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.