Reuniting a forgotten foreign community

Today, Liang's guesthouse has also become a quiet crossroads. When descendants like the MacInnis return, they sit with him.

He shares his stories, like the time he nearly died as a child after eating wild berries, only to be revived by the care of a foreign doctor.

"I could hear everything," Liang recalls of lying limp, listening to the urgent Fuzhou dialect around him.

He also recounts how his mother, a Christian, had him baptized in the local stream, and how his grandfather sold parcels of land to foreigners — land the family would later rent back to grow sweet potatoes, a cycle of practical coexistence.

These details, like the water from his family's century-old well dug by his father, are still pure today, nourishing the roots of Kuliang.

Yang Jie contributed to this story.