Distant relations
A few years ago, when I was living in Hanoi, I made the short but bumpy trip to visit my – the ancestral village on my father’s side – which turned out to be a little hamlet of concrete houses in the middle of swampy rice paddies. Local villagers came out to greet the unknown car and I was soon directed to the Dao family temple – a grand name for the little shrine appended to the roof of one of the homes. Daos began appearing, seemingly summoned out of the ether. Cups of tea materialised too, and then a jerry can of moonshine. A duck was slaughtered and
