Thoughts of Zhong Guo, Middle Kingdom, China (2)

Zhong Guo, Kingdom, China

A few weeks ago, I went to China and fell in love with it and wanted to partake. Wanted so badly to go, see and learn. I made a huge decision for myself which was I wanted to move to Beijing. I started to talk to my friends about, I started making plans to move. But now I don’t. I am scared. I think if they can ban what I write, and that there are people in jail over there for doing exactly the same thing I am doing, and that even if I never ever write a word about my thoughts, I am not sure having them and maybe having it slip is not actually dangerous. I don’t know if I might not end up in jail or deported. China is China, we never know its whims, and without established courts, and rule of law, they can do what they want, whenever they want without much protection. I say all this because all I can think of in the last few days is how disappointed I am with China and how maybe I just don’t want to participate in this country anymore. It’s really hard.

And because I feel today I want to get out, maybe that for my own safety, for my own sanity that it’s better that I stick to what I always believed in. Which is someone with as strong political convictions about democracy, free speech and human rights should NEVER move to China, that I can’t actually live there.

We actually has a discussion about it in the comment box, and people sorta mentioned whether they thought if it was a good idea, and I was pretty adamant in convincing them that I was. Now, I think a bunch of semi-friends/strangers on the net, might know a thing or two about me that I didn’t know myself. Which is it’s not too smart when you have said as vocal things as I have about why my government needs to change on the internet to move across the border where they have every right to arrest you for doing the same thing.

I was confused then, my god am I confused now because truly, because I am at a juncture of life where its might be better for me to close a chapter in my life and move on somewhere else. I seem so stuck and have been for two years. Mostly it has everything to do with being sick with depression, and just not being completely functioning for so long. And that maybe since I always had the plan to live elsewhere again, that instead of starting over in Hong Kong, it’s better to take this “break” in my life and start somewhere else. I just didn’t know where.

Blessed with too many choices, I could be back in LA and join my family there, I could try New York and be with friends, I could join my family in Sydney, and well I could go to China and start a personal journey with my motherland.

It took so long for me to make that decision and when I made it, just after I made it, everything turned because of politics, because the big wide world had something to tell me.

And when I received a few emails from people who said, “They banned your site? Are you safe in Hong Kong?” Although I told them I was, I knew there is some truth in the matter, because as much as we in HK tries to fight to keep our free speech, it might not last forever, and when that happens, if that happens, it means policies can affect me in a very direct way.

I really do love my country in a way that I can’t describe. I actually feel tied to it, in ways that surprises people because I spent quite a lot of years abroad since I was a kid. It’s like a gwei mui like me should not be so tied to China at all. I should look west because I am so “western” much more so than the majority of people who have immigrated to other countries, partly for economic reasons, partly for lifestyle, partly political. They don’t have faith in China. Didn’t believe in “One Country, Two Systems” didn’t know what was to come. I didn’t either, but I wanted to come home. I really did, and I wanted to stay here.

Now I am not so sure…

And I know that if I leave and move back “west” it’s not going to be too hard a move. I don’t even have the language problem that most Chinese immigrants suffer when they move, I was never ghettoized the way many of the Chinese kids around me was. I wasn’t stuck in Moneterey Park, I wasn’t hanging out with the kids from Hong Kong either. Where ever I have landed, I have been able to slip right into the mainstream culture, although I would always choose to be with the alternative crowd. I just slipped into America without a problem, people wasn’t even sure if I wasn’t born there barred the English accent. People never really ever thought of me too much as a “foreigner.” If someone made an issue of me being from somewhere else, it was often me and not them.

And the truth is China will be a harder move. I would be far more a “foreigner” in China than I would be in Australia, than for sure if I was in the US. Once I remember speeding down the freeway, and I said to my friend, “Sometimes this place is home. It really feels like home.” And she said, “Well, that’s good because California loves having you here.” And her comment comes back up a lot of times because when I do get treated like I am not really Chinese, or not really from Hong Kong, because I spent my childhood in International Schools, because I speak Chinese with a bit of an accent, because I don’t act like someone who lived here all my life, I comfort myself with the knowledge that there is somewhere else that I know I can go back to where for the most part, people will treat me like I belong.

How many times did people say when I was in the US last year, “Will you just come back!” “We want you here.” “Look what that place did to you… you haven’t been happy. You were happy here. You can stay with me until you get your feet back on the ground.”

And how many times I say, “Yeah, I would love to, but I was born there, it’s my home.” “I just want to stay.” “What could I do in America? I mean, what I can say about Hong Kong is far more different, than what I can say about America. Here I am just another Asian-Amercan, there I am doing art for home.”

And I wanted to learn about China. I wanted to learn Chinese. I mean I really speak Cantonese fluently now. I really wanted to learn to speak mandarin fluently to really be able to read.

The Romantic Dream of My Chineseness.

