New & old photographs of Moy Yan/Mei Xian/Mei Hsien

["J.F. Chow" <mcrinfo@sympatico.ca>]

Hi everyone

The article on Mrs. Henrietta Akit in the Toronto Star has revived my
interest in the Hakkas & I have come across this site by surfing the
net.

I was trying to locate the ancestral village on a map & the closest
thing I found was Mei Hsien.  Could anyone confirm to me if Mei Hsien &
Mei Xian is the same village ?

My other questions are:

My dad tells me there is no such thing as a last name in Mei Xian or Mei
Hsien or Moy Yan.  People belong to clans & people will identify
themselves to their particular clan.  But then why would so many family
names in Mauritius start with Ah ?  My last name is Ah-Chow.

I noticed when reading some of the messages that were previously posted
that many hakkas in the West-Indies would have their last name starting
with the letter A, for example Mrs. Henrietta Akit or Mr. Philip Atteck.

Why would all the Hakkas in the West-Indies, Mauritius, South-Africa end
up opening a variety store ? Why none, to my knowledge, end up as a
labourer in the sugar cane fields ?  Were the Hakkas by nature, traders
?

Why do the Hakkas refer to people other than chinese as evil in the
hakka language? "Phak kwee" for white person, "Vooo kwee" for a black
person but "Thong neen" for a chinese?

My parents would also tell me some stories about the homeland.  Human
waste would be used for manure & urine was used to water the
vegetables.  This possibly could explain why the "Fu-mak" is so tasty
over there !:-).  They were so poor they would eat eggs only on their
birthdays.  They would eat mostly rice & congee with vegetables but
rarely meat.  They would raise their own animals & when it came time to
slaughter the animals, they would "give away" meat to the neighbors
because they had no fridge.  So, Mr & Mrs X would be given 10 lbs of
porc & so would Mr & Mrs Y & so on.  When it would be Mr & Mrs X's turn
to slaughter their pig, they would give my grand-parents back the 10 lbs
of porc.

The toilet was a room as big as a bedroom with a wooden plank across the
room.  One would walk across the plank, "choose a spot", squat & do
his/her thing.  I asked my mum what would happened if one slipped; she
bursted in laughter & said you would be in knee deep shit !

Speaking of shit ... a friend of mine told me that his parents would use
some kind of stick like chop sticks to scrap off the pooh after
relieving themselves because they were all poor & toilet paper were
non-existant.  Is this real ? I hope I didn't gross you guys out but
when I hear these kind of stories & what our ancestors had to go
through, there are many things in life I don't take for granted.

Chicken would wander in the house & do their thing on the floor.

My parents told me everyone would work in the rice fields.  They would
worship the dead buried on the nearby mountains.  My dad recalls with
fondness swimming in a nearby river & jumping off from the bridge.

That was Mei Xian before WW II.  Could anyone who has visited the area
recently tell me that this place look like now ?  Everything must have
really changed since then ?  I would really appreciate if anyone could
email me some recent & old snap shots of Mei Xian.

I look forward to your replies.

Regards,
Jean-Francois Ah-Chow
mcrinfo@sympatico.ca