Opium, Parents, and Racists Sexist Gweilos.

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Stories of a Backpacking Addict, Global Transnational Identities

I took it off coz I went chicken. I am now reposting due to request from Kim from Toasted Kitten. (Thanks Kim, I need little nudges to be brave.)

I was thinking how I tried Opium on NYE of the millennium coz there wasn’t much to do in Laos, and how I just lolled around on the bed feeling, blissful, and I understood why the Brits were truly evil to sell this stuff to China, and how it literally could collapse a nation because if a certain number of people in a society smoked it, then forget any kind of functioning structure.

And how that’s why China burnt all of the British Opium which precipitated the Opium Wars which lead to Hong Kong being run by the British.

I never smoked it again, no matter how many people offered it to me out of some possibly misplaced cultural pride. It was like, this stuff was part of the reason China was humiliated by the Hegemony of the time which was Britain, and I shouldn’t do this.

I thought it was an interesting story but I couldn’t put it up because my parents read this.

Then I thought about how when I was really tiny, all I can practically remember is my mother and father fighting all the time, and how the nanny would have to come pick me up from the fray, and then one day, I woke up and there were movers and everything was packed and I had no idea what was going on. Seemed like me and mom was going to move to grandma’s and dad was going to stay. He told me he would join us later.

No one ever mentioned it again to me, so I spent the next 4 year of my life thinking daddy was going to join us, as I was only a kid and then at 7 my mom remarried and I realized that we weren’t going to go home again. And in the whole of those years no one actually bothered to explain it to me in a way I could understand, that it wasn’t going to happen, and how to this day, I think people are who feel marriage protects children coz it makes people try harder is misguided as it didn’t seem to stop anyone from leaving each other when I was a toddler.

And I thought I would like to write about that, but I can’t, coz I don’t want to upset my mom.

Then I wanted to write about how sick I am off the way these racists, sexist, homophobic expats in Hong Kong think they are so special because unlike all the losers in the small town they grew up in, they actually got off their ass and did something, and they think they are all that and real special and love to shove in down our throat.

And how some people like to put a blindfold on their eyes and say, “Oh, you’re being too sensitive,” because it freaks them out to have those things challenged because sooner or later it will get to their own racism, sexism, and homophobia. And how in order to mask it they will say, “Oh, not all expats are like that.” Well, NO SHIT. Not everyone is like that, but those who are, simply ARE. Deal with it, the world is full of racist, sexist, homophobic people, which is why it’s the mess we’re in and some of them own blogs!! Why does it surprise you?

And I thought, God, I can’t write that it will start a flame war because people who are racist, sexist and homophobic really really hate being called on it. Coz you know people who know they are not, simply know they aren’t being talked about, people like Shakey, Giles, and Doug. They didn’t even feel threatened because they knew it wasn’t them.

So then I thought.

Okay. So Glutter is supposed to talk about my life. It’s supposed to be the beginning of the book I am going to write. About all the things I have seen and done and what I learnt about the world in terms of culture and society and people.

Coz when you’ve been to something like over 40 countries in your life time, I think it’s fair to say that maybe I have a different perspective on things.

And I am a minority in terms of world voices. I am a woman of color, I am a Chinese woman, I am a woman, and Chinese, who lived under a colony, and then lived in an un-freed colony and I write in English..

But I can’t talk about it all without talking about the time I smoked Opium and it freaked me out, and I can’t talk about it without explaining why I ended up in the places I did, which had everything to do with divorce and remarriage, and I cannot, cannot discuss my life without talking about the racism and sexism I suffered much of my life from the people I went to school with, the teachers that taught me, all the while being in HONG KONG, my own home.

And then I realized why no one heard such voices before. I don’t think I am the only one who lived this life, I see it all around me, but maybe it’s really really hard to actually want to talk about it in public, coz you know not everyone thinks as you do, and that by writing about it, it’s going to hurt people you love, or embarrass people you prefer not to, or piss people off because they don’t like what you are saying. So it’s better not to say.

In that case, I might as well not do Glutter. I might as well not write. If I can’t get to the bits that make my life extra-ordinary, then what makes me different from the person on the next blog? They too have something in their lives that make theirs extra-ordinary, but I may never know because he or she is too busy being polite.

Fuck politeness.

I am just going to write. My life has been kind extraordinary sometimes, I find it so… I didn’t mean it to be…. that’s a lie.

That’s all I ever wanted. Since I was 11.

I wanted to live the craziest life I could live to the best of my abilities and then live to write about it all. Every mistake, every fun thing, every really great conversation was duly noted.

I only ever had one goal.

As Truman Capote once said after he exposed a whole bunch of not-so-nice things about his friends, “They knew I was writer, what did they think I was doing there?”

All Laos 1999-2000 Entries