They are in Siam

In the spring of 2017, at 18 years old, I traveled alone to Bangkok to "find" my second grand-aunt. "She's on Song Wat Road near the Grand Palace," Grandpa told me before I left.

Second grand-aunt didn’t speak Mandarin, only Teochew, and her vocabulary still belonged to an older era. Over the phone, she asked me where I was staying—"which inn or guesthouse"—so that my uncle could pick me up. I replied that I was staying at a "homestay." She didn’t understand. "Where exactly?" she asked. I thought of saying "Airbnb," but figured she wouldn’t know the term and that I couldn’t possibly explain the English address to her over the phone. I had no choice but to say, "I’m staying at a friend’s place; I’ll come to you."

Second grand-aunt gave me an address and told me to ask around if I couldn’t find it: "Just ask for Aunt E." I agreed repeatedly.

Near the bustling Siam Square shopping district in Bangkok, I flagged down a taxi. "To the Grand Palace," I said. Truth be told, I hadn’t memorized the exact address second grand-aunt had given me. She spoke in Teochew, and I wasn’t sure what characters corresponded to her words. I only caught the street name "Song Wat Road" and a house number, but the alley name and specific details became a blur in my mind. Sitting in the cab, I looked out the window at the familiar Lingnan-style buildings: three- to four-story homes rising vertically, old metal shutter gates on the ground floor, and storefront signs with Chinese characters. It looked so much like Chaoshan (my ancestral hometown) that I nearly forgot I was in Bangkok.

My original plan was to walk to second grand-aunt’s place after arriving at the Grand Palace. But while checking the map in the cab, I realized her home was still far away from there. Song Wat Road, an eight-kilometer stretch, runs southeast from the Grand Palace through Chinatown, then follows the Chao Phraya River southwest. I don’t remember exactly how I negotiated with the driver, but after several adjustments to the destination, I handed him the phone to speak directly with second grand-aunt. When we finally reached the spot, the driver grinned and charged me an extra 100 baht.

This was Bangkok’s Bang Kho Laem district, near the iconic Ferris wheel of Asiatique, the riverside night market. On the streets, luxury hotels, high-rise condos, and modest houses alternated. The driver pointed to an alley and said, "It’s here."

At the alley entrance, I asked an older man in Teochew, "Uncle, is Aunt E here?" He looked a bit surprised. "Aunt E? Oh, Aunt E!" Then he stood up and said he’d take me to her.

After walking just a few steps, I saw Aunt E approaching, supported by a middle-aged man. That was our first meeting. She had a head of silver hair, wore glasses, and had a string of beads around her neck. She looked much thinner than in photos. That year, she was 83 but still full of energy, clear-minded, and warmly conversational.

The alley was narrow, only about two meters wide. After walking a few steps in, we passed a small temple at a corner, with red Chinese characters on bamboo lanterns hanging on either side. Deeper into the alley, at the far end, was Aunt E’s home.

Aunt E is my second grand-aunt, Grandpa’s second eldest sister.

In 1946, Aunt E boarded a ship to Siam (Thailand) from Shantou with her father, elder sister, and younger brother. There were too many people fleeing famine, so her mother and youngest brother (my grandpa) couldn’t get on the ship. From that point on, the family was split in two, separated by the heavens and the earth. Some stayed in Siam, while others remained tied to Tangshan (a traditional term for China).

Why did she leave? Why Siam? What event or moment finally made her decide to go? For those granted different choices by fate at the same time, how did their lives diverge in two lands? Did those who left ever regret their decision? Did those who stayed behind ever resent the unfairness of it all? Did they think of reuniting, or of returning? And how did they eventually reconnect?

These questions flooded my mind, intense and unrelenting. I decided to seek answers. I traveled to Thailand and also returned to my ancestral hometown. Some questions have faded into the dust with the passing of the older generation, but others have allowed me to glimpse how the threads of our family’s fate were tangled and stretched over time.

Those Who Left

Aunt E and her family lived in a rural village at the border of Puning County and Jieyang County. Before moving back to the village, they had been living in a nearby small town. However, the house they were staying in was reclaimed by its owner, leaving them with no choice but to return. By that time, their ancestral home had already been passed down to the family of the third brother, leaving Aunt E and her family to sleep in a corner of the living room.

Her father, known as Zai-Niang, was a farmer who sold vegetables to make a living. He was the second brother in his family, with elder and younger brothers named Zi-Niang and Zai-Fu. Interestingly, in Teochew (Chaozhou) dialect, Zi-Niang translates to "woman." It is said that before the eldest son was born, the family faced many tragedies with infant mortality, particularly with male children, while female infants survived. In response, they began giving their sons feminine names, believing it might ensure their survival. However, Zai-Niang's youngest brother did not follow this tradition, as by then, the other three sons had already survived.

Such gender-biased traditions were not uncommon in rural Teochew villages. In 1931, Puning County recorded 266,400 males but only 195,800 females—a stark gender imbalance.

When exactly Aunt E left, my grandfather didn’t know. In fact, he never even met her.

For many Teochew people, Siam (modern Thailand) wasn’t a far-off, unreachable place. It frequently appeared in proverbs and folk songs, such as “From Siam to the pig trough” or “If you’ve got nothing, go to Siam.” Another common song went:
"The Siam ship, on distant waters,
Who knows if we’ll live or die today.
If you don’t make a living abroad,
You’ll die a ghost in despair.”

Siam wasn’t just a foreign land—it was also a place where kinship and bloodlines offered a lifeline. For centuries, from the red-hulled junks to steamships, all kinds of people—merchants, sailors, craftsmen, laborers, pirates, fugitives, and refugees—sailed south to the vast expanse of Nanyang (Southeast Asia). By 1955, about 1.297 million Teochew people lived in Thailand, comprising 56% of the country’s total Chinese population.

The destinies of Teochew and Siam have long been intertwined. In 1767, a man of Teochew heritage, King Taksin, established the Thonburi Kingdom in Siam. Following his rise, Teochew merchants flourished in the region, gaining economic privileges, such as controlling the import of Siamese rice. Teochew plantation owners in Siam also recruited large numbers of workers from their hometown, while Teochew craftsmen were employed by the monarchy to help construct the capitals of Thonburi and Bangkok.

In later decades, natural disasters and poverty continued to drive people away from Teochew. But migration was also spurred by violence and social disorder. Teochew was considered a particularly volatile frontier, beyond the full control of China’s central government. The region was rife with clan feuds, resource disputes, opium smuggling, and gang activity. In 1869, the Qing government launched a pacification campaign along Teochew’s coast, arresting and executing thousands of so-called “troublemakers,” burning villages, and forcing tens of thousands to flee their homes. This destruction normalized large-scale male migration, particularly to Siam.

War and political instability further embedded violence into the lives of ordinary people. Between 1918 and 1931, approximately 1.577 million people left Shantou port for Southeast Asia, with 868,000 going to Siam. Migration surged during tumultuous years—such as 1927, when 222,000 people left Shantou, and 1928, when another 212,000 followed. These spikes coincided with the Nationalists defeating warlords and suppressing communists in the Hailufeng region. By comparison, only 84,000 people left Shantou in 1926.

The exact moment when Aunt E’s family made their decision to leave remains unclear. Perhaps it was a long, bleak day. County records only hint at the cascading disasters they faced before departure: prolonged warfare, droughts, floods, and famines.

In late 1942 through early 1943, Guangdong suffered from severe winter and spring droughts. The early rice harvest failed. Starving villagers raided food stores, and horrifyingly, there were even reports of cannibalism. In Puning County alone, about 100,000 people either starved, fell ill, or fled. Over 70% of farmland was affected, spanning 360,000 acres. In neighboring Jieyang County, 68,400 people starved to death, 22,300 young girls and infants were sold, and 24,200 people fled to nearby provinces. Cholera outbreaks followed, killing 400 people in the nearby town where my grandfather’s family lived. Meanwhile, Japanese occupation exacerbated the famine by restricting fishing and halting grain imports.

During this famine, my grandfather, less than a year old, was taken by his great-grandmother to a wealthy family. Enchanted by his fluffy hair and cuteness, they considered adopting him. In the end, however, she couldn’t bear to part with him and brought him back.

Folk songs from this period preserve the collective memory of hunger:
"Millet weed, millet weed,
Eat it, vomit it back up…
No grain for the farmers,
Hunger forces them to eat millet weed."

In 1946, Aunt E’s family decided to leave. Her father, Zai-Niang, pawned their four acres of farmland to pay for the journey. On the way to Shantou, he was beaten and robbed of some of the money after taking a wrong turn near customs. Furthermore, with so many refugees, tickets for the ship to Siam were allocated by lottery. The family decided that the father would take his 16-year-old and 12-year-old daughters and his 8-year-old son to Siam first. The mother and youngest son (my grandfather) would follow later.

But they never reunited. After traveling to Shantou with funds sent by relatives in Siam, they were told the port was now restricting entry to “newcomers.” My grandfather’s mother’s illness—a contagious eye condition—might also have prevented them from boarding.

These barriers reflected Siam’s tightening immigration policies. Starting in the 1920s, Siam introduced measures to assimilate its Chinese population while imposing restrictions on new arrivals. Entry taxes, literacy requirements, and bans on those with diseases like trachoma made it increasingly difficult for poor laborers and women to immigrate. These restrictions intensified after World War II as the Thai government sought to control the surge of refugees.

In the end, Siam became a far-off place my grandfather and his mother could never reach—a distant land forever just out of reach.

Ah Ai

Grandma's name was Ah Ai.

I am deeply curious about her. What kind of person was this grandmother who raised her son alone? How did she live her life in Chaozhou, relying only on her son? I also wonder what Ah Ai looked like. Unfortunately, no photos of her remain. According to my grandfather, she had an oval face, thin eyebrows, a slender build, and wore her hair in a round bun at the back of her head. She often dressed in loose traditional garments.

