Category Archives: read

Hong Kong as “the great Chinese experiment in freedom”

Posted by expatlingo in Hong Kong, read and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

“No one knows how long Hong Kong will exist, or how long it will prosper.”

This quote is from the 1950s, but it could have been said at many different points in Hong Kong’s history:

  • Upon its foundation as a British colony when it was unclear whether this sleepy backwater would ever amount to anything besides an “also-ran” to Portuguese Macau;
  • On the brink of Japanese invasion and occupation in World War II;
  • During negotiations in the 1980s over its return to China from Britain;
  • And now, as Hong Kong continues to feel the heavy influence of its reunification with the Mainland.

The South China Morning Post is full of articles highlighting the seemingly growing tension between Hong Kong and the Mainland. Hongkongers complain about Mainland Chinese coming to Hong Kong to buy basic necessities, luxury goods, and real estate (and recently slapped a tax on property purchases by non-local buyers to discourage this). Many Hongkongers were furious over a “National Education” program that they feared would whitewash Chinese history and wrongly alter the sympathies of the territory’s youth (and which was subsequently withdrawn). And there are fears by some over the continued independence of the judiciary.

Colonial-era flag waved at demonstrations.

Frustration over these issues has led to many protests including some that have included calls for Hong Kong independence and the waving of old colonial flags. I honestly can’t gauge how serious these independence sentiments are or how many Hongkongers feel this way. Waving old colonial flags seems, however, like a strategy for maximizing the impact of otherwise smallish protests that might have otherwise gone unnoticed.

And indeed they were noticed.

And they infuriated Mainland officials.

Some called for would be secessionists to leave “China” (and by that they mean Hong Kong as well). Some called the British colonial-period flag wavers traitors and seek increased anti-treason legislation. Some have even hinted at cutting off Hong Kong’s water supplies from the Mainland if an independence movement grew out of hand.

All a huge over-reaction that reveals how little Mainland officials understand people who are used to living in a society where rights to free speech are important, well-loved, and legally protected.

An overreaction that only further heightens Hongkongers’ fears over the future. Legal agreements at the time of the handover in 1997 stated that Hong Kong would be able to maintain its capitalist system and way of life for 50 years.

Hongkongers increasingly wonder what will happen in 2047 (in 35 years): “If a few silly flag wavers are enough to upset Big Brother, will there still be a free press? Will our nascent and partial democracy be allowed to continue? Will I be able to post drunk pictures of my friends on Facebook?”

There was a thoughtful op-ed in the South China Morning Post this week that reminded Hong Kong’s Chief Executive (considered rather sympathetic to the Mainland) that:

“[his] job is to protect our freedom to wave any flag.”

The author, Keane Shum, also made this on-the-mark statement:

“If Hong Kong was once the world’s laboratory for unbridled capitalism, we are now the great Chinese experiment in freedom.”

Let us hope it is a successful experiment.

*****

Sources:

For the initial quote at the top of the post: Steven Tsang, A Modern History of Hong Kong (2004) himself quoting a visiting British labour advisor in the 1950s.

For the quote on Hong Kong being “the great Chinese experiment in freedom: Keane Shum, “Leung’s job is to protect our freedom to wave any flag,” South China Morning Post, 7 November 2012.

See also, generally: Gary Cheung and Stuart Lau, “Love China or leave, Lu Ping tells Hong Kong’s would-be secessionists,” South China Morning Post, 1 November 2012.

For a quick and dirty history of the handover see this Wikipedia article, “Transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong.”

For a tongue-in-cheek overview of recent events see: Chip Tsao, Politically Incorrect: “My Firm No to Hong Kong Independence,” HK Magazine, Friday, November 9, 2012.

“Big in China”

Posted by expatlingo in China, read and tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

“We can spend the next three years in China,” she said. “Or we can spend them talking about kitchen renovation.”

