Travel Tips

This trip, I visited Guangzhou, Tangkeng, Meizhou, Dabu, Xunwu, Longnan, Dayu, and Ganzhou. (Guangdong and Jiangxi province of China)

Some 300+ km northeast of Guangzhou lies a village called Tangkeng, which was my father’s hometown. He was raised in China and migrated to the wealthy British-Malaya (Malaysia) in the year 1949 in search of better life. 57 years later, I brought my father and my girlfriend to visit that little village. I met my father’s eldest brother, the whole family, and to my surprise they still lives in that little 400+ year old house (the one my father lived 57 years ago), not only one house but the entire village, unbelievable.

In the last 30 years he told me so many wartime starvation stories of Tangkeng, I hate it very much because I don’t understand. He repeated his stories each time someone else or me mentioned the word ‘China’. Time has changed, the wealthy-Communist China is not the same old China while the old wealthy British-Malaya is now Islamic Malaysia.

So, I arranged a direct flight to Guangzhou to VT-Meet Guangzhouian Paul and Rita. The very first morning, without much planning and without map study, we went to one of the 4 oldest mosques in China, Six-Banyan temple, etc and then I phoned Paul for a VT-Meeting at his apartment, Chinese lunch with beer and beef, and we took a ‘T’ to the French-English territory at Shamian, Zhujiang river, Qingping market.....

The ‘Golden week’ October 1-7 is national holidays in China, I was warned not to travel during that period therefore I went to small towns in Jiangxi province to avoid the insane high price. At a town called Dayu, I found an ancient 2000 year old road/highway located right at the border of Guangdong and Jiangxi province, the name in Chinese is Meiguan-Guyidao and then the name in English is ‘Mei Guan Gu Yi Dao’. The road was made of stones, well preserved and is a top tourist attraction. The history says the road is rich in history that it was used to link up the northern states with the Nanyue kingdom of Zhao Mo.

Guangzhou
Not far from a McDonald’s I came across the tomb of Wa-ke-su, located near the 2100 years old tomb of Zhao Mo. History recorded Muhammad at age 57 sent his uncle Wa-ke-su (Sa'd ibn Abi-Waqqas) to Guangzhou for business and mosques were built in China. Wa-ke-su was one of the first persons converted to Islam and he was later buried here at Guangzhou. His tomb was placed inside a green shelter with big Chinese words ‘Wa-ke-su zhi mu’ (the tomb of Islamic sage Abu Waqqas). I was particularly curious about Wa-ke-su, why he went to Guangzhou, why Muhammad not sends him to Japan, Australia, Antartica or Malaysia? I Googled and discovered, at that time only a small number of peoples in the Arabian states embraced Islam, the political world of Southeast Asia especially Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei (Srivijaya) were religiously Buddhist and Hindu. Guangzhou is, imagine a world without overweight obesity peoples, that immense number of skyscrapers and….

The Hakka architectures
I read that ‘Hakka’ is not an ethnic but the name of a culture, language, and is a group of peoples still living in China, especially in the southeastern inland part of Guangzhou, Jiangxi and Fujian. Hakka house is a series of houses of a family built together inside a huge wall with purpose to self protect against invasions by other clans or bandits. What special about Hakka houses is the shape, circular, semi circular, square, oval, etc, they build any shapes they want as long as the structure is firm enough. I find it a little funny and weird to visit these Hakka houses, because visitors are actually stepping into the house of the owners that are still living in the house. These houses are not museums but due to high demand, some house owners turned their own houses into tourist attraction, they built ticket office to collect entrance fees, we visit, stare hard, ask questions, take photos, build tips....

Rediscovered Hi
At ‘Bajingtai’ in Ganzhou, I bought a home-made traditional Hakka tobacco from a lady, she asked: “strong or mild?” Mild thanks. She picked up some tobaccos from the tray and carefully wraps up and handed to me, I ‘tarik’ and slowly I rediscovered the very moment of ‘Hii’….I recalled that I was brought up in my grandmother’s little grocery store that has a shelf full of tobaccos. One day I grabbed a pack and hide alone upstairs to sneakily enjoy, I coughed and immediately threw it out of the window. In my high school, smoking is a ticket to join pig-dog friends to listen to dirty stories. Each of them told me different dirty stories of them xxx with beautiful girls at 12, some said they can make girls scream, so and so. Some ‘serious users’ added grass to ‘cut down pressures’ because they are matured, they talk different language. Smoking was not that important for me, I was not that matured but I can still remember those ‘serious & thoughtful’ poses...

Old stories
There is an old temple in Tangkeng where my father points his finger at the temple and starts describing his childhood experiences. He said he saw a lady killing her granddaughter using her own legs stepped hard on the baby girls' neck until broken and died. He said during the wartime (China, mid 1800s to 1949), food was insufficient, killing own babies was common. He said for years he ate potatoes boiled in water mixed with a small half cup of rice feeding 4 persons in a whole day. He said his family was lucky because they owned a small farmland, others starved and many died on the street. He saw someone cut neck, the blood dried and sticky, he stepped closer to look, the bubbles coming out from the neck, that, he said was a horrible scene. He saw soldiers shot someone from the back, the bullet went through the head and so the face exploded like a watermelon, etc, etc.... After stories, we visited his already abandon primary school, surprisingly the classroom and the blackboard are still around, the rest still in good shape...

Ancient science
In the old days, there was no science study in school, sciences was imported to China after the 19th century. Sciences in ancient China were Daoism, Buddhism and Confucius. Chinese studied Confucius and then work for government for big money or study Daoism and Buddhism for knowledge. Buddhism was imported from India long ago, an Indian man named Damo arrived in China and he invented Zen. Zen was considered ‘science’ & ‘theory of evolution’ during the old days. (Photo taken at Dayu) is ‘science’ invented by the sixth follower of Zen. He was an illiterate man, so let’s study some ancient science of the Chinese. It says: “…a tree was originally not a tree….a mirror was not a mirror….nothing is the origin….” This is the ancient science of China, it is also the theory of evolution and philosophy of origin. The Confucians are filthy rich politicians and imperial courtiers, they extremely dislike ‘sciences’, beheaded peoples, they Confucianized the meaning of ‘sciences’ and created history…….