Understanding history

While older trips often involved rebuilding temples, ancestral halls, or providing financial aid, modern tours are more focused on understanding family history.

Or said Singaporeans were "mostly curious about their ancestors' hometowns", and some took part in traditional rituals to pay respect to their ancestors.

Some visitors went on unplanned xun gen trips when in China for other purposes. For instance, Lee from Char Yong (Dabu) Association went in search of his ancestral hometown in 2018, when he was in Guangdong for a conference.

His grandfather left Dabu county for Singapore to work as a tailor around the 1930s shortly after getting married. His job supported a household of 11 people.

"Though money was tight, my grandfather would still squeeze out money to send home to China whenever requests came," he said.

Lee visited his ancestral village with a 1982 photo of a bridge that his grandfather had donated.

For his visit coming back to his grandfather's hometown, he not only found the bridge but also a distant aunt who was still living there. "I was so lucky," he said.

His aunt showed him the room where his grandfather lived before moving to Singapore.

"The ancestral home has largely been abandoned after the roof caved in and became unsafe, but I'm very touched to have seen that part of my grandfather's life," said Lee.

As for Phua, his mother had urged him to visit their ancestral home in Hainan after he got married. His parents used to show him letters from their relatives, and he even helped them write back.

"So I actually wanted to go back and see what they were like," he said.

That first trip turned out to be memorable.

"There was no language barrier, as we grew up speaking the Hainan dialect," said Phua. "Neighbors would visit us every night to talk to my mother until the wee hours, while my wife and I would hang out with my cousins, whom we were meeting for the first time."