The history of Fujian Province and its habit of letting loose its inhabitants upon the seas is partially to blame.  Craggy hillsides covered by mist-covered forests coat the area with the richest ecology amongst the seaboard provinces, and yet because of this topology Fujian’s development and agriculture have historically lagged behind the rest.  So the Fujianese turned to the sea for both their diet and their livelihood, and after the Ming Dynasty sent the Chinese seafarer Zheng He abroad to explore the world in the 15th century, many Fujianese emigrated to the Southeast Asian countries he landed at to develop trade relations.

Later exoduses of Fujianese migrants would occur during the transition from the Ming Dynasty to the invading Manchurian Qing Dynasty in the 17th century, and over the next two centuries of Qing rule, Ming loyalists and ethnic Han dissidents based in or with ties to Fujian would rebel against the Qing. Among them was the pirate Coxinga, who chased Dutch colonialists out of Taiwan and established its first Chinese state from which to fight the Manchurian dynasty. There is a gigantic statue of Coxinga in Xiamen, where he is much celebrated because he and many of his followers came from Fujian. Dad believes that we are descended from one of Coxinga’s top ministers, and for a few days after this genealogical discovery he danced around the house telling my mother that she had married the son of a pirate king. Mom is very patient.

Dad’s revolutionary ancestry also includes Oei Tjie Sien, who fathered one of Indonesia’s richest business magnates of the 19th century, Oei Tiong Ham, or the “Sugar King of Java.” Old Man Oei set his son up for greatness by giving him the reins of the Kian Gwan Company that he started in Indonesia after first fleeing Fujian and the Qing armies marching down on it. That had been during the height of the Taiping Rebellions, when anti-Qing revolts were springing up everywhere and being violently put down. By 1860, the Qing had wiped out everyone save for those in remote Fujian, where the last of the Taiping revolutionaries were huddling, and as an anti-Qing conspirator himself Oei did the smart thing and got out of dodge. By doing this he was following the other Fujianese of his era who had already come to Indonesia, Malaysia, and other Southeast Asian countries, where even now regional Fujianese dialects like Teochiu, Hakka, and Hokkien are taught to baby Chinese 华裔 before Mandarin is.

More recently, a third wave of Fujianese emigration has flowed towards the Eastern seaboard of the United States, with New York City’s Chinatown as a preferred destination. According to Jennifer Lee, these recent emigrants have over the last three decades come mostly for work in Chinese American restaurants, sometimes making shady deals with Fujianese snakeheads to get into the States illegally. Just as Fujian and Guangdong are neighboring provinces in the Mainland, so too now are older Chinese Americans usually of either Fujianese or Cantonese extraction, with the Cantonese having a stronger presence in the West Coast thanks to the San Francisco Gold Rush.

But my family owes its own global spread to having left China much earlier during the first and second waves of Fujianese emigration. With more time since then and now, we have all become more Westernized thanks to our adopted countries (Holland, Germany, Canada, and America, to name a few), where all save my father’s immediate branch of the clan (a unique situation that I won’t get into) have lived for at least a few generations now. Those who stayed in Southeast Asia have also become very accustomed to Western ways thanks to the centuries of colonial imperialism in that sector, and a few have even broken into Western histories themselves (Oei Tiong Ham’s daughter married Wellington Koo, making him I suppose a kind of great-grandfather for me, and grandma Oma frequently mentions that we are somehow related to Singaporean statesman Lee Kuan Yew, though I don’t know how and it’s unlikely he knows either).

See Dad? I have been listening to your family stories after all! : )

I know all this thanks to Dad’s industrious work uncovering his family history, and I even know that his ancestral village (which is as important an identifier here in China as how old you are or what you do for a living) where all these revolutionaries, barons, and runaways presumably came from is now the Fujianese city of Zhangzhou. Mom’s 老家 is also in Fujian, near the rapidly developing township of Shishi (its English name “Rock Lion” is a little cooler). So despite also being in Fujian, Fuzhou is hardly our ancestral village at all and my relations there can’t even speak its particular dialect. It’s just where my relations happen to live today.

Those relatives include my grandmother Popo and her cousin’s family. I know a lot about my father’s family history, but my mom’s ancestors must have been more civil than my dad’s revolutionary troublemakers because they largely stayed in China. As a result, most of them still speak Chinese as their primary language, and communication with them has been difficult for me. I hoped that by visiting them for two weeks I could get to know them better and improve my Chinese.

What followed were two weeks of pleasant quiet and jaunts about the city with family. Many thanks to cousin Vivien, whose excellent English and willingness to take me on daily adventures around Fuzhou helped to improve both my Chinese and my conception of Chinese cities and societies better than a whole semester of being in Shenzhen did. Also many thanks to Jiu Gong and Jiu Po, my granduncle and grandaunt, who cooked wonderful hotpot and found breakfast treats every day, and to Biao Jiu and Biao Jiu Ma, Vivien’s parents who provided me and Popo with a guest room, helped drive me around places, and showed me the inner workings of the lightbulb factory where Biao Jiu Ma works as a QC supervisor. And of course it was wonderful to see my grandmother, who I can now have a good conversation with! Besides trying to fit everything presented to me into my stomach (I think I’ve gained a few pounds just from being there), Vivien also took me to see a zoo, the Fujian Provincial Library, the youth-frequented Dongjie Street where we met a young cardshark magician, a new old-looking place (a reconstructed street mimicking old Chinese architecture with open shops and boutiques) where I think we were briefly caught in the background of a CCTV childrens’ broadcast, and many other sights.

Among family, the self-doubts I have about my place and identity in China as a 华裔 melt away, and I was comfortable with just being me again. While the Chinese family unit is popularly known in the States as intrusive and overbearing thanks to stories like The Joy Luck Club, being in Fuzhou reminded me of how sacredly it is regarded here as a support network that keeps people grounded and secure in a country that can sometimes be as brusque and unforgiving as it can be friendly. After coming back to Shenzhen, I’ve noticed that I’m now more comfortable talking to Chinese people and less conscious about my identity, and that now I speak Chinese a little more loudly, a little more confidently. It’s still a long ways away from feeling like the “homecoming” one aunt suggested, but it’s a start towards answering the question I posed to myself in coming to China that historical knowledge alone couldn’t satisfy: my place as a Chinese American and how I can mediate the gap between my heritage and my personal identity especially when Mainland Chinese seem to have a different concept of the Overseas Chinese heritage than we do. This deserves its own post so I won’t go into it here, but I have the sense that I could not have made the progress I have without feeling at home amongst my family in Fuzhou. I can’t help feeling like it’s been stumbling upon a fundamental “duh” that everyone around me has known since childhood!

A tidbit I only figured out recently: the “Fu” in “Fujian” is the same word that you often see on lucky signs during Lunar New Year, as it means “fortune.”