jetlagged

a week after the trip, reminiscing...

we speed off from JFK at more than 500 miles per hour 

in the middle of a tuesday. 

we boarded eagerly

because promise lay ahead. 

we fly over 

Canada 

the North Pole

Russia

says the live map on my screen. 

we pass the time watching 

the pixelated plane mosey over 

the pixelated earth. 

we pull up the shade sometimes

slowly, against the fierce glare of daylight

unchanging as the crackled, snow-white terrain

below.

we squint hard,

peer down,

close the shade. 

we turn haggardly 

to our meal trays and dull screens, 

count down the hours until the New World.

The Au Family

5.2.2015

Clearly, I won't be falling asleep this morning, as I've been awake since 4:30. 

Uncle Jackson drove us around yesterday for an accelerated guided tour of the must-see sights in Sydney. The Rock, Rose Bay, and Bondi Beach. A few of these places were really charming and I would have preferred to spend the day exploring the streets on foot. But, we were on a schedule to be back at Aunt Lillian's place for the big family party.

Uncle Joseph calls Lillian the General Manager of the Au Family. And manage she did. She started planning this party a month ago, and she impressively got almost everybody to show up-- all of nearly 40 people --and bring food! She's also an amazing cook, and clearly, a very successful businesswoman. Even her three kids-- Suzanne, Derek, and David -- are mature and helped with the party without direction. In fact, all of the kids I've met have the same sense of responsibility and respect instilled in them. 

The family trickled in. Leonard, Aunt Evelyn's son, was tasked with taking the photos. So I set up my camera and tripod next to his for the shoot. First the octogenarians, then my dad's generation, then mine, some of them holding babies. I would post the photos but they are trapped in my camera at the moment.

It's funny, when you look at all of us together in a room, you can see the various sets of physical features repeating and changing with the new blood that joins the gene pool each generation. Surprising similarities occur even across different branches. For example, Suzanne reminds me so much of Georgina; the fine details are different enough between them, but as an overall impression, I would have though they were sisters. They are second cousins, however. There's weirdly also a Spanish looking part of the family, and also an actual Spanish part of the family-- in-laws of course.

There was enough food to feed a small town, and I missed out on most of it, because there were so many people to talk to. Namely, I forgot to try the fantastic looking salmon which I had watched Aunt Fiona prepare. People kept pouring me sangria, so I had plenty of that. Drinking with family-- also a new experience! 

Technically, there are just 2 uncles and 3 aunts, and everyone else is a second or third cousin to me. But I'm supposed to just call them all Auntie or Uncle.

The evening was pretty surreal. Here were a room full of intimate strangers, very westernized yet very Chinese, speaking in a rather pleasant and kinda funny accent. With each new person, we introduced ourselves by explaining who our parents and grandparents were. I'm Maggie. My dad, Sagon, is Uncle Stephen's brother, and your Aunt Emily was my grandmother. A response I heard more than once was-- Aunt Emily was a lovely lady. It's true, she was genuinely classy. Anyway, the times I'd been at family parties of this magnitude and variety before tonight, they were other people's family. Tonight's experience revealed a world previously unknown yet so close and personal.

Other than everything I just mentioned, the night's highlights included Aunt Lillian's riveting telling of her and her sister's arrest and escape during a trip to Beijing at the height of the goverment's crackdown on Falun Gong in the 90s. It's too long to tell now, but it was pretty amazing stuff.

The other was the discovery that the German ancestry business is a running joke here among the family, sort of. It has repeatedly come up in conversations about our family ties. Great grandmother is supposedly half German. But people aren't sure it's true, because in old photos, she looks quite Chinese. She does look whiter than everyone else in the photos, but I'm not sure why no one else except for Aunt Evelyn seems sure of this information. My dad had first told me this years ago, but when asked recently he doesn't remember telling it and was surprised to hear it himself. It would make sense though-- some of these relatives sure don't look very Chinese. 

The rain in Spain-- no, Sydney.

It's been raining since we landed. For the last three days we've been in and out of different parts of the city and suburbs, seeing sights and snapping photos while dodging the intermittent rain. This rain is hampering my shooting a bit. It's warm enough, though, for it not to be miserable. They say it's the most rain Sydney has gotten in 25 years. In this case, I'll take it as a sign that the powers that be approve of my dad and I being here. 

On our second day here, Friday, we rode the train from Chatswood, where Aunt Evelyn lives, into the city. Chatswood is apparently another suburb populated by many Chinese, on the north side of Sydney. The train is sleek, clean, modern, and a double decker. From Circular Quay (pronounced "key", meaning "harbor"), we rode a ferry to Manly. We had a view of the entire bay as the ferry sailed out-- the Opera House and Harbour Bridge being the centerpieces of a landscape dotted with sailboats and harbours, a skyline as layered and expansive as Chicago's flanked by green hillsides painted with white houses with red tiled roofs. Manly is a small beach area, and like many beaches has a street lined with shops leading you up to the sand and surf. There were a few surfers in wetsuits out there trying to make something of the half-hearted waves. We took in the scene, took some photos and it started to rain again, so we backtracked up the street and stopped for some fish and chips, which Uncle Jackson told us later was the thing Manly was known for. That explains why we saw so much of it.

