2017 Mar 11-17 : "China: Finding Our Roots (2) 寻根之旅 (2)" - 广东省梅县市大埔县湖寮镇双坑村

Since the last trip to Dabu 大埔 in 2015 December, we have met up with a potential long lost relative. After that time, I have registered myself into the Hakka interest group on Facebook. In this group, all Hakka people around the world are welcome to join the group and share anything pertaining to Hakka culture. From there, I got to know a fellow Singaporean Hakka 客家人, Terence Ho 何斌赞 and through our private conversation, we got to know our ancestors came from the same village. Terence is a frequent traveller to Dabu and is in constant contact with the Char Yong (Dabu) Association 新加坡茶阳（大埔）会馆 in Singapore and in Dabu. He is generation 28 in the ancestral hierarchy, same as myself. Thus he could potentially be my distant cousin. This time, we managed to establish contact with the clan in Dabu. With the new details on hand, we were confident to find our ancestral lineage this time. We decided to go to Dabu again in 2017 March.

An old photography of my granddad.

His name was 何榕阶 (real name) / 何娘来 (possibly a nickname since young).

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Day 1

香港 -> 梅州市 -> 大埔县湖寮镇

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We took the same set of flights just like the previous trip in 2015.

We arrived 2 days in HK before the flight to Meixian.

Here we were at HKIA boarding a China Southern flight to Meixian.

We hired a private car to drive us to Dabu from Meixian Airport.

Below is a map of Dabu 大埔

Upon arrival, we checked in the same hotel which we stayed in our previous trip.

And surprising to find our local contact 何维立 from the clan association (and he is my distant nephew who is much older than me, and he is 29th generation).

My nephew brought us out for dinner at a local street eatery.

We ordered local Hakka food: noodles 老鼠粉 with minced pork and beef balls 牛肉丸. Economical and tasty.

This is how the noodles 老鼠粉 is made. In his hand, there was this dough made of rice flour, And there was this wooden grate with holes beneath where he rolled the dough to squeeze out the short strips into the boiling pot below.

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Day 2

大埔县湖寮镇, 双坑村, 百侯镇

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Early morning after having breakfast at the hotel, 维立 came to our hotel in a hired chauffeur in a car to fetch us to the Ho Clan Association.

After a short drive through the city, we arrived at 庐江大厦 in Huliao town

We climbed up 5 levels to reach the main office and the altar.

We were warmly welcomed and served Chinese tea by the clan members. The man in white vest was the chairman.

We were introduced to the ancestors' altar.

The ancestors' tablets represented the founding Ho forefathers from the various villages in this city.

This tablet belonged to the founding father of my granddad's village

Here was our paying of respect to all our ancestors.

Here are the photographs of the tombs of the founding forefathers.

A group photograph before we moved on to the next destination, 双坑村 (old name 崧里亭）. Below is a satellite imagery of the village 双坑村

We arrived at the village and we went back to the previous location at the elementary school. This time the ancestral book custodian was at home.

He showed us a copy of the existing listing in the ancestral book.

We found granddad's name and the mention of my 3 uncles.

We provided the names of the other children and grand children (in the form of a printed paper of the family tree) to update into the ancestral book.

There was a sundry shop next door and we were introduced to this lady Her family was the ones living beside granddad's ancestral home. We met her briefly during the previous trip in 2015 but didn't have a chance to speak to her during that time.

We got to know that she was my father's only distant paternal cousin here (both are also generation 27). Her father was a brother to my granddad. She is my distant aunty and she is the daughter to the 96 year old lady whom we met in our previous trip here.

We visited granddad's ancestral home again.

We were also told that there were 4 rooms inside this ancestral home, and one of the rooms belonged to my granddad.

Now we understood why there was no ancestral altar here. It was moved to a ancestral hall in the village (which we would be visiting next),

We drove further deeper into the village and arrived at a new building.

This is the new ancestral hall

The tablets belong to the generation uplines of the founding forefather of this village.

Names of the cash donors who contributed to the construction of this hall.

The stone tablets above were relocated from the original site and they were dated couple of hundreds years' old (there was a mention of the reign of 乾隆 of Qing Dynasty).

