D8 - Saturday 4-12-2005 Guangzhou

Our package tour of 7 day 6 night ended today but we stayed on for another two days in Guangzhou so that my father-in-law and his family members could trace and visit his ancestor birthplace in Southern China.

Through a colleague's relative in Guangzhou, we hired a van (600rmb=Rm300) in Guangzhou and with the driver's assistance, we spent a whole day tracing my father-in-law's home village so called East Village. My father-in-law left China at the age of 5 so it was very challenging for him to trace the birth place after a lapse of 70 years !

After making a number of queries with a few senior citizens around the area, we managed to find the place. So it was home sweet home at last for my father-in-law as his dream of visiting his birthplace had now been fulfilled. As we walked around the area, my father-in-law took the opportunity to mingle with the local people and chatted with them about the past and the changes that he had witnessed over the last 70 years. Many of the old dwellings , houses, backlanes and roads had been domolished and rebuilt. We took a number of pictures in the surrounding area before leaving the place.