In a Different Life by Sarena Tien
"It’s been nine years. Hong Kong hasn’t changed, but I have."
The cashier says something to me. I freeze as I try to process the words, but she spoke too quickly for my rudimentary language skills. Unlike with English and French, no one ever assumes that I’m not a native speaker of the language.
“I don’t speak Cantonese,” I finally say in English, as if admitting a terrible truth.
“Oh,” the cashier says, switching to English with an ease that I envy. “Do you need a plastic bag?”
“No thank you,” I say as I hand over the money, feeling even more like a tourist as I pull the bills out of one of several red envelopes of money that I’d received from my mom’s family and friends.
It’s been nine years. Hong Kong hasn’t changed, but I have. The last time I was here, I was twenty, still in college, with a brother and a father.
Despite my awkward interaction with the cashier, I’m grateful for the language barrier. Nobody asks what it’s like to be an unmoored sister without a brother, and I can’t confess that I’m relieved to be a daughter without a father.
But these losses aren’t visible, so in a way, I’ve been frozen in time with the city. Everyone thinks I’m the same age I was when I last visited. My mom’s friends all exclaim in Cantonese, “So tall!” upon seeing me, giving me whatever the opposite of a Napoleon complex is—until they ask how old I am and are shocked to hear I’m not 17, 18, or 19. I don’t know if they think it’s typical for teenagers to be a year away from graduating with a PhD.
The day after my mom and I arrived in Hong Kong, we went to visit my grandparents. I munched on snacks and texted my friends back home while my mom caught up with her parents in-person instead of over the phone. At some point, I gathered that they were talking about me, because to my mom’s family, I’ve always been mui mui or “little sister” in Cantonese. This time, though, the label felt like a lie creeping across my skin. I’ve spent more than two-thirds of my life as a little sister, but I’ve since aged past how old my brother was when he passed away. Mui mui is an identity is lost to time, buried with my brother in a cemetery in Virginia.
I didn’t know exactly what my grandparents were saying about me until my grandfather pulled out a photo album from beneath the coffee table. My mom, laughing, turned to me and said, “Gung gung said you is not look like 29.”
I scowled. It was like I’d somehow managed to de-age even though my cheeks have lost their baby fat and I wear glasses permanently now. They’re no longer just a shield from when I’d forgotten to put them on one day at work and a bald old man had told me that I had really pretty eyes—I can’t see faraway words and faces and details without them.
Still, it’s strange, getting a glimpse of what life could’ve been if I’d been born here. As my mom’s family and friends pay for everything—food, clothes, public transportation, and even gifts for my own friends back home in the US—I quickly learn to stop pointing at various foods and asking what they are because my oldest aunt immediately buys them for me. She only somewhat assuages my guilt when she tells me in Mandarin, “Order whatever you want. America doesn’t have good food, right?”
If I’d grown up here in Hong Kong, I probably wouldn’t have had to worry about money. As the only girl among my brother and four cousins, I also would’ve been spoiled. My oldest aunt had already tried giving me several of her bracelets, only to mutter in bewilderment, “Why are you so small?” because I have child-sized wrists that defy one-size-fits-all jewelry.
But I don’t know if a life here in this bustling island city is one that I would’ve liked or even wanted. Sure, I wouldn’t have had to grow up second-generation or low-income, but without any of those foundational experiences, I have no idea if I’d be the same person today.
As an Asian American woman, the intersections of racism and sexism have shaped me in indelible ways. I move through life with a lot of rage and salt and distrust, which can be alternately energizing and exhausting. I’ve experienced violence that I wish I could forget. I’ve been called slurs, stalked, and fetishized by men who view me as an exotic land to colonize (“Once I had Japanese conquest”), by men who are old enough to be my father (“Asiatic girls, they have one feature. Face always looks young”), by men who have not been told “no” often enough (“You have a boyfriend? Can I give you my number?”). But I’ve also made lifelong friends who understand or share my anger, who are as constant and comforting as the weight of the watch on my wrist.
