Home Sweet Home

Jilu, my former home, is one of the 1,833 diaolou still standing in Kaiping. In 2003, my father proposed to send money back to have the old building repaired, but no one else in my family supported the idea. Still, my father insisted, pleading, “I can’t watch the property left by our ancestors collapse.”

My great-grandfather, Guan Chongji, once managed a restaurant and a laundry shop in Melbourne, Australia. He worked long hours every day, fueled by dreams of one day returning to Kaiping to build houses to shelter his family. And he did just that. He arranged for his son to marry a local Kaiping girl, and transported foreign building materials such as concrete and colored glass to his hometown, with which he constructed Jilu.

Although born in Australia, my grandfather went back to Kaiping to wed. He resided there for several years, and his wife gave birth there to a daughter and a son. He left China again, but his wife and children remained in the diaolou home.

My father never saw my grandfather again until he had grown to the age of 20. Dad followed a starkly different path from his old man – neither going abroad nor marrying a Kaiping girl. Instead, he chose to travel around China. My brother and I were born in my mother’s hometown on the coast, and we were raised by her parents. We prefer seafood and cannot speak Kaiping’s local dialect.

Although we have visited Kaiping a few times, we have never stayed longer than 30 days. Although different from our ancestors in so many ways, we still inherited the adventurous spirit that flows through the veins of Kaiping people. When we were young, my father encouraged my brother and me to explore the world. He never scolded my brother for dismantling household appliances, but rather gathered tools and components to teach him how to put the things backtogether. As a teenager, I dreamt of becoming a traveler, and my father’s encouragement helped me save my allowance and money given by elders at Spring Festival (Chinese New Year). He also taught me how I could earn money by making match boxes or binding books. My father would match every penny I saved, doubling my saving speed, and by the age of 19, I amassed enough money to take a trip to Xinjiang. Once grown, I wandered about so much that I rarely returned home for Spring Festival, and my parents spent many nights awake worrying about my safety, but could never dissuade me from taking my adventures.

When we were young, our father sent us to Kaiping to stay in Jilu for several days. None of us liked the old building. We feared that the wooden stairs would collapse at any moment, and found its lack of an indoor toilet rather inconvenient. After my grandparents passed away, Jilu decayed day after day. My father once asked the family if anyone wanted the building, but not a single voice replied in the affirmative.

Years later, I grew up enough to realize that not all families have such a rich history, and that not all parents give their children such freedom like mine did. “Remember,” stressed my father, “your ancestor built a diaolou named Jilu in Kaiping, and no matter where you go, you remain a child of Kaiping.” I will speak those same words to my own son one day.