I think it was some point between hailing a taxi to meet my Uncle Joe, and the comforting familiarity of finding myself in one of the same malls I was in five years ago, that it really sunk in.
I’m in HONG-FUCKING-KONG.
The constant din of traffic and people reminds me of the way New York never sleeps. It pulsates and breathes, as if it was a body. I wonder how there can be so much life in such a tiny city1. None of my words, pictures, or videos could ever do it justice, because it’s the experience that makes it real. The things that can’t be said. Like the way people treat the elderly. The every day significance of food and eating well. The million subtleties of the Chinese culture.
The temptation to move here is coming on me again, with every street, every sign, every person I pass, every day gone by. Maybe the timing is right, where I find myself not only rootless in Ottawa, but with a sense of forlornness attached to the city as well. I’m beginning to wonder; what can I leave behind? What do I want to leave behind?
- Half the area of Ottawa, with over seven times the population. [↩]
What’s so odd is I feel the same, without your kind of history. And yet, my Hong Kong Chinese friends are one by one, planning to move here to the States. It makes me a bit sad that although they’re moving for great reasons (marriage in two cases), I know how lonely the U.S. can make one feel, how disconnected. Hong Kong is SO connected; it’s so comforting. I hope they get enough support when they leave it.
Connected is a good way to put it. I’d say intimate too. It must be so hard to leave such a place. I imagine that love is one of the few reasons that makes it possible.