When the ferry redocked at Circular Quay, we walked along the Opera Quay towards the Opera House. For a place that doesn't rain that much, many of the scenic and shop-lined walks were designed with overhangs and rain shelters that stretch out almost until you reach the intersecting walk that runs along the bay.

Again it started to pour as we neared the Opera House. It was also time for us to train it back to Gordon, where Aunt Lillian  would pick us up at 4:30 to head to another prearranged dinner, this time with Uncle Samuel's family. So, the Uncle Samuel I spoke of yesterday-- his name is actually Joseph. Ha! And he may or may not be blacklisted from China, but Aunt Lillian and Aunt Fiona definitely are. More on that later. So Samuel is Joseph's older brother, and they are both my grandmother's younger brothers. 

Uncle Samuel who is 88 married a second (one and a half?) generation Chinese-Australian woman from a rural area four hours north of Sydney. She reminds me of an old British lady and could probably pass, though she is full-blooded Chinese-- but I'm learning that the question of our blood is an area of much bemused speculation and rumor across the extended family. More on that later! 

Uncle Samuel looks more Chinese than Joseph. He looks like a cute hobbit. I hope he never reads this.

Dinner was in Chatswood at a fancy Chinese restaurant chosen by Roselyn and Janine, Uncle Samuel's daughters. It was Chinese owned and run, and the flavor profiles were more western-tasting. They also individually portioned and served each of us even though the dishes were family style. That was interesting. 

And Roslyn and Janine are lovely. I sat between them and chatted. Janine herself is leaving town next week for a five week trip across Europe and Asia! And Roslyn is a flavor scientist, so cool.

After dinner, Roslyn took us to Kirribilli which is a park across the bay from the Opera House. We saw it lit up next to the bridge. Kids were hanging about around us, reveling in their youth and the warm night, as we took in the scene. As we drove off, the rain came down as if cued.

The journey, the family

Unfortunately, this Australia series will be lacking the Ching part of the blog. This is uniquely a family trip. My dad and I landed at Kingsford early this morning 33 hours after leaving philly. Now that I've been here for a full day, the journey to get here seems like its own separate trip. Ching dropped us off at the Air China terminal at JFK (oh, there's the Ching portion), and we spent the first of two legs with a full cabin of other bodies en route to Beijing. It was like Chinatown, except in an enclosed box, 37,000 feet above the earth. Upon boarding, a pungent smell hit me, and there were screaming babies, Chinese spoken loudly, slippers. Throughout the flight, persons were milling about, and I heard a couple of people hocking loogies. In between the in-flight meals, some had brought snacks of cup noodles and sticky rice wrapped in banana leaf. It was also the largest plane I have ever been on, and it was packed to the gills with people and their piles of haphazardly packed luggage I watched getting checked in back at departures. Despite that the Chinatown feel gave a comfortable sort of familiarity, I was nervous about flying up until the plane glided into and remained in a stable cruising altitude.

We didn't have too much time to dally at the Beijing airport (but enough for my dad to forget his wallet at customs and take the long walk back from the gate to luckily retrieve it) before getting on the second 13.5 hour flight. There was a noticeable cultural difference in the folks aboard this flight. They were still mostly Chinese, but without the Chinatown feel. It was a bit more like the Bay Area instead.

After another mind numbing night on another plane, we were welcomed into the comfortable warmth of my dad's side of the family. Dad's cousin Lillian (Ling Ling) recognized me despite not having seen me since I was 2 and a half, and hugged me ecstatically. A nap followed a homemade lunch followed by another meal in Eastwood, which is a very Chinese suburb near Willoughby where we were staying. Dad and I dined with his two siblings, their two cousins and their husbands, and Great Uncle Samuel and his wife, whom, clearly, everyone adores as much as I do. Funny enough, I was told to sit at the kids' table with five cousins who were all younger than me.

Samuel is 86 and has twinkling, boyish eyes with charm to match. He is a writer, a gardener, a Falun Gong practitioner, and as a result, is blacklisted from entering China's borders. He has aged a lot since I met him in 2000 when he came for grandma's funeral, but isn't any less spirited. He asked us all to bring photos with us. My dad brought some really old photos from when all of the elders were just getting going in life, and he was very delighted to reminisce.

I gave him a Phillies cap, because he always has a cap on his head, and he gave me a deck of Sydney scenic photo cards, a wooden 3D koala model, and kiwis and persimmons from his garden. He explained that each card has a duplicate, and I'm supposed to send one to a missed loved one back home and when I return, to attempt to reunite the pair. If I am successful, that means that I am loved back. 

I liked that the house he shared with his wife and a renter - a young white woman who is also a Falun Gong practitioner - was cozy, modest, and familiarly Chinese, despite the kindly, innocently swaggering Australian-ness about him.

If I had felt any distance between myself and these newfound relatives whose lives and world views are relatively (har har) different from my own, Uncle Samuel's utmost warmth helped close that gap. I haven't always felt a part of a large, old, strong and caring family with a lot of rich history. It's nice to experience that now.