Taiwan - Grandma's House

So off to grandma's house!

They kept telling me it was a 1.5-2.0 hour car ride. I was reading on the Kindle, so I didn't have a sense of time, but it only seemed about a 45 minute ride from Kaohsiung, but they told me it was closer to 90 minutes.

I wanted to take a picture of one of my strong memories of the farm as a child, the pig house.

As I was walking over there with my aunt, she told me that the family ox was kept in the in that is the first door on the right. The pigs were kept in the furthest out "rooms", which now hold various junk and is used to dry laundry.

Inside the old pens.

I remember as a child balancing and walking on top of the short walls. Grandma hasn't raised pigs in probably 20 years, but there is still the "smell" of pigs permanently embedded in the brick floors and walls of that building.

And now, just a place to hold some stuff. Grandma's not much of a pack rat, so it's not too messy.

They hired a catering company to come out for the celebration event. The main tent to the right and the tent for the cooks to the left. It rained on-and-off the next day of the party.

Me and Grandma.

She suffered a set of small strokes last Spring. As a result, she temporarily lost control of part of her face. She was in a bit of a depression for a while, but after a while she recovered. She needs a walker and wheelchair.

She was using her walker with about 3 women hovering around her in her tiny kitchen when I walked through the kitchen. Her face just LIT UP when she saw me. We hadn't seen each other in 10 years. She was very, very happy to see me.

And then, we took a trip to the family temple. It's about 30 yards from the house and a great source of pride within the family. My grandparents donated the land and contributed a bit of money to the construction of the temple. For a farmer to give up usable land, is a big deal - but apparently really big in the good karma department. Also, some sort of neighborhood prestige of course.



My Dad has 4 brothers and 4 sisters and he's the oldest. From left to right is:
#2 sister, #3 sister, me, my Dad, and #1 sister (the wealthy one)

The #1 and #3 sisters are very devoted and close to my grandma and my Dad.

And here we are in the temple. So many customs and so many alters to go visit. As we were going through all the alters with various sticks of incense, several things popped up in my mind.

• Man, this is weird watching my parents go through long ago ingrained Buddhist rituals.
• Hmmm, I wonder if my adoption buddies who twist themselves in agony about preserving their child's "cultural heritage" have taken their kids to a Buddhist temple?
• No? Must be because Christianity is the one and only TRUE religion.
• Heh
  

The longest part of this visit was the incense stick count. You had to get the right number of sticks for each person and my Dad and his brother-in-law spent time dickering over the number of sticks we should grab.

Seriously?

This is me and my grandma with our sticks.


My Dad and my Uncle.


My Aunt was trying to explain this guy to me. He was beneath the main alter, and she said....it's kind of like the dog for the house. You know, protect. So this is the protective ummmm....symbol? alter? god? Errrr....anyway the protective thingie for

The main shrine. Odd, maybe they put it behind bars because it has real gold (guessing) for the figures.

And across the street from the old family lot, I took a picture of this sorta putrid open sewer. The reason I took the picture? One of my early memories as a 4 or 5 year old was playing in the "ditch" with my sister or cousins in this ditch....yeah in 1969.