China Diary: Looking At Ancestors

I recently got back from a 10 day trip to China where I visited the main cities of Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. I had a really great time although I haven’t finished organizing and tagging all my photos and hope to get that done soon before I forget all the finer details of where each photo was taken. As I go through notes and photos I’ll be adding some thoughts to this “China Diary” over the next couple of months.

People have been asking me if I went to China for work or pleasure. In many eastern religions and philosophies lies the belief that all things are inter-related, which is referred to as non-duality. So while I went to China strictly for pleasure, it has certainly affected how I see the work that I do as as a personal historian as well as many other areas of my life. It was a profound trip for me; the first time I’ve been to an Asian culture, and I found the juxtaposition between our cultures fascinating.

My work as a personal historian and video biographer often finds me connecting generations through history. It’s not unusual for me to hear, “how did you get that story our of my (father)? ” or ” I’ve never heard that before.” I suppose part of the problem is that in families, we get to ‘know’ people so well that we stop listening. And part of it is that as we get older, we often think our children won’t be interested in our stories or it will occur as bragging, or a variety of other reasons that family and personal stories don’t get passed down.