Cultural and Historical Value of Family History

Earlier this month, I went to a documentary event. I've been following the documentary festival since the day I went to their opening ceremony. Click the link to read about the opening ceremony --- The World of Documentaries

The festival ended yesterday. Today's their 17th anniversary and the award ceremony of the festival. I went and had a lot of fun! I ate so much I believe I swallowed the whole garden. Maybe I'd talk about the event some other time if I feel like it.

Today's main point is one of the videos in this festival. The screening was yesterday, on the 19th of July. It's one of the videos that received an award.

「僑樑」 The Wandering Nationals by Director Zheng Poyuan

The film covers the story of his family, who originated from Vietnam. When the war broke, they fled the country and ended up in different countries as refugees. The film started off with his grandma, slowly branches out to the family members in America, Vietnam and Taiwan.

It shows how wars tear families apart. It's heart-wrenching to listen to these stories. There are many more families as such in many parts of the world. It's still happening now, not only in the past where we read their stories in history.

I remember the first time I saw a brief description of this phenomena in my history textbook when I was in middle school. There was a communist leader, Chin Peng. At some point, he was exiled. During the late years of his life, he was in Thailand. He wasn't permitted to return to the Malayan Union and couldn't see his family members before he passed away.

Even though it was a short description, it left a deep mark in my heart. When I slept at night, he appeared in my dream. The next day, I went to school and jokingly told my classmates that I was so stressed out memorizing history texts that Chin Peng showed up in my dream.

Many years later, I was in university. I've always had a keen interest in topics regarding culture, history and people. I chose an elective class, Chinese History and Culture. The lessons discussed topics about China's residents and its history, and the lives of these Chinese  immigrating to work in different parts of the world and their younger generations.

As a Malaysian Chinese, I'm considered a third or fourth generation of Chinese immigrants. For the final project of this class, we all had to choose a topic to write a report portfolio. I wrote about the story of Chinese immigrants in Malaysia and how the culture evolved.

After watching this documentary, I immediately thought of this old portfolio of mine. I'd want to look it up and do a much deeper research to discuss this topic in depth and maybe expand the discussions into much deeper subtopics.

Looking forward to an interesting project!

If you happen to read this post and is interested in this film, you can search the title 僑樑 to watch their trailer or the hashtag #僑樑 on Facebook to follow up any future screenings.