it was no match for four star hotels in the West.

We got to rest for a couple of hours before my cousin Chiu Ping came to collect us for a family dinner at my Uncle's apartment, in a Nissan Sentra he borrowed from a friend (his small mini-car Subaru would not fit the 5 of us). My uncle and his wife live in a fairly new 5-story walk up apartment. The architecture of the building was certainly interesting, as it wasn't just a walk up 5 stairs of buildings. First you had to walk through a few walkways (tunnels) that were fairly low (Lars had to duck quite a few times), and then up 3 flights of stairs to the first landing. From there you had walk across the building to a second set of stairs that brought you up the remaining 2 stories to the apartment. My mother was out of breath by the time she made it to the apartment. My aunt, on the other hand is in quite good shape for her age does the walk up and down the stairs every day (Not only that but she walks up Gushan mountain regularly to the Buddhist temple there).

My aunt and my cousin prepared a large dinner for us. The dinner included my parents, Lars, my aunt and uncle, my two cousins, and myself. My aunt had obviously been working all day preparing the meal for us. I'm sure it was expensive for them, although probably not as difficult obtaining food as it was the first time my dad visited them in 1980, when they had to go to neighbors and borrow food ration coupons to prepare a meal for my father.

Their apartment is a 3 bedroom apartment, in a fairly new building. A large contrast to the one room affair the four of them lived in when my dad saw them in 1980. Only my aunt and uncle live in the apartment, their two kids (my cousins) are grown up married and living on their own. Both my cousins have kids of their own. After dinner, my cousin brought us back to our hotel room to rest for the evening.

The next day, my mom and dad went with my cousin Chiu Ping to his apartment to do some laundry, as we were about half way through our trip. While they were there, they walked over to the Chiu family home (lao jia), which is across the street down an alleyway opposite Chiu Ping's apartment (also a 3-bedroom in a fairly new building). That's when my dad took the video of the Chiu family home that's on the DVD I distributed. My dad lived at this home when he was a child before the family left for Taiwan.

The alleyway runs along side a stream, which at the time was fairly low and fairly calm. My dad remembers it from his childhood as running very fast and having strong currents. The front half of the Chiu family home was torn down to build a new apartment building. The rear half of the building is still standing, and split up into various apartments. I'm sure my mom, dad and cousin standing outside the building were quite a curiousity to the local residents. An elderly female resident came up to them and asked what they were doing, and my dad responded that this was his grandfather's house at one time. The elderly lady responded back with a Chinese name, and my father said, "Yes, that's my grandfather!" She then let my father into her apartment, which he videotaped. He had stayed in the upstairs room as a child.

During this time, Lars and I wandered around downtown Fuzhou doing some shopping and general sightseeing. Fuzhou is a bustling city with a lot of shops, with the streets looking very much like any other metropolitan city.

That afternoon, when my parents got back from Chiu Ping's apartment was when we went to visit my mom's aunt at her temple and took the road trip out to my mom's family home.

The next day, my cousin Chiu Ping borrowed another car, this one a larger, aging, Peugeot 505 station wagon, with a third row seat. We were going on a road trip to Xiamen, a southern coastal city in the Fujian province. My mother had always wanted to visit Xiamen, and this was her chance. The drive down to Xiamen took a few hours and we arrived by early afternoon, in time to check into our hotel, and do some local sightseeing. We hired a local tour guide at the hotel, who arranged for us to take a boat trip out to Gulangyu Island (famous for its Piano Pier). During the boat ride we took a spin out toward's Taiwan's Kinmen Island, the closest point Taiwan comes to China. My dad was stationed at Kinmen Island when he was in the Taiwanese army, and this trip brought back many memories for him.

On Gulangyu Island we hired an electric golf cart, (as no gas powered automobiles are allowed on the island), which took us on a basic tour of the island. The island itself is filled with lots of interesting architecture and buildings many of them built by Westerners in the 19th and 20th century when they were occupying parts of China. After that we visited the Hulishan fortress, famous for having the German-made Krupp Cannon that is the largest existing coast cannon in the world. In addition there's an exhibition of antique swords, cannons, and other military weaponry. Finally there's a stone exhibition, showing different types of rocks, stones, and carvings, as well as naturally formed stone figures.

We stayed the night in Xiamen and returned back to Fuzhou the next day. We had lunch with my dad's family, my uncle, his wife, my cousin Chiu Ping, my cousin Chiu Yuen, her husband and her daughter. That evening, we had dinner at my great aunt's Buddhist temple.

The next day, my dad's family, my uncle, his wife, my cousin Chiu Ping, my cousin Chiu Yuen, her husband, and I went up Gushan mountain to see the Gushan Temple. Lars stayed in Fuzhou and did some sightseeing and shopping on his own.

We left Fuzhou by plane that evening for Beijing for the last leg of our China adventure.