Day 17; Jiangmen (Mon; 14 Apr)

 Tour 2; Day 4

The plan: 

• Dexun Lin Ancestral Hall
• Meet Prof. Selia Tan
• Genealogy Research Presentation
• Wuyi University
• Workshop
• Individual Research Review
• WU Overseas Chinese Museum tour
  

 Today began with the normal buffet breakfast at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, which I noted in my journal as mediocre. I should qualify my breakfast opinion(s) by saying if they didn't have at least one of my typcial "American" breakfast items (e.g. yogurt, bagel, grapefruit) I gave it a less than average rating - probably unfair on my part... Anyway, buffet breakfast then on the tour bus to the Dexun Lin Ancestral Hall (DLAH), also known as the Blue Tile Heritage Centre. There we met Dr. Selia Tan. Dr. Tan has a PhD in architecture but apparently she has a passion for Chinese heritage, specifically overseas Chinese heritage, as she is quite well known for recent and continuing work in this area. 

Note: I have to give credit where it's due; Henry Tom, the tour organizer did a great service to all who attended Tour 2 by putting us in contact with Dr. Tan. She, along with a small staff of full time (?) researchers (5-ish) and a group of 30 or so student volunteers did the leg work in China, prior to our arrival. This work allowed many, if not all, of us* to gain a much richer insight into our ancestral history. That said, I would add that those tour members who put in some prep time before coming to China reaped more benefit from the whatever research was done by Tan et al in China. Donna put in a lot of pre-trip work and had several questions as well as new leads for our researchers. 

*All of us who were Chinese that is... there were a handful of us spouse-types that had no possibility of a Chinese ancestor and were along in a  support and/or educational role...

At the DLAH Dr. Tan gave a presentation as to how the research was carried out and what results were considered "successful". In general, the information supplied by the tour group folks to Dr. Tan, months in advance of the trip, was divided amongst the full time staff who then directed the student volunteers. Donna sent information about all four of her grandparents requiring four separate lines of inquiry. During her presentation Dr. Tan pointed out that the results of two of Donna's inquiries were considered "fails" and went on to say why. I forget the precise details of how she classified "fails" but I think that it was because they were unable to physically talk with anyone with personal knowledge, or see any direct evidence*, that the person they were looking for (i.e. the grandparent) lived in the village. We also toured the DLAH, which was spectacular (there's that word again...). The DLAH was initially funded by overseas Chinese, Lin Zizhao from Malaysia, in 1935 but fell into disrepair. It was restored in 2022 and the primary beam raising ceremony is featured in a YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDENYuZW-oc).

* Direct evidence meaning a written record, known as a jaipu. A jiapu is a multi-generational family record maintained by a Chinese clan that dates back thousands of years. Similar to a family tree but more direct in that while a Smith in the United States is not related to every other Smith, a Chang in China is of the same clan as other Changs and whose ancestors should reside in the Chang jaipu. 

Now you know everything I know and I made up a little bit - questions regarding jaipus, etc. should go directly to Donna...the errors in the above description are mine though (djt)...

 After the DLAH presentation and tour it was back on the bus and on to Wuyi University where we met the volunteer student researchers assigned to our task. I'm not sure who our full time researcher was but we were assigned two students, Liz and Yangyang who were outstanding! (Some of our tour members were not so fortunate in that they expressed less than outstanding service from their team, but as I mentioned earlier, a lot of what we got out of this effort depended on how much work was put into it stateside...). Yangyang took us to lunch at the Wuyi student commons that was unlike any student commons I've ever seen.  The commons had more than 50 walk up food outlets along the outer wall with seating for hundreds, maybe a thousand, in the center. Most of the outlets offered Chinese food (duh...) but I found one that offered a sort of chicken wrap. Liz, our other student researcher met us during lunch and they began presenting the results of their work to Donna. As an observer of this interaction it seemed that the three of them were pretty excited as Donna went over their results, which had been emailed to us a couple of days before we left for China, and added insight and additional results she had acquired between the time she sent her information to Dr. Tan and our arrival.  After lunch the entire tour group along with the assigned students and staff members gathered in a small lecture hall while Dr. Tan told us about how Wuyi University fit into the scheme of what we were doing (i.e. genealogy research) and her work regarding overseas Chinese. We then took a tour of a small overseas Chinese museum there at the university.

