Being Eurasian: Memories Across Racial Divides

Chapter 5: Joyce Symons

5 !>฀I ฀ « >฀• ฀O ฀• ฀฀I ฀4฀ Joyce Symons Pre-War Hong Kong : The Like s of Us ' 'We must carry ourselves with colossal assurance and say "Look at us, the Eurasians' Just look How beautiful we are, more beautiful than either race alone More clever, more hardy The meeting of both cultures, the fusionof all that can become a world civilization Look at us, and envy us, you poor one-world people, riveted to your limitations We are the futureof the world Look at us "' (Han, [1952] 1992,230 ) Only I had the courage (or the foolishness)to scream against the generalcontempt for Eurasians, 'But we are the future'I stuck to my foolishness' (Han, 1980 , 314) They knew no homeland, dearer on distant view In these lone hills, unsung, unhonoured, unknown They sowed in blood that we in joy may reap (Law, 1998 ) L ooking at the Stars: Memoirs of Catherine JoyceSymons was published in 1996, a year before the handover, during a time when every bookstore in town was suddenly inundated with an abundance of books on Hong Kong, book s re-thinkin g Hon g Kong' s colonia l past , speculatin g o n it s Chinese future and questioning the notion of a Hong Kong identity. Looking at the Stars is very muc h a n individua l versio n o f th e commo n ques t fo r identity at this uncertain period in Hong Kong. Joyce Symons was born in Shanghai in 1918. She came to Hong Kong 46 Being Eurasian Memories Across Racial Divides when she was six years old. After being principal of Diocesan Girls' School for mor e tha n thre e decades , she retired i n 198 5 — a few month s afte r British Prim e Minister Margare t Thatcher signe d th e Sino-Bntish Join t Declaration in Beijing — to the quiet neighbourhood of Walton-on-Thames in England. Away from he r hecti c public career i n Hong Kong, Symon s embarked on what many public personages had done in their retirement — the autobiographical project. Retirement had not been easy for the extrovert Symons. When asked what it was like to retire, Symons says, 'It's like dying. Painful an d empty, but your heart tells you it is not the end' (1996, 90). Keenly conscious of the plethora of books on Hong Kong in the months leading u p t o th e changeove r o f sovereignty , sh e says , ' I hav e fel t i t unnecessary to add much to these works. But a number of people have been interested by my experiences and asked me to tell them stories of my life. So it is for them that I write now' (1996, 1). Her modestly self-effacing attributio n of her autobiographical impetu s to the request of her friends seems no more than a polite gesture. In reading through her personal narrative, we feel an impetus much more intense than a memoi r writte n a t th e reques t o f others. It seem s to originate fro m a heightened sens e o f isolatio n a s a Eurasian woman , a stubbornness t o continue agains t all odds, a desire to render her life-writin g a s a form of signature, a final imprin t on the world which had alternately appreciate d and rejected her. Writing becomes for her very much, as Amy Ling says of autobiography, an act of self-assertion, self-revelation an d self-preservatio n (Ling, 135). Adjusting her retirement from a bustling public career in the colony of Hong Kong to a lonely existence m an English suburb, her autobiographical project became a kind of reconnection through memory with that vibran t and pulsating past. It bridges the gap between who she once was (principal, JP, Unmelco, OBE, CBE, Honorary Doctorate) and who she is at the tim e of writing (retire e i n a quiet Englis h town) . Writing he r lif e help s th e autobiographer t o gain a more unified an d organized sense of self in thi s stocktaking exercise. The literary merit of memoirs written by public figures is often doubte d by scholars lik e Gusdorf, wh o says , 'as soon a s they hav e th e leisur e o f retirement or exile ... write in order to celebrate their deeds ... for posterity that otherwise is in...