Foreign Lands, Familiar Faces

Living in between two cultures has its advantages and disadvantages. I have one Chinese parent, my mother, which means that I am fortunate enough to be able to travel abroad on a regular basis. Hong Kong is an eleven-hour time difference, and an entire world apart.

It was during my last visit that I was made keenly aware of this disparity. The moment we stepped out of the airport and into the humidity, a cab swallowed us up and raced into the heart of the island. Nothing in Hong Kong runs slowly, and everything is tight and compact. The living complexes are twenty-stories high. The streets are lined with vendors, crowds, and double-decker trolleys and stink of fish, rotting mangos, and exhaust. Everything shimmers because of the heat. Nothing is dry.

My mother, brother and I pressed the buzzer to my grandparent’s 7th floor apartment that has three bedrooms, one bathroom, and a kitchen. This sounds big. It is not. The kitchen is the size of my closet at home. In the bedrooms, you can reach from one end to the other.

I was welcomed with a foreign language that I can only comprehend when spoken slowly, and with pointing. I smiled warmly at those familiar, foreign faces. They commented on my weight, because that is a common greeting. They put a bowl of food in front of me, because I am “too skinny, too skinny.” They gave me pocket money with big smiles on their faces. It is because they are proud that they can give to me, every time.

My grandfather used to sit in the couch crammed into the back of the apartment. He watched Chinese game shows and smoked two packs of cigarettes a day. Sometime between my last visit and now, he died of lung cancer. All I can remember from that last visit are the blue pajamas from which he never changed, and the little white bucket with the flower into which he coughed mucus.

I can remember my grandmother perfectly. She was especially skittish and her mane of salt-and-pepper hair was a halo around her powdered face. She gave me a painful smile. She slapped my hand sternly when I forgot to change from my street shoes into apartment slippers. She cannot speak English, I cannot speak Chinese; we manage to coexist.

My seven aunts and four uncles, all of whom are immediate family, can speak English fluently, but they never left time in conversation to hear my answers. They would just ramble out another question following the previous. This is always nice, because I just have to keep nodding, keep smiling. “You are good in school, yes? Get good grades, yes? Like to math and science, yes?” I nodded like a bobble-head, but thought ‘I guess, I guess, I guess.”

After the visit, they skittered away and left my brother and me to unpack. We cleaned off the layer of perspiration that had already coated our faces. We took naps to ease away the clouds of jetlag. We looked at each other and took a deep breath in unison. Last time I went to Hong Kong, I recall feeling tired, and missing home. As I rested back into a flat pillow, I vividly remember thinking this: I am Chinese, but I do not belong in China.