Unable to board the ship, Ah Ai and her young son returned to their hometown. As a widow with a child, they were bullied by villagers and had to move around, eventually staying at her sister’s house. Her sister’s home was near the riverbank of the Rongjiang River, where many children enjoyed swimming. However, Ah Ai was strict with her son, only allowing him to bathe by the river but forbidding him to go into deeper waters. When it was time to come back, she would call him home. As a result, while the neighboring children all learned to swim, her son never did.

Her husband sent money monthly from overseas to support their living expenses. On many nights, under the dim candlelight, Ah Ai would process gold foil paper for extra income. Her son, still young, would sit nearby and keep her company. Sometimes, when his eyes became heavy with sleep, she would tap his head gently to keep him awake. During holidays, she would take him to the temple to worship or go watch performances in front of the local theater.

Ah Ai was hesitant to go overseas even when her daughter, born in Thailand, offered to send her travel funds.

This does not seem to align with the image of Ah Ai my grandfather described. He said Ah Ai was "strong-minded." Her mental arithmetic amazed others. In the past, scales were measured in units of 16 taels per jin (a Chinese pound), and converting taels to jin was not straightforward. Ah Ai could calculate with ease, ensuring no one shortchanged her. Neighbors even asked her to help calculate prices when buying goods from street vendors.

After the liberation of China, it became almost impossible for Ah Ai and her son to emigrate. Her husband sent back enough money for them to buy a house, so they no longer had to live with her sister.

Life remained frugal. In the mornings, she would cut a single green olive in half, dip it in soy sauce, and share it with her son along with some porridge. A childhood friend of hers, who lived nearby, often came over to chat. The four acres of land that she had pawned off years ago to afford travel expenses were eventually redeemed. Ah Ai began to grow vegetables, often heading to the fields at dawn to harvest string beans.

There were countless women like Ah Ai in the Minnan and Guangdong regions—women who stayed behind in their hometowns while their husbands went overseas to seek livelihoods. Before the early 20th century, very few women migrated to Southeast Asia. Their husbands went alone, leaving them behind to care for their families. Some women who did manage to go overseas were drawn into human trafficking or the sex industry. From 1882 to 1892, only 2-3% of Chinese immigrants to Siam were women. This rose to under 10% before World War I, and by 1945-1949, women accounted for 31.45% of Chinese immigrants.

It was not uncommon for husbands who left their hometowns to remarry abroad. A 1980s study in three counties in Fujian found that of 165 Southeast Asian immigrants, 19 workers had remarried locally after initially marrying back home—a figure believed to be conservative due to the reluctance of families to disclose the truth. Meanwhile, the wives left behind lived as if they were widows. Some were tightly controlled by their families, limiting their participation in social life. The gender inequality was stark—women who had extramarital affairs were seen as family disgraces, and their husbands even published notices in newspapers accusing them of being unfaithful before divorcing them.

The Marriage Law introduced by New China in 1950 encouraged some of these women to seek divorce. A March 1954 report from the Guangdong People’s Court’s Eastern Branch recorded 74 cases of overseas Chinese marriage disputes in Puning County that year. Nearly a third of the divorces were due to the husbands remarrying abroad, another third were because of long separations, and some cases involved pregnancies from extramarital relationships or brides who had only seen their husbands in photos but never met them in person despite years of marriage. In such cases, divorces were granted if the husband had been missing for years or had remarried, and attempts at reconciliation failed. If the husband maintained correspondence and financial support, the decision depended on specific circumstances, such as the couple’s feelings, the length of separation, and the level of financial support.

However, the Marriage Law sparked discontent among overseas Chinese. Since remittances from overseas were a crucial source of foreign currency for China, in April 1954, the government issued a directive: If the overseas husband had not remarried, maintained correspondence, and sent remittances, the wife’s request for divorce should be discouraged. Officials were instructed to mediate and persuade the wife to abandon the idea of divorce.

Ah Ai’s circumstances were different from others. She spent more than 20 years with her husband and decided to take her child to Siam to rebuild their life together. Although they faced obstacles, she continued to strive for a reunion. During their ten years apart, her husband sent monthly remittances, and they kept in touch through letters.

Had life continued in this steady, uneventful way, it might not have been so bad. But in 1956, ten years after her husband and child had left, Ah Ai lost her eyesight. It was said to be glaucoma, but no doctor she consulted could cure it. Her young son, who was in sixth grade at the time, dropped out of school to care for her and took over her gardening work. He sold sweet potatoes to families who ground them into starch and carried vegetables to sell in the streets. It was during this time that he learned how to cook.

After a year, he returned to school and made up for a missed semester. That same year, he failed his entrance exams for junior high school and decided to study on his own at home for another year. His fifteenth year slipped away in a routine of caring for his mother, growing and selling vegetables, and self-studying. In 1958, he successfully passed the entrance exam for Jieyang County No. 2 Middle School.

He was a diligent student. During meals, he would draw unsolved geometry problems on the wall and study them while eating. Sometimes, inspiration struck, and his eyes lit up. Suddenly, he would put down his bowl. "Brother, are you full?" Ah Ai would ask in surprise. "Not yet, I just thought of a solution!"

One day that year, while digging sweet potatoes in the field as usual, the village cadres came by and said, “Brother, once these sweet potatoes are dug up, you won’t be planting here anymore.” He asked why. “The land will be collectivized,” they replied. Embarrassed, he left and never returned to farming. Satirical folk songs about the false promises and exaggerations of the collectivization period were common at the time:
“The house beams are large, one acre yields ten thousand;
The communal kitchens scatter, the first meal swears oaths.”
“This year’s bumper harvest, food rations are snatched;
Surpassing the UK and the US, millet is made into water.”

The middle school also set up a communal kitchen where students had to eat, but he had no memories of the communal meals—he had to return home to care for his blind mother.

He was already used to being alone. After school, he went straight home, never participating in extracurricular activities with classmates. He didn’t play basketball or table tennis. He rarely smiled, his face always stern. Because he looked "intimidating," no one dared to bully him, and he had no conflicts with others. However, when it came time to join the Communist Youth League, the class League members rejected him, saying, "You don’t follow the collective path; you refuse to eat at school."

“I really had no choice,” my grandfather said with a chuckle as he recalled this. “They counted it as a shortcoming and didn’t let me join.”

After 1958, due to the Great Leap Forward and collectivization, overseas Chinese households were mobilized to turn over their assets. Remittances from overseas dropped significantly. Faced with domestic hardships and material shortages, overseas Chinese began sending rice, oil, and other goods instead of money. To secure foreign exchange, the Chinese government declared that after joining people’s communes, personal living supplies, remittances, and savings of overseas Chinese families would remain privately owned. Later, policies allowing the purchase of goods with remittance vouchers were implemented, and special supply stores for overseas Chinese were established. These stores were abolished in 1966 and only reinstated in 1976.

Bad news from afar arrived during this time. In August 1959, Ah Ai’s husband passed away in Bangkok. Her son, seeing the red remittance letter with the obituary written in pencil, decided to keep the news from her. Until the day she died, Ah Ai never knew about her husband’s death.

Ah Ai's health deteriorated in the spring of 1961. During the second semester of his third year in junior high, during every recess, her son would rush home to brew herbal medicine and prepare lunch. He often had to fetch doctors to treat her and prescribe medicine. After lunch, he would return to school for the afternoon classes.

In early June of that year, on a quiet evening, Ah Ai passed away without a sound.

Her son finished preparing dinner and went to call her to eat, but she didn’t respond. Panicking, he ran out of the house and sprinted through the village to find his third uncle and his wife. Together, they hurried to the town. He then wove through countless winding alleys to reach the riverside and informed his maternal aunt.

There was no formal funeral. Everything was done quietly, with no one daring to make a fuss. It was the era of the Four Olds campaign. Even the wealthy refrained from holding funerals, let alone those who were poor. The neighborhood committee director helped apply for a free coffin, and Ah Ai was buried in a mound of earth in her husband’s village.

From sixth grade to his final year of junior high, her son had cared for his blind mother for nearly five years. When asked about her cause of death, he said, "It was probably malnutrition, edema. At that time, life in the country was hard economically."

After Ah Ai's death, her son began attending evening classes at school. Returning home after class, he would sleep for a few hours, wake up around 2 a.m., light a kerosene lamp, and study until dawn before heading back to school. This routine repeated every day. He performed well in his graduation exams, ranking second in the year for physics. The top scorer was a girl from the same village who went on to high school and later married into another area.

Her son, however, was two years older than his peers. He was over the age limit to apply for a regular high school and wasn’t allowed to take the exams. Instead, he enrolled in Jieyang Normal School.

After his father’s death, the remittance letters began being signed by his elder brother, and later by E-jie (his older sister). However, he later discovered that his elder brother had never sent money. Initially, it was their eldest sister who sent the funds—she had borrowed money from their father and, after his death, decided not to repay it directly to her younger brother. Instead, she sent it under their elder brother’s name to support his education.

E-jie eventually took over and sent even more. Once the eldest sister’s debt was "repaid," E-jie began sending 30 Hong Kong dollars a month, which he exchanged for 12.81 RMB. She often encouraged him to study diligently. In her letters, she wrote, “Study hard. I won’t get married yet. Once I’m married, I might not be able to support you.”

E-jie once sent him a black-and-white photo of herself to his school. She looked elegant and fashionable, with short curly hair, fine arched eyebrows, crescent-shaped eyes, and adorned with ornate earrings, a necklace, and a lace-trimmed dress. Like Ah Ai, she had single eyelids and small eyes. "So refined," her son said years later, still admiring her in the photo.

He also sent E-jie a photo of himself, taken in his early twenties. He had thick eyebrows and big eyes, wearing a sweater and jacket. The brown wool was purchased from the Overseas Chinese Store. “That was when I looked dashing,” he said with a smile.

