Waking up bright and early!! Super excited to see my relatives in Kinmen (mum’s side) for the first time! Food, trekking up Taiwu mountain, alcohol overdose, VIPs, showering with icy cold water in below 10 degrees winter night, 7 super old & super cool family ancestral halls – tell me how can it not be memorable

 

 

Cool huh! It’s the shadow of our plane on the clouds below us with a rainbow ring around it!!

After 40 gruelling minutes of uncomfortable plane ride, we landed safely (THANK GOD). Our cousins (you’d see more of them in the later entries) were already waiting and they drove us for lunch immediately! Starving

This wasn’t just all that we had; dishes after dishes kept coming out from the kitchen I couldn’t keep up with the photo taking!!

We found it quite bizarre initially when we entered the restaurant with nobody in it and even more strange when a few government officials from Xiamen (a small province in China) came over to eat with us and we were introduced to them one by one by our cousin.

Subsequently, every meal that we ate out with our particular cousin (you’ll see him in the later post), we’d always have someone fancy eating with us as well – VP of bank, some big guy from Explomo (he said they have business dealings S’pore as well providing "explosives" for SAF and even fireworks during NDP, dunno true or not), and others from positions that I don’t really understand (my mandarin is not ace I know).

Stranger yet, he could bring us to limited access parts of the military "cave" in Kinmen and we even had the privilege to visit the Kinmen Kaoliang Liquor factory with both the chairman there to welcome us.

It was only in the later parts I found out from my mother why we had such a good opportunity – my cousin was one of the few MPs in Kinmen (I guess "shoe shining" will always benefit huh). And all this while I thought they were just farmers (=.=’‘)

Okay well that is partially true since some of them own a pig farm, some oyster farm and other mishmash.

With the exception of breakfast, we all had to drink shots of Kaoliang Liquor for all our meals and even though the shot glass is small (in comparison to a soup spoon and my sister’s pinky finger), 53% of pure alcohol is insanely mind blowing. And that was only the first meal, subsequent ones we were all given 58% to drink

And the thing is, you can’t say no. When the TW cousins or "special" guests comes over to "gan bei" (cheers) with you, it’s rude not to drink because it’s like as if you’re not showing them "face". Worst, they seem to enjoy coming over our table over and over and over and over and over again.

Torture

My SG cousin Ronnie had it worst. Because he was the only guy on the 第三代华侨 table ("third generation of Chinese immigrants" – that was how we were all addressed as and it makes me feel like a China girl, lol) they made him drink it by CUP. He always had the hugest cups to drink from and they liked to "sabo" him in particular. LOL.

The guy in glasses is the cousin I was talking about

Then it was visiting tourist spots around Kinmen. Culturally enriching, or in layman my terms, boring. Lol. Okay to be fair I was really excited, but subsequently, we kept visiting museums, parks, etc it got sooo boring because it all revolves around the "theme" of military.

Husky is probably the most popular dog around because you see them almost everywhere

The telephone booth actually says “金门” (Kinmen) in traditional chinese

Home cook dinner’s the best  We had oyster mee sua (the Chua family style), fried chicken cutlet, ngor hiong, dumplings, fried crabs, tomato prawns and pickled veggies. There were too many people so they split the tables by generations and we had 7 in a seating – lucky us we didn’t have to cramp with the older ones

And they were too generous with the food :/ Everytime we’re almost halfway done, they’d come again topping up each dish so much so we can be stuffed and all the food looks untouched. It’s very wasteful since we hardly managed to leave the table with the dishes at the halfway mark.

:(

Torture, round #2

2nd aunt’s birthday!

Super stoned

Next entry would probably be the most exciting yet as we got to visit our family ancestral halls. Till then happy campers!!