Nine dragons
of hong kong🇭🇰
the motherland
I’ve been strolling around Kowloon (九龍 / “nine dragons”) as my aunt & uncle share stories of our family. This was 婆婆 & 公公’s first apartment until we moved out in 1968. That is my old middle school. Here is where your mom tumbled out of the 2nd story window when she was three. I love it. Hong Kong isn’t my birth country. But it often feels like the motherland. I like wandering its streets, pasting together fragments of our history. I like drafting out the family tree, one data point at a time, meeting relatives one dimsum at a time.
a gallery
a lost language
Cantonese was my mother tongue. There are home videos of smol shang sisters bickering in canto, with cute accented english. But I lost it all. I’ve come to peace with it (jesus still loves me teehee). In any given conversation, I can either understand nearly everything, but my brain has no neuropathway to instruct my tongue to coherently reply with anything but the classic: sik tang, mm sik gong. Or I understand some adjectives. And zero important words. At best, I have the translation skills of a toddler.
So it was a shocking discovery that I was able to finesse my way through a family meal yesterday. My brother (whose translation skills are that of a plattered peking duck), complimented me afterwards. I’m surprised. You really can hold your own. The fam was impressed. Honestly, my brain was in fight-or-flight mode. But glad I can now confidently put on my résumé: terrible canto, terrific chinglish.
a doodle
I love canto food. Here are some childhood favorites I’ve been nomming.
be well, friends! 弟弟 and i attended a local church yesterday, and loved what the pastor declared as a charge over those being baptized: fight valiantly under the banner of christ. may we also do likewise this week.
love,
reb