How I Became An Adopted Child

Every Easter, I would follow my parents to pay our respects to my ancestors at Tze Dor Aum （自度庵）at Sin Ming Road.

As a routine, we would first make our way to the main hall where we pray to the various Buddhas before going inside the columbarium to greet my Great Grandma, Grandparents and youngest uncle.

Following which, we would go back outside to the communal area to lay out the offerings we had prepared and invite them for a meal.

After assuming they are done with their feast, we would bade our farewells and clear the table for the next family to use before heading to Tai Pei Yuen （大悲院）at Balestier to visit my big uncle and his wife who were also my Godparents.

As for how I became their adopted son still baffles me this very day.

As the story goes, Grandma was awakened one night and saw a man whom she instantly recognised as her deceased son together with a girl in the living room. My uncle, who had passed away due to diarrhea when he was a kid told his Mum about this girl he had met down there and their desire to get married.

After much difficulties, my aunts finally tracked down the girl's surviving family who is a friend of a friend of a friend or something like that (if only they had Facebook then) who had also been looking all over for us.

It seems the girl's family has also got the same 'vision' as my Grandma hence, a Yin marriage was promptly arranged for them.

And so, big uncle has found himself a lovely bride, Grandma is relieved her eldest son is not lonely down there anymore and everyone should lived happily ever after but wait, the story does not end here because that is when I was implicated came into the picture.

Sometime after their wedding, Grandma got a dream from uncle that they have no heir and they would have no one to tend to their tombs during Qing Ming.

That got Grandma all worked up again and at this juncture (like a well-written drama script), entered yours truly, or rather my Mum, who was heavily pregnant with me at that time.

Uncle had told Grandma in her dream that the baby in Mum's womb is a boy and that the child (me) would be "the chosen one". I do not think my parents even know the gender of their own baby at that time as ultrascan is probably not yet available in those days.

Needless to say, I automatically 'upgraded' to be their Godson who has, for as long as I could remember, been praying to them dutifully since the day I was born.

And that, is my story of how I became an adopted child.