Lineage and Hong Kong through pictures
I'm Canadian, I'm Chinese-Canadian, and imma as Canadian as English-Canadians and French-Canadians (aka the ppl running the government now)...but we are definitely not as Canadian as Native-Canadians, no matter how much we'll like to be or how easily we could be accepted as (E/F-C, imma pointing at YOU).
It's partly blood, romantically, we like to link blood to the land...dunno about that, but more pragmatically, it's family, it's what we learnt and inherit from our parents, our aunts and uncles, our grandparents...
I'll never have what Native-North-Americans have, and it'll be improper for me to pretend, I don't have a tie to this land that goes back generations and generations, my bloodline did not flow with the waters through this land when the ice started to melt.
...and that's okay, because I have something that Native North-Americans don't have, a heritage elsewhere. Ditto for European-Canadians, African-Canadians, Asian-Canadians, and Combination-Canadian. It's never more and less, it's just different.
It's a tricky thing, I'm privileged to have this double view, I was born in Hong Kong and I spent the second half of my childhood in Canada, I can read in Chinese and in English, I have relatives here and back in Hong Kong. Canada is my home but my bloodline is Chinese, more specifically to me, Hong Kong, three generations is short in the long scale of time, but my grandparents rose with the city after the wars. To be frank, I've got my eggs in more than one basket. I left Hong Kong and here I have Canada. If I leave Canada I could have Hong Kong. In degrees.
See, my heart is divided and there will always be this small ache, no matter where I am. No matter how long I've been there, with the aid of my near photographic memories of some moments in life (plus smell and touch and taste), part of my HEAD will always be in Hong Kong. Sometimes I think if I lean out the window I could see the people on the street, looking from a distance of 15 stories like black beans. If I crane my neck in a certain direction I could smell the stinky tofu cart on some days. If I take the elevator downstairs the shop that mixes frozen yogurt with berries is just across the street, as is the supermarket.
Then, when I was finally visiting Hong Kong again last year, I spent the whole month missing Canada, and I know, if I live in Hong Kong, I will be more of an alien there than here. Now, that would fade over time, but if I move to Hong Kong and live there for decades and decades, part of me would always long for everything about Canada, I had my prom here, first string of crushes, I like how fresh the air is, I know so many of the birds here and I have eaten wildflowers. I missed touching the trees, I didn't dare to try and climb trees in Hong Kong, there are so many people, too many people, that everyone must weight the consequence of their action as "what will happen if everyone does it too?". The ancient wishing tree outside a beachside temple actually had its major branches broken from the weight of wishes...(paper slips attached to mandarin oranges with ribbons, if it catches on the tree you get your wish).
Hopefully, I could visit Hong Kong again, and what I'll really like is to be able to do it often. There are so many years ahead... I really wish I had taken more photographs, I only have a handful...I was so sick last year, even the tiny camera was heavy. I reasoned then that there are better photographs than what I could have took, but I forgot, when I was sick, I forgot that blurry photos I took would be better than the pretty picture albums I have in my room in Canada, because my photos are through my eyes, a part of my memory that would help draw it back up.
I look at my pretty photo books, and everything feels so sectioned, but mostly distant. The Hong Kong pictures people seem to love best seem to be the skyscrapers, but to me, Hong Kong, and why a city is so thrilling, is never the tall building, but what's inside it; the people. The streets of so many people. The high density of possibilities. Love, adventure...
It's partly blood, romantically, we like to link blood to the land...dunno about that, but more pragmatically, it's family, it's what we learnt and inherit from our parents, our aunts and uncles, our grandparents...
I'll never have what Native-North-Americans have, and it'll be improper for me to pretend, I don't have a tie to this land that goes back generations and generations, my bloodline did not flow with the waters through this land when the ice started to melt.
...and that's okay, because I have something that Native North-Americans don't have, a heritage elsewhere. Ditto for European-Canadians, African-Canadians, Asian-Canadians, and Combination-Canadian. It's never more and less, it's just different.
It's a tricky thing, I'm privileged to have this double view, I was born in Hong Kong and I spent the second half of my childhood in Canada, I can read in Chinese and in English, I have relatives here and back in Hong Kong. Canada is my home but my bloodline is Chinese, more specifically to me, Hong Kong, three generations is short in the long scale of time, but my grandparents rose with the city after the wars. To be frank, I've got my eggs in more than one basket. I left Hong Kong and here I have Canada. If I leave Canada I could have Hong Kong. In degrees.
See, my heart is divided and there will always be this small ache, no matter where I am. No matter how long I've been there, with the aid of my near photographic memories of some moments in life (plus smell and touch and taste), part of my HEAD will always be in Hong Kong. Sometimes I think if I lean out the window I could see the people on the street, looking from a distance of 15 stories like black beans. If I crane my neck in a certain direction I could smell the stinky tofu cart on some days. If I take the elevator downstairs the shop that mixes frozen yogurt with berries is just across the street, as is the supermarket.
Then, when I was finally visiting Hong Kong again last year, I spent the whole month missing Canada, and I know, if I live in Hong Kong, I will be more of an alien there than here. Now, that would fade over time, but if I move to Hong Kong and live there for decades and decades, part of me would always long for everything about Canada, I had my prom here, first string of crushes, I like how fresh the air is, I know so many of the birds here and I have eaten wildflowers. I missed touching the trees, I didn't dare to try and climb trees in Hong Kong, there are so many people, too many people, that everyone must weight the consequence of their action as "what will happen if everyone does it too?". The ancient wishing tree outside a beachside temple actually had its major branches broken from the weight of wishes...(paper slips attached to mandarin oranges with ribbons, if it catches on the tree you get your wish).
Hopefully, I could visit Hong Kong again, and what I'll really like is to be able to do it often. There are so many years ahead... I really wish I had taken more photographs, I only have a handful...I was so sick last year, even the tiny camera was heavy. I reasoned then that there are better photographs than what I could have took, but I forgot, when I was sick, I forgot that blurry photos I took would be better than the pretty picture albums I have in my room in Canada, because my photos are through my eyes, a part of my memory that would help draw it back up.
I look at my pretty photo books, and everything feels so sectioned, but mostly distant. The Hong Kong pictures people seem to love best seem to be the skyscrapers, but to me, Hong Kong, and why a city is so thrilling, is never the tall building, but what's inside it; the people. The streets of so many people. The high density of possibilities. Love, adventure...