Okay, I was talking to someone just now, and I realized when I said, “I don’t know any of those people who came to this site and then went else where and talked shit about me.”
No one understands.
Let me put it to you again:
I. Don’t. Know. Any. Of. Them.
NONE. I exchanged emails with one of them a few times six months ago, and then went on my happy way and never visited a Hong Kong blog again until like I found I was linked to people I didn’t know three weeks ago. I didn’t really bother to read much. I just passed on the invite coz I thought it was sweet. I left a few comments here and there and that was that.
Next thing I know. I am being insulted pretty disgustingly by people I never heard off. Beauty! Last time I ranted against a fellow blogger in my last community I called him a purveyor of child porn because that link he was sending people to was of an underage girl. I didn’t get a single comment. Not one!
Are we getting it yet?
See why I am furious??
I wasn’t some girl on the edges of the HK blog world.
I didn’t even exist in this neighbourhood.
When I got all those emails from readers and bloggers, the first day or two I had to ask “Can you tell me something about who are these people having so many comments about me are? Coz I have no idea.”
I now I have been schooled and explained this thing a whole lot more, I know I wouldn’t have enough to say to last through a dinner without excusing myself for the most part. And it pisses me off that people even think I have any kind of association with them, coz I would be damned to have friends like that. They were STRANGERS to me and they will remain STRANGERS to me forever.
And it’s not like I am dying to hang out with the expat world even in real life. I am not one of those girls you see in Lan Kwai Fong looking for that boyfriend, and go around saying, “Oh, I just like to hang out with foreigners coz they are more fun, and open minded.” I just like who I like and I don’t have to say things like, “Local Born Chinese” when I refer to people I love as a badge of honour.
Yeah. I am still mad. I will be mad for a hell of a long time afterwards too. And this has always been the place for me to vent my anger, where I write down what’s bothering me and this is going to be no exception. I am not even so overtly mad at what happened here, but at what other people said on the other blogs, coz they are all cowards to continue a fight where they know that they are safe -fight behind your own line of defense. Pathetic.
I am sorry for the few people who gets lumped into this because they are also a HK bloggers. But they know I like their stuff and is someone I get along with at least on the internet and that our writings have something in common and that’s why I linked to them in the first place.
I was always part of a much huger alternative, anti-government, anti-authority, anti-corporations, anti-dominant culture space. There I was a little voice from HK but pretty much ranted about the same things. You would think that it’s like a huge poster sign that reads “THIS BLOG IS PART OF THE ALTERNATIVE, PROGRESSIVE UNIVERSE” when I have a little girl holding a teddy bear and a gun on my banner. You would think certain people will realize no matter how loud they shout, I will still stand by my convictions which is then again probably why they resorted to personal attacks..
So like. Someone please explain why I am grouped with these Republicans, Conservatives, and Centralist people on the internet? Although it doesn’t surprise me I piss them off and they feel this need to exert their loud mouth opinions on what I write and who I am? Coz like I don’t share anything with a lot of these people except maybe like a HK ID card? And by the way mine is PERMANENT and theirs are not? And I am at HOME and they are FOREIGNERS?
It’s not like they will be living here forever. They will come here make some money and go back to their home countries. It’s not like they are immigrants who have decided to make this place their permanent home and will retire here and die here and be buried here.
It’s like are they linking to me because it seems like they have more friends or something? Good, interesting writing is pretty devoid of boundaries I say. But that’s not why I am sitting in the sand pit of gossip, immature behavior and pompous attitudes. It’s coz I live in Hong Kong! I am not in a street gang, I don’t need hazing, don’t need to learn new rules coz I don’t want to join.
I am not here to tell foreigners about China, if you want to do that, go to living in China. I am here to put MY LIFE into the context of an alternative mind frame, and see it in a new way for myself. And maybe a book or a doctorate will come out of some of these ideas.
And I for the record now understand why so many professors were disappointed I gave up on academic life and how a few laughed in my face and said, “Yan you will be back,” even when I said, “Nah, I don’t think so.”
Now I know how right they were not only on hegemonic cultures, colonial mind space and behaviors, what it means to be a minority, a woman and of color. Coz I see it every day, they were right I can’t stand being in this world where thinking deeply is seen as a waste of time and being controversial is like a death wish.
And I keep this public coz there are other people all around the world, four to five times to those based in HK every day who come by and have been coming by for months, and they like to read what I write, and I know it would be ridiculous to shut it down on the accounts of a few idiots.
Days like this I wish my parents never put me in an English school so I have to write in this language and coz then I can go off and blog in Chinese like Hailey did. What were they thinking? Grrrr. I was only allowed two pages and it is up.
If I go on about this. You think people will get it in their heads finally, I am not impressed, and they should either think about who they think they are, learn to get out of a small pond or leave me alone forever more? I doubt it. That takes compassion, intelligence, and lack of ego. Yah. I live in la la land.
Yan Sham-Shackleton Online 