Monthly Archives: March 2009

This City Lets Me Live

Boundary Street Balcony — Sunset

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?

  1. Half the area of Ottawa, with over sev­en times the pop­u­la­tion. [↩]

Having It Maid

It’s the maid­’s day off.

To be hon­est, her brief absence has shown that I already got used to hav­ing her around.

But then again, it’s not hard to get used to such a lux­u­ry. You wake up and feel like eat­ing some­thing, and she’ll have it ready by the time you’re dressed and fin­ished brush­ing your teeth. She draws your bath water. She irons your clothes while you wait. She picks up the gro­ceries for din­ner when you decide what to eat. Some of the dish­es are so com­pli­cat­ed that she begins cook­ing the night before, and has her niece (my aunt and uncle’s maid) come over to help.

Nothing needs to be said when it comes to chores around the house. When a meal is fin­ished, every­one gets up and heads to the liv­ing room. The next time you come back, the dish­es are gone and the table wiped clean1. I fold my sheets before leav­ing the house, and when I get back they’re refold­ed, only neater.

My grand­moth­er has a his­to­ry of live-in ser­vants, although there haven’t been any wet nurs­es, gar­den­ers, or chauf­feurs for a while. Ever since her chil­dren grew up and left the house (or coun­try), she’s only need­ed one maid at a time. It seems to be a great rela­tion­ship, as there’s a respect that goes both ways; the maid is extreme­ly good at her job, and we treat her like fam­i­ly. When the last maid died after 30 years of ser­vice, all her funer­al arrange­ments were tak­en care of. In the last years of her life she had gone blind from dia­betes, and was then served her­self. That’s how we found the cur­rent maid, who’s been with my grand­ma ever since.

One of my favourite rit­u­als2 is the way the maid is giv­en din­ner. After all the food is cooked, the maid lays the dish­es out on the din­ner table, but does­n’t take any for her­self. So my grand­ma will take a plate, pile food onto it, and bring it to her.

  1. Admittedly, this was the hard­est thing for me to get used to. Something in me would keep scream­ing, “PUT THE DISHES IN THE SINK”. [↩]
  2. And as a Taoist, I’m gen­er­al­ly deri­sive of rit­u­als. [↩]

Speaking Chinese

I’ve been speak­ing pure Chinese for almost an entire week straight. Certain mus­cles in my tongue that I did­n’t know exist­ed are tired. People tell me they’re sur­prised at how good my Chinese is — not just in terms of pro­nun­ci­a­tion, but vocab­u­lary as well — and won­der how it’s pos­si­ble with­out any means of prac­tice. I can’t explain this myself, aside from a con­stant inter­est in learn­ing new terms, and a love of Chinese movies (although this is more of a love of Hong Kong, and Chinese movies are my sen­ti­men­tal way of revis­it­ing it). There are also some Chinese terms that have no English equiv­a­lent, and peo­ple are always shocked when I know them.

Somehow, I can switch between the lan­guages quick­ly when I’m here. I even catch myself count­ing in Chinese now, which they say is what reveals your moth­er tongue.

Our Own People

It’s been a relaxed exis­tence here. Aside from spend­ing time with my grand­ma when she’s awake, mak­ing sure she eats through­out the day, and the occa­sion­al vis­it to the hos­pi­tal, there’s no set sched­ule for any­thing. I’ve only been to this house a hand­ful of times in my life, but I feel remark­ably com­fort­able. There’s no for­mal need to sit at the din­ner table until every­one is fin­ished eat­ing. There’s no oblig­a­tion to talk to some­one. No one feels the need to enter­tain me. I can nap when I want. I can raid one of the three fridges when I wake up at night and can’t fall asleep. I can walk around in my paja­mas all day. I can dis­ap­pear for hours to write. Like we’re actu­al­ly fam­i­ly, even though I bare­ly see these peo­ple.

My grand­ma tells me feel at home because we’re “our own peo­ple” as it’s said in Chinese. Even though I always under­stood the expres­sion, I’ve nev­er real­ly felt it until now.