Jiang Jiu
yes I'm finally back in the blogging world. The short break that I took had been the best time that I ever had with my family. We rarely go overseas together. It's either my siblings and I go together or just my parents going on holiday! The last time we went together as a family was when we went for Cruise together about 6 years ago. We had a lot of fun going to China to have a look at our ancestral home, visiting our 96 year old grand aunt, and of course tasting the local food.
The main thing about going to China was to introduce us the 3 kids to my parents relatives in China. The Chinese relatives were fascinated and got excited when they knew I could speak Chinese and understood a bit of Hokkien (I'm better than my dad! He doesnt understand Hokkien!)
We visited our ancestral home in both Xiamen and Jiang Jiu. Xiamen is the Chan's hometown while Jiang Jiu is the Goh's hometown. Both ancestral homes are so different. The Chan's is considered to be a big house (at their time at least) while the Goh's is pretty small. My mum told me that the Zeng Cuo An, a village where all the Chans lived, consisted of all the rich people. And thus their village didnt look at all like a backward place. They had bungalows in there. In my mum's the people are more friendlier though.
While mum and sis found cheap thrills in shopping, Dad, my bro and I amused ourselves looking at the different foods around. Basically where there is food or a small eatery shop, we would look around and look at the stuff they cook. If it's those snacks my bro and I would actually go and try each one. We had the local's popiah, egg burger, sugared candies (the san zhas were VERY VERY sour, i love the strawberry ones, taste so much nicer), the fried buns and yu2 diao. We were well fed when we stayed at my mum's hometown. There wasnt much to see and look around there but the food were really so nice. We had no problem at all adjusting to the food. All thanks to our wonderful mum who always expose us to her hometown specialties, like oyster omelette, lo mie, wu xiang. Our cousins and uncles over there in China brought us out to eat all the time. And it's "terrible" eating there. Their restaurants serve 13 dishes!!!!! and that's really too much for us!!! But we had to eat to give respect and we couldnt just eat a little. Knowing the Chinese, we the youngest ones were gorged with all the food. Oh and that includes the drink as well. My dad couldnt drink the chinese rice wine, so we the children had to drink for him! It's really a very very strong liqour. I didnt get drunk but it was enough to get me the best sleep I ever gotten from the entire trip.
In Xiamen, there's a small island across it, named Gulang yi! And it was interesting as it almost has the same concept as Sentosa just that there is really people living in there and that it is not a man made island like Sentosa. Someone in Singapore invested and built Underwater World over there and it turned out that it's my uncle's friend. Well of course it cant be compared to ours, but it was passable. The dolphin were so cute! We had to get there by boat and it was bloody cold due to the wind. My nose felt so numb that i almost thought that they were gone.
It was a truly fun and interesting trip! Well at least China isnt as bad as I thought. The people were still backward but they are changing and keeping up with the times. But the traffic is still as bad. Their driving is horrendous and really dangerous. Crossing the road is pretty much like a suicidal act on my part but at least they slowed down in the end. The worse was when the cars drove on the pedestrian pathway! We were really really shocked!! But hey that's their culture.