In 1964, he graduated and was assigned to teach at a rural elementary school. “At that time, people were so enthusiastic. The country needed us, and that was our aspiration—to follow assignments without question,” he said, laughing. With his job secured, he immediately wrote to his sister, telling her she no longer needed to send money.

The Cultural Revolution soon began. Having overseas connections became a liability, so he burned many remittance letters. Communication between them dwindled, eventually stopping almost entirely. "There was hardly any contact after that," he said.

Aunt E

In the place where I was born, people were accustomed to stories of migrating to Southeast Asia. Relatives of ours in Hong Kong, Singapore, and Thailand were casually mentioned in idle chatter at the tea table. Those who returned home to visit family were called fan ke (returning guests), and they would bring gifts from faraway places to distribute among the waiting mouths. The overseas Chinese hospital in the town, as well as the elementary school where my grandfather later taught, were both donated by fan ke who had been away from home for many years.

For a long time, I knew very little about my relatives in Thailand. What kind of people were they? What kind of work did they do there? What neighborhood did they live in in Bangkok, and who lived there? Had they ever had a better life? Filled with curiosity and questions, I went to Thailand.

In 2017, I remember arriving at E-jie's house step by step, and the beautiful distant place I had imagined began to slowly crumble.

Under the eaves of E-jie's house, there were many ants, crawling around the shoes, some even climbing onto them. Inside, the lighting was dim, the decoration was simple, and the furnishings were old. Leftover food was covered with a plastic food cover on the table. In her old age, due to diabetes, her eyesight had deteriorated somewhat, and my grandfather gave me some money to pass on to her for medical treatment.

Whenever Thailand was mentioned, my grandparents would always bring up E-jie, saying how much money she sent to support my grandfather’s living expenses. E-jie treated my grandfather very well, and we all knew that. Because of this, I had a special feeling for her. Although I had never met her, I naturally wanted to get close and learn more about this woman who shared my bloodline.

From my one-sided perspective, E-jie’s old age seemed less than ideal. I heard comments from others expressing sympathy and regret for her fate, feeling that she had struggled and wasn't truly happy. Her life was summed up in a few simple words of lament. E-jie used to sell vegetables in Da Le and worked until she was 60. She never had children but adopted a boy from another country, an infant who had been abandoned at birth. A few years later, she divorced. One day, I ran into her adopted son. We couldn’t communicate due to the language barrier, and after a brief, somewhat awkward exchange, he left.

At that time, I felt sadness for E-jie’s past and present. A woman who had already left but was still giving, and her difficult life—selling vegetables in the market, raising her younger brother from afar. Did she sacrifice her own intimate relationships and happiness by waiting for him to graduate before marrying? I had thought this way until I visited Thailand again this year.

This summer, I went back to Thailand and stayed at Ren Bo’s house. Ren Bo is the second son of my eldest aunt. The first time I visited Bangkok, I had also met him at E-jie’s house.

Ren Bo was born in 1962. From the age of seven, he helped E-jie sell vegetables after school. He was probably the youngest relative who spent the most time with E-jie and was the closest to her. He was always by her side as a child, running errands for her. As he grew up, the elders praised him for being thoughtful and kind to others. From Ren Bo’s stories, I glimpsed a small corner of E-jie’s life and unexpectedly discovered another side of her—stories I had never heard before.

“She is a kind, sports-loving person who likes to buy things for others,” Ren Bo’s translation app told me when I asked about E-jie.

Ren Bo grew up speaking Chaozhou dialect with the elders and speaking Thai with his brothers and friends. He hasn’t spoken much of either language lately, and his Chaozhou dialect has become quite rusty and less fluent. Sometimes, when he doesn’t know how to express something, he opens Google Translate. He presses the “microphone” button, hesitates for a few seconds, carefully thinks about what he wants to say, afraid he won't express it clearly. But after waiting too long in silence, the microphone stops recording before he can speak.

E-jie lived close to my eldest aunt, just a few minutes away. Every day, she would go to the market nearby to sell vegetables, having her own stall. Around 9 a.m., she would take someone’s car to buy the goods. Two hours later, she would call out, “The vegetables are here!” and Ren Bo and his uncle would come out to unload the vegetables from the car, then use a small cart to push them to the market. After that, Ren Bo would help E-jie arrange and prepare the vegetables at the stall.

At 1 p.m., E-jie would open the stall on her own. She smiled a lot, and when business was good, there were many customers. Between two and three in the afternoon was the busiest time. She probably took after her mother’s “strong spirit,” talking a lot, loving to chat, and speaking Thai fluently. Ren Bo said she was “talkative” and “strong in speech.” His eldest aunt also sold vegetables, but she didn’t talk much—quiet, with a neutral expression, and her business wasn’t as good.

In my grandmother’s memory, E-jie was very strong-willed. She once told my grandfather that the second sister was very “wild,” stubborn, while the eldest sister was honest.

When they were young, the eldest and second sisters would go gather tree leaves to bring home for fuel. One day, they encountered two boys about their age in the village. A fight broke out, and they ended up using rakes to hit each other, scattering in all directions. The eldest sister had been sick as a child and now walked with a limp, too scared to move as the fight ensued. But the second sister beat the two boys so badly that they cried out loud. Even though her own hands were bruised, she didn’t cry. Afterward, she sat quietly, her face dark and silent, not saying anything.

The boys' mother came to their house, accusing the second sister of causing a bump on her son's head. My grandmother didn’t back down either. She took the second sister out and said, “This is a matter between the children, don’t come looking for trouble. Look at mine—she didn’t cry even though her hands were bruised.”

"(In Siam), we used to sell vegetables, and the business was good. All the vendors were Chinese," Ren Bo said. He used traditional terms to refer to different groups: the Chinese were called "Tang people," the Thai were "foreigners," the Malays were "Hakka," and Westerners were "red-haired."

By five or six in the evening, when the crowd had thinned out and E-jie was tired, she would return to her elder sister’s house to rest. "Ren, come help Auntie sell vegetables." Ren Bo got off school around three in the afternoon and would watch the stall until seven. After closing, he would sweep away the vegetable leaves, and E-jie would pack up the unsold vegetables into baskets, adding frost water. I misunderstood and thought she said "sour water"—what was that? I didn’t understand. "Ice, little pieces, the vegetables stay cool. In the past, there was no freezer," Ren Bo explained. I realized it was referring to ice water and refrigerators. Frost water, freezer—terms I had never used before.

Ren Bo recalled that E-jie used to make seven or eight Thai baht a day from selling vegetables. After closing the stall, she would give him one or two baht as pocket money, which he would use to buy food. Two baht could buy a bowl of pig’s feet rice, two bowls of rice noodle soup, or four skewers of grilled pork. "Money was worth a lot back then, now the rice noodles cost forty or fifty," Ren Bo remarked.

Ren Bo smiled and said that E-jie was relatively well-off and often helped his elder sister and younger brother. He also knew that E-jie sent money to my grandfather. "Business was good, so she sent money to Tangshan," he added. But he also said, "E-jie wasn’t very rich, just somewhat well-off." Wealth, according to Ren Bo, was measured by food: "Whatever you want to eat, she can get it."

"I’d go to her place to get food," Ren Bo laughed. He had six siblings, and he was the second oldest. "At our house, there were two dishes for eight people; at her house, three dishes for three or four people." Wherever they went, whatever they wanted to eat, Ren Bo would take E-jie along.

How should I describe my feelings when I first learned this news? Surprise, relief, and a deep sense of comfort? E-jie’s life was not as difficult as I had imagined. The money sent back to Tangshan wasn’t squeezed out of her, either. Thank goodness. At that moment, I was almost at a loss for words, only feeling a mix of shock and joy.

No one knew exactly when E-jie got married. Ren Bo recalled that when he was five, she was already married, but he couldn’t remember anything earlier. From the information he could piece together, she probably got married between the ages of 30 and 33, which would have been between 1964, the year my grandfather graduated from normal school, and 1967, when Ren Bo was five and able to remember things. E-jie’s husband had a son with his ex-wife, who occasionally came to E-jie’s house for meals, and Ren Bo had met him. A few years after they married, E-jie left that man. Ren Bo said the man was selfish and had other women. E-jie decisively divorced him. Afterward, she had other boyfriends.

Ren Bo recalled that when he was five, he used to get into trouble with people, even messing around at E-jie’s vegetable stall. "She was selling vegetables, hadn’t even started, and I went over to ask for money, saying, ‘Aunt, I want to buy something to eat.’ She scolded me, saying, ‘I haven’t even sold anything yet, and you want money.’" A few years later, when Ren Bo matured, he began helping E-jie sell vegetables.

E-jie was always willing to satisfy his needs. Every year during the holidays, Ren Bo would ask E-jie for new clothes, and she would buy them for him to wear. Near the vegetable stall, someone sold crispy coconut milk, which Ren Bo liked, so E-jie would tell him to buy an egg and have the vendor add it to the milk, making it taste even better.

Sometimes, after selling the vegetables, Ren Bo would want to watch a movie, and E-jie would take him on a three- or four-stop bus ride to the cinema. She loved watching Chinese and Thai films. "David Chiang (Jiang David), do you know him? From Hong Kong," Ren Bo asked me. I shook my head. "Didn’t you take your uncle or third uncle?" I asked. Ren Bo laughed. "No, they didn’t like to watch those kinds of films. My uncle wasn’t interested; he wouldn’t go."

After finishing middle school, Ren Bo wanted to attend a public business college. Public colleges were cheaper, while private ones were much more expensive. E-jie said that if he didn’t pass the entrance exam, she would pay for him to go to a private one. She knew that his eldest aunt’s family couldn’t afford that much. Fortunately, Ren Bo passed the exam and was able to attend a public college, so E-jie didn’t have to provide extra money.

