(James Yang,  an architect who lives in Melbourne and regularly travels to SE Asia and in particular Guandong.   He was so kind to arrange everything for us and nephew of Stephen & Margaret Mar )
 

Hi James  

Thank you for your help organising our trip to the ancestral village Ping Gang of my deceased grandfather “James Chung Gon” or” Zhong Run”.
 
My daughter Anita and I had the most wonderful reception from our relatives. It was really overwhelming.
 
Mr Li visited the village some days before we arrived to organise the proceedings in advance.
 
We were picked up by his son Wei Li and driver Ming in a private car from Don Feng hotel in Guangzhou at 900hrs on Saturday25 January2009.   The weather was cool - 6 to 11 degrees centigrade all day.
 
We travelled for 130kms to the city of Xin Hui where we were joined by Mr Li, his wife and her friend who all travelled in another vehicle. We continued on in convoy and stopped another 25kms south at the village administration office where we were greeted by manager Mr Chen Eu Wen who introduced himself as one of our relations and escorted us to our village just 5 minutes away.
 

We arrived at the little farming village of Ping Gang (really a small collection of quaint farm houses) at 1130 hrs and were escorted into an old stone public meeting hall where a group of eight weathered octogenarian farmers and other younger relatives with the most magnificent smiles gave us a warm greeting.

We sat on crude bench stools around an old rectangular table set with two bunches of bananas and some mandarins out of their gardens. Hot water was poured from a thermos into small paper cups and we toasted each other with much shaking of hands and hugs accompanied by the flashes of Anita’s camera recording the event.
 

Through my translator I was able to establish that one very likable character, 50 years old Zhang Guo Chao, a leading spokesman in our welcoming party, was related to me.  His great grandfather was my great grandfather’s brother.

Anita and I were presented with a 314 page book titled “World Chung Clan”. One old gentleman, who seemed to be the knowledgeable historian, pointed out my family genealogical chart and was keen for us to provide information to update it.   We handed out macadamia nuts, business cards souvenirs and gifts depicting our wonderful paradise Tasmania, including samples of leatherwood honey, toy Tasmanian Devils, maps and information about our island..
Warm memorable communication continued for some time seemingly unimpeded by the language barrier, and then we were shown around the village, inside Zhang Guo Chao’s home by his wife, and our family gravesite where many generations of grandfather’s forebears were buried.
 

Then Mr Li, his wife, her friend, Wei Li,  driver Ming (my group), all the greeting relatives including the oldies and commune administration  staff who joined us, ( a party of approximately 24) sat down to a banquet lunch at the local country restaurant  just a few kilometres from the village.
 

This was an even more emotional time for me than the preceding two hours for here I recognised the exact style of Cantonese home cooking my family had taught me which I have been so familiar with all my life. The crispy skin chicken, steamed local freshwater fish,  stir fried Chinese green vegetables, herb soup, sweet potato,sliced beef with bamboo shoots onions and capsicum, and fresh prawns were all delicious.  The special white carrot treat turned out to be what I call Chinese radish or Japanese daikon.
 

And we washed it all down with Chinese tea and much toasting with copious quantities of an exquisite tasting rice wine in little shot glasses poured out of white porcelain bottles packaged in attractive gold tin containers (on which the only writing I could read was 38% alcohol by volume!)
 
I felt it my duty to pay for the banquet, Mr Li accepted and thus I became the very willing and happy host.  The banquet lunch lasted 1.5 hours and in typical Chinese fashion seemed to end abruptly with much handshaking and farewelling and invitations to return soon.   My group then took Anita and I back to Xin Hui where we e had been booked into a very comfortable hotel by Mr Li.

To finish the day off Anita and I were guests of honour at a western style reastaurant dinner given by Mr Zhong Guoan, Director Chairman of the Xinhui Foreign and Overseas Chinese Affairs Bureau of Jiangmen City Xinhui Returned Overseas Chinese Association (the title on his business card) and who also came from Ping Gang Cun. Mr Li had obviously arranged this and his family came along too.
 
The next morning we were picked up at 600hrs by Wei li and Ming and transferred to Guangzhou airport to catch our flight to Nanning.   So our 44 hrs in Guandong province was a really overwhelming emotional whirlwind experience and Anita and I enjoyed every minute of it.
 
We will always remember the magnificent help we received from Mr Li and his family to take us to our ancestral village and the wonderfully warm welcome and reception we received from our relatives.
 
Anita has emails and addresses for us to keep in contact, we will follow up the information to update the World Chung Clan book and I will forward these details of our adventure to my cousin Ai Lin in Florence to record in the Chung Gon Website.
 
Thanks to you, my cousin Margaret Mar and husband Stephen we were able to make a lifetime ambition become reality.
 
 
Kind Regards

Bob Chung Gon
12 February 2009