维立 climbed a nearby pipa tree 枇杷树 and plucked a fruit to let us try.

Next we drove to another town 百侯镇, south-east of Dabu. The residents here have the surname of Yang 杨. This is Grandma's ancestral town, her birth place too. Her name was 杨玉运. She was brought to South East Asia when she was a toddler.

The place seemed to have produced many scholars in the past.

We did not come prepared to look for Grandma's ancestral home as we did not have details other than her ancestors came from this town.

We leisurely walked around the town. Most of the houses were opened to public viewing.

There were still people living in many of the other houses.

The green stuff floating on the surface of the pond was probably the feed to the household animals like pigs and ducks.

We drove back to the hotel after the visit.

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Day 3

大东镇，花萼楼，坪山梯田, 西岩茶乡度假村

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This morning we set off towards south east direction and headed much further away than 百侯镇. There were 3 places we would be visiting today 花萼楼，坪山梯田,and 西岩茶乡度假村

First destination was the 花萼楼.

广东省大埔县大东镇花萼楼

花萼楼位于大埔县大东镇联丰村，距县城有45公里，距今有近400年的历史，为省级文物保护单位。占地面积2300平方米，建筑面积2286平方米，属土木结构的圆形建筑。其设计精巧、结构独特，显示了客家人圆满、团结、平均、平等的生活理念，是目前广东土围楼中规模最大、设计最精美、保存最完整的民居古建筑，是世界民居建筑的一大奇观

Local villages selling mandarins. We bought some to eat. Very sweet and reasonably priced.

Next we proceeded to 坪山梯田

坪山梯田旅游区，是国家AAA级旅游景区，位于广东大埔县大东镇，毗邻福建。坪山村历史文化底蕴深厚，人文资源丰富，文物古迹众多，自然生态优美。坪山千亩梯田源于元末明初，堪称传奇。因弧线优美，风景秀丽，吸引了珠三角、潮揭汕、福建以及梅州各地众多游客纷至沓来。特别是近几年，大埔县委县政府和大东镇村干部致力打造坪山千亩梯田景观，通过财政补贴方式引导村民“夏种水稻冬种油菜”，营造出“春如道道金链，夏滚层层绿波，秋叠座座金山，冬锁条条苍龙”的千亩梯田四季美景。每至春时，千亩油菜花基地成为乡间一道亮丽的风景线

Canola field 油菜花园

Final destination of the day was the 西岩茶乡度假村

大埔县西岩茶乡度假村风光秀丽、奇石遍布，峰高林立、幽泉山涧飞瀑、景色宜人，是感受现代休闲农业和高山森林度假的佳境，现已开发有万亩有机茶园，茶山别墅，茶山宾馆，会议, 中心，茶叶加工厂，茶叶大观园，倚岩寺，西竺寺，仙人桥，七星石，又一村等接待设施和景点，形成较为完善的吃、住、行、游、购、娱综合服务体系.

西岩山位于大埔县东南部，与潮州市饶平县接壤。西岩山是粤东名山，主峰海拔1256米，山上奇石嶙峋，形态各异，有“鸡公髻石”、“天狗望月”、“七星石”、“仙人桥”、“撑腰石”、“仙人打鼓”、“飞来石”、“仙人茶壶”、“ 清泉石上流”等景点。　　度假村坐落于西岩山北麓，现为集茶叶种植、加工、旅游、观光于一体的国家AAA级旅游景区。度假村分为休闲餐饮娱乐区、茶园观赏区、制茶工艺展示区、登山观景健体区四个区域

Different types of tea were planted here

We went back to the hotel in Dabu to rest and pack up for the return road trip back to 梅州市. We stayed at the same hotel, Ramada Meizhou.

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Day 4

大埔 -> 梅州市

Day 5

梅州市 -> 香港 -> 新加坡

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After breakfast at the hotel, we took a taxi to Meixian Airport, and flew back to Singapore via HK.

We managed to get to coordinate the best-effort updates into the ancestor book. Below was a page from the updated book which we received after we returned back to Singapore. There still existed some discrepancies as we were not given chance to proof-read the updates before they printed the new edition. Till the next trip in the future...