"I have to go back to China," my paternal great-grandmother declared in 1939. "I don't want to die here. My spirit wouldn't be able to converse with the local ghosts because I don't speak their language!" Seven years earlier, she had traveled with my father's parents from Fuqing, in China's Fujian province, to Indonesia, then called the Netherlands East Indies.
Tea Leaves
Family history mirrors attitudes among China's diaspora
Why pride in the 'old country' still sustains Sino-Indonesians
The author's paternal great-grandmother, center, is pictured here with in 1940. To her right sits the author's grandmother, holding the author's father. (Courtesy of the author)
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