After the tour it was back on the tour bus and back to the hotel for a short rest then dinner, which I note in my journal was "better than average". Regarding "average" - I would argue that by now I had a statistically significant Chinese banquet data set and a sense of below, at or above average. But that's just me, my expertise in what truly constitutes good Chinese food should be considered suspect...

Today was just a hint of what was to come regarding the ancestral village visits that would come later in the week.

 

The Dexun Lin Ancestral Hall

Some details, of the outside. Blue tile roofs, accurately restored here, were apparently quite rare.

Some inside pictures...

The "Red Beam" featured in the YouTube video

Prof. Selia Tan describes the hall and the restoration effort

Prof. Tan's presentation (zoom in to read)...

Unfortunate light reflection - One of Donna's inquiries was presented as an example of a "fail" yet had significant information, specifically about Donna's great-grandfather's brother. Ultimately, however, the veracity of that finding was questionable.

This from the Overseas Chinese Museum at Wuyi University

Display of Overseas Chinese in America

It was a very small museum but had an interesting assortment of displays - here a foot-driven sewing machine

Just getting started at dinner...

Fish, crabs and others, not long for this world. The planks on top of the lower tanks are to prevent escape attempts, particularly of the crabs...

Day 16; Jiangmen (Sun; 13 Apr)

 Tour 2; Day 3

Today's schedule:

• Bus to Jiangmen
• Mingyang Village, Mingcheng Town, Gaoming District, Foshan City, Guangdong Province
• Tom Ancestral Hall
  
• Three Tans Pagoda
• Crown Plaza Hotel
  

Today we rode the tour bus from Guangzhou to Jiangmen with an en route stop at the "Red Culture" tourist village of Mingyang.

The Mingyang Village, formally know as Mingyang Village, Mingcheng Town, Gaoming District, Foshan City, Guangdong Province, is a showcase  for the Chinese government and noticeably different than any town, city or village we've been to so far. By noticeably I mean Mingyang was pristine, so much so that I wondered if the communal "store" we visited might have been scoured before (and after) our visit. We were the only "customers" for the 40 minutes or so we were there. Moreover, as we walked through the village to the restaurant, the streets and alleys throughout the village/town were spotless - not one piece of litter nor was anything out of place. There was a noticeable lack of people (other than us...) about as well. About midway through the trip we stopped at what I think I recall as being the Tom Ancestral Hall. Tom is the clan that the tour organizer belongs to and I recall being more than a bit annoyed that this was day 2 out of 3 that the tour route seemed to cater to the tour organizer. However, I didn't know, at the time, that there several other Tom Clan members on the tour so I would/should say that my being annoyed wasn't really warranted, but I was annoyed at the time... After what I'd guess as a 1/4 to 1/2 mile walk we got to the restaurant, which was very busy. One very obnoxious thing about Chinese restaurants so far is that people smoke in many of them. In most, if not all, of them there are "No Smoking" signs but they're blatantly ignored by the customers and staff. In this restaurant the smoking was bad enough and the food not good enough to stay so I went outside. I took a long look at the pagoda and the Three Tans statue beside it. The following taken from an introductory poster at the visitor center

 The 'Three Tans' refer to Tan Pingshan (1886-1956), Tan Zhitang (1893-1952) and Tan Tiandu (1893-1999). Born in Mingyang Village, Mingcheng Town, Gaoming District, Foshan City, Guangdong Province, they are all outstanding figures in the history of Chinese revolution and have been known as 'the Three Tan Revolutionists'

I take "Outstanding figures in the history..." to mean they were on the side that won and is presently in charge...

