The "Maple Leaves" Trip to Original Place of Canadian Chinese

Tianbing Tse is presenting Tongping Xie the Family tree book.

It was a rainy day on March 20th, the "Maple Leaves Tourist Group" from Canada which consists of 19 overseas Chinese drove to "Yong-xing-wei" village in Lianping, Guangdong in rain, in search of their ancestors and original place. Among the 19 people, 11 were young Canadian Chinese. They came to the original place to get to know the history of their ancestors, and to find the root of their culture.

Zhenhan Tse is tasting local flavor full of joy.

Mr. Zhenhan Xie, whose original hometown is this village, took his two sons, Mr. Tongping Xie and Mr. Tonghao Xie with him on this trip. They were very excited about this trip to hometown. In 1949, the father of Mr. Zhenhan Xie, whose name was Renmin Xie, left his hometown for Hong Kong and Macau to make a living, and finally settled down in Canada with his son, Mr. Zhenhan Xie. Mr. Renmin Xie had been missing his hometown for half a century. And this feeling became stronger and stronger in his old age. In this trip to the hometown, Mr. Zhenhan Xie took the hope and commitment of his father with him together.

The family of Zhenhan Xie held a memorial ceremony for their ancestors.

While the bus was running along the looped road to the village, the beautiful scene out of the window made the travelers very excited. The bus finally arrived at the village with the long-time expectation of Mr. Zhenhan Xie and his family. They were so moved when they found that in the entrance to the village, hundreds of farmers were waiting to welcome their new family members on line. They ran up to their big family here and embraced with them. Although this is the first time they meet their big family, although they were thousands of miles apart from their big family, their hearts had been bound to their big family because, blood is thicker than water.

The arrival of the new family members from afar took the whole village into a happy atmosphere as if it was spring festival. Home fellows smiled to them, and firecrackers exploded everywhere. Mr. Zhenhan Xie tasted the local flavor full of joy, and talked with his big family members in Ke-jia-hua (local dialect). The feeling of being at home warmed up everyone. Mr. Tianbing Xie, an old gentleman in his 70s, held the hands of the two sons of Mr. Zhenhan Xie excitedly, introduced them to all the big family members, showed them around the memorial temple of the family which had over 500 years' history and the Potou middle school (formerly named as Private Yinmei middle school) which was set up with the help of Mr. Renmin Xie. Finally he presented the young brothers a family tree book of this big family, in order to help them understand more of the history and development of this big family clan. Mr. Tianbing Xie said to them: " This is the best evidence of family history that you can get in this trip."

In the afternoon, Mr. Tianbing Xie took Mr. Zhenhan Xie and his two songs to the tomb of their ancestors and held a memorial ceremony with them. Standing in front of ancestors, the father and two sons kept silent for a long time, then served joss sticks to the ancestors and bow deeply. The overseas Chinese respect their respect to their ancestors in this way, and to cherish their memory of their ancestors.

Mr. Zhenhan Xie and his two sons felt deeply love from their family in China in the short meeting with them. They took pictures and shook hands with everybody before they left. The bus set off slowly on the way back. All the home fellows stood along the road and wave to their overseas family members. Their love and blessing will stay in the heart of the overseas Chinese forever.

Editor: Benjamin                                                                                     by: Source: Heyuan XQ