My grandmother passed away a few mornings ago. She was 88.

As I mourn her passing, I cannot help but reflect on how our family tree is perhaps a microcosm, a more personal version of the Chinese Malaysian experience.

My grandparents were both Hakka, of the Mei County variation and my grandmother spoke only this dialect her entire life. They were proud of their customs, their food and clannish instincts. Up to the very end, my grandmother's only consistent admonishment to me was that I should settle down soon with a Hakka girl (of the Mei County variation).

My grandmother came to Malaya as the newlywed wife to my grandfather, whose own father had summoned him down from Mei County, Guangdong Province to help with the family trading business in the 1930s.

Like many other overseas Chinese of that period, my grandfather opened his own small business - a Chinese pharmacy. He later participated actively in the 1930s anti-Japanese movement (the Japanese had invaded China by 1937) and was imprisoned for some time during the Japanese Occupation of Malaya.

My grandparents, who come from a family of modest landowners, considered themselves lucky to have left China by then. During the 1940s China was beset by the Japanese Occupation and later, the civil war between the Nationalists and the Communists.

Of the relatives who stayed on in Guangdong after the Communists came to power, some were killed or took their own lives, some went mad while the rest were exiled to Hainan Island (a more difficult place back then than today's chicken rice dish would imply).

They had three children after the war, though I suspect that they had, and lost, some before. The family got through the 1950s in spite of the Communist insurgency and my grandfather's Kuo Min Tang (KMT) leanings. Business and life improved in the late 1950s and 1960s.

The foundations for the Malaysian identity were being forged during this time, in the fires of 1957, May 13, and the post May 13-NEP period. My grandparents, like many of their generation, looked on at this obliviously and skeptically.

They could not return to Chairman Mao's China, but still kept some hope alive that they might one day see the Mei County of their youth again.

My parents are from a different era, they grew up with Elvis and the Tunku. Although my grandparents had tried to inculcate them with Hakka values, they could more easily grasp the idea of 'Malaysia' and had less attachment to that particular village in Mei County.

They were keen to learn English and Malay, and spoke broken Cantonese as well as anyone migrating to KL in the 1960s.

I am purely a child of the Mahathir era of 1980s and 1990s. Perhaps mine is the first Chinese Malaysian generation that can easily list Anita Mui, Madonna and Sudirman as pop idols all in the same sentence.

My mind is completely devoid of Mei County memories. I am as Malaysianised and as Westernised as the KBSM education system and the potent Sesame Street/MTV combination could make me.

I do not instinctively ask the questions that haunted my grandparents and to some extent, my parents: 'Where do I come from and where do I belong?'

And so, Mei County has passed on with my grandmother.

But these past few days, I have been given to pondering about my grandmother's life and her Mei County memories she was so fond of. What does it mean to be Malaysian and Chinese? As a people, we have long ago left the shores of our Mei Counties, just as our grandmothers must leave us at some point in time.

But must we collectively let go of the Mei Counties in our minds? Why did I cram the history of Malacca and Birch's assassination for my SPM but not even one page of Mei County history?

What is the place of Mei County's history in this country? What is my place in this country and what will be my grandchildren's place in this country?

These are honest questions I pose. They are not meant to provoke anyone.