In the summer of 2017, five months after I visited E-jie, my family went to Thailand, including my 75-year-old grandfather. It was his second trip to Thailand; his first had been in 1999. When E-jie saw the whole family arrive, she was so happy that she couldn’t stop smiling. My grandfather said that it was clear her joy was genuine. At that time, E-jie was still talkative. My grandfather gave her money for medical expenses again, and not long after returning to China, E-jie was hospitalized.

In December of that year, E-jie passed away in Bangkok.

Arrival in Siam

Ren Bo stared at a black-and-white photo for a long time. Several women, dressed in white short-sleeve tops and black pants, stood in front of a newly erected tombstone, still without an inscription. It was the grave of Zai Niang (Grandmother).

"They were all neighbors," Ren Bo suddenly remembered, pointing to each person and saying: "This one is my friend's grandmother; this one, she sells duck rice noodles, our neighbor; this one, I used to call her 'Drama Aunt,' but later she stopped acting and started selling chicken, duck, and pork; this one, an old lady, a kind person, when we were poor and had little to eat, she sold salted food in Daxi and brought some to us."

They were all neighbors of Zai Niang.

"The locals all say that Grandpa (Zai Niang) was an honest person," Ren Bo had told me when I first arrived. He added, his friend's father had also said that Zai Niang had a kind heart and was a good person.

The photo was brought by Gu Jing, the daughter of Ren Bo’s father. In Chaoshan, I called her "A Jing Gu," but after coming to Thailand, I followed the local custom of placing the name after the title, so I referred to her as "Gu Jing."

Gu Jing found a large red iron box at home, filled with many old black-and-white photographs. Before coming, she had told me via WeChat that she wanted to give me some of her husband's old photos. "Bring him to his homeland," she had said in Chaozhou dialect.

Gu Jing was beautiful; I had seen her photo when I was a child. In the picture, she held a bouquet of flowers, wearing a black graduation gown, standing between her parents, smiling brightly. It was clear her hairstyle had been carefully done, with two small curls of hair hanging down on each side. There was another photo where she wore a light-colored suit and had neatly cut short hair. In these photos, she was always surrounded by flowers, trees, and golden buildings, which took me, a child of less than ten, into a glamorous world I had never known. I secretly admired the refined, mature adults and envied a world that wasn’t mine.

"If you have any questions, just ask us," Gu Ying said. She was Gu Jing's older sister, six years older than her. I had also seen Gu Ying in photos before; one was from a wedding where she married a Thai-born Chaozhou man. Gu Ying spoke some Chaozhou dialect, and in the past, when their family spoke it, Gu Ying followed along, but now she had forgotten much of it.

Whenever I asked a question, Gu Ying and Ren Bo would rack their brains to answer me in Chaozhou dialect. Then they would discuss the true answer in Thai, a language I couldn’t understand. After figuring it out, they would tell me. If no one knew how to express something, they would leave it to Gu Jing, who spoke Chaozhou and some "red-haired" (foreign) language, or they would turn to Google Translate.

Ren Bo's uncles and aunts were born after Zai Niang had passed, so what they knew and spoke was mostly what they had heard from the older generation. However, now most of the elders had also passed. Many past events, like the "famine in Tangshan," "no food," and "hardship," were vaguely summarized. No one knew the finer details of how the family had first found a place to live or made a living. Only a few scattered memories allowed me to roughly understand what had happened a long time ago.

In 1946, after spending almost a month on the ship, Zai Niang and her three children finally arrived in Bangkok.

That was probably the first time they saw the sea. They had lived in the inland area of Chaoshan, where there were only hills, rivers, and farmland. But the excitement of seeing the sea might have quickly been overshadowed by seasickness and hunger. They drank water until their stomachs swelled, and then they were so hungry that they fell into a deep sleep, losing track of day and night. Once they reached Bangkok, others advised that they should smoke a bit to relieve the swelling. Gu Ying also heard that some people had died of hunger on the ship and were thrown into the sea.

When they first arrived in Bangkok, they had no home. Zai Niang’s family lived with relatives. Gu Jing added that it was a shelter. She gestured with her hands and then pointed outside the glass door at a small overhanging area that provided shelter from the rain. "It’s not inside their (relatives’) house, it’s the place outside," Gu Ying explained.

Zai Niang found a new livelihood by carrying goods to sell duck eggs. Everyone called her "Egg Seller Uncle." Later, the family moved out of the relative's house and into a wooden house by the river. In order to send money back to Tangshan, Zai Niang lived frugally and often ate porridge with melon strips.

"In Siam in the past, whatever you wanted to do, there was always a way. But in Tangshan, there was no way," Ren Bo said.

Grandpa was only eight years old when he first arrived in Siam. It’s unclear when exactly, but at some point, he started selling ice cakes on the street. He never went to school and was mocked by others as a hooligan. At fourteen or fifteen, he worked as an employee at a printing factory, and by the age of nineteen, he started his own printing business. Because he couldn’t read, he had to hire someone to choose the characters for printing and arrange the work. Grandpa learned Thai gradually from his friends, neighbors, and relatives, and by old age, when he spoke, he sounded like a "Thai person." When Grandpa visited Thailand to see his relatives, he was still in the printing business.

I read about the prosperous Bangkok of that time in the novel Southern Wind Blows Dreams by the Chinese-Thai author Mudan. Cars, cinemas, telephones, and televisions—confronted with the splendor of the 1950s in a foreign land, would he have been dazzled? Perhaps, like the male protagonist in the book, he believed that hard work and endurance could change his fate. The protagonist said: "Even now, they (Thai people) don’t like doing business. They’re content with whatever work, as long as they have enough to eat. They don’t strive to accumulate more money like we Chinese do, so most of the people doing business are Chinese."

"Chinese people came here and worked hard," Ren Bo said, echoing the sentiments of the protagonist in the book. He thought the Thais were lazy. "Siamese people are not like Tangshan people, they’re lazy." Ren Bo shared his opinion, believing that the Thais of the past were not industrious and liked to rest.

"But now, Grandpa doesn’t know," he added with a silly smile, continuing, "Chinese people, foreigners, not necessarily." He said, now many Chinese are wealthy and come to Thailand to do business... to do what? Ren Bo couldn’t find the right words in Chaozhou dialect. His translation app told me: some of them engage in illegal work. He was referring to telecom fraud.

"Write a letter, send two baht, tell the child not to gamble, to work the farm, raise pigs, and wait until I earn enough to return to Tangshan and reunite with the family."

Did Zai Niang ever miss her hometown? Was she curious about the changes in her homeland? Was she satisfied with her new life abroad? Grandpa said that around 1953, Zai Niang had planned to bring her three children back to Chaoshan, but the trip never happened, as they heard that China and Thailand had severed diplomatic ties.

Life in Thailand wasn’t stable when they first arrived. After the return of the Luang Phibun government in 1948, they continued to pressure the Chinese, including raising the foreigner residency fee from 20 baht to 400 baht. In 1952, during discussions about increasing the fee, many Chinese protested. On June 13 of that year, over 10,000 poor Chinese gathered to demonstrate. Additionally, the government sought to eliminate the influence of communism in Thailand, launching a three-month campaign in November 1952 to arrest leftist figures. The Chinese community was also divided over which Chinese political party to support, making the local social climate unstable.

On a day in August 1959, Zai Niang had a stomachache and went to the hospital. After a day or two, she passed away.

Auntie said it was probably cancer, as the symptoms were similar, but at the time, it wasn’t diagnosed. However, Grandpa had heard different versions. He said that Zai Niang was selling duck eggs outside someone’s house when the property was demolished by the government, leaving her with nowhere to go. She became so upset that she fell ill and never recovered. He couldn’t remember where he heard it from, but perhaps it was mentioned by a distant relative in the 1980s when they returned to Thailand.

"This is really it, so many years later, so far away, it’s been 65 years. Those people have all passed away, and there’s no one to confirm it," Grandpa said when I shared another version of the story with him. "When you went to Thailand, didn’t you ask about Zai Niang?" Grandpa didn’t like to dig too deeply into the past. Whenever I asked him such questions, he would just laugh and say, "I’m not a reporter."

Auntie and the others were also curious about the past in Tangshan. Gu Ying asked me, "Is your hometown Jieyang? Do you have a photo of your grandmother (A Ai)? How old was she when she passed? After she passed, did Grandpa live alone?" I said yes. She widened her eyes, her mouth slightly open, probably surprised since she hadn’t heard much about Grandpa living alone in the past.

Fractured Memories

Grandpa just celebrated his eighty-third birthday, and signs of aging are accelerating.

In the summer, the days are long. By 5:30 PM, the sky is beginning to brighten. Grandpa hops onto his bicycle, rides to the Rongjiang River, leisurely circles around the nearby village, and then returns to town. It’s about a ten-kilometer route, and he arrives home around seven. His arms have become weaker, and while cycling, his flesh sags down, as if it were stuck, swaying with each pedal.

One evening after dinner, he went out for a walk wearing a sleeveless shirt, and someone familiar remarked that he had become thinner. Grandpa knew it himself. The next time he went out, he would wear a short-sleeved shirt over his white vest. “What’s it to you? Mind your own business,” I told Grandpa, suggesting he respond like that. He laughed heartily, put on the shirt, and went out again. I know that in this small town full of social norms, it’s impossible to respond like that face-to-face. I can imagine Grandpa scratching his white hair, pretending not to care, smiling awkwardly, and then walking away.

Grandpa has shrunk, it’s true. He used to be about 1.64 meters tall, but now he’s only 1.58. His sensitivity to the sound of rain has also decreased. Recently, it’s been raining a lot in the afternoons. The sound of rain against the window outside the dining table goes unnoticed by him. After a few minutes, when the sound of raindrops hitting the windowsill is clear, he always exclaims with certainty as if he’s the first to notice something new: “It’s raining!”