This excerpt from “Big in China” rings true for me and probably many other expats: living abroad can be an exotic, inspirational and mind-opening break from the “real world.”

Alan Paul’s book “Big In China” relays his damn lucky Beijing adventure during which he went from begin a “trailing spouse” (his wife was the Wall Street Journal’s Beijing bureau chief) to heading up a popular blues band that toured China to large crowds. Few are so lucky to undergo such a transformation abroad, but his story underscores the point that unthinkable opportunities more frequently arise during expat life, especially in China where everything is growing and changing so swiftly.

And, of course, opportunities are even more common for those with a wealth of connections and a sweet expat financial package. Some readers–perhaps especially those teaching English in China for low wages–may resent tales of his very privileged “full expat package” existence:

“The very existence of places like the Riv ["The Rivera," a gated compound of villas] was news to me before we made that look-see visit. I had assumed we would be living in a small apartment in the city center, but we ended up with a house that was larger than our place in New Jersey.”

“The compound was simultaneously a non-Chinese bubble and a paradigm of Chinese living, with guards and street maids who kept the sidewalks and gutters clean with archaic twig brooms.”

This plush lifestyle paired with an environment rich in potential, is well captured by these quotes:

“It felt like a was winking at life and getting away with something. I was energized by the raw thrill of being enmeshed in two new worlds: Beijing and Expat Land.

“It was like living in a college dorm, but with kids and money.”

During my 3.5 years in Zhuhai, China, I certainly enjoyed a similar feeling of “getting away with something” by living the good life abroad. But, I have since been humbled by three years as an expat in the UK. Three years spent doing my own laundry, hunting for the rare babysitter, struggling to make close friends and living “normal life.” I can now appreciate even more clearly how uniquely privileged the expat life can be in some corners of the world.

Despite the privileged expat bubble that Paul lived in, his book is a fun read and many expats will find much to relate to.

Since finishing the book, I’ve wondered how he’s holding up back in New Jersey. They returned home for pragmatic reasons (his wife was offered a super job for the Wall Street Journal back home), but it was with evident sadness that the family left Beijing and the unique lifestyle they enjoyed there.

It’s very clear that Paul was glad to have followed his father’s advice when they were making the decision whether to accept the overseas assignment or not:

“You can’t say no to this.”

Here, here!

Alan Paul, “Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues, and Becoming a Star in Beijing,” 2011.

The Expat Dilemma: longing to be everywhere at once

Posted by expatlingo in expat life, read and tagged with , , , , , , , , , , ,

With each move, I find myself with a new home and a new future place to miss. I felt this especially intensely during weeks four-to-eight of our recent move to Hong Kong: I missed America, I missed mainland China, I missed England. I missed everyplace and wanted to be everywhere at once with friends and family that understand my jokes and at least pieces of my history.

Illustration from Arnold Lobel’s “Owl at Home.”

I was delighted to pick up a children’s book that addresses this same issue. I adore Arnold Lobel (and especially his “Frog and Toad” books for their keen observations and rather droll sense of humor). His book of (very) short stories, “Owl at Home,” includes”Upstairs and Downstairs,” which I deeply relate to as an expat:

When Owl was downstairs he said, “I wonder how my upstairs is?” When Owl was upstairs he said, “I wonder how my downstairs is getting along? I am always missing one place or the other.”

“There must be a way,” said Owl, “to be upstairs and to be downstairs at the same time.”

“Perhaps if I run very very fast, I can be in both places at once.”

***

“Faster, faster, faster!” cried Owl. Owl ran upstairs and downstairs all evening. But he could not be in both places at once.

“When I am up,” said Owl, I am not down. When I am down, I am not up. All I am is very tired!”

I need this message as much as the young readers this book is aimed at: enjoy the place you are at the moment because you can’t be everywhere at once.

And, since I am just back from a lovely weekend in Yellowstone National Park and have just relaxed through a great evening of fireworks, it is very easy to say that I am enjoying every moment of my American “home leave.”

