Yearly Archives: 2009

Five Year Timestamp

People here say I’ve changed.

Me and grandma

It’s been five years, and my grand­ma used to describe me all the time as “seun”, a Cantonese word for “pure, clean, unmixed”. But when I arrived last week, she said she would­n’t rec­og­nize me if she saw me on the street.

They used to say I looked like Leon Lai.

Leon Lai

Yeah, this guy. Now they’ll con­cede that I’m bet­ter look­ing than my dad.

People notice the white hair and say I used to have a baby face. That I’m old­er. Or more mature.

It’s true that I feel com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent than the per­son I was five years ago. I tend to reflect and eval­u­ate on a dai­ly basis (which is far too often) so I nev­er get a sense of any long term changes.

But now that I’m in Hong Kong again, and I look back on the per­son I was the last time I was here, I see the changes much more dras­ti­cal­ly.

It’s reflect­ed in ways that I’m not accus­tomed to notic­ing. Not just in the way I see the world, but from the way I han­dle things. The way I speak with those old­er than me. My inter­ests in what they have to say. I did­n’t even start work­ing yet the last time I vis­it­ed.

But at the core, I’m still the same per­son. The same morals, the same log­ic, the same intel­lect. It seems like it’s only the way these core traits man­i­fest them­selves that has changed, most like­ly from the things I’ve been through.

Five years is a long time to be so blind to these changes.

It’s quite sur­pris­ing.

Here, Scared

Grandma’s at the hos­pi­tal. She woke up this morn­ing with pain all over her body, but more severe­ly in her low­er abdomen. They quick­ly drove her to the doc­tor, and it turns out there’s been a block­age in her colon. This after­noon they per­formed a pro­ce­dure to expand the colon, and it went through with­out any com­pli­ca­tions. She’s rest­ing at the hos­pi­tal for the night, and my fam­i­ly is tak­ing shifts to stay with her.

I’ve been stuck at home all day. Everyone else has been at the hos­pi­tal and they decid­ed to leave me behind. I’m on immune sup­press­ing med­ica­tions and the hos­pi­tal is full of germs; get­ting sick myself is the last thing I need, espe­cial­ly when it means that I would­n’t be able to see my grand­ma, as her immune sys­tem is even low­er than mine right now. I would only be in the way if I was there any­way.

I’m scared. I’ve nev­er dealt with any kind of sick­ness like this before. The only peo­ple in my fam­i­ly who have passed away were always far away in Hong Kong.

And now I’m here.

A Day in the Hong Kong Life

Crossing the street

Thumbnail: Dad with sum sum
Thumbnail: Chinese entranceway shrine
Thumbnail: Grandma at tea
Thumbnail: Indoor skating rink
Thumbnail: Skater
Thumbnail: Kid on motorcycle
Thumbnail: Hong Kong mall
Thumbnail: Row of Mercedes
Thumbnail: Open kitchen
Thumbnail: Grandma with aunt
 

Grandma has been han­dling the chemo well. We’re try­ing to slow the growth of the major tumor so that there are no block­ages. She’s not sup­posed to eat meat, but we want her to enjoy life (along with the fact that we’re glad she’s eat­ing at all because she has no appetite) so we let her.

Most days are unplanned, just see­ing how she’s feel­ing before we decide to do any­thing.

I’m begin­ning to sleep a lit­tle bet­ter now. For the first week and a half, I’d still wake up in the mid­dle of the night, unable to fall asleep again even though I’d be com­plete­ly exhaust­ed from jet lag and walk­ing around all day. I’m not sure if I’m just get­ting used to the day/night pat­tern, or the fact that I’m taper­ing off one of my col­i­tis med­ica­tions which has sleep­less­ness as one of the side effects.

So the cur­rent sched­ule is:

  • Wake up around 7:30
  • Eat break­fast
  • Watch TV with grand­ma
  • Fall asleep on the couch — The win­dows are left open all the time and the air is rel­a­tive­ly cool in the morn­ing, so i’ll just let myself suc­cumb to the breeze and drowsi­ness. Normally I need to be lying down, wear­ing a sleep mask, but not in this case. These naps are awe­some.
  • Eat lunch
  • An activ­i­ty with grand­ma if she’s feel­ing up to it — this can be a walk to the park, get­ting her hair done and her feet mas­saged, or a walk to a restau­rant
  • Afternoon tea — Snacks can be sweet, salty, or both
  • A chance to write, work on pic­tures, or edit videos because grand­ma takes a nap
  • Have din­ner
  • Hang out with guests/family
  • Watch TV — There are two shows that seem to be big right now that my fam­i­ly enjoys watch­ing; an under­cov­er cop tele­vi­sion dra­ma, and a Chinese fan­ta­sy called “Big Winter Melon”. I’m real­ly get­ting into the for­mer because it’s well writ­ten with lots of inten­si­ty (although the direct­ing style is so out-dat­ed by Hollywood stan­dards). The lat­ter is anoth­er story…I’ve tried watch­ing a few episodes and still can’t fig­ure out what’s going on, or even if it’s a com­e­dy or dra­ma.
  • Shower (a nice way to cool off before going to bed)
  • Some more writ­ing while every­one is asleep.

