I have been a little bit behind my email and RSS in the last couple of days. Today, I spent my time to clean up my email and read all my RSS items, which are already more than 1700.

While cleaning up my email, I found an interesting email from my cousin. She told me a story about our ancestor, mostly about our grandparents. There are many things that I didn’t know before. Here are some interesting facts about my ancestor:

  • Both of my grandfathers were originally from Fuzhou city, Fujian province, China. They migrated to Indonesia in the 1930s because politic and economic situation was not stable.
  • My grandfather (from my father) went out from China using somebody else’s passport. I don’t know the details how he did that. That’s why; my father has two last names. The first one is “Ong”, which is his “real” last name. The second is “Gee”, which is the last name from somebody’s passport.
  • My other grandfather (from my mother) had to work in many different places along his way to Indonesia. He had no money at all; so he normally helped local farmers working on their fields. He received very little money for doing the job. From what I know from my mother, he ate only once a day during that time.
  • This one is a romantic story, but also so sad. One of my grandfathers married a lady when he was in China. Three months after their marriage, he left China to pursue a better life, which led him to Indonesia. Unfortunately his journey was very hard. It took him years before he finally became rich. He married to another lady in Indonesia, who is my grandmother, and never came back to China. What happened to his first wife? She still lived in China and adopted a son. After being rich, my father built them a big house on the top of the hill. When my grandfather died in 1991, she cried and mourned for many days.
  • Both of my grandfathers are smart guys. One of them built a noodle factory in Indonesia and he designed all the machines by himself. Interestingly, he was not well-educated. He was a hard working man and sometimes forgot to eat. That’s why he got stomach problem that led to his death. He died when my father was still a baby. That’s why my father didn’t have memory of his own father.
  • One of my grandmothers was originally from China too. I don’t know exactly from which city because she never talked about her family. What I know is that her family was very poor. She was sold as a maid to a rich family in Indonesia. Fortunately, the rich family treated her very well.

That’s all for now….

I have a very old picture below. From left to right: My grandmother, my mother, my brother (with red shirt), me (with yellow shirt) and my father.

A picture of my family