Before I moved away from Chaoshan at the age of twelve, we lived together with Grandpa and Grandma. In our home, Grandpa handled the chores like buying groceries, cooking, and hanging laundry. He was also the one who helped me with math problems, listened to me recite my lessons, and signed my test papers—because he was easy to talk to. Occasionally, if I couldn’t memorize something, he would agree to sign the paper first, then remind me to memorize it properly in private, and all I had to do was pray that I wouldn’t be called on by the teacher the next day.

Grandpa had a good temper and a gentle personality, but he rarely smiled in public. He always looked serious, and sometimes stubborn. After becoming a teacher, even his students were surprised by him. Grandpa said he commanded respect without saying a word: he never got angry or yelled, and his students would quietly listen in class. Some colleagues punished students for talking by making them squat next to the podium, while others slammed their desks in anger. “Throwing desks and chairs is wrong,” Grandpa would say slowly. When he was training as a teacher, and a student spoke out of turn in class, he would tap the desk with his fingers. Afterward, his mentor criticized him, saying it was "a form of corporal punishment" and "violated teaching regulations."

I think Grandpa definitely carries some of Grandma A Ai’s traits. Or rather, the experience of depending on his mother shaped his personality. So, what about the family members who have passed? After all these years, what have they left behind for Grandpa? How does he face and process those past memories of growing up without a father or siblings? Do they still exist in Grandpa’s memory? Can he remember them? How much does he recall?

Time, with its sharp claws, devours Grandpa’s memories. He says he no longer remembers the children’s stories. But through repeated prodding and persistent efforts, the floodgates to his childhood memories were suddenly cracked open a little.

Grandpa remembers that during the Lunar New Year, he sat on his father’s shoulders, and the family walked to the fields by the river outside the village to watch a dragon dance. This was probably the last New Year they spent together before they parted ways. Later, in the 1980s and 1990s, houses were built on that land. Grandpa also bought land and built a house there, with the door facing the river. Nowadays, the dragon dance still takes place in that village during the Lunar New Year, but the newly built high-rise buildings block the view of the sky, and standing by the river, one can no longer see the dragon dance.

In the summer, Grandma carried him outside the village to catch golden beetles on the leaves of the mallow plants. There was also a night when he was hungry, and the house had no food. Grandma carried him to the garden to pick sweet potatoes and brought them back to cook soup. The sky was dark, and he sat at the edge of the garden, watching his father digging.

One time, his older sister squatted in the corner to cook, and he went over to tug on her braid. Another time, he tried to pick leaves from a potted plant, and his older brother tapped him on the head with his finger. These remaining memories are mostly fragments—isolated moments, tiny, broken pieces of light that can no longer be pieced together.

These memories spilled out when he saw a photo of his older sister. He said he didn’t recognize the teenage version of her, and he had no recollection of her face. If he bumped into her on the street, he wouldn’t know it was his sister. Grandpa remembers a few small things about his father, older sister, and older brother, but he has forgotten about his beloved second sister’s childhood.

“There’s nothing more.” Grandpa couldn’t remember anything else. If it weren’t for seeing his father’s portrait years later during a trip to Thailand, even his father’s face would have become blurry in his mind.

**Grandpa always speaks calmly and reservedly about the past, rarely expressing himself passionately. I don’t know if he intentionally suppresses his emotions about distant relatives. In general, for people from Chaozhou, suppressed emotions are often reflected in how they refer to their parents. There is a saying that fortune-tellers advise against being too familiar in one’s address. As a result, many older Chaozhou people don’t call their parents “Dad” or “Mom,” but use terms like “A-Bai” (father’s side) and “A-Mu” (mother’s side), or “A-So” (uncle) and “A-Shen” (aunt), which are terms for extended family members. Grandpa is the same.

One thing is certain: the role of his father in Grandpa’s life is distant. Grandpa doesn’t know his stepmother’s birth year. I asked, “When was Grandma born?” Grandpa replied, “She was born in the Year of the Goat.”

In this region, where ancestor worship and fortune-telling are common, older generations of Chaozhou people are accustomed to using the zodiac signs to refer to people’s ages. When talking about someone, they rarely ask for the year, instead asking about their zodiac sign. Some people who like to buy lottery tickets might ask, “What’s his zodiac sign?” when an unfamiliar guest visits, and they would then bet on that sign or its corresponding number. Some even study the mysterious patterns in the black-and-white tabloids, hoping to decipher the secrets.

Grandma was surprised that Grandpa didn’t know his father’s age. “You don’t know how old Uncle (Stepfather) is?” she asked. Grandpa replied, “How would I know?” “You don’t know his zodiac sign?”

Grandpa really didn’t know his stepfather’s zodiac sign. He only remembered that Grandma Ai once said she married at 18 (in the lunar age), had him at 35, and his stepmother married at 24. If Grandma Ai was born in the Year of the Goat, that would make her birth year 1907, and his stepmother would have been born around 1901, passing away at 59 in lunar years. However, in Thailand, I couldn’t find confirmation of this. After much discussion, Aunties told me that his stepmother passed away at 62 lunar years, which means she was born in 1898. But the difference is not large—I think it was somewhere in this range.

Grandpa was studying a photo of his father, older brother, and older sister. After a long time, he chuckled softly. “My mother (Grandma Ai) used to complain about my stepfather. She’d say his eyebrows were so thin, just like a pair of ‘little eyebrows.’ His two front teeth were like the teeth of a monkey. She’d say his little teeth were so small, they were annoying.”

Grandpa smiled, his eyes turning crescent-shaped.

“What’s ‘little eyebrows’?” I didn’t understand.

“It’s like a ‘double-arched’ eyebrow, but not thick,” Grandpa explained. “My father had a double-arched eyebrow, but my stepfather’s eyebrows were quite thick.”

He then recited a song that’s commonly associated with women left behind by their husbands:

“On the third day of the third lunar month, the soft moonlight shines, the moon hangs far in the sky; it’s a moon so soft, thinking of my husband who has gone far away.”

In this song, the woman’s heart is broken with longing, waiting for her reunion with her husband. But the man Grandma Ai talks about in the distance wasn’t so positive; there was also a sense of “disdain.”

Grandma Ai mentioned that her husband was forgetful. While working in the garden, he would often forget tools and leave them behind. “He’s such an easy-going person, very careless,” Grandma Ai would say. There was a vegetable shop nearby, and the shopkeeper would often get vegetables from Grandpa’s stepmother. One time, business was so good that they ran out of green onions. The shopkeeper asked Grandpa’s stepmother to pick more, and she told him to go to the garden and pull up as many as he needed, then just pay the amount.

But isn’t it good to be honest and trusting? In Chaozhou, being too honest often results in being criticized—honesty is seen as a lack of ability. There’s a saying, “Honesty is useless.” But when these words come from Grandma Ai, is it an intentional subtlety? Is it a form of sarcasm to cover up her true feelings? Why did she say my stepfather’s eyebrows were thin when they were actually thick? I can’t be sure.

During the time I briefly stepped away from the phone, Grandpa studied a photo of his father again. Later, I heard from a recording that he sighed and said to Grandma: “My stepfather had long ears, that’s why he lived such a short life—only in his fifties.”

I often think that if Grandpa and Grandma had gone to Thailand back then, they might not have been so lonely. Grandpa would have had his brother and sister with him, and maybe he would have been more like his sister—someone who loved to laugh and chat.

“Have you ever thought that it would have been better if you had gone to Siam?” I asked Grandpa nearly eighty years later. His gaze was fixed on the street outside, as if deep in thought, or maybe avoiding the question. “No.” “Not even once?” “No.”

“I’m not that interested in Thailand,” he said, “I don’t know if it’s good or bad over there. I don’t know. What does a child know?”

Grandpa always tends to avoid the present. The sharp, blocking words from a child who didn’t understand anything back then prevent me from asking further. It’s hard to fathom Grandpa’s inner world, his emotions about his father, and his feelings about distant places he never reached.

“Isn’t there someone who’s had it even harder than him?” Grandma once shook her head, knowing Grandpa’s nature. He rarely speaks about his past. “He doesn’t talk about it to others. He keeps everything to himself.”

“Everyone had it hard,” Grandpa replied, not wanting to talk about suffering.

“Today’s children are like this.”

“The big climate,” Grandpa said, “The children before liberation, who had it hard? Those who suffered were few. Those who were poor became landowners after the land reform.”

The Rise and Fall

The lives of my grandparents were not the stuff of legendary tales, not like those stories of laborers in Southeast Asia who became wealthy merchants. They were part of the hidden tide of migration to the South Seas, with no grand achievements to speak of. Fate, it seems, often teased them, eroding the lives they worked hard to rebuild and maintain. But they always made a forward choice at the moment when they could change their destiny. Perhaps the results were not always ideal, perhaps they didn't receive much grace, but they never gave up.

In the year after my grandfather passed away, my uncles and aunts started to marry one by one. My uncle continued to live in the old house, while my eldest aunt and her husband moved next door. My youngest uncle presided over my grandfather's wedding and even wrote a letter to our hometown in Chaozhou to inform my grandmother and grandfather of this happy news. The woman my uncle married was a Chaozhou native born in Siam, whose parents had immigrated there years earlier.

My eldest aunt's husband was also from Chaozhou, but older, by twelve years. Around 1940, he left Chenghai County, leaving behind his wife and infant son, and sailed to Siam. At that time, he was in his early twenties, working as a laborer at the docks while saving money to send back home. Twenty years later, in 1960, his hometown had become a place he could never return to, so he remarried in Bangkok with my eldest aunt.

Before marriage, my eldest aunt had sold vegetables, specifically different varieties from those my aunt sold. After having children, she stayed home to care for them, having six children in twelve years. When the children grew up, she was encouraged by my aunt to go back to selling vegetables until she was in her fifties. From what I know of my uncle's life, he worked as a street vendor selling fruits, tofu, fried rice cakes, and soy milk. He changed his offerings multiple times, and only stopped at the age of 70.

