I was born 1992 in Hong Kong as a little sprite named 趙明 . For these first years of my life I was mothered by a young nanny named Auntie Bang Bang. I loved her because she would fill my baby bottle with Coca Cola, let me eat packets of sugar with my fingers, and because she embraced me with her life and love. Sundays were Dad's day off from work and he would take me and my brother out on all kinds of adventures. It seems we always did something new - made sand castles on the beach, went fishing with nets by the river, mini-golf, and visit the party-hatted seals at Ocean Park.
Downstairs lived my two sisterly cousins who would always come play with us. And up the mountain from our apartment lived our grandparents who we made frequent visits to. By the time age three rolled around I started to attend a primary school called Lingnan. I went to school everyday in my little uniforms where I would learn my Chinese characters and simple English words like "girl," "boy," "dog," "cat," written on flash cards. We also played grocery shopping in Sailor Moon costumes, doctor-patient with empty pill bottles, and Olympian hopscotch on the rooftop. I always placed fourth out of five.
By 1996 my Auntie Bang Bang ran off to marry an American man who had long curly brown locks and worked as a garbage man; and my family immigrated to Canada before the handing back of Hong Kong, from Britain to China. Suddenly the land around me flattened with vastness and tall buildings sat less frequently. Suddenly I had to learn to read and speak English. And suddenly the colours of my life changed a whole new palette.
But now, here I am. Almost twenty years later, I'm back on this continent to do some backpacking with a Canadian stamp stitched on my pack. Although my family has since made periodic visits back to Hong Kong over the years, I never had the opportunity to come back as an independent woman; never forced to navigate the metro systems, speak for myself at cashiers, or know that there is a Kowloon side and a Hong Kong Island side. It was time for a visit.
Throughout my childhood I continued to primarily speak Cantonese with my parents. But my skills in this language remained at a 5-year-old level. I cannot read or write so when I came facing the all-Chinese signs hanging on the shops of Queens Road in Sheung Wan I felt overwhelmed with my heart beating in anxiety. When I was traveling Thailand or Vietnam I didn't know how to read the language either but it is a whole different, more complicated beast, when you look the part; speak the part; but can't read the part. You're not forgiven as a confused tourist anymore, but perhaps seen as an uneducated local. "I can't read," I'll tell them.
I'd go into stores and restaurants and choose my battles. Will I speak Cantonese and try to be received as a native? Do I converse in English with my North American accent so I'll be seen as a complete tourist? Sometimes I'll start in Cantonese and be asked something I don't understand. I respond with a whole "... Sorry I'm actually more Canadian than Chinese. English please?" Or sometimes I'd casually throw in English words for every Canto word I didn't know because apart of being cool in this language is to use English as slang. And sometimes, I'll accidentally step on someone's foot, stutter with the indecision to use English or Cantonese, and they walk away exasperated before I can even make up my mind.
Returning to a place you've been numerous times, it can be difficult to see it under a different light. I'll see many things I vaguely recognize and many things I don't. Unlike arriving in a new and unfamiliar city where nobody knows who you are, you look at spaces and think of all the past associations you have to it. You're left in this strange place where you want to be interested and explore your environment for what it is, but you can't quite pull yourself away from seeing it under past people and memories. How does one change his/her perspective about a place that has a vivid past stitched to it? One is to actively ask different questions from the place and invite new people to come inform new impressions. Pretend you've never been there - where would you go? Let your environment tell you.
My dad never fully immigrated to Canada and had moved back to Hong Kong early on due to employment reasons. So, my trip towards independence often turned into lazy-daughter-dependent-on-father time for this reason. But while being completely alone to discover, and be discovered, is a unique and thrilling thing... It is also a precious gift to make up some lost time and hang out with your dad. He brought me to visit all my childhood spots that I didn't even know were my spots. My preschool which looks a bit like it went through a Jurassic era; our old apartment building that is 20-stories high; the nearby park he'd take me to when he got off work; the beach where I fell in the water... Memories, memories, memories.
Being taken to a memory is so sweet yet so strange. "Wow. I used to be a toddler that toddled around this little school," I'd think to myself. The child you once were seems so foreign to you and it's odd to think this present-you came from this child-you... To me she feels more like a long-lost baby sister (a cute one, at that.) Yet these moments allow you to realize how much a person changes in decades, years, months, days, and hours. One can seamlessly become a completely different person with a separate identity. While sentiments and awareness of your past is important, it is an even greater realization that you can be and become literally anybody.
