Today’s prompt is kind of a tricky one to write. It says to write a piece about a typically “local” experience from where you come from as though it’s an entry in a travel guide. I am stumped because I have no clue what “local” experience means. I’ve never experienced it.

I spent 10 consecutive years of my life in a small corner of southeast China in a town located in the广东(GuangDong) Province called 石岐(Shi’Qi), means stone fort. It’s call that because all the horrible weather seem to avoid this area. It’s California but without the beach and the clear blue skies.

Of all the people I’ve talked to, most of them have no idea where I am talking about. Apparently Google doesn’t either because if you look on the map, it’s not there. So usually, I just end up telling them I’m 90 minutes from Hong Kong. During those years in China, I hardly traveled anywhere. That’s the reason why I don’t even know my local culture because I was always stuck at home doing homework or going to school.

The only time I’ve traveled was during the summer when it’s hot and humid not to mention no AC. One of the reasons for my travel was to visit my extended family, none of them even bothered telling me their names. The place was 大南 (Da’Nan) which I have no idea where it’s located even to-date. When I last visited in the early 2000, it was incredibly rural and undeveloped. No roads. The only way to get around was either on the back of my relative’s truck (bumpy ride) or walk (not a great terrain to walk on).

My relatives still lived in those houses that looked like it was built a century ago, still so old-fashioned. Wooden furniture and bamboo bed (no mattress). I don’t know how it is now but honestly, I’ll never see myself living in that place.

The other reason was to follow my grandpa to another rural part of the province to monitor the progress of the house he was building, the house that I’d never get to see and that my cousin now inherits completely due to our little argument last year. It was boring and gross. Dirt and dog poop everywhere and the often I went, the more I could not see this house to ever be completed. In my mind, it was five-stories of disaster.

More fun facts about my nick of the woods, our delicacy is roast pigeon (烤乳鸽) and we speak the ShiQi dialect (石岐话) which is a dialect that is on the verge of extinction.

I was told a few years ago, people from the north (mandarin-speaking) started to migrate south (cantonese territory) because of the job market. When my mom visited two years ago, she told me that most people speaks either mandarin or cantonese now, no more dialect, she said. She also said most of the people from the town had immigrated to the U.S. in the recent years and most of them reside in the San Francisco Bay area. That’s probably why, most people had left.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this mini-tour of my incognito ever-changing hometown. I think I will have to go back some time this year or the next whether I want to or not. I have to get my teeth fixed and have to collect my insurance money.