In preparation of meeting Popo, I spent some time gathering and scanning old pictures to show her from photo albums we had at home. She likes looking at photos and she has a tablet she uses to watch tv shows and video call family members. Here are a few interesting ones I’ve found.
My grandma has been living in a part of Hong Kong called Ap Lei Chau (Duck Tongue Country). My cousin Tim said that it’s one of the most densely populated areas of the world. Wikipedia says that it’s a half a square mile in size with a population density of 158,840 inhabitants per square mile making it the fourth most densely populated island in the world which is crazy. My Uncle William lives a half hour away on foot at his own place and hired Sincha, a live in Filipino caretaker, for my grandma. Sincha does all the cooking and cleaning as well as moves my grandma around the apartment. She’s very attentive and caring which gives me relief that Popo is being well taken care of.
It was very nice seeing Popo again. It took her a little bit to perk up after we arrived but she was very happy to see us after so long apart. When she was living with us in 2018, she was still able to slowly make her way up and down the stairs at our house but now she cannot even get up from a chair without assistance which is sad. Her eyes are still very sharp but she’s almost completely deaf so we have to write on paper or use our phones to communicate to her. She doesn’t have hearing aids and I’m kicking myself for not picking one up as the US FDA just started allowing the sale of over the counter hearing aids just a few weeks ago. Maybe I can plan on getting one for her the next time we visit.
Another challenge in communication is that in her old age, she’s defaulted to Wenzhou dialect which is what she grew up speaking. My mom speaks it fluently but we grew up with Cantonese and a bit of Mandarin. It’s almost like being a Spanish speaker trying to understand someone speaking Portuguese, some similar sounds but you can’t quite make it out. Kimberly is much better at deducing what she’s trying to say than me but that’s because she has a closer relationship with her.
My uncle took us all out to lunch for dim sum and I had to sneakily pretend I had to go to the bathroom to give the waiter my credit card to pay for the meal. For those that aren’t familiar with “the dance” there’s certain etiquette when it comes to paying the bill for a meal, especially with people you haven’t seen in a long time. The bill comes at the end and everyone’s yelling at the waiter to hand them the check so they can pay and it’s just a game of one upping each other and threatening the wait staff. I’d rather avoid the debacle and use stealth instead.
We finished lunch and much to my uncle’s dismay, I won this one but I know that he’ll end up finding somewhere else to take us to eat and beat me to the check. This was the first time my grandma’s been out of the apartment since August when my youngest uncle came to visit from Panama. I feel sad that she’s basically locked in such a small space with very few visitors but Hong Kong is not a great place for the elderly or disabled to easily move around. My mom has a security camera set up in the living room and bedroom to keep tabs and talk to Popo every day so at least we have that while living such a far distance away.
I think I mentioned in a previous post that my grandpa passed away around August 2020 during the pandemic. My mom and her brother had to be in a 14 day mandatory hotel quarantine leading up to the funeral in order to be allowed to enter the country. That was really hard because we all wanted to be here for the service but it was just too much time away from work that we couldn’t afford to take off.
My uncle drove us to the grave site after lunch which was only about 10 minutes away and upon arrival, I was kind of shocked to see how many graves there were in this area. He explained that this is specifically a Christian cemetery and you have to be a member or be approved by the local church to be buried here. I marked with red arrows how high up the graves go and I also didn’t realize until later that the building in the background was not an apartment for the living but is comprised of small (for the lack of a better word) cubbies for people’s remains to reside.
Tomb sweeping day is a holiday the Chinese have celebrated for thousands of years where they visit their ancestor’s grave sites and tidy up and do things in remembrance of them. It kind of resembles Dia de los Muertos in Mexico and takes place in April. Since we likely won’t be here for that, we brought flowers and several bags of water to tidy up the space. While it’s never a happy time to be in a cemetery, I definitely felt more at ease that it’s in a relatively nice place by the ocean, near family who can visit on a regular basis.
Something new about Chinese culture that I didn’t know before was that all of these graves are temporary. Because land is such a rare commodity in Hong Kong, bodies are only buried for about 6 years and then moved to a different location. Once the time is up, the family will “wake up” the deceased family member and staff will collect the bones and grind them into a powder to place in an urn and be moved to the final resting place. My grandfather specifically did not want to be cremated because he was a very committed Christian and associated cremation with burning in Hell. Not that he cares now, but we still have to respect his wishes. The woman to the left of him already had the granite slab removed recently which indicated to me that they were preparing to move her soon. I hope to come back to HK in 4 years when they move him since I wasn’t able to attend his funeral.
On the way home, I noticed that many of the taller apartment buildings had rectangular holes cut out of the middle of them. I looked up why the architecture was that way and read that they are called “Dragon Gates”. According to Feng Shui, these holes allow dragons to fly from the mountains to the ocean each day, allowing positive energy flow through the building as a result.
We stopped to get gas for my uncle’s BMW SUV. I sat as the numbers kept climbing up and up…Going to let you guess how much it cost for a 19 gallon tank.
It was about $213 dollars to fill up my uncle’s car or $11.21 a gallon…TWO HUNDRED AND THIRTEEN DOLLARS! He asked me how much gas was back home. I said $3.35 at Costco in Minnesota. Remember this next time gas is a little pricy and you’re not paying anywhere near $10 a gallon.
While today wasn’t necessarily an emotional day, I definitely felt pensive about my grandma’s situation here and how unfortunately far away we are from family. It was definitely the right choice to take time off of work and come visit because I was able to take this picture.
I just saw your face in that pic of your Mom when she was 5. 🙂 She must have had a great time growing up with 3 brothers.