Details on the book itself: Arnold Lobel, “Owl at Home”, 1975, HarperCollins Children’s Books; New York.

Sea shipment arrives: the awe of expat transitions

Posted by expatlingo in expat life, read and tagged with , , , , , , ,

It was (mostly) a joy to receive the 40 foot container full of our stuff this weekend. The house is filling up, there are more toys and books for the kids, and I’m writing this sitting on an actual couch.

But I also find these starkly marked transitions to be oddly melancholy: What will happen in the next “x” years? What will the day feel like when it’s all boxed up again? How old will we all be? Where will we be going? Seattle? Shanghai? Amsterdam? Around the corner?

Moving to a new country (relatively) frequently has forced me to notice and mark every change according to where we were/are: Wow, I bought this sweater back when we lived in Seattle. Hey, these clothes from Zhuhai work again now that I’m back in the semi-tropics. Did I really ride this bakfiets cargo bike every day only 8 weeks ago?

My beloved bakfiets

I’ve been slowly reading the novel “Sea of Poppies” by Amitav Ghosh. In talking about a group of migrant, indentured Indians traveling by sea to a far flung, foreign destination, he includes this description of their day of departure:

“… The long-planned-for rituals of departure were forgotten in the confusion, but strangely, this great outburst of activity became itself a kind of worship, not so much intended to achieve an end – their bundles and bojhas were so small and so many times packed and unpacked that there was not much to be done to them – but rather as an expression of awe, of the kind that might greet a divine revelation: for when a moment arrives that is so much feared and so long awaited, it perforates the veil of everyday expectation in such a way as to reveal the prodigious darkness of the unknown.”

The big, interesting question that these stark transitions force: What will be?

Expat blog love

Posted by expatlingo in read and tagged with , , ,

Chuffed to have been nominated for two blogging awards by two lovely follow bloggers!

Expat Alien nominated me for the Versatile Blogger Award. She writes about growing up as a “third culture kid” and has some wonderful posts about her expat experiences as a child and adult. She is working on a memoir that I look forward to reading one day.

中国Jumble kindly nominated me for the Liebster Award. She shares a lot of great photos and stories of her time spent living in China and bouncing around Asia.

Now it’s my turn to share seven things about myself:

1. When I was eight, I felt supremely cool when my family ventured out of Mazatlan, Mexico’s “Golden Zone” (i.e., the “safe tourist area”). We saw a butchered pig’s head! We saw food at a wet market! This trip was my first time on an airplane.

2. I was (am?) a lawyer and I don’t know what exactly I’ll do next. Never a law-firm lawyer, but more of a groovy public interest/international development lawyer. (i.e., the kind that makes a lot less money)

3. I am a statistics nerd who takes part-time classes via the Open University (in the UK and soon in Hong Kong too).

4. My parents married and divorced each other…twice… But since they originally married in the Mormon Temple, I think they are technically still “sealed for time and all eternity.” That will be awkward.

5. I use too many parentheticals.

6. My favorite movies are “Animal House” and “Lawrence of Arabia.”

7. My five-year-old daughter has celiac disease, which is manageable via a strict, life-long, gluten-free diet. This means no wheat, barely, rye or most oats. Sounds like it should be easy in Asia, right? All that rice. Except soy sauce, which is in everything, contains wheat. I blog about this aspect of my life over here at Gluten Free Kids Travel. (And, yes, five years ago, I was the jerk who thought that all these “funny eating requirements” were bogus. Ha! Joke was on me.)

And now (under the Versatile Blogger Award), I’m to “pass it on.” In addition, to the two great bloggers who nominated me, these are some funny expat women worth checking-out:

LostnChina This is such a funny blog about China, elderly Chinese-American parents, fashion mishaps, etc. I get giddy when I see there is a new post to read.

Expatially Mexico Another expat writing up funny stories of a life abroad: flooding condos, language snafus and talking your way out of traffic tickets.

