Home

Whenever my parents would talk about where their home is, I truly wonder because they do not know and I barely know as well. Many Chinese people like my parents have moved away from our home country, China, to various other countries but still consider China as our main home. Even though my parents have lived in America for over 20 years, they still talk about going home, to their hometown and retire there. From my viewpoint, land used to be very important to my grandparents and my great-grandparents, because they farmed and have lived in the same place for about seven generations.
 
Land to the Sapelo island people however, is way more important. For them, land is a symbol of who they are as a people, and without it, they see their old way of life dying away. Their roots on that land dated all the way back to the slavery time period, a whole nine generations, so I see why they are so protective of it. Their land means a lot to them, all their stories and traditions come from the earth, so when the government took it away from them they have all the right to be extremely upset and angry. For my ancestors in China, land was never owned by them, so even though they lived there for many generations too, land was not that valuable. They viewed it more like a job and not something that defined who they were.

 For my family and all my relatives, it is not land that is important but rather family. Even though we own land in America, it is not where our heart is. Personally, I spent most of my time growing up in the coal regions of Pennsylvania, and even though I've lived there for ten years, I always feel that something is missing, and that it is truly not my home. For the Sapelo people, I feel that they are more connected with each other, and that even though they have moved away from Africa to America, both land and family are very important.