Random Photo #7

Again no time to really post, so another random photo chosen with my eyes shut:

Ah, a moon-gate at the Tang Family Ancestral Village in Guangzhou.

Do you know about this?  That the Tang Family has this village where any descendant can find refuge and which even has a museum of extremely beautiful objects made by various ancestral Tangs - including a 10,000 year old Rice Goddess statue - and Three Halls of Ancestors listing all the different lines of the Tang Family.

I actually did several posts on this place which I should find and link in here.

In the meantime, I'll tell you one little-bit-sad story involving this place:  I was on a train going up to Guangzhou in China surrounded by a tour group of American preppie private school girls on a school trip. Since the seats, in blocks of six, all faced each other and the carriage was crowded I got endless giggling and in-your-face tedious "teenage girl chatter" with lots of squealing and eye-rolling, trying on each other's lipstick and endless snooty "Shud up!" and inane stuff like that. However, sitting right next to me was this American Chinese girl and we kinda started chatting a bit and she told me her surname was Tang so I asked "Will you be visiting your ancestral village while you're in Guangzhou?"

"My what?"

So I told her about the place and for the briefest flicker she looked interested, but then her friends chimed in and wanted to know about it and suddenly she came over all strangely embarrassed and said  "Those people are all Chinese. It's nothing to do with me!" and then she shrugged and turned back to her friends and the inane giggling was on again.

And that's when I became instantly grateful that Chinese trains have very civilised smoking carriages so I went off to find one and left them all to it.

Mind you, the Tang family are such a talented bunch I'd be proud to call myself one.  I mean, look who we have who could always find refuge in this very pretty village:




I know she's a New Zealand artist who "Claims Maori" but her mother was Sophia Tang from Hong Kong, sure, but originally from this very village up there in China.