"Sudah Balik Tongsan !"


Days ago my friend text messaged  me to ask whether my eldest brother  is still doing sheet-metal work as he could find nobody in town to custom made a metal box.
My reply to his message was in a simple Malay, " sudah balik tongsan!".
My friend immediately understood what I meant; my eldest brother had already departed from this world.

"Balik tongsan" is a Malay vocabulary I had learned while I was still a kid.
At that time there was an Indian Muslim shop attendant staying next door to my Nibong Tebal house. Every two or three years he would go back to India to visit his family members. Before he went back to his ancestral land he would make known to everybody in the neighbourhood that " Saya mau balik tongsan!" ( tongsan [唐山] is a Chinese vocabulary carrying the meaning of 'ancestral land'.

Later it was adopted by other races in their everyday usage.)
In the past, 'balik tongsan' was used with good intention as it is a virtue to go back to ancestral land to visit one's family members and relatives. It's also a 'better pronoun' to tell others that " so-and-so has died".
Unfortunately, nowadays 'balik tongsan' is used with a  bad intention of "halau orang keluar negeri" ( to chase people out of the country).

Those who demanded others to 'balik tongsan' they themselves would have to do likewise once their time is up in this world. This is Tao(道) which they might be "tak tahu" and they should have taken a few lessons to learn from the grandmaster Lao Tze(老子).