Kaiping to Taishan - Day 12

May 5, 2014

A start to a long day, thus a post with TOO MANY photos. We rented a driver for 1 day through my aunt's connection. The driver was an old man, probably in his 60s+ and he said he is retired, but sometimes take on-call work. The driver cost 300RMB, but we gave him an extra 100RMB in a red envelope for being such a hard worker; more on his hard efforts later. 

We started the day early, say around 10AM, and the driver was already waiting for us downstairs. The first stop was to my aunt on my father's side's place in Kaiping. When we got there, we have to call my father's brother's wife's sister to open the door because she was maintaining the place and she would be setting up the mini-ceremony. Once we entered through the gate, it was a super long walk up the stairs, worse than our place because they lived on the top floor; there are 5 floors. We got in and had to prepare joss paper, food, chicken, etc. in multiple directions of house and then burn incense.Nobody lives here anymore, my cousin from my dad side moved to America and my dad's sister and uncle moved to Canada.

 

This building is more modern than the building that we were currently staying at, but even so, it does not have a elevator. I guess you need to be quite fit to walk up and down the stairs if you were to live here. I was exhausted by the time I reached the top, now good thing my grandmother did not come with us. We actually forgot to bring the joss paper up, so my uncle had to go back to the van to grab it. LOL.

Performed mini ceremonies in various directions of the house, covering north, south, east, west. We also burned joss paper, burned incense and prayed; this is to honor the dead.

This sewing machine was used by my aunt, currently living with us, a long time ago. It looks like it can be placed in a museum. 

Next, we set off to see my mom and dad's old apartment building; also in Kaiping. They lived in the same building before (neighbors), and I guess that's how they met. There was three cute little doggies right across the building! AWWW!! ☆*:.｡. o(≧▽≦)o .｡.:*☆ They're were sleeping at first, but when we walked over, one of them woke up and licked my converse! I wanted to touch them, but had to hold back because of the potential diseases they could carry.

☆*:.｡. o(≧▽≦)o .｡.:*☆

☆*:.｡. o(≧▽≦)o .｡.:*☆

Yes, they lived in the building in the middle, the yellow one. It's so old, but there are renters living there now. We left the building to a relative to help us maintain the property and rent; no, we don't get the CASH.

This is the street outside the building.

We entered the building and walked up to the roof. Man, all these old buildings don't have elevators. So tiring. Once we got to the roof, the view was OKAY... very old buildings...stained yellow...

This little hut here used to be a chicken shed; a chicken shed on the roof. It belongs to my dad's side of the family. It's still here after all those years.

After this, we went back down the stairs and decided to go home first for lunch.

 

This is the door to the roof. The stairs are very steep with no railings, so it is actually quite dangerous. There is also no light bulb in here, so as you go down the stairs it's actually very dark. If you trip, um, you'll probably become a bouncing ball.

While going down the stairs, you have to avoid all those junk.

 

This is my dad's place; we tried to peek inside and thought perhaps we could also go in to take a look.

Our final goodbyes to the dogs. AWWW! 

The next stop after lunch is to the "WAN" village in Kaiping. It is almost impossible to go to any village with a bus, so you must either call a taxi or rent a vehicle. On the way there, the scenery is just marvelous; it's all nature. It's so green everywhere!

While my mother and uncle talked to the people in the village, I went exploring. I found a dog and a chicken playing? together. It was a interesting sight. And then one of the villager's showed me the bunny shed.

Found a free roaming chicken. Life in the village for these chickens must be good, until they get fat and plump.

I am not sure what these are; at first, I thought it was for alcohol storage (from those ancient Chinese shows).

We came to the "WAN" village to visit my ancestor's grave. The grave is situated on a little a mountain, if you would call it that. The mountain was close to the village, but we did have to walk pass the rice field. Regardless, the scenery in the this village is just so pretty. BTW, the mountains are called "WAN" mountains.

Rice fields. It enormous!

The journey up the mountain. It was some serious hiking, since you have to create your own path and push leaves out of your face.

The scenery from the grave. Look at those plots of land. And the driver also hiked with us to the grave.

 

 

We have two grave stones right next to each other, so once we are done the ceremony with one grave, we would then transfer the roasted pig to the next grave. They can share the pig. I believe these graves are my great grandfather and grandfather (dad side). The bottom grave says 1974, and that's all I can read.

While heading down the mountain, I almost stepped on this ant hole.

There were bamboos, but too bad no pandas. First time seeing bamboos trees in the outdoors.

Some final pictures before leaving the "WAN" village. There's banana trees too!

Next we  went to the "LI" village in Taishan. The "Li" village is where my grandmother on my father side was born. There's barely anybody here...

When we got to the village this dog was barking at us. So scary. Most of the dogs we encountered in the village are docile except this one. In this village, there are so many dogs, vicious ones at that.

 There's a basketball court here too.

