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My grandfather was born in Swatow, which I have never been to because it feels like a mystical place I hope won’t let me down (complicated feelings about China / ancestry). I have a street name and location for where he was born; his name is in some kind of family book there. That’s the only thing I know about ‘genealogy’ (we aren’t big on that stuff).
Lately I’ve been looking at content about Swatow and in the Teochew language (which I understand perfectly) on Xiaohongshu. It’s such a window into a part of his life / my life that I never had.
In one recent video, some guy says ‘how to get amazing food in this city? Literally walk outside the door and sniff, join any line, sit down, eat’
Even though I have never been there, I kind of feel I have this unreal expectation that all of life, in every city, should have amazing food exactly like this. I guess I know where I get it from.
(Season one of ‘Flavourful Origins’ on Netflix is about this obsessive food culture I come from)
@skinnylatte My paternal grandparents were also from Swatow. My dad (and his siblings) spoke Teochew with them but us grandkids never learned it. Only just random words mixed with Thai here and there, which I’m quickly forgetting. 
Sometimes I wish I had known their language better and have the opportunity to learn about the place they came from the way you described it. My cousins and I were even planning a trip to Swatow this year to visit their birthplace, but leaving the US now ended up not being a good idea.
@vatthikorn there are so many Teochew loan words in Thai, when I first started learning Thai I felt like I knew so many words already!