Return Of Hundred Daughters 


My father’s roots are in a little village of rice farmers called Zhaolong Li in an area called Shui Quo in Kaiping, China. Kaiping is located in the Pearl River Delta and is part of the Greater Taishan Region, the ancestral homeland of many Chinese who left the motherland in search of greener pastures in foreign Gold Mountains.  


Back in the day, a fortune teller told my grandparents that demon gods wished harm upon their first-born son. So when my father, the only son in the family, was born, they named him Pak Noi – Hundred Daughters – to fool the demon gods.  


After the war in 1956, my father, 21 year old Pak Noi left Zhaolong Li like every other young men in the village did, in search of greener pastures in the golden mountains of lands afar. He went to Hong Kong and Australia before finally settling in a little Pacific island far, far away called Fiji. Earlier at age 17, Pak Noi married Law Cheun Ho, an orphaned girl from a neighboring village, and she became my mother in 1973 when I was born in Nadi, a small town in Fiji. I have 4 sisters and am the only son, like my father was.  


In July 2012, after almost 56 years, my father finally returned to his ancestral home in Zhaolong Li. My mother, my four sisters with their own families, and I with a camera, joined him in a family road trip of a lifetime – The Return of 100 Daughters.


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