Final Part of : -

The Lum's Clan's Ancestral Home (祖屋) in the village of  "Gao Por" (高坡村) outside the city of Xinyi (信宜) in the administrative district of "Maoming"( 茂名市) in the Guangdong (广东) Province of the PRC.

(1) The Past and the Present of the Ancestral Home's Internal Structure

For this part, I will instead be comparing old picture(s) and videos and therefrom make my observations. Governed by the format used, resultant referencings to the structure of our ancestral home are at best indirect but nevertheless visually tenable. I must state though that my memory-recalls are reasonably consistent with what are seen in the picture as well as the videos - notwithstanding the years long passed.

A note here : As I said in the previous post, when I first arrived at the ancestral home it was dusk. By the time we finished the mini "big-table" dinner, it was already dark. My quickie photo shoot session started immediately. 

My camera then was a mere standard model of the Minolta's range, sans an in-built flash. Consequently, the quality of the shots were less than perfect but both the glees and exuberance captured from the faces of the subjects were and still appear inordinately and perfectly awe-struck! Ah well ... here we go : -

Our late uncle YM, his wife, daughters-in-law and grandkids in a chamber that was used as a storage area. Take note of the bottom right corner of the picture above. You will see some wood pieces stacked against an (unseen) wall. 

The likely distance from the edge of the left wall till the spot where the boy in blue rested his left foot. That would be about 17 to 20 ft. wide (my rough estimate of the required lateral space seemingly needed to have all subjects lined up the way they did.)

Lets now look at the most recent (the 2nd. day of CNY 2023) prayers' rituals done at the ancestral home's altar...

My guess-timate for the entire altar chamber's width as seen in the video to be at least 30 ft. to 38 ft. Relative to the photo seen above, it is safe to conclude that the chamber's original wall has been torn down.

I further recall that at the end of my first visit, the farewell mini-style 'large table' dinner was held in a somewhat large dinning hall adjacent to the original storage chamber (in which the above photo was taken). The door into the original dining hall is still visible in the same clip above.

(2) Summing Up

Given the photo that was taken in Nov. 1988 and the visuals as seen in the CNY-2023 video, our ancestral home has structurally been modified to allow for a larger prayers' altar/chamber. This was and still is good as it reflected our cousins' joint intention to preserve the old building that our forebears left us with. 

Their intention to keep then and now alone warrants our support to preserve the ancestral home for posterity. 

(3) The Land on Which The Ancestral Home Sits On

In the earlier posting, I mentioned that my 'gut feel' of the ancestral home's land size was about one to 1.50 acres. Lets adopt a conservative stance, say it was 1.20 acres. This would be about 52,000 sq. ft.

During our 2013 group visit to the ancestral home, I took the trouble and walked round the perimeter of the ancestral home's landed area. Adopting my long confirmed  ... 'yardstick' of 135 'normal walking steps' to be equivalent to 100m, or just about equivalent to 330 ft ..., I later calculated that what was left of our ancestral land was a size of about 30,000 to 36,000 sq. ft. I stated the conservative mid-point of 33,000 sq.ft. captioned at the end of the video seen below :

Take note of three interesting matters in the same video below :

Firstly, the cut-off land (watch out at the 34 minutes-point of the video stream) which was (and still is now) a rural trunk road. On the right but at a higher ground level is the de facto 'front entrance' to our ancestral home. 

Secondly, I commenced my 'guess-timates' by walking around the ancestral home's remaining plot size (watch for and at the 48 minutes-point of the video stream). I ended the walk back onto the rural trunk road again. 

Thirdly, the houses of our two cousins - at the beginning of the video.

(4) Land Lost vs Land Plots Gained

Against the sets of figures stated earlier, it would be fair to conclude then that the original size of the ancestral home's land area has been reduced by some 19,000 sq. ft. or some 37.0 %. Of course, the reduction was a mandatory acquisition by the local authority for a public good, a motorizable trunk road.

Did our cousins lose out? Definitely no !

In exchange for the land area reduction, our cousins were alloted five contiguous pieces of housing lots just a stone's throw away. As you might be aware of by now, the late Wai Hoong's and Wai Hon's houses are seen at the beginning of the video clip above. Abutting Wai Hoong's are three more units. They are Wai Leong's, Wai Foo's and Wai Keat's.

Two of the five houses built has seen some very recent and grand re-furbishing and/or renovations. (See clips from Wai Hon sent in early January 2023,)

Thats all for now ... till my next posting. Cheers !