I just landed in Chaing Mai, Thailand today after having the unique experience of spending the Spring Festival and the preceding two weeks with a good friend down near Xiamen, China. I was able to experience a lot of the traditions and some family life as well.
One of the traditions in China for Spring Festival is to go back to your hometown, which here means your family's origin basically. It's the town that all your relatives live in and that only began to change slightly in the equivalent of our Baby Boomer Generation (after 1978-ish) and much more now that everyone is migrating to mega-cities for work.
Xiamen is across from Taiwan and they say you can see some of its islands on very clear days. I never have. Isaac's hometown is a fishing town traditionally and every meal I ate had some kind of seafood in it. This is a short walk from his old house. They have a new house in the city and kept the one that his parents originally owned here in their hometown.
There are still bits and pieces of gorgeous beach here but just behind the camera is a nasty mess of mined stone and which has completely destroyed most of this beautiful beach.
We met and walked about a 1/2 mile on a pier that protected the stone-mining bay with Isaac's classmate from his middle school days. They were #1 and #2 in their class back in the day.
That concluded our first visit to the "Old home." We were lucky to catch it on such a clear day because almost the entire two weeks were rainy or foggy.
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