A light drizzle was falling on the village of Jilong on the afternoon of Dec. 17 when a large black sport utility vehicle pulled up to a parking area next to the pond. Out of it stepped Gary Locke, the American ambassador, who this month is expected to leave his post and return to his hometown of Seattle. This was Mr. Locke’s fifth visit to his ancestral village in the Taishan region of Guangdong Province, and his third and possibly final one as ambassador to China.
The rain tapered off as Mr. Locke and embassy colleagues walked around the pond to the front of the village. With the clearing weather, the crowd of 50 or 60 people began swelling to more than 100, all of whom wanted to greet Mr. Locke. On hand to document the event for Modern Weekly, a Chinese news magazine, was Alan Chin, an American photojournalist who lives in Brooklyn. Alan was spending one month in Taishan for a personal book project. His ancestral village is also in Taishan, and he can speak the local language, which has given him far greater access to the people there than most foreign journalists are able to get.
Taishan is better known to most of the world by its Cantonese name, Toishan. For decades, it was the main origin point of the Chinese diaspora. Immigrants from Taishan settled in Chinatowns in the United States and other countries, mostly taking low-wage jobs in restaurants, laundromats and convenience stores. Their goal in their new country was to move to the suburbs, where their children would in theory become better educated and move on to college and professional careers. While building their lives far from China, the first-generation immigrants would also send remittances to their home villages.
via U.S. Ambassador Renews Ties to His Ancestral Village – NYTimes.com.
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