It’s been an end­less cycle of peo­ple com­ing through the house, whether it’s fam­i­ly or friends, din­ner or tea, a chat or a vis­it. Spending time with them leaves me some­what lack­adaisi­cal. I don’t want to be anti-social and get up to do some­thing else, but I’m rarely involved in any of the con­ver­sa­tions, and the top­ics are often vapid.

Unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to hang out with my Uncle Joe much because I’m try­ing spend as much time with grand­ma as pos­si­ble, but next week should offer a bet­ter oppor­tu­ni­ty. I hope to do more explor­ing then.

It’s cer­tain­ly a bit­ter­sweet exis­tence here. Being in Hong Kong again fills me with won­der, but see­ing my poor grand­moth­er going through so much breaks my heart.

Wong Tai Sin Temple

As a Taoist, I felt it was only nat­ur­al that I vis­it the most famous Taoist tem­ple in Hong Kong while here.

Maybe I was being naïve, but I was pic­tur­ing some­thing like Washington Square Park, except instead of chess board tables, there would be peo­ple sit­ting around, dis­cussing Chuang Tzu’s para­bles, or spright­ly con­ver­sa­tions about the hap­pi­ness of fish. Instead, it was more like a gigan­tic for­tune-telling, wish­ing well extrav­a­gan­za. People go there to wor­ship Taoist deities by burn­ing incense, pray­ing to them for their wish­es to come true, and have their for­tunes told through the prac­tice of kau cim, which is when they shake a con­tain­er full of bam­boo sticks until one falls out, and the char­ac­ter on the stick is inter­pret­ed by a sooth­say­er1.

It amazes me how vast­ly dif­fer­ent the Taoist phi­los­o­phy is from the reli­gion. I could­n’t relate to any of this at all. The Taoists here are try­ing to get a hol­i­day — on Lau Tzu’s birth­day, if I under­stand cor­rect­ly — because oth­er reli­gions get a day off. This strikes me as some­what strange, since Lao Tzu is still dis­put­ed to be a myth­i­cal fig­ure, with an unknown date of birth. I also have to won­der if Lao Tzu would approve of such a rit­u­al.

At one point, there was an old lady wor­ship­ing at the entrance of a build­ing, and a woman came out and said, “Ma’am, this is the infor­ma­tion booth. You don’t need to wor­ship us.” My uncle and I could­n’t stop laugh­ing.

(This was a qui­et day in the mid­dle of the after­noon. Apparently, on spe­cial days of the Chinese lunar cal­en­dar, it’s packed, and the incense smoke too thick to breathe. Superstition has always been a part of the Chinese cul­ture.)

  1. That’s the part of the video where the peo­ple are kneel­ing, and you can hear the bam­boo shak­ers. It’s a short clip because I was­n’t allowed to film there. [↩]

The Usual Comments And Questions

Pretty much every­one I’ve met so far has said one or more of the fol­low­ing things to me:

You have a lot of white hair. They see it main­ly in the sides of my head, where it’s short­er and more obvi­ous. It seems like most peo­ple in my fam­i­ly dye their hair black, so my grey stands out, even though I’m youngest.

Are you dat­ing any­one? This is usu­al­ly fol­lowed by, “Are there any girls are after you?”, which is a sort of way of fig­ur­ing out if you want to date, or just don’t have the option.

Is your Tai Chi teacher white? Except instead of white, it’s “guai” or “ghost”. This is the only ques­tion I resent, because I feel like I have to defend the fact that he’s a com­pe­tent teacher, even though he’s a “for­eign­er”.

You’re a hand­some boy. The word for hand­some in Chinese — “leng” — is the same word for pret­ty when applied to girls. This one is good. I like this one. More peo­ple need to say this to me.

Aren’t you cold? It’s get­ting very hot and some­what mug­gy, so I’m wear­ing as lit­tle cloth­ing as pos­si­ble. This is in con­trast to every­one else, who are still wear­ing scarves and coats.

Do your tat­toos come off? Although the lit­er­al trans­la­tion is more like “Do your tat­toos wipe off?”. Many peo­ple here don’t know how tat­toos work, which is under­stand­able, since they’re so uncom­mon. Related to this is, “Did you draw it your­self?”. This ques­tion sur­pris­es me, because the char­ac­ter was drawn by arguably the most famous Chinese cal­lig­ra­ph­er, Yan Zhenqing, and is so beau­ti­ful and per­fect and far beyond some­thing that I could have done myself.