Jadeluxe An expat stenographer living in Hong Kong’s New Territories. Loved her anniversary dinner pictures which noted Hong Kong’s “Earth Hour” failures.

Tales from Hebei What another funny woman? Who was that asshole male comedian who said women aren’t funny?

Outbound Mom Recently landed in Brazil and was crazy enough to let an unknown woman enter her condo last week and get a knife out of her kitchen drawer.

Ladies: I love you. Consider yourselves nominated, but don’t feel pressured to pass on the blog award love to others unless you’re in the mood. One nominating a few, times several iterations=blogging award pyramid scheme! 

Milestones in a foreign language: “I went from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly.”

Posted by expatlingo in languages, read and tagged with , , , , , , ,

David Sedaris, like the lovely Julia Child who I quoted last week, is another America who has spent stretches of time as an expat in France. For those who don’t know him, he’s a humorist/writer who revels in the dark and absurd aspects of his own life growing up in North Carolina, and living as an adult in New York City and France.

In “Me Talk Pretty One Day” he writes about his struggle to learn French.

On making the first wobbly steps in a new language:

“Things began to come together, and I went from speaking like an evil baby to speaking like a hillbilly. ‘Is them the thoughts of cows?’ I’d ask the butcher, pointing to the calves’ brains displayed in the front window. ‘I want me some lamb chops with handles on ‘em.’”

On the difficulty of memorizing the gender of nouns:

“I spent months searching for some secret code before I realized that common sense has nothing to do with it. …

‘What’s the trick to remembering that a sandwich is masculine? What qualities does it share with anyone in possession of a penis? I’ll tell myself that a sandwich is masculine because if left alone for a week or two, it will eventually grow a beard. This works until it’s time to order and I decide that because it sometimes loses its makeup, a sandwich is undoubtedly feminine.

“I just can’t manage to keep my stories straight. Hoping I might learn through repetition, I tried using gender in my everyday English. ‘Hi, guys,’ I’d say, opening a new box of paper clips, or ‘Hey, Hugh, have you seem by belt? I can’t find her anywhere.’ I invented personalities for the objects on my dresser and set them up on blind dates….”

Struggling to memorize Chinese characters has forced me into similar games. I’ve made up many, many silly stories to help me remember the meaning and pronunciation of characters. For example, this character:

means foundation or base. For me, the meaning was easy enough to remember, since it looks kind of like a structure balanced on a base, but I couldn’t remember the sound. So I looked at it a long time and came to convince myself that it also kind of looks like a guy being stabbed in the crotch with a sword. And, facing such pain, one thing he might scream is “ji!”

My brain is cluttered with all kinds of bizarre stories like this. Bizarre ones tend to have better “sticking power.”

But I still mix them up. For example, this character:

Is that a little tank bullying a man? And if so, what did that mean?

Julia Child: the ultimate reinvented “trailing spouse”

Posted by expatlingo in expat life, read and tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Julia Child, after a rather adventurous early life of her own, arrived in Paris as the expat wife of a U.S. Information Service officer. She only understood basic French and had minimal cooking ability, but she took advantage of her location and free time to completely reinvent herself.

Tall, gawky and with such an odd voice, Julia was an absolute master at making things happen. She must have been smart as a whip and as determined as hell. And she had to face the same woe of other serial expats: moving away from places she loved and sometimes ending up places she didn’t much like (all at the whim of an employer’s needs).

If you’re an expat–especially a “trailing spouse”–and haven’t read her biography, please pick it up immediately. It’s inspirational and a good laugh. A few gems:

On pre-arrival expectations:

“In Pasadena, California, where I was raised, France did not have a good reputation. My … father … liked to say that all Europeans, especially the French, were ‘dark’ and ‘dirty,’ although he’d never actually been to Europe and didn’t know any Frenchmen. … Furthermore, thanks to articles in Vogue and Hollywood spectaculars, I suspected that France was a nation of icky-picky people where the women were all dainty, exquisitely coiffed, nasty little creatures, the men all … dandies who twirled their mustaches, pinched girls, and schemed against American rubes.

