My Family's stories

Dragon's gate is the name of my hometown village. This is where my forth fathers born. I was privileged to visit this town. Anxi is 72km from Xiamen. It is a very small town in Fujian and famous for its Oolong Tea. As we were going through the mountains on the way to Anxi and I understood why my father built one of his restaurants near Temple's Park in Malaysia. He was home sick and wanted to feel the atmosphere of his hometown that he missed so much.
The original house is now being vacant but it is still under the name of my uncle (my father's younger brother). It is situated inside Dragon's Gate village near the Bridge of Light and Righteousness. This bridge was built for the people so that they did not have to cross the river the old fashion way. My uncle working together with my father in Malaysia at that time help organised the fund raising projects to build this bridge by contacting Anxi Chinese overseas.
The house has 4 very special trees planted by my great grandfather, grandfather and my father. The fourth one was the tree planted after the death of my father to commemorate him.
During the time when Kuomintang was recruiting soldiers to fight against the communists. They would "encourage" one young man from every family to join the army. Fearing of being recruited by Kuomintang, my father fled to Malaysia with the help of other relatives in Singapore. My uncle was too young to join the army during that time and he was spared. Time was tough for the family; my father was to try out his luck to make a living in Nan yang (South Asia) to help to support the family back home.

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My grandmother was quite sick at that time after my father left China. My uncle was desperate for help; the family went to the temple to pray. A remedy was given to get 27 water snails near the river. The family members started scooping for water snails near the river. They finally got 27 snails after working non-stop from 10pm till 4 am. But grandma died. My uncle was crushed by the incident and decided to become a doctor to help people.

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With my father working in Malaysia, my uncle studying in the medical school at interstate; my uncle has got no choice but to send grandpa to Malaysia so that my father could look after him. At that time, my father had established himself with the Lam Tai restaurant in Rawang, Malaysia. Grandpa also died 2 years later after arriving in Malaysia. I had never heard stories like this before I came here.

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I've met some interesting people today. Some people were old friends of my father. One man came in and told me that he was my father's student. He remembered when he was punished by my father for misbehaving. The man was old; if my father is still alive he would be 81 by now.

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The feeling of coming back to Anxi was very surreal. In many ways I was glad that I made this visit. It has opened my eyes about my heritage and many things about my father.

Doulos Part IIb - Seasick

27 June 2005
I woke up at 6am. My cabin is still rocking. I got up and sat at my bunk bed, I could not hold it for a minute. I had to lie down again; I could not hold myself together. After about 10 minutes, I told myself that I needed to get out of my bed and get a shower. May be that would help. I just had to give it a try. I managed to get down from the bunk bed, balanced myself and walked to the bath room and had a shower. One of the most difficult showers I ever had. The bath room was rocking too.

Then I was reminded the following Bible passage. Matthew 8:23-27 (The Message)

23Then he got in the boat, his disciples with him. 24The next thing they knew, they were in a severe storm. Waves were crashing into the boat--and he was sound asleep! 25They roused him, pleading, "Master, save us! We're going down!"
26Jesus reprimanded them. "Why are you such cowards, such faint-hearts?" Then he stood up and told the wind to be silent, the sea to quiet down: "Silence!" The sea became smooth as glass.
27The men rubbed their eyes, astonished. "What's going on here? Wind and sea come to heel at his command!"

How I wished Jesus would calm the “storm” right where I stood. But there wasn’t any storm. I was just experiencing seasickness.

I never knew being seasick was such a bad experience. I could not function at all. The feeling is very hard to describe, I was not experiencing any pain or fever. The discomfort was all too overwhelming.

I walked to the dining room for breakfast. John was there and told me he just threw out his breakfast. As soon as I heard there, I went straight back to my cabin and chucked; I went straight to my bed.

Doulos Part II - (Tanzania to Mozambique)

26 June 2005
My cabin was in section 1:- the front of the ship. This means when the ship is hit by the wave, section one will get it first before the rest of the ship. If you put this in a sea-sickness perspective, you get the picture. My cabin mates were Lucas from Germany, Andrew from England and Tespo from Lesotho. Lesotho is a country inside South Africa. Cabin that I stayed was very small. 2 bunk beds and a very small bath room.

27 June 2005

The STEP group was meeting for the first time. STEP stands for Short Term Exposure Programme -the mission trip that I participated. Most of the participants were from America, Jordan, Ryan, Rebecca, Deets, Jenny and Jennifer. Daniel from England living in Cyprus, Hack Chul from South Korea, Reza from Albania, Raphael and Martina from Switzerland, Annamiek from Holland, John from Malaysia studying in Scotland and Rachel from Ireland. Our co-ordinator was Gill. She has been on Doulos for more than 1 year. We were brief by different leaders on the ship about the programme and what expected of us.

The ship is set to sail this late afternoon. As part of the normal safety protocol, we performed a search for stowaway, the ‘unwanted guests’ who got on board for free passage. It happened before; the ship has to make a ‘U-turn’ back to the previous port and returned the ‘guest’. Normally, there will be someone pretend to be a stowaway during this exercise. The aim is to search every part of the ship and locate the stowaway.

The ship’s company, i.e. the crew members, were out on the deck waving good-bye to the locals. I was out with everyone else to check out what was it like to sail on a big ship as this was my first time on board with the ship. The deckies were busy getting the ship ready as the tuck boats pull the ship away from the quayside. After the ship was tucked to the required distance, we set sail for a 3 day journey to Nacala, Mozambique. The weather was cloudy that day, apart from that everything was fine. I felt the wave on the deck; it was not as bad as I thought what people said about seasickness. I was taking photographs with John and Raphael who were on the deck and I could not feel any seasickness coming to me. We adjourned to the dinning room for dinner. I could feel a bit of movement in the dinning room. As I was eating my dinner, I started to sweat. This could be the weather since we were in Africa, and this land is always warm even during winter time. The sweating did not stop, rest of the people who were eating with me were fine. At that moment, I knew; I have been hit by seasickness. I finished my dinner and excuse myself and went straight to my cabin. I lost my bearing. I could not even walk to my cabin. The ground was 'moving'. I was sweating is crazy trying to concentrate each of my step back to section 1. I finally made it to my cabin, climbed up to my bunk bed and trying to sleep. I felt better when I lied down but I could still feel the cabin rocking. My body not longer fighting off the cough but trying to counter act the imbalance of my body. It was 6pm in the evening; I did not go out of my cabin that night.