Words and Light

© 2017. Arrival at Zhencheng Lou (振成樓) in Hongkeng Village, Yongding County, Fujian, China. Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2017. Portra 400, Canon EOS A2.

The «tulou» my grandmother’s grandfather built is one of about 3,000 that remain in Fujian.

Wrote a New York Times reporter in 2008: “Feng shui correct, the compounds have withstood bullets, fires, quakes, and typhoons. They’re at least three stories tall, and their outer walls are three to five feet thick. The entrance is a wooden slab sheathed in iron. Windows are tiny and only on the upper floors. A well is inside; outhouses are outside. Most ingenious are the walls — a mixture of soil, lime, pebbles and wood chips held together by soupy glutinous rice and brown sugar, pounded into impregnability, giving the structures their name, ‘tulou,’ or ‘earthen building.’”

© 2017. Arrival at Zhencheng Lou (振成樓) in Hongkeng Village, Yongding County, Fujian, China. Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2017. Portra 400, Canon EOS A2.

I remember feeling dazed — first from jet lag and then the dawning realization I was actually standing in that cobblestoned path, staring at the “round house” that my parents had told me about.

I remember being warmly greeted amid the cackle of hastily lit firecrackers that startled several nearby groups of tourists.

I remember being ushered inside the «tulou» and taking tea and smiling and nodding among family whose chatter I couldn’t understand.

I remember being seated at a round table loaded with more than 10 different dishes for our first family dinner.

I remember taking a second round of tea in another room, and wondering whether my stomach would burst.

I don’t remember how Jeff, my Uncle Doug, and I managed to leave everyone else to explore the area immediately outside the «tulou».

As I walked with my camera in hand, a man approached, displaying photos inside creased plastic sheets and speaking to me in Chinese. “I don’t understand, I’m sorry,” I tried telling him, but the man continued speaking to me until the woman who had served our enormous dinner appeared in the main gate and yelled at him.

“He was trying to sell you photos, but she told him who your grandmother is and that you’re her granddaughter and to leave you alone,” my Uncle Doug told me.

With that, in addition to the afternoon’s welcoming round of firecrackers, I began to see that my grandmother — and her family — enjoyed a status of which I’d previously heard only hints.

© 2017. Arrival at Zhencheng Lou (振成樓) in Hongkeng Village, Yongding County, Fujian, China. Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2017. Portra 400, Canon EOS A2.

After we were settled in the hotel that my relatives operate nearby, Jeff and my Uncle Doug and I returned to the «tulou». I think we wanted to make the most of every moment, even though it was nighttime and the «tulou» was officially closed to visitors. One of our relatives recognized us and we were allowed inside where we saw the red lanterns lit up against the navy blue sky. When we ran into my grandmother’s cousin, he led us on an impromptu tour, showing us the ancestral hall and then the fourth floor, which is off-limits to visitors and from which we could hear the sounds of various residents, young and old, washing up and getting ready for bed. Knowing we, too, should rest, we thanked our relative and returned to the hotel.

This «homelandcoming» series features film I shot when I traveled with my grandmother in 2017 to her ancestral home in China, which she had not seen in 74 years.

Some frames show the postcard-perfect scenery of «tulou» (“earthen buildings”) practically untouched by time; others reveal the everyday details that fascinated or amused us, and served to remind us that modern-day life continues for the residents who remain.

As a whole, this series is not a comprehensive visual diary of our trip — rather, it is a selection of a selection, showing the intersections of history and modernity, of authenticity and tourism, and of foreign and familiar.