Later on, we encountered someone that my relative knows and he has two dogs! CUTE! (⌒▽⌒)☆

This dog looks so Asian.

And this little guy looks so chubby.

Yes, there were free-roaming chickens again. I saw these guys walking around the village together.

We then went to look for my grandmother's and father's house. My dad only lived here for a brief period of time when he was a kid. It actually looks quite pretty with a European style.  We tried to open the door with the keys, but the door won't budge. I was very disappointed that we couldn't go inside, I wanted to see how the roof looks like and what kind of antiques were inside. 

The entrance way.

A neat thing about this house is that the top of the wall have glass on them. I find it very artistic. Maybe it's to stop burglars from climbing over the walls. Since we couldn't go inside to explore the house, we went to visit another grave from my dad's mother's side of the family. We had to walk pass a chicken farm (nice white chickens) and walk up some long stairs and then hiking up.

 Chicken farm

While hiking, we encountered a lot of eggshells on the ground. Had to be careful not to step on them since they are meant for the dead. I swore I had stepped on someone's gravestone and snapped their incense in half. The grave stone here are very small and it is difficult to find because there are a lot of very tall 1 meter high weeds growing from the ground.

 View from the top of the mini-mountain. 

These are the weeds we had to pull out. When you pull out the weed, you would then dump it away from your grave stone, so it ends up on top of another person's gravestone; this makes it difficult to find the grave. It is such a tiring job. The driver was helping us pull too. And also, we left something in the van and the driver volunteered to go get it. I felt kind of bad because he's old and he had to go back down the mountain and back up again. Yes, and this is where we gave him his red envelope of 100RMB. He seemed very grateful and appreciated.

One of the graves is dad's mother's mother. We went to 2 graves but they were not situated beside each other so we had to move from one place to another.

Later on, we asked the driver if he could drive us to a certain high school. My mother, uncle and grandmother went here for elementary to secondary school. It's a very nice looking school. It looks like a palace and quite majestic too. I think the school is only a secondary school now.

 There is a guard in front of the school to regulate who is allowed to pass. We told him that my mother and uncle are alumina of this school and that they wanted to see how it is now. Look at that grand sign for the school gate. There were a lot of nice looking, modern cars parked inside the school. I guess they get paid pretty well, and some of them "might be" gifts from the student's parents for "special attention."

 It's nice that they have a river next to the school.

 The inside of the school looks like a palace kitchen or something.

Now, we are on our way to the "DENG" village in Kaiping. Crazy tall trees, like a forest.

The village house that my grandpa lived in was in a "not so good" condition so my grandma and grandpa went back to China 20 years ago or so and rebuilt it. Thus, today it looks like this. So ugly. ( ≧Д≦)

 The sign on top of the house.

 A little garden inside the gates of the house. The walls are rusting!

 An gigantic alter when you enter the house, situated right in the middle. This is like a house for prayers instead of living. The house itself, has two rooms on the bottom and another two rooms on the second floor; the rooms are also very large, but too bad nobody lives here.

 Stairs leading to the second floor and the balcony.

 View of the mini-garden

 The driver sweeping the floor??! Where did he even get the broom??

 View of houses from the balcony.

The buildings in this village have the nicest designs, very grand. 

A lot of people in this village recognizes my grandmother. We prepared goodie bags before hand to give to them. There were only 3 people who awaited our arrival, but word of mouth spread through the village and more people can to our building to meet and greet my grandmother. It was very nice, everybody was so kind. And then my grandmother gave everybody red envelopes, and they waved us goodbye when we left.

The driver asked us if we wanted to go to Chikan town, a place famous for filming historic Chinese movies. It wasn't too far so we went. This place is so run down.

And finally we went to the "Li Garden" located in Genghua Village, Tangkou in Kaiping; a famous attraction that took over 10 years to complete. Ticket cost 100 RMB, but we got in for free due to some connections. It was almost closing time so most of the buildings were already locked up, so sad.

 This is so cool, it's like a representation of the village.

 This is a large bird cage.

 Another bird cage.

 A secret passage way to escape; it was used in the past.

 A very long corridor.

The Li garden is very big, so you can probably spend a couple of hours here. Almost 95% of the buildings were already closed so we couldn't go in and explore. When we were walking around, there was a private tour for two middle age man by a worker; I can tell that they are wealthy and important people? They get the whole garden to themselves.

 

On the way back the driver showed us some more diaolous.

And last but not least, on our way home we stopped by a restaurant for dinner. It was a open door restaurant that was quite large in size. They had all the sea creatures outside (fish, calms, etc). There's no menu, so you just tell them what you would like to eat and how you would like it to be made. Yes, the driver was invited to dinner too. And I hate how they don't provide you with napkins, you got to buy it from them. The restaurant was quite popular, all the indoor private rooms were taken and the undercover, outdoor seating area were almost full. My mother ordered a plate of gigantic shrimps, never ate a shrimp that large before.

It was around 9 PM by the time we got home. A long day finally over.