But maybe I didn’t do if for so long, and hadn’t done it because my feelings on China is so mixed, even if I said otherwise. Because it doesn’t take a lot, my site being banned, the government once again, reminding us that Hong Kong is under that their control that makes me want to leave. Because since I was a kid, I was taught to fear that country. Hate the communists. They took away our land and our money, they turned China into an isolated place, they removed democracy, they killed the republic. One day I guess I will write about how I learnt those lessons, through my family, through those around me, and how that has always been the Hong Kong way of thinking, because most of the people here, all the “adults” in this city, escaped and cut ties with the mainland, and that’s why they are here. And you grow up learning that, and believing that, and no matter how “open” China is. We shouldn’t believe them.

But I guess like all the people without roots, they are curious. They want it too, and some will make that step and do something about it, and some will not. I make half a step and go back home. But I don’t make the full step and move to China. And just when I was ready, so I thought to do that. I realize maybe I am not. And maybe I don’t have to either. My mother thinks it’s a little nuts anyway, to want it so badly when she spent most of her life making sure that I am not stuck and I can go anywhere, and I don’t have to be tied to this city and this country at a time when it seemed the future was not here but out there.

I am not even that Chinese. If I could let you glimpse into some of the familial conversations I have with my more “Chinese” family members. I personally think they are crazy, and secretly (although I am now writing about it) think a whole load of Chinese culture is crap. The lack of personal freedoms, lack of individuality.. when my grandmother came back to Hong Kong for a visit, I met some of her family members. For the most part, amazingly cool people I like a lot. Found out where part of my personality is from, as I am much much more like the Yius than I am like the Shams and the Chans.

But when I found out some of my cousins, my age didn’t have a choice in what they studied, where they went to school, and until they were in their 20s before they could pick their clothes and their friends, I thanked god that I wasn’t raised that way. Some of the things about my culture is a little bit scary. The constant respect for the elders, the constant “yes” to authority, the fact a woman really should pick someone who can provide a good life rather than someone you get along with. Some ways they feel about relationships, sex, money, things, face. It all leaves me confused and frustrated. I am really not that Chinese and when I sit down and really think about it, I am probably chasing a completely romanticized dream or something that’s not even there.

When I was in New York, I finally confessed to my friend that maybe I haven’t been in a relationship for a while, or at least never really stick to one is that really I rather want to meet a Chinese boy and do that whole thing. And it hasn’t happened, much like my mom, dad, family, friends have all predicted. Too independent, too individual, too alternative. Not willing to make the sacrifices a good Chinese wife is willing to make (What they are, I am still trying to work out), and my friend said that at some point, maybe I should give up. I am letting good chances, with nice people slip just because they are not of the same race I am. It seems a little silly really, when I was raised by a white kiwi father anyway.

But I was adamant. “But if I marry out, my kids would never learn any Chinese culture! I can’t give it to them! I don’t know it myself! I don’t even hold my chopsticks properly! You hold them better than me!”

And she thought about it and went, “But, you’re the one who is always saying that you are so lucky, you had all these chances and choices in life that you would not have if you were raised in a traditional Chinese family! And you are saying you want your kids to live that? You don’t even want it!”

When she said that I knew she was right. I don’t really want it. Part of me hates it. It makes me mad when I see some of my friends suffer under it. Not all, as any culture or society there is a range, but some. Sometimes I just sit in confusion at some of the decisions or ideas some of the people around me choose or have. I simply do not understand why they cling on, sometimes it actually grates, sometimes, it drives me crazy, and I want to tell them it’s time to join the modern world and it’s 2004.

And that if I hear “It’s just Chinese culture” I have to truly hold my temper because I don’t particularly care its Chinese, I know it’s just an excuse to refute change and I just think that particular thing we are talking about is absolute shit. I don’t care where it’s from and why it is, it’s just stupid to me. And sometimes I feel that about western culture too, I think that of fundamental Christianity/Muslim, I think that of a lot of things. It’s just a waste of time, and we can do away with those old fashioned ideas, and then therefore it seems crazy that I hold the idea of “Chineseness” to such an ideal.

Sorta like (as Nevin said) XXXX with Chinese characteristics, our government so likes throwing out. XXXX stands for “Freedom” “Free Speech” “Democracy,” and “Chinese Characteristics” Stands for, “Not Quite like You Thought Eh?”

The way I see it is. “Not Freedom” “Not Free Speech” “Not Democracy”

The Chinese Characteristics Part is just a front.

So I know. I know deep down I am searching for something that would only mean not all the things I care about. That is actually fundamentally at odds with my basic belief system. The Hyper-Chinese likes to think it’s “western,” I found the western people I know often find it just “Edgy” or “Different.” And it took a long time to convince my friends in Hong Kong that I wasn’t “just western” anyway, I was a bit of a left wing, liberal “whacko” in the US too. I was always on the sidelines of the spectrum, and not mainstream in any way. They sorta understand that now. It’s about time I accepted it too.

China. I love it because it’s where I am from. Chinese culture, I admire it because it’s what I don’t have.

My Search?

I don’t know…

PS: Thoughts on Zhong Guo, Middle Kingdom, China (1)