In Hong Kong, however, I wouldn’t even have known what a model minority or an Asian fetish were. I would’ve grown up surrounded by people who looked like me. In fact, as part of the majority, I would’ve benefited from racism. Worse, I might even have been complicit in perpetuating it. Hong Kong has a huge colorism endemic, exploiting Southeast Asian and Muslim women from countries like Indonesia and the Philippines as underpaid domestic workers and nannies.
The prejudice against dark-skinned Asians is so prolific that I’ve been nicknamed xiǎo hēitóu—literally, “little dark head,” or metaphorically, “little dark child” because I tan very easily. In the US, umbrellas are almost universally used for protection against the rain, but here in Hong Kong, women also use umbrellas as protection against the sun. When my aunts take my mom and me to Cheung Chau Island, they repeatedly ask, “Where’s your umbrella?” either unaware or unfazed by how annoying it is to have to balance or close an umbrella every time you want to take photos of the scenery. Eventually, I pull it out of my backpack, but only because it provides respite from a sun so relentless, half our lunch consists of ice cream. At the beach, I learn to sift through the sand one-handed, pocketing porcelain, shells, and sea glass in my swim shorts.
If only languages were as easy to stash away. My mom accompanies me to the hair salon to serve as my translator, only to have the hairdresser ask, “Why doesn’t she speak Cantonese? Is her father American?” People who didn’t grow up as second-generation immigrants can’t imagine life in a colonial country where maintained monolingualism is used as an assimilation strategy, where people of color are shamed for speaking a language that isn’t the dominant tongue. When I was little, my “l”s sounded like “n”s, and today, words like “linoleum” and “colonialism” are still tongue twisters despite the fact that I’d long ago abandoned my mother tongue for a pristine American English, unsullied by bilingualism and stripped of an accent’s musicality. Mandarin became a lingering legacy, and Cantonese wasn’t even in the picture, as my father didn’t speak it.
Had I been fluent in Cantonese and English, I wonder if I’d ever have turned to French. In Hong Kong, nobody would’ve asked where I was really from, much less attempted to flirt with me by guessing my ethnicity. Or maybe, given that Hong Kong had been a British colony, choosing to learn French still would’ve been an act of resistance against learning English as my country’s colonial language.
At the Hong Kong Palace Museum, I stand next to my mom, trying to look as innocent as possible while the lady at the ticket window glances between me and my Cornell student ID. According to the sign, full-time students can get discounted tickets, but nothing specifies whether international or graduate students are included in that category.
“She studies in America,” my mom volunteers.
I don’t say anything—partly because I don’t know how to say “yes” in Cantonese, partly because any Cantonese I do say would give me away as a foreigner—and instead offer a disarming smile, hoping the fact that everyone has so far mistaken me for an eighteen-year-old works in my favor.
It does. The lady nods, handing my ID back to my mom and prints out discounted tickets for both of us, one for a student and one for a senior.
While my mom didn’t technically lie, a half-truth was also the only explanation she could offer. She could’ve said that I was American, which is true according to my passport, but that clarification excludes the other half of my identity, the part of me that doesn’t know the English names for certain vegetables and dishes, the part of me that America tries so viscerally to render invisible while paradoxically subjecting to hypervisibility.
As my mom and I head toward the museum’s entrance, I fiddle with the bracelet around my wrist. Even though I resemble the majority of Hong Kong’s population, I don’t fit in here either, and that’s okay. My oldest aunt had already given up trying to find a bracelet that didn’t fall off my hand and had instead handed me jade beads and elastic string so that I could make my own.
Sarena Tien is a queer Chinese American writer and feminist. Once upon a time, she used to be so shy that two teachers once argued whether she was a “low talker” or “no talker,” but she’s since learned how to scream. Her poetry and prose have appeared in publications such as Bustle, The Rumpus, Snarl, and Sylvia, as well as anthologies