August 20, 2009

• Family tree

  Having read a blog written by fellow Xangan Matt (ElusiveWords) on his family, made me think of my own personal family and how we bond and communicate. As a chinese I know that it is never a surprise to another fellow chinese when I say that I come from a BIG family.

  How big is my family? Well, I never knew the family from my maternal grandparents, sad to say, with the exception from my mum’s older sister. From my paternal grandparents, however, it's a different story. Both of my paternal late grandparents married twice. My grandma was his second wife. They had 3 children together. My dad was their second child. My grandpa had 6 (I think) with his first wife. Years later after my grandpa passed away, my grandma remarried. This time she was ALSO the second wife. They had 6 kids together, while he had 4 (I think) with his first wife. This was WAY back when chinese tradition was still in its prime among the chinese people and there was no law or public criticism against a man having more than 1 wife.

  The downside to this is that I have so many relatives whom I know little about and some never even met. My late grandma alone had 6 siblings. My late grandpa had 3 siblings (I think). Not to mention the families of my step uncles and step aunts. To make it harder, they all are spread around the world. Mostly are here in indonesia (total 6 cities), while the others are living in overseas, from australia to singapore to hongkong to taiwan to usa, and some unknown extended family still living in china. Believe it or not, we all (those who are still alive and well) still in touch and get along well enough as one big family, and it is safe to say that we are quite close and care for one and another. The trouble is… your business seems to be theirs also.

  Anyhow, this year’s past chinese new year I had a chance to explain a little about the family tree to a much younger relative. He is too young to remember or to know who’s who in our family and how they are connected. It triggered a funny and happy conversation with the relatives who were in the room and are much older than us and know more about our family tree. They seemed surprised that I know as much as I did. They figured I would be too young to know or to even have an interest to know. Somehow the conversation turned into an agreement that I should take time to draw up a family tree, complete with pictures, for the sake of the younger generations. The suggestion was only made in a joking way but I couldn’t help to think that maybe, just maybe that’s what we need in our family to get everyone closer and for all of the kids to know whom exactly they are getting their ANGPAO from every chinese new year. I could always try to bother the many relatives of mine to ask questions but with so many of them, including those living in overseas, I think I need more than just family stories to help me draw up a family tree.

  Just in case anyone’s wondering… nope, I haven’t started on the project. Yet.

  • 3:31 am
  • 6 Comments