Closing question

Did I find myself?

The question changed. In Hong Kong I didn't find myself, but I defined myself. Students, while in school, go through a natural self-exploration stage. Many things come with this - school has you expand the vessel (container of knowledge) while filling it up. Students feel overly confident about their skills and capacities, being taught these days they are full of promise, potential and power, but in the process they must remain flexible and definable, so this causes confusion in personality and identity (I think this is very specific to the school experience in the West). Some take time to define this, others put it aside, and others go out in search of it. I went to Hong Kong in search of it.

As a half-Chinese Canadian, I felt confused, stuck between two worlds, never in one or the other, stretched thin, looking for direction as to what I am.

I am layers
I have learned, that instead my personality and identity has many layers. I have the benefit of picking and choosing, combining, ignoring or being the sum of my heritage, past, capacities, skills. And that I have many opportunities and much potential to determine and define much more than who I am, but direction, and destination.

I noticed this in my discussions shortly arriving in Hong Kong. I spoke Chinese, I knew the music, I knew the food, I knew about the politics and the celebrity gossip. Questions would start when I would surprise my friends and friends of friends, usually over coffee or beer at a local coffeehouse or bar.

"Wai-Chung - how do you know (the old-time celebrity singer) Sam Hui?"
"Because I am of half-Hong Kong descent!"

"Wai-Chung - how come you have not been to Macau?"
"Because I am not from Hong Kong!"

A typical one:
"Wai-Chung - how come your Chinese is so good?"
"Because I am Half-Chinese - it should be good."
"Ah - so how come it is not better?"
"Because I am Canadian - I grew up in Canada."

I had excuses for everything. 3 of them. Part Chinese, not part Chinese, half-Chinese, Canadian. These are layers. I've learned I'm not stuck between them. This was inherent with my French-Canadian background - I can switch back and forth English to French, hardly a thought (I often forget what conversation on a topic was in what language - with some people I switch back and forth). This isn't being stuck, these are interchangeable hats of skills and background.

Canada was disorienting
But in Hong Kong I felt very comfortable though. I realized sometimes how out of place I felt sometimes in Canada - physically. Not exactly white, but not exactly anything else. And particularly thin, love technology gadgets (though I won't admit they're such) and toys (ibid). In Hong Kong, eerily I am similar stature to the general Hong Kong male (maybe a bit taller), same hair, same pose. It's weird. And the same with the gadgets and toys (they're the ones with them - not me. Mine are called 'technological tools' and 'casual objects'). And the body chemistry too - the drinking capacity, the appetite, I share these with the Hong Kong male. In Canada, I don't see these, and it can be disorienting.

Did I?
So, did I find myself in Hong Kong? I found I wasn't lost. I knew all along where I was - I just didn't have a destination yet and the terrain quite figured out.

How I prepared to come back to HK (for 2 weeks)

Gifts for my friends and family in HK, organised by recipient

85% of my luggage is gifts. Gifts gifts gifts.
I always find gift shopping the most difficult, and if the response of others is an accurate indication, I do think I'm getting good at it.



Lists.

My suggestions:

Best gifts to return from Asia with:

• Monogrammed jerseys of the local sports team.
• I come back with China jerseys with my friends nicknames and year of their birth on it. Can't tell a better story than that. And their not expensive.
• Chinese signs.
• Maybe it says "Please be quiet" or "Wash your hands". They're helpful. You can point out to people "Yo, did you not read the sign? Damn, what do I have to do?"
• Local magazines
• Local insight into the goings on on the scene.

Best gifts to bring to Asia:

• Try to avoid stuff made in Asia.
• If you're Canadian: Maple Syrup and Maple cookies and local wine.
• Sea Monkeys.
• Die-cast vehicles.

That's all I have for now.

Hong Kong can remind us of our the west's lack of social responsibilities 20 years ago

I came in today. Came into the building where I stayed for 2 years and it was like walking into a time machine. The sights, the smells, like walking into a track, things became automatic.





I met the security guard who greeted me for those 2 years. He is Singaporean and Chinese, and his English is far better than any other security guard I've met. The rest I've met, in the building complex and other places, hardly speak two words of English. He helped me alot, with general things. Finding a cleaner, a delivery person, getting directions, finding out about buses.

