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Preface
- Hong Kong University Press, HKU
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Preface I have not always kept a diary, so many things I write depend on memories. I didn’t have an extraordinary life — no war, no famine, no earthquake, and so on. But I was born in an extraordinary city and grew up in another equally extraordinary one. These places shape my life; they continue to instil in me the kind of meditativeness so necessary for a literary life. Since I spent over twenty years as, in a way, “guest” of these two cities, feeling at home and also not at home has become a state of natural being. Now, I travel at least six times, usually more, a year, going from the place I work to the place I write; going from one conference to another; visiting one university lecture hall followed by another. Going back to Hong Kong now, I would feel no less a visitor than if I were going for a brief stay in Germany. Going back to the place I work from wherever I have been means the slow beginning of another departure. The first minutes of waking up in a city that is not one’s home bring surprise — (Why is the morning so bright? Where is the roar of traffic coming from?), as well as sweet familiarity — (Great, I am en route! Wonderful, I have to start negotiating different social relationships! Ah, what language should I use or can I use today?). This book is about British Hong Kong, as well as Portuguese Macau, two colonial outposts during the first two decades of my life. It’s also a record of uprootedness, of living through memories while experiencing the present intensely. I feel a strong urge to imitate Lawrence Durrell’s rapturous evocation of hot and teemingAlexandria when I write Pilgrimages: Memories of Colonial Macau and Hong Kong x about Macau, though I spent the majority of my youth in Hong Kong. Perhaps it’s because Macau, my birthplace, was exotic to me while Hong Kong was where I lived and wentto school. Perhaps I was grateful that the Portuguese government was willing to grant me citizenship while the British government treated most Hong Kong Chinese as second-class people, not worthy of a British passport. Or perhaps it’s because the Portuguese have lived in Macau for a much longer period of time than the British in Hong Kong, and the Iberian colonizers have assimilated the Chinese culture and vice versa, so that Macanese culture is distinctly Macanese, while in Hong Kong, the British kept aloof from the Chinese multitude and the Chinese culture. I have so much more affection for Portugal that when I visited the country, it felt like home, ridiculous as it might be — I could imagine living there. The rocky landscape of northern Portugal, the glimmering river leading out to the ocean, the heat in Lisboa that covers like a blanket, the blue and yellow tiles in the railway station — it was all familiar. It’s entirely appropriate, to my mind, to begin my journey back with my imaginedmother country. When I visited England (which w ould be appalled if I should call it my mother country), the first time in the 70s, the English people, the cabs, Buckingham Palace, the Mall, Harrods — all reinforced the belief that was inculcated in me since childhood that English culture was superior in a colonial way. England was exciting but also not my home country. Of course, I am not naïve enough to believe that I could integrate into Portuguese society and be accepted as a Portuguese. But emotionally and psychologically, it is much more congenial to me. Ultimately, this book is really about the two cities, separated from each other by the Pearl River Delta, during the last decades of colonial culture when I was growing up, and only incidentally, about me. Much could have changed since the time of writing. Such is the dynamic nature of Hong Kong, and to a lesser degree, Macau. ...