Pilgrimages: Memories of Colonial Macau and Hong Kong

To Write, To Travel

To Write, To Travel 129 To Write, To Travel Pilgrimages: Memories of Colonial Macau and Hong Kong 130 Writing and Travelling It can be said that I spent the first twenty years of my life — or at least the major part of these twenty years — w anting to be a different person. I didn’t want to live in Hong Kong. I didn’t like being Chinese. I couldn’t imagine myself becoming established and growing old in this city. I couldn’t get along with my mother and didn’t really want to have much to do with any of the many relatives on both sides of the family. Even good friends disappointed me in that, though they received the same education, read the same books, attended the same lectures, and lived in the same cities, they didn’t develop any of these symptoms. Colonial cultures didn’t seem to affect them. I was the odd person out. In reviewing my early life, I try to see my memories from the perspective of this perpetually sullen teenager within the context of the kind of life I led — a constant pattern of conflicting cultural information and an intelligent awareness that outstripped the conventional guidance that was available to me. I think the fictional character I related to most was Paul Morel in D.H. Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers, although my father was not a violent man of the working class. And although young Morel doesn’t want to become an East Asian! (I can quite see, as an adult, that of course my mother could not explain to me the contradictions in my upbringing. I must be proud of my Chinese heritage; but I must learn to think like a Westerner. I could spend all my time at the convent; but I could not develop any non-Chinese friendship. I could imbibe the ideologies of the Catholic Church and American democracy; but I must always honour the Confucianist ethos. Even now, I can find life confusing.) This childish desire to be someone else and to be somewhere else seemed to have nurtured in me a genuine fever to be on the move, counterbalanced by the need to have the security of a home. (Nothing speaks of this paradoxical state of mind better than someone who travels and moves a lot with thousands of books as part of her possession.) I have since lived a peripatetic life, both in reality and in my mind.As a child, I wanted to leave Hong Kong. Regular visits to Macau were not enough. For two decades, I lived in Vancouver and had moved home To Write, To Travel 131 twelve times, thus fulfilling a childhood dream in many ways — acquiring a university education, immersing in Western culture, living in interesting accommodations, spending money on books. Now I teach in southern Alberta and have a home there. I travel to Vancouver every long weekend, Christmas, and the summer months. I take my laptop and files with me when I stay for a longer period, so that I continue my research and writing wherever I am. I travel to Asia and Europe to give papers at conferences and to research. Once in a rare while I would take a holiday that did not involve giving a paper at an academic conference. As I get older, each trip becomes more tiring. Flying has lost its glamour. The long duration going anywhere has become tedious. But each time after I have unpacked, I would start planning the next trip. To keep travelling seems to be an important w ay to affirm my own existence. The waiting lounge of any airport is a comforting space. If I am not travelling to remind myself of who I am, or am not, then I do it through writing. Writing is not only essential to my profession. It sustains my imagination. I don’t mean imagination as in fiction writing, but imagination as a person who participates intellectually in society, who absorbs ideas and processes experiences. Mapping one’s life and retracing one’s existence have various effects and serve several goals. As far as my project is concerned, writing is an analytical process; writing about my early years is a way to understand the person I am and am evolving to be. Unlike conventional autobiographies of earlier times, penned by great men (mainly) and occasionally women, my project...