“I was a six-foot–two-inch, thirty-six-year-old, rather loud and unserious Californian. The sight of France in my porthole was like a giant question mark.”

On expat cliques: 

“Paul and I were intent on meeting French people, but that was not as easy as one might think. For one thing Paris was crawling with Americans, most of them young, and they liked to cling together in great expat flocks.”

On the “rustic” charms/annoyances of some overseas accommodation:

“[The landlady's] taste dated to the last century, and the salon looked faintly ridiculous: decorated in Louis XVI style, it was high-ceilinged, with gray walls, four layers of gilded molding, inset panels, an ugly tapestry, thick curtains around one window, fake electric sconces, broken electrical switches, and weak light. …

“[In] the kitchen … there was a four-foot-squre shallow soapstone sink with no hot water. (We discovered we couldn’t use it in the winter, because the pipes ran along the outside of the building and froze up.)

“The building had no central heating and was as cold and damp as Lazarus’s tomb. Our breath came out in great puffs indoors. So, like true Parisians, we installed an ugly little potbellied stove in the salon and sealed ourselves off for the winter. We stoked that bloody stove all day, and it provided a faint trace of heat and a strong stench of coal gas.”

On the uncertainty of expat life:

“Our tenants had moved out of our Olive Avenue house in Washington, and the real-estate agent wanted to know if he should rent it again. We didn’t have an answer. Nor did anyone else in the U.S. government, apparently. It was maddening. Paul and I didn’t want to change our life pattern, nor did we fancy standing in the middle of the prairie with no options at all. So he began to agitate quietly behind the scenes. “I understand how government works,” Paul wrote his twin. “To the boys in Washington … I am just a body. If there is a slot in Rome, or Singapore, my body could be plunked there–or Zamboanga.”‘

“My Life in France,” Julia Child with Alex Prud’homme (2006). (If you need more convincing, read two gushing New York Times reviews here and here.)

“If it weren’t for the booze we should all go mad and kill each other”

Posted by expatlingo in expat life, read, travel and tagged with , , , , , ,

For the post title, I’ve taken slight liberties with a passage from George Orwell’s “Burmese Days“:

“It’s a tradition to booze together and swap meals and pretend to be friends, though we all hate each other like poison. Hanging together, we call it. It’s a political necessity. Of course drink is what keeps the machine going. We should all go mad and kill one another in a week if it weren’t for that. … Booze as the cement of empire.”

This is yet another dark quote on expat life from the novel’s 1920s English teak trader, Flory, who remains aloof in a very small, provincial expat community. (See here for another of his bleak, but foresightful, quotes.)

Very young me happy to be out of Utah, drinking beer somewhere in India.

I drink, but raised in rather dry Utah, it’s taken me years to see alcohol as a normal part of life. Expats drink a lot and seeing the quantities consumed has been eye-opening. But then again, do I mean expats generally, or British expats more particularly? I’m not sure myself.

Cheers! 干杯！

Disappointing hotel rooms and stone-throwing mobs: 19th Century China travel

Posted by expatlingo in China, read and tagged with , , , , , , ,

Isabella L Bird

Isabella L. Bird was a “traveller” in the biggest sense. She grew up rather sickly in England and found relief from her ennui through travel. In her book, “The Yangtze Valley and Beyond” (1900), she writes about one of her journeys through China.

If you can wade through her rather serious discussions on why British cotton doesn’t sell well in rural China, local methods for milling grain and missionary work, there are many interesting travel gems to be uncovered:

Disappointing hotel rooms: I had a good laugh upon realizing that even old-school adventurers can be disappointed by hotel rooms that don’t live up to expectations:

“… I got a room in a new inn which, though on the road-level on one side, was two stories above a winding stream and some undulating agricultural country on the other. On that side it actually had a window and a view. … I congratulated myself heartily on such unusually pleasant surroundings. This was premature. When the bustle of unpacking was over, noises all too familiar made me look through the chinks of the floor, and I saw that I was over a pig-sty the size of my room, inhabited by nine large, black sows.