From Mingyang we proceeded on to Jiangmen arriving at the Crown Plaza Hotel about 4 PM. Donna took pity on me and agreed to eat dinner at the hotel where I was game for anything other than Chinese Banquet food - I had a hamburger and Donna had pasta, which we waited over a half hour for as the restaurant, set up for Chinese buffet, didn't seem to be ready for menu orders.  In any case, both dinners were better than average but nothing to write home about (... but writing in a blog about it is OK...).

This "highwheel" bicycle in the Voco lobby, didn't see anything remotely close to this on the street but I thought it warranted mention here...

From the bus on our way out of town relatively early, folks are out and about shopping - that's meat hanging under the lights...

The Mingyang Village, Mingcheng Town, Gaoming District, Foshan City, Guangdong Province Visitor Center

 A notional map of Mingyang Village - "The Three Tans Hometown and a Red Culture Tourism Attraction"

A "typical" food store in a "typical" village...

This is us, listening to, I think, some political leader representing the village complex. Some of us are "shopping"...

... done shopping, we start on a walk through the village...

... all these folks are part of our group. Note the electrical wires, the village was quite old. I don't know how old but older than household electricity provisions that were clearly an afterthought

The streets and alleys were clean, suspiciously clean, more clean than any we've seen (or will see) in all of China. This is interesting as most of China that we'd seen to date was devoid of litter, more appealing than most streets in the US and something China's people and government could/should take pride in. These streets and alleys appeared to be "staged" as they were too clean.

We saw only a few people one might consider to be "residents", most of the homes appeared to be quite nice - the doors were metal, sometimes stainless steel.

We stopped here, I think this is a Tom Ancestral Hall...

... which was quite nice inside with several wall paintings and thousands of ancestors listed along the walls

This is a movie theater, I don't know if it is in use...

... as these movie posters looked quite old - all depicting movies about the glory of the revolution (I'm guessing...)

Old village, new tech (note the QR code to order...)

Still making our way through the village, hadn't seen anything like this yet (and won't again...)

I assume the woman on the scooter is a resident - note the little girl up front and that there's someone sitting on back, hiding under the box...

Here we start down the main street of the village. There were a few open shops and restaurants and a few more people, who appeared to be mostly visitors...

This is the Pagoda in Mingyang Village - full disclosure, I think we're still in Mingyang Village but we could have transitioned into Mingcheng Town, it's all soooo confusing...

 

Statue of the "Three Tans" adjacent to the pagoda.

Day 15; Guangzhou (Sat; 12 Apr)

 Tour 2; Day 2

The schedule:

• Bullet train - Shaoguan to Guangzhou
• Temple of the Six Banyan Trees
• Chen Clan Ancestral Hall
• Dim Sum Dinner

 The day started more reasonably with our normal 7:30-ish buffet breakfast at the hotel then a bus ride to the train station to catch the bullet train back to Guangzhou. I've prattled on enough about the trains here, suffice it to say now that all aspects of bullet train travel were impressive.

We arrived at the Guangzhou train station after a non-stop, 141 mile ride in about 45 minutes to board the tour bus that took us to the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees. Construction of the Buddhist temple began in 537 CE and the Flower Pagoda, the main structure of the temple, was built in 1097, although it has been destroyed and rebuilt at least twice (1373 and 1900). Originally it was originally called the Baozhuangyan Temple but during the Northern Song Dynasty, a writer called Su Shi wrote the inscription Liu Rong (Six Banyan Trees) because of the six banyan trees he saw there and it has since been called the Temple of the Six Banyan Trees. Those trees no longer exist but there were at least two vey impressive banyan trees in the temple courtyard. The Flower Pagoda is interesting in several respects, one of them being that while it looks like a 9-story structure from the outside, inside it has 17 stories. Although the temple grounds were quite small relative to those we've already seen, there were several impressive structures. After about an hour and half it was time to meet back at the entrance and walk to lunch... uh, except "that guy" didn't show up and we all waited a half hour as the tour guide once again went to find him. There was some audible complaining amongst several group members when the tour guide returned with "that guy" in tow, he was oblivious to it all...