Now my uncle lives in a quiet residential area in the northwest of Bangkok in Nonthaburi, in a two-story house. He moved here more than two years ago. He showed me around the land in front and behind the house, introducing me to the mangoes, winter melons, bananas, sour oranges, and other plants whose names I couldn’t understand in Thai. When I asked him why he chose this place, he used a translation app to tell me, "I wanted a house with space to plant trees."

My uncle's childhood was spent in a wooden house. Behind the house was the winding Chao Phraya River, with many mosquitoes that would slip in through the cracks in the wood. At night, while sleeping, he would stretch out his hand outside the blanket, and with a slap, he could kill ten mosquitoes. When he was a teenager, the tenants of the area were forced to leave as the land was to be used for the construction of a building or "guesthouse." My aunt and her husband had to find a new place, one that wasn’t too far from the school where the children had to study. After much searching, they found a house near the "Yue" area and signed a long-term lease.

Life was difficult for them. My uncle had attended a private school that cost 100 baht per semester, but when the term started, he still hadn't paid, and the teacher called out his name. His third brother studied there for two years but couldn't afford the fees, so he had to transfer to a free temple school. There was one time when the water bill collector came to the house. Normally the bill was around 10 or 20 baht a month, but this time, for some reason, it was 120 baht, which they couldn't afford, so my aunt had to borrow money.

Despite the poverty, my uncle was very clear about what was good and bad. My aunt and uncle always taught their children to work diligently and not take others' money. When he was a child, one of his Chinese friends lived in a house where they sold newspapers. He would often go there to read the papers and help watch the store. When something sold, he would put the money back into the cash box. One time, another child was caught taking money and stuffing it into his pants pocket. His friend's mother, who was watching from inside the house, scolded him, "If you do this, you're going to get in trouble!"

Some things are timeless, connected across generations. When I asked my grandfather what my grandmother taught him, his answer was always consistent: "Your hands and feet should be clean, and when you enter someone else's house, you shouldn’t touch things without permission." I imagine this is what my aunt was taught at home, and later, what she passed on to my uncle.

In the past, my uncle remembered that Bangkok had many parks and trees, and there weren’t as many roads as there are now. His parents didn’t have time to watch over him, so he and his friends would run off to play. One day, his uncle saw him out on the road and shouted, "What are you doing here? Get inside!" My uncle replied, "I’m with my friends." His uncle asked, "Are you coming to my house? Don't you want to come?" "Go, go," he said, as he hopped on his uncle’s motorcycle and left.

My uncle often took his third brother out on errands. He loved picking up discarded cigarette wrappers to play with. Sometimes he would also collect scrap metal to sell, earning a couple of baht for a small bag.

He started earning money when he was young, about eleven or twelve years old, when he worked part-time helping a vegetable vendor at the market. He worked for half an hour or an hour a day, earning 5 baht, which added up to 35 baht a week. Earlier, he also bought homemade ice cream from a neighbor and sold it at the market, shouting, "Ice cream is here, ice cream!"

When he was eight or nine years old, he and his friends went to the river. A cargo ship came in, and the workers unloaded large sacks of white sugar onto the boat. Some sugar spilled on the ground, and my uncle collected it in a bag, one grain at a time. When he gathered a kilogram, he could sell it for two baht.

His parents didn’t know he was collecting sugar. They thought it was too dangerous and forbade him to go. One time, a neighbor caught him by the river, and when his uncle found out, he took a wooden stick and went looking for him. From a distance, my uncle and his third brother saw him coming and hurriedly hid. His uncle searched around but couldn’t find them and had to leave.

On one occasion, my uncle and a friend gathered 35 kilograms of sugar and sold it for 70 baht, which they split. That year, when he was nine years old, he used the money to take his third and fourth brothers to eat pig's trotter rice, which cost two baht per bowl. Normally, they couldn’t afford to eat it at home, so he had to earn the money himself. After selling the sugar, he felt rich, and he told his brothers, "We can have two bowls, it’s only four baht." He also bargained with the owner, saying, "Why is one bowl three baht? Give me the discount, it’s too much." "Two baht isn’t enough, I want three baht," he laughed.

My uncle has an innate sense of humor. Later, when I met his brothers, I realized that this humor was not unique to him.

His fourth brother, who also spoke with a smile, often used "understand" and "okay" as part of his conversation to ease the atmosphere. He spoke in broken English and told me his job was simple, "Okay?" He laughed. "I’m old now, and my memory is outdated, understand?" he laughed again. His wife shook her head, saying, "Confused, what is he saying?"

Sometimes, my fourth uncle was stumped by my questions, furrowing his lips and thinking hard, looking like Donald Duck. "I don’t remember," he said. But when I asked him about his parents’ work, he became enthusiastic and wrote down his answer on a piece of paper: "Easy question, paper paper."

Whenever he recalls the past, Renbo speaks endlessly, and it’s hard to stop his flow of words. Even though his Teochew has become rusty, he still loves to speak it, occasionally finding the right word after a little search. Sometimes, he needs to think for a while, humming and murmuring, before the word finally comes out. When he talks about his retirement, he doesn’t quite know how to express it, so he uses "graduated" as a substitute.

At times, he doesn’t understand what I ask. Once, I asked him what the second aunt did before selling vegetables. He paused, leaned in with his ear, squinted his eyes, and said, "What’s that? What’s that?" This was how Renbo always reacted when he didn’t understand something. I rephrased the question: "What did the second aunt do before selling vegetables?" He understood and replied: "The eldest aunt said the second aunt helped her husband sell eggs, then started selling vegetables when she was a teenager. She never went to school in Siam."

In the past, when the older generation was still around, Renbo spoke Teochew more often. "The second aunt spoke Mandarin, which was too difficult for me, so I just spoke back in Teochew." He laughed again, "Now, I don’t speak Mandarin anymore. You come, I’ll speak in Teochew for you."

These days, Renbo leads a healthy lifestyle. He avoids overly sweet, salty, or cold food. He wakes up around five or six in the morning, goes downstairs to watch TV, and drinks a cup of hot honey with sour lime. In the evening, his wife goes to dance fitness classes, and he walks around the area. He still plays soccer twice a week.

After turning sixty, Renbo started receiving a government pension of 600 baht per month (around 120 RMB). "600 baht, it’s not enough for one meal," he said with a wry smile.

In comparison, he believes a government job is very good because after retirement, you can still receive your salary, and most family education and healthcare are free. However, government salaries are low. He told me that his cousin, who works as a civil servant, has been working for eight or nine years but only earns around 20,000 baht (less than 5,000 RMB). Despite this, Renbo admires the retirement benefits for civil servants and regrets not knowing these things when he was younger.

When he first graduated, he never thought about working for the government. When the government was mentioned, Renbo only thought of the police, and the family didn’t know there were other government jobs available. "Chinese people do the police work, no one likes it, they’re afraid to catch thieves, because the thieves have guns, it’s hard," Renbo said.

I asked him what Chinese people liked to do back then. "Banking and selling goods," he replied. In Thailand, the occupational divide between Thai and Chinese people was already taking shape by the 19th and 20th centuries: Thai people were more interested in agriculture, government, and self-employment, while Chinese people favored business, industry, finance, and mining.

After junior high, Renbo studied at a business college for three more years. In the early 1980s, after graduation, he worked for half a year at Hung Lee Bank, then switched to a private company in sales, where the salary was higher. His salary started at 3,000 baht, and by the time he retired, it had risen to 60,000. After his children started working, the family’s situation gradually improved.

Most of Renbo’s brothers worked in banking and sales. Five out of six worked in banks. Some switched careers early, and others were forced to leave during the 1997 Asian financial crisis.

The eldest brother graduated from business college and joined Thai Commercial Bank. In 1997, he left with a severance pay of 900,000 baht, bought a house in a neighboring province, and worked as a lawyer in the banking sector for a few years. Later, he helped his wife sell drinks at a stall in the market for twenty years, which continues today. When I saw him at the market, I almost didn’t recognize him. Seven years ago, his hair was still dark, but now it is nearly all white, and his face shows signs of fatigue. He’s over sixty now, and recently he decided to rest and stop working, saying, "Enough, I can’t go on."

The third and fourth brothers are university graduates. The third brother became a lawyer after leaving the bank. The fourth brother, as Grandpa said, "has two diplomas"—he studied two years of graduate school after completing his undergraduate degree. He worked in a bank for a short time, then switched careers to become a programmer. Ten years ago, he left the bank and started his own small business.

"Before, life was hard in Tangshan, but Siam was good. Now Tangshan is good, but Siam is bad," Renbo often compares the two places, lamenting the economic downturn in Thailand: "Siam loses to Tangshan, losing, losing."

"Now, I don’t dare to spend money freely," he said. When he bought a car, he used savings; when he bought a house, he borrowed money from family and friends. He didn’t dare to borrow money from a bank, feeling the interest rates were too high. "The bank’s money, I’m afraid of it," he said, "Young people nowadays are not like that, they’re not afraid of loans—my cousin got married two years ago, wanted to buy a new house, and borrowed over three million baht from the bank, with a 30-year loan, paying more than ten thousand baht a month."

Renbo is cautious with money, but he is also kind. One of his childhood friends, who was a gambler and lost all his family savings, now lives a tough life. His friend calls him once in a while, saying he has no money, and Renbo always gives him some. When Renbo was still earning a salary, he would occasionally give him 1,000 baht. After retiring, when his own income dried up, he would give him 300 or 500 baht. Renbo is loyal to old friends; his friend’s family was rich in the past, and they always shared what they had with him, even giving him nice clothes without asking for anything in return.

