Pascal

Till next time, 2025🙈😵‍💫🤘🏻

Wishing everyone the very best of holidays! @pascal.hum and I were already feeling pretty festive in Hong Kong in mid-November! #christmastree #christmasmagic #christmasinhongkong

We spent the last afternoon of our vacation in Tai O, a fishing village on the western side of Hong Kong’s Lantau Island, where everything seemed wonderfully photogenic #taiofishingvillage #lantauisland #hongkongtravel

Priceless moment for me: on our last night in Guangzhou, my son @pascal.hum practices writing the characters for his new Chinese name, with kind help from @jessiebunny2024 and @chloechen7133 . We ended the Guangzhou part of our trip at Four Box Bar, just around the corner from our hotel. Many card games were played and a few intriguing cocktails were imbibed. Just an unbeatable time. #guangzhou #guangzhoucocktail #guangzhoucity

It doesn’t get any better than a Pearl River Cruise in Guangzhou #guangzhou #skyline #lightupthenight

Lucky us — our first stop in Guangzhou was a @michelinguide -lauded noodle soup shop just around the corner from our @city.note hotel off of bustling Beijing Road. We had a delicious kickoff to two memorable days in the Southern Chinese mega-city. I can’t read Chinese to save my live, but I think the restaurant we stumbled into was a location of Xiguan Zhuyuan, of which Michelin says: “This is not only a noodle shop, but also a factory that makes bouncy noodles for various restaurants in Guangzhou and Hong Kong. These famous strands made with duck eggs are dried outside the shop, which is nestled in a picturesque park. [Our location wasn’t.] Dried plaice toasted on charcoal is added to the broth alongside pork backbones and dried shrimp for depth.” Our noodles certainly were toothsome. The crab wontons were mild but flavourful and their skins were ridiculously thin. The broth was exceptional. Most remarkably, the soup instantly made me think of bowls my late mother made for me, and I felt a little wave of nostalgia and emotion inside. #wontonsoup #wontonnoodles #michelinbibgourmand

I’m always going to remember the day when 18 of my Canadian relatives and I got in our rented bus in southern China and went to throw a luncheon party at the ancestral village that my grandfather left when he came to Canada in 1900. The catering company cooked outside for us, in the village’s paved public space. We sat under a festive red canopy. In the fields around the village, there were water buffalo. Before we dug in, a Chinese relative who we could call my cousin set off fireworks. About 140 people showed up. All were connected to the village, Soon On Lee. A few still lived there. Others had moved away to nearby towns or cities. All of us had an ancestor with the surname Hum or Tan, its Mandarin equivalent. Or we are named Hum or Tan. For me, the most mind-blowing moment was when one of my distant Chinese relatives that I met for the first time told me that I reminded her of her long-deceased grandfather. She teared up when she told me that. Somehow, across space and time and despite a language barrier, the family connection endures. Going forward, my relatives in both China and Canada are going to do what we can to stay connected. #familyreunion #chinesevillage #kaiping

Three hotpot adventures with family and friends in Kaiping, Foshan and then Guangzhou. In Kaiping, the hotpot was beefy, typical and great. At a smaller, simpler eatery in Foshan, the local hotpot specialty involved beef cooked in congee. In the megacity of Guangzhou, we ate at a sleekly appointed hotpot restaurant that focused on chicken cooked in coconut water. Which hotpot experience would you prefer? #hotpot #chinesehotpot #guangzhoufood

We ate so well at the Cangdong Heritage Research Centre! #cantonesefood #kaiping #cangdong

Concert and music lessons in the bamboo grove behind Cangdong Heritage Research Centre in rural Southern China. I could remember, if not play, the simple open-string song that Jacky taught my group last year. But I could barely make a sound on the bamboo flute, an instrument that goes back 2,000 years, before I got light-headed. That’s humbling. #chinesemusic #kaiping #cangdong

Who wants @oreo milk tea in Tangkou, Jiangmen and Guangzhou? We do, we do #oreomilktea #refreshingdrink

Here are pix and clips of my Canadian and Chinese relatives paying respects to my grandmother, Mai Houn Hum, who died in Ottawa in 1925, 100 years ago. She was a mother of four, in her mid-30s, and the cause of her death was tuberculosis. The following year, my grandfather brought his children and his wife’s remains back to his village in Kaiping, and my grandmother was laid to rest in the hills near the village. There was never a grave marker, though, until this month, when my Canadian relatives had our Chinese relatives commission a bilingual one. It wasn’t easy to get the 140-kg stone in place, off in the hills. Huge thanks to our Chinese relatives. Rest in peace, grandmother. We will always remember you. PS: Special thanks to the @ccmuseumbc , @catherinebclement , @naomi.louie , @sandfortmarchese and @henryyu67 , among others, for inspiration, encouragement and genealogical research that led my family to make this incredible trip. You’ve all helped change our lives. #chinesecanadian #chinesecanadianhistory #chinesecanadianmuseum