“It was the only night of my journey on which I had no sleep. … for the groaning, grunting, routing and quarreling were incessant.”

Angry locals: The whole account of her journey is relatively amusing and droll, but then, you come to realize the real peril she is in, traveling through China during a time when foreigners are most definitely not welcome. There are multiple occasions when she is threatened by large crowds and one when she must be barricaded into a hotel for safety against a mob. Here is one particularly hair-raising incident:

“The crowd caught sight of my open chair, which, being a novelty, was an abomination, and fully two thousand men rushed down one shingle bank and up the other brandishing sticks and porters’ poles, yelling, hooting, crying “Foreign devil,” and “Child-eater,” telling the bearers to put the chair down. …Then there were stones thrown, ammunition being handy. Some hit the chair and bearers, and one knocked off my hat. The yells of “Foreign devil,” and “Foreign dog,” were tremendous. Volleys of stones hailed on the chair, and a big one hit me a severe blow at the back of my ear, knocking me forwards and stunning me.

“Be-dien said that I was insensible for ‘some time,’ during which a ‘reason talker’ harangued the crowd, saying it had done enough, and if it killed me, though I was only a woman, foreign soldiers would come and burn their houses and destroy their crops, and worse. This sapient reasoning had its effect. When I recovered my senses, the chair was set down in the midst of the crowd, which was still hooting and shouting, but no further violence was offered, and as the bearers carried me on, the crowd gradually thinned. I had a violent pain in my head, and the symptoms of concussion of the brain, and felt a mortifying inclination to cry. …”

The dark underbelly: She also very casually mentions in her narrative that she revived a young woman who had attempted suicide by opium overdose:

“…[A] young married woman had committed suicide with opium, and was lying apparently dead. In great fear of something–I know not what–the villagers appealed to me for remedies, which I succeeded in forcing down her throat, and also put plasters of hot vinegar and cayenne pepper behind her ears. … I had a bad quarter of an hour before she became conscious, for, had she died, the opium would have been acquitted, and the blame would have been laid on the foreigner. …”

Isabella L. Bird: I will think of you fondly the next time I’m tempted to gripe about smelly airplane loos, jet-lag or disappointing hotel rooms. Thank you for the perspective.

Piracy on the Hong Kong-Macau ferry

Posted by expatlingo in China, Hong Kong, Macau, read, travel and tagged with , , , , , , ,

A fraction of the Pearl River Delta's many islands: the perfect pirate hideaway.

After last week’s Austin Coates’ quote, I must also share his vivid reference to piracy in the Pearl River Delta:

“… [China's new post-civil war government] did at least one notable service: it stamped out the piracy which had been endemic for centuries in the waters around Hongkong. For the first time since 1364 there was security of travel in the waters. The river steamers plying between Hongkong and Macao took down their barbed wire and machine guns round the captain’s bridge; and it was no longer necessary for night passengers, as a protection for themselves and their valuables, to be locked into their cabins by the huge chains which used to encircle the cabin sections of the ships.” (From “Myself a Mandarin: Memoirs of a Special Magistrate”)

Active piracy in the waters around Hong Kong up until 1949? Machine gun defense off the captain’s bridge?

A world away from the hydrofoils that whizz back and forth between Hong Kong and Macau today, where mere sea sickness is the biggest risk.

Glamour shot of the Hong Kong-Macau Ferry. I can almost hear the "Miami Vice" soundtrack.

(“Myself a Mandarin: Memoirs of a Special Magistrate” by Austin Coates was originally published in 1968. My copy was published in 1980 by Heinemann Educational Books (Asia) Ltd.)