In his younger years, Renbo also gambled and lost several thousand baht. He went back to his wife and said, "Buy whatever you want, go ahead," and from that time on, he didn’t dare to gamble anymore. "Stopped, scared, money is hard to earn."

A few years ago, Renbo went to Tangshan to visit his half-brother and also saw my grandparents. When his brother’s family asked him how life was in Siam, he replied, "I can eat whatever I want, there’s good food. I’m not rich, but I’m doing fine."

Visitors from Afar

When I was young, every New Year’s Day, I could always hear my grandfather answering the phone. He would say it was a call from abroad.

After the 1970s, connections with distant relatives slowly began to be re-established. Sister E occasionally sent care packages. The distant family members knew very little about each other and had each formed new families. Every letter became a precious opportunity to learn about one another’s current situation.

The letters were thin and pink, written in messy traditional Chinese characters, and were written by someone else on Sister E’s behalf. Most of the letters were lost. The only surviving one is from January 1975, with 15 Hong Kong dollars enclosed. Sister E asked Grandpa, “Do you know how old your eldest son is this year? Does he have any children now?” Later, when acquaintances came back or went to visit relatives, Grandpa would ask them to bring local specialties for Sister E and her brother.

Sister E never came back to Tangshan. Grandpa had mentioned it a few times, asking her to come and visit, but she never did. She would say that her legs weren’t doing well. Uncle and Aunt would give the same excuse, “No money,” “The children are studying, we need money.”

Grandpa’s family has an old photo album on the third floor, and I often flipped through the pictures. The photos were taken during Grandpa and Grandma’s first trip to Thailand in 1999. Although we had never met, I had already heard from the elders who these people were—this was Grandpa’s second sister, this was his eldest sister and brother, and that was their children.

Before their trip to Thailand that year, Grandpa made his first phone call to his eldest sister’s family. After talking to her, his second sister came on the line, and the two of them took turns speaking. Finally, the person on the other end said, “Alright, don’t talk too long, the phone is expensive.” Back and forth, the conversation lasted half an hour, and Grandpa spent over a hundred yuan on the call.

Grandpa didn’t remember what they talked about during the call, but Uncle remembered. He would often bring it up, mimicking their tones. “Ah, brother, do you want to come to Siam?” “Yes, yes, I want to come.” “Hmm, when will you come? If it’s on a good day, then it’ll be very good.”

On the day they arrived in Thailand, Sister E, Uncle, and Aunt came to meet them at the airport.

In the car, Uncle kept complaining. He would say that when he traveled to Siam by boat in the past, he was hungry, sick, and had a tough time all the way. He would add, “Brother, you’re lucky; you’ve studied. When I went to get your fortune told, your fate was good.” But Sister E didn’t mention these things.

That night when they arrived at Uncle’s house, Grandma didn’t come out to greet them. That day, Grandpa seemed a bit upset. He knew that his siblings-in-law’s impression of relatives from Tangshan wasn’t very good—people from a poor place who hadn’t seen each other in decades. Even though they were blood relatives, they were likely coming to ask for things. I could empathize with Grandpa’s disappointment after arriving and could also understand Uncle’s concerns and caution.

“Tangshan,” a distant hometown, one that doesn’t need to give back but continues to receive benefits and gifts from wealthier places. People often imagine those who go to Southeast Asia returning in glory, while those left behind in poverty wait and envy the travelers, hoping to see the success they imagine they will bring.

More than ten or twenty years ago, Uncle would often ask Aunt: “Why don’t you want to go to Tangshan?” Aunt would reply, “No, no, don’t talk about it, I’ll stay here. There’s nothing good there.”

In the 1990s, Uncle returned to Chenghai to visit relatives; his mother and ex-wife were still there. His grandson was young and liked to watch TV, but there was none at home. Uncle’s son said that Uncle didn’t have the money to buy a TV. Hearing this, a few people who had traveled with him decided to pool some money together to buy a TV for his grandson.

In the early 2000s, Uncle’s son, who was from Tangshan, came to Thailand. He didn’t have much money either. Uncle wanted to give him some, so he discussed with a few people and they decided to pool their money together. Although Uncle didn’t have much money, he contributed about 3,000 to 4,000 baht. In the end, Uncle gave him over 10,000 baht.

But Grandpa wasn’t there to ask for anything. In 1999, Grandpa was 57 years old, and since they had been separated 53 years ago, he had never seen his eldest sister or brother. At that time, Grandpa had heard about his second sister’s house burning down, and thinking of her kindness, he saved up some money and decided to go see her when a friend was visiting Thailand.

In the past, wooden houses in Thailand would often catch fire, and when they did, entire rows of houses would burn down. Sister E’s house had caught fire because of a neighbor’s house. Uncle said there were two fires—one in 1984 and another in 1998. Sister E’s house was badly burned, and after it was all over, almost all of their belongings turned to ashes. They lost nearly everything, and Sister E suffered huge losses. Uncle bought her a refrigerator. Later, Sister E hired someone to rebuild, but the person didn’t finish the work and ran off with the money.

Grandpa and Grandma brought three jade bangles, one for each of their eldest and second sisters and their sister-in-law. For every grandchild they met, and even for the unmarried aunt at that time, they gave each person 100 Hong Kong dollars as a memento. They also gave Sister E some extra money under the pretext of helping her with the fire damage. Aunt accepted some, but Uncle felt embarrassed to accept anything.

Uncle said directly, “When others come here, they only want things, but you come here and want to share with others.” He told Aunt, “Look at my brother, he came all the way here, and now he’s sharing money with others, while you only want to take my money.”

“Going this time, it changed his (Uncle’s) point of view,” Grandpa sighed.

Seeing that their younger brother was doing well, Sister E was very happy. She had always worried about her little brother, who had been so small when they parted, and never knew how he had grown up.

Grandpa and Grandma stayed at Aunt’s house for one night. They stayed on the floor, with cloth curtains separating the spaces. The weather was hot and humid, and there was only one fan. Aunt’s neighbors saw Grandpa and said he looked like their father. Most of the time, Grandpa and Grandma stayed at Uncle’s house, which was more spacious.

They went to many places together. Uncle and Aunt, along with Sister E, took Grandpa to temples and the beach. Uncle’s second son, who didn’t speak much Chaozhou, specially bought a dictionary and took it along when they went to the Royal Field Square. When Uncle returned from working abroad, he took a few elderly relatives out to eat hotpot. “When Grandpa and Grandma came, Uncle was already in his thirties, still young,” Uncle said with a smile.

In front of buildings with tall spires and gleaming gold, they took many photos together, which they brought back to Tangshan. Uncle also took Grandpa to meet the daughter of Aunt’s sister—she had come to Siam early and had never met them before. They had originally wanted to visit the families of Grandpa’s older brother and younger uncle, but since they hadn’t been in contact for a long time, they couldn’t find them in the end.

Identity

For many years, we each lived our own lives in different places. Most of the time, we did not disturb each other; but whenever we met, we treated each other with warmth and hospitality. We could be described as distant relatives, connected by blood, yet separated by language and geography.

But I still feel some regret. I grew up in a small town in Chaozhou, where family and relatives were close, and interactions were frequent. Just like how Renbo often went to Aunt E's house for meals and stayed overnight at Uncle's, I too had such a childhood. Aunt E was my grandfather's closest family member, and we might have been closer, but over the long years, our relationship naturally grew distant. Even letters could not sustain or mend the bond.

Renbo's family still keeps some Chinese remnants. There's a shrine to the local deity in the corner of the dining table. Every Spring Festival, Aunt E's family and several of her brothers wear red shirts with "Happy New Year" printed on them for a group photo, which they share in the WeChat group. Renbo’s wife is a Thai, and she enjoys wearing red qipao. As for how they address each other, they still use Chaozhou dialect—Aunt, Uncle, older brother, older sister-in-law, and so on. On the day Uncle Si visited Renbo’s house, I overheard him call her "Second Sister-in-law."

But Aunt E also has many habits and customs that are unfamiliar to me. For example, Buddhism is deeply embedded in her life, and Renbo and his wife often engage in religious activities, making offerings to monks. She also follows the Thai Buddhist calendar, so whenever I ask about the year, I need to subtract 543 to get the familiar Gregorian year. Furthermore, she takes a bath twice a day; they don’t use chopsticks at home, only forks and spoons; for breakfast, they eat fried rice, and they add chili to their congee.

I can't help but wonder why the Chinese in Thailand integrated so quickly compared to Chinese communities in other Southeast Asian countries?

There's an interesting story about a representative of the overseas Chinese who went to Southeast Asia to seek fortune. In 1810, Xu Sizhang from Zhangzhou, Fujian, went to Penang (now part of Malaysia) as a laborer, later trading in various locations, marrying a Thai woman, and eventually becoming a contractor for the tin mine taxes in the Siamese region, where he developed tin mining. Later, he was appointed by the Siamese royal family and granted an official title. His family was even given the Thai surname "Na Lalong." His descendants who stayed in Thailand became Thais, while those who returned to Malaysia remained Chinese.

About a hundred years ago, during the early years of the Bangkok Dynasty, wealthy Chinese elites in Siam maintained close relationships with the royal family. They became wealthy through cross-border trade, had tax collection rights, entered the bureaucracy, were granted noble titles, or even married into the royal family. Most of these tax contractors who served the Siamese elite were Chaozhou people. These upper-class Chinese were accepted by the Siamese elite and seamlessly integrated into the local political system. Meanwhile, ordinary Chinese laborers in Siam usually married local women, even if they had wives in China.

The Siamese authorities were open about the identity choices for Chinese immigrants at the time. They were allowed to maintain their own cultural practices while freely adopting local customs. Mixed-race descendants could choose to identify as Chinese or Thai. The Chinese had to pay a head tax (marked with a string on their wrist and a stamp), but they were exempt from military service. Scholars have summarized that before 1910, mixed-race children with Chinese fathers and Thai mothers usually identified as Chinese, while children of mixed-race fathers—whether their mothers were Thai or mixed—typically identified as Thai. This means that by the third generation of Chinese immigrants, their identity and cultural affiliation were mostly Siamese.