He told me he will be retiring in a few months. He has to - he's turning 65. He worked at a hotel until he had to retire there when he turned 60. He didn't want to retire then and he doesn't now. He hasn't been informed he will be let go, but he knows it's coming.

Canada has eliminated mandatory retirement - every province did as court cases came forward and the contractual clauses and laws were dropped as deemed against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

I think if you can do the job and you still want to, you should. But labour comes cheap here, and the market reigns supreme. And it has me reflect on the social benefits in Canada.

La fin, ça continue (The End - it continues) - 2008 update

A photo I took at an airport in Japan on my way home in 2004.

I know it was a shame to leave my blog unfinished. I no less than abandoned it shortly before leaving Hong Kong. I will end it now, but continue it with my visits to Hong Kong, to make it complete a full circle and continue to twirl as such.

I am writing this as I return to Hong Kong after over a year and a half of being away. In summary I've started my career as a public servant in the Canadian Federal Government in Canada's capital, Ottawa. I'm also doing my masters and I'm where I wanted to be, and where I've planned to be. I am on my way to Hong Kong on a 2-week holiday, as my friend Apple is getting married and I wouldn't miss it for the world (luckily I had enough notice to make arrangements). She's my closest friend in Hong Kong, and if it hadn't been for her I can't imagine what my experience in HK would have been like. Perhaps lost. Perhaps associating with the other local foreigners. Perhaps nothing to blog about.

I will not take up too much space here about my experience in the public service, but to summarize:

I did leave Hong Kong. July 10 of 2006. Many reasons led up to it, there was a push to leave and a pull back to Hong Kong. As I tell people when the subject arises, my initial intentions were to stay in Hong Kong for a year - then a year became two when I knew I could push my Chinese further and my work was meeting a change. I intended to stay another 2 years, but I cut that short by a year. I broke even - I stayed a year longer than I initially thought I would, but stayed a year less than I later planned.



Near the end of the 2nd year my level of Chinese had plateaued (went as far as it would) and my career wasn't going any further. My contract with teaching orphans, for mutual reasons, wasn't renewed, and my other work, doing website development and Production of a magazine, wasn't seeing further gains. I considered several options to forward my Chinese - considered with going to university to learn Cantonese (advanced-level courses to learn to be a translator), as it was the only way to push it further, but the costs and time commitment were prohibitive (didn't make it possible). I also considered trying to be adopted by a Chinese family, but I knew after a few months I would probably make the cover of the Apple Daily gossip papers for being the only foreigner going to university kicked out on the street by locals for some reason or another.

Bells rang of my aspirations back home to work in the Public Service of Canada. With international experience and a foreign language under my belt, I was ready to go back and start the rest of my life.

In April/May I started to tie up the strings in Hong Kong, as my Canadiana-rooted patience ran thin. I applied to a graduate certificate program and was sufficiently surprised to be accepted. I had a deadline to return to Canada, and time to say goodbye.

I reflect on Hong Kong with happiness and pain. I left a love best numbed by forgetting. I left friends I knew briefly and well, who in turn left a life-long impression on me. I developed my love for children and working with disadvantaged youth and benefiting the community, and advanced my career skills and developed a language. Half a world away I felt the pride of my father in telling him happy birthday, stung with the pain of being so far away. My grandmother passed away and I realized the basic truth that lives of those you think will live for eternity are better appreciated and the relationships nurtured. I learned from the trials of people on the street can be a testament to the disparity between rich and poor can be as great as the poor and the neglected and ignored.

I recall my last months, weeks and days. My rope had run out and I was out of patience. I could not advance without knowing more Cantonese or risk being the kind of person I didn't like - a socialite who spent lots to keep up and ignore the surrounding - seems so typical for the permanent tourists I met (called Expats). My advantages were plentiful - I had a country to escape to and I could use it whenever I was fed up. I was starting arguments, as you could see in my last posts.

But it's interesting how memories fade, gaps fall to the background, and the sum doesn't capture the time spent, the trials and tribulations that led to learning and discovery. I guess I will recall these as I realize how broken my Cantonese speaking and Chinese reading has become. But more to come. I only have 11 days to fully explore, and enjoy the experience again, anew.

The end, it continues.