one of the purposes of our trip to china was to visit relatives. as mentioned before, we went into 潮州 to visit my mom's family. from the moment we woke up each morning until the minute we slept each night it was those same people. so pretty quickly you could see all there was to see about each and every person. the four kids our age (eleven to ninteen) were actually my cousin's kids. all of which i never even knew existed until that day. couldn't say we hit it off from the beginning, but quickly enough we went from being complete strangers, to friends, to close relatives.
the youngest one 志坤, whom i call 弟弟 (little brother) is 11. he's the kid that isn't afraid to project his voice, says things without much thought and sometimes completely unrelated to the current topic, cracks witty jokes, sticks to you like glue, runs around the house without a shirt on, or sometimes without pants on, and loves to eat. he's simply adorable and always puts a smile on my face.
his older brother is 13, 阿韩 but i call him 妹妹 (little sister). he doesn't like the nicname one bit, but he calls me 老嬸 (old lady) or 肥婆 (fat lady) and you can imagine how much i like that. he's the bratty one who gets mad easily, but gets over it just as quickly. he's the one that always plays pranks on me and teases me, but he's also the one that was crying the day we left and again that night. he's really not a bad kid and a lot of fun to play with.
the only girl, 阿歡 is 17. she's very mature for her age and doesn't speak much. she's always helping out with chores around the house without being asked. she acts like a mother to the two younger kids (she's their cousin) and they call her sister. she's caring, polite, and a really good girl in every aspect.
lastly is her older brother, 阿哲 that i nicnamed 爺爺 (grandpa) age 19. like his sister, he's a really good child and in turn makes him a really good person for me to bully and order around. he's really easy-going and is the peace keeper of the group. he's also the only one that speaks a bit of cantonese and struggles to speak to my brother and i.
   
 
coming from completely different backgrounds, my brother and i grew up in canada and have never set foot in china before. they have been in china all their lives and we share none of the same history. we don't even speak the same language. they basically speak complete mandarin and a chinese dialect, 潮汕話. my brother only knows the slightest of 潮汕話 and no mandarin whatsoever. a conversation may go something like this: 弟弟 says something in 潮汕話, is then translated into mandarin by 阿歡, which is then translated into broken cantonese by 阿哲 that my brother can not understand, so i must translate that into understandable cantonese for him. takes more than a bit of effort. most of the time i speak in cantonese and they talk in 潮汕話 or mandarin because i can understand some of both, and they can understand some cantonese.
it's quite a miracle the 6 of us could have gotten along so well, to a point that most of the adults could not understand this magic.
i never knew saying goodbye could be so hard. everyone tried every method possible to persuade my parents to stay another day. 用最不捨得的眼神對我說, "不要回去, 不要走, 不要回去". the 6 of us squeezed into a taxi (yea, that's how taxis work in china, they really don't care how many people squeeze in) and i could see in 阿韩's expression he was going to cry. 爺爺 beside me kept saying "i wish this car ride would last forever". i couldn't speak. at the bus station everyone was in tears.
不是永遠的goodbye, 只是"再見"