Although many Chinese had been gradually assimilated, in the early 20th century, with the acceptance of nationalism by educated Siamese elites, the spread of Chinese nationalism and communism, and Western anti-Chinese sentiment, the Siamese government began implementing a policy of Thai nationalism. This policy was intended to accelerate the assimilation of the Chinese, with external forces pushing the process. For example, the 1913 amendment to the nationality law made all Chinese born in Siam citizens of Siam.

However, as Chinese migration to Siam increased after World War I, with entire families migrating together, the number of Chinese women and children also grew significantly. The number of second-generation Chinese born in Siam marrying local women decreased, slowing the pace of assimilation. As a result, after the 1930s, the Siamese elite imposed more stringent controls over Chinese language education, Chinese-language newspapers, and Chinese business practices. Numerous revisions to immigration laws restricted the entry of communists, the poor, and women.

In a secret document from the National Security Council of Thailand in 1965, the government explained its goals and measures for assimilating the Chinese. The document pointed out that extreme nationalism should not be used, but rather a gentler approach should be adopted to assimilate the Chinese into loyal Thai citizens. This included encouraging intermarriage, using Thai names, offering equal rights to naturalized citizens, and establishing more Thai-language schools.

These gentle policies had a direct impact on my grandfather’s relatives. Today, there is almost no clear distinction between Chinese and Thai social classes in Thai society.

Among the second-generation immigrants, except for Renbo, the other uncles and aunts barely speak the language of their parents. Aunt E's family no longer seeks to marry fellow Chinese as their parents did—only Aunt Ying married a descendant of Chinese immigrants. By the third generation, this is even less of a concern.

I am curious about how Aunt E perceives her identity and Chinese heritage. Renbo’s younger brother told me that when she was a child, she had no interest in China and didn’t know much about the place, except that her parents had told her it was very poor. Her parents' hometown was just a distant image to her. She couldn’t speak much Chaozhou dialect and only spoke Thai at school. Her friends were all Thai. At home, she mixed the two languages, which often got her scolded by her eldest uncle: “Speak properly!” The eldest uncle only knew a little Thai, and Aunt E's mother knew even less. So, when she spoke to her parents, Renbo had to act as her translator.

Aunt E seamlessly integrated into Thai society and became a full-fledged Thai. On the wall near the stairs in Renbo's house, there is a picture of the late King Bhumibol Adulyadej and his dog Tongda, along with another photo of his wife, Queen Sirikit. When I met her on the day she visited, she gave several yellow shirts to Renbo’s family and me, with the royal emblem on the chest. Yellow is the color representing the king, and that month was the birthday month of the current king. She said, "I can wear it when I go out to play."

Uncles and aunts have Chinese names, but they only use them at home. Outside, for school or work, Aunt E has always used a Thai name. Renbo’s former surname was "Chen"—in fact, the eldest uncle’s surname is Lin, but when he arrived in Siam, his ID card was mistakenly swapped, and upon landing in Siam, he became a "Chen." From that moment on, the surname "Chen" was always on his and his children’s identification cards.

In his thirties, Renbo decided to change his surname to a Thai one. He said, "When Chinese people come to Siam, what they need most is to change their surname—just by seeing your surname, they know you’re a local, not a foreigner. Locals are easier to deal with." Of his six brothers, three changed to Thai surnames. From 1982 to around 1990, the Thai government received about 10,000 applications per year to change surnames, 90% of which were from Chinese people; in addition, about a thousand Chinese immigrants became Thai citizens each year.

Renbo selected three possible surnames and went to the district office several times to complete the paperwork. The staff rejected his requests for various reasons. On the final attempt, Renbo slipped 200 baht into the staff's hand. The staff member sighed, looking troubled yet scrutinizing the surname seriously, then said, "This one is too common, can't use it... this one, this one is good! Just a regular one, a couple of bows, and it’ll do, about a month’s wait. Afterward, just bring me money, and I’ll say, ‘Good, good, good, you found the right surname!’" Renbo shook his head and refused to pay, insisting the process should be done without bribery.

Over forty years ago, Aunt E became a Thai citizen and also changed her surname. But Uncle, Aunt E’s eldest sister, and her eldest brother-in-law didn’t change their surnames, so Aunt E has always lived in Thailand as a foreigner. Grandpa once asked Uncle about it, and he said, "I’m Chinese, what’s the point of changing nationality?" But not being a Thai citizen has its inconveniences. Since Uncle wasn’t Thai, he had to use Aunt E’s name to buy land and build a house. After turning 60, he also didn’t receive the government’s pension.

When Aunt E was still selling vegetables, life was manageable. After she turned 60, she stopped selling and began receiving government aid. Renbo would give her some extra money each month, initially 500 or 700 baht, later 1,000 baht. "I know in my heart," she said. "When you grow up, you understand what’s good and what’s not." She also said that it wasn’t her parents who taught her to do this. "Chinese and foreigners are not the same. Foreigners don’t understand... but maybe not, percentage-wise it’s different."

The cause of Aunt E’s death isn’t very clear to Grandpa. Renbo spoke to him about it a few years ago, but Grandpa couldn’t understand his Chaozhou dialect. Renbo later told me via a translation app that it was a stomach perforation.

Before coming to Thailand this time, my family asked me to bring some dried shiitake mushrooms, morel mushrooms, hawthorn, and old citron. Grandpa said that people there like these, and in the past, when foreign guests returned, they always brought these items back. When we arrived at Renbo’s house, Aunt E saw the mushrooms and said, "Second Aunt loves these. She often asked me to go to Chinatown to buy them."

When Renbo worked abroad, Aunt E would call him every month. If she wanted to eat Chinese goods or needed offerings for ancestor worship, she would have Renbo buy them. "She loves to eat these, so I go and buy the best ones for her."

Aunt E would speak very quickly, never hanging up the phone for less than half an hour. She’d ask Renbo, "Have you transferred the money yet? Have you transferred it yet?" Uncle would reply, "I’ll transfer it next week. You go to Yaowarat and buy ginkgo nuts and red dates for Aunt."

Farewell

I came to Siam, to the places where Aunt E once stepped. I was able to rediscover her distant story and felt genuinely happy for her from the bottom of my heart. Aunt E is a good person—ordinary, honest, and living a simple, earnest life.

After the death of her eldest brother-in-law twenty years ago, her mental and physical health deteriorated, and she developed Alzheimer's disease.

When she was happy, she liked to talk about the past—saying, “In the past, I knew; but now, I don’t know.” Aunt E would reminisce, “In the old days, when someone hit my little sister, I would fight back.” Renbo asked her about her younger brother. She recalled that someone had asked her to go to Tangshan to find him, but it was hard to locate him, and she didn’t succeed. Aunt E also remembered that Grandpa had come to Thailand many years ago—twenty years ago. Renbo asked, “Would you like to go to Tangshan? Or not?” She replied, “No, no, nothing good to eat there.”

She only responds to others when in a good mood. When she’s upset, she becomes impatient, saying, “Don’t talk, don’t talk, I don’t know, I don’t know.” She gets upset if there are too many people, or if the noise around her is too loud. If too many things are said at once, she also becomes unhappy. Her sons would try to say good things to her at home, teaching her to say, “Happy New Year, wish you prosperity!” When the eldest uncle said the first part, Aunt E would always finish with the second part.

In 2021, Aunt E passed away during the COVID-19 pandemic at the age of 91.

Grandpa passed away more than a decade ago due to a stroke. Grandma is still alive, now 85, but she also has Alzheimer’s disease. She is currently unable to care for herself and is being looked after by caregivers in the hospital, bedridden. In 2003, she visited Chaozhou to see relatives and stayed at my house. After that visit, Grandpa planned to return to see her, but he never did.

We flipped through the black-and-white photos Aunt E brought. For each elderly relative—Mother, Aunt E, Grandpa, and others—Aunt E gave me a copy to take home, saying, “Take them to Tangshan and show them around.”

The grave of Mother’s mother is located in the southern part of Bangkok, in the Nakhon Pathom province, on a small piece of land next to other people's graves. This cemetery is mostly filled with Chinese people, Renbo told me. Every year during Qingming (Tomb Sweeping Day), Aunt E and Grandpa would visit to pay respects to their father. Because of her leg problems, Aunt E would go only occasionally. Renbo began accompanying Aunt E on these visits when he was around nine years old. At first, they took a bus, transferring three or four times to reach the cemetery. Later, as more people joined, about ten in total, they hired a vehicle to go there. After the graves were cleaned, they would head south to Bangsaen Beach to relax. Since then, Renbo almost always joined the trip, except during the two years of the pandemic.

When Renbo took me to the cemetery that day, everything was quiet. The only sound was the rustling of our feet through the overgrown grass. This place likely only becomes lively during Qingming. The gravestones were closely packed together—some hidden behind thick grass, others with inscriptions completely faded, perhaps from years of neglect. The gravestones indicated the hometowns of the deceased, almost all from the Eight Regions of Chaozhou. People from different dialect groups were buried together.

We walked through grass that reached up to our calves and knees to reach the grave of Mother’s mother. The inscription listed her origin as "Puyin, Egongkeng, Xiang," meaning a village in Chaozhou. The gravestone had been renovated by Grandpa more than a decade ago, with dragon and phoenix paintings on either side, and lotus flowers. In front of the grave was a stone platform, decorated with a fruit tray. There was no wild grass around this grave, and the grass on the mound was neatly trimmed. The name of Aunt E's mother was also engraved on the stone, even though she wasn't buried here.

"Grandpa, your grandson has come from Tangshan to visit you," Renbo said.