On the magical earth, inhabitants of different nationalities live in every corner of the world, and under the tide of globalization, they continue to move out, and such social activities constitute the regional national character.
We Chinese have always had a homecoming complex, and Mr. Yu Guangzhong more intuitively described this kind of plot as "homesickness".
When we are young, we leave our hometown for our ideals and life, but we want to return to our hometown after we have achieved certain achievements, which is the origin of returning home.
Incredibly, in 2010, six people arrived in China by boat, all descendants of the mysterious Austronesian language family.
In order to be able to return to their homeland, they sailed the sea for 116 days.
1. What is an Austronesian language family?
This Austronesian language family sounds very unfamiliar, but in fact it is quite distributed on the earth.
From Madagascar to the island of Taiwan, and even New Zealand and Hawaii, there are Austronesian inhabitants, and the Austronesian language family actually contains more than 1,200 languages, and it is conservatively estimated that nearly 300 million people in the world belong to the Austronesian language family.
Austronesian languages are mainly found on islands, hence the name Polynesian languages.
According to the research of historians, the origin of the Austronesian language family is in our China, about 6,000 years ago, the inhabitants of the southeast coast of the mainland began to migrate to the islands above the Pacific Ocean.
In the years that followed, these people dispersed to the islands of the Pacific Ocean and traveled to different continents in the direction of the currents.
So there is a very miraculous phenomenon.
Although Austronesian people are the most widely distributed in the world, with distributions in the Americas, Africa, and Oceania, their cultural characteristics are extremely similar at such a distance.
For example, although the languages are different, because they all belong to the Austronesian language family, some of the words spoken by the inhabitants of Madagascar are very similar to those spoken by some of the indigenous people of the Hawaiian Islands, and in addition, the logic of these islanders in building ships is also the same.
From a linguistic point of view, the Austronesian language family is divided into four language families, which may sound a bit awkward.
Let's take an example, for example, English belongs to the Germanic language group under the Indo-European language family, which shows that the Austronesian language family is actually all-encompassing, and it can also be seen that the descendants of the Austronesian language family are actually all over the four oceans.
2. Set off
The Polynesian Islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean are located in a triangle in the east-central Pacific Ocean, and the Polynesian Islands may not be very well-known, but the other two corners of this triangle are the famous Hawaii and Easter Island.
So what is the connection between the Polynesian Islands and China?
In fact, there are many Chinese in Polynesia, and most of these Chinese are of Hakka descent.
This is also the result of the ancestors of Fujian who went to sea to find a new world, and these ancestors came to the island by going to sea, and settled on the spot and began to multiply.
In 2010, a small team of six people from the Polynesian Islands formed.
They decided to do something exciting and big, and that was to sail a canoe from the Pacific Ocean to Fujian, China.
These people believe that they are descendants of China, and if they can reach China in this way, it will be an unprecedented journey to find their roots.
It is worth mentioning that one of the six is also a diplomatic adviser to the former president of Polynesia, another is a prince of the Cook Islands, and one is a Polynesian politician...... Three of these small teams of six people have backgrounds that should not be underestimated.
So why take the risk of this feat when the people in this small team are all people in high positions in their own country, and they can live a life without food and clothing?
In addition to the identification of their ancestors from China, the real reason for the six people's trip came from their leader, Elia.
Elija was a diplomatic adviser to the former president of Polynia, but before he became a diplomat, he was a proper scholar and received a doctorate in anthropology.
In the process of completing his doctoral dissertation, Elijah made a surprising discovery – his background seemed to be unusual.
If from the outside, Elia has all the characteristics of a white man, he is still convinced of it - he is of course a white man through and through, but when he looks through various historical texts, he is shocked to find that his ancestors are actually Chinese.
The discovery of his ancestors from Fujian, who may have migrated to the islands of the Pacific Ocean and settled there, may have been a few hundred years ago.
Therefore, in order to understand China better, he chose to become a diplomat after graduating from his Ph.D., and after that, the more he learned about China, the more he fell in love with China, and many years later, Elia made this great decision to row to China.
When Elia told his friends about his plan, it was unexpected. Instead of thinking he was whimsical, five of his friends offered to go with him.
The support of his friends warmed his heart, so they began to make plans to row to China for 2,000 years.
After ten years of preparation, coinciding with the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai, Elia decided to row to China this year to let the world see China's influence in the world.
3. The Great Journey
After making all the preparations for the voyage, the six descendants of the Austronesian language family set out from the eastern Pacific Ocean and followed the established route to China in order to explore their Chinese roots.
The ship chosen by Elia is also very interesting, they did not choose a sailboat, you must know that sailing on the ocean, a sailboat is the most suitable, because it can be easily and quickly sailed by the strong winds of the ocean.
However, Elijah believed that since it was a journey to find his roots, he had to be religious, so he and his friends built a canoe and chose the ancient form of rowing.
According to Elia, he believes that his ancestors left China by rowing hundreds of years ago, so he also returned to China by rowing to show the greatness of this journey.
In the end, after a full 116 days of sailing, these six pious descendants crossed 29,000 kilometers at sea and finally arrived at Mawei Port in Fujian Province, China.
When Elia stepped on the land of China, he felt a lot of emotion in his heart.
He had looked at China countless times, and finally came in such a wonderful way.
The great journey of Elia shows that the Chinese civilization has made great contributions to the level of uniting the world, and I believe that the dream of world harmony will eventually come.
Source:
Fujian Provincial People's Government2023-10-15 08:32"Going to the Eternal Covenant between People and the Sea - Looking at the Temperament of Fujian's Marine Civilization from the World Marine Civilization Exchange and Mutual Learning Forum"
China Daily, December 14, 2010 – Austronesian descendants sail canoes to "find their roots" in China