We walked to lunch at the HongMian Restaurant that was in the nearby Westin hotel. I noted that it was good, another Chinese banquet, but good nonetheless...

 The next event for the day was a visit to the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall, also known as the Chen Clan Academy. This site was similar to those we saw in Shaoguan but I think larger and more extravagant, if that's possible. The hall was originally built in 1894 using money donated by various Chen lineages abroad as well as the 72 counties in Guangdong. It's original purpose was two-fold, a temple for worship of their ancestors and an academy to train their clansmen for the imperial examination during the late Qing dynasty. When the imperial examination was abolished in 1905 the academy became a practical school for members of the clan. During the Cultural Revolution the artwork of the hall was saved from destruction by installing a print shop for publishing works by Mao Zedong. The hall now serves as the Guangdong Folk Art Museum and is a 3.25 acre complex of 19 buildings with nine halls and six courtyards connected by symmetric corridors. The hall is notable for the extensive decorations both inside and outside along almost every beam, column, ridge and wall. The 11 pottery ridge crest is of particular note. There are also extensive wood, plaster and brick carvings as well as iron engraving. The CCAH was nothing short of, yes, spectacular...

 After the CCAH it was on to the bus (that guy got the message, or, just happened to show up at the meeting spot on time...) and onwards for a dim sum dinner at the Panxi Restaurant. The restaurant was centered around an extensive water garden of sorts and our group had it's own room. The dim sum was was good and after we'd had as much as we could eat it was on the bus and back to the Voco Guangzhou Sifu Hotel. 

The first night we stayed at the Voco we got in late, had to pack for the next day and get up early so we didn't check out the local area (which, from the bus did not look that inviting anyway...). This evening we got back at a reasonable time and found that the hotel actually bordered a very popular shopping street (for lack of a better description) so we ventured out to see what was what. It was actually quite nice. We walked around for a half hour or so then went back to get ready for tomorrow.

A good day all-in-all, so maybe there's hope for tour 2...

A Buddha welcomes us to The Temple of the Six Banyan Trees

This is the backside of the welcome Buddha

Other Buddhas as we make our way into the temple grounds towards...

... The Flower Pagoda

One of two banyan trees we saw...

... same tree, different viewpoint. That's Donna in the lower left taking the picture above. So, I guess that makes this taking a picture of taking a picture of a tree. The excitement never ends for the Taylor Fong-Taylor elder clan...

 

This is the other banyan tree. These pictures don't really capture the grandeur of these trees, as ususal

There several carved stone pieces displayed on the grounds, here are a couple...

 

At the base of the Flower Pagoda there were several of these cylinders (gold and black above) surrounding it. The cylinders were free to spin and several people, Buddhists I assume, would offer a gift (like a piece of fruit) and incense at the front of the pagoda then walk around the entire pagoda touching and spinning each cylinder.

We saw this fine example of a banyan tree on our walk from the temple to the restaurant

 

The HongMian Restaurant at the Westin hotel in Guangzhou

Typical banquet serving, there's room on the lazy susan so we're not even half way into lunch here...

Many of the dishes here (as well as the other places we ate at) were very artistically presented.

The main entrance to the Chen Clan Ancestral Hall

 Some close-ups of the pottery along the entrance ridge

 

Wood carving just as you enter...

 

The ridge pottery carvings were along every ridge we saw. We took over 100 pictures here, most of mine were of the ridge carvings. The detail is amazing.

There were many other artifacts here, literally thousands, and we (at least I) became saturated after a while

A ceramic bouquet

Ceramic figures

Wood carvings... it goes on and on...

The Panxi Restaurant...

... a peek into the kitchen as we walk by...

... and some of the food.

The front side of the Voco Guangzhou Sifu Hotel was much more inviting than the back side that we originally came in

Looking right from the hotel's front entrance...

... and left. A lot of shops open late.

View from our hotel room.