Meet the Gaskins: Day 3: To Guang Zhou We Go

The pace of this trip is definitely unlike any other Hon reunion. Instead of leisure mornings nursing late nights and debating the day's activities, we're on a strict, can't-be-late schedule where if we miss one departure, it's a chain effect of missing everything else.

This day started off with a heavy knock on the door and a panicked Shobab waking up out of his much needed slumber. "Almost ready!" He yells. We throw everything in our bags and wait to wake Yaelle up until the last minute.

Today is one of the more meaningful days. We're busing to a small, poor village in the eastern part of Guang Zhou to our Hon family ancestral temple. It was destroyed during the cultural revolution in the 1940's and has been in the process of being rebuilt over the last 10 years.

Boarding our bus for the 1.5 hr drive to the village.

On our way!! (Where's the whiskey?)

In front of the Hon temple. Most of the materials used to rebuild are from the original temple.

Posing with Hon family blessings.

Under the shrine of her ancestors.

My dad is on the left, 2 of my uncles on the right. The man in the middle with the sweet shorts is my father's distant cousin. His mom and my great grand mother hung themselves in this house during the cultural revolution as their only escape from torture.

After the Hon temple we headed into Guang Zhou. This is the river my uncle swam across unsupervised at 8 years old after just learning how to swim...just to see if he could make it. Apparently my grandmother was very modern for her time and didn't discipline her children for common things like grades and almost killing themselves. She encouraged art, creativity and other means of learning. Though 3 of her boys ended up eventually graduating from UC Berkeley, apparently they all had terrible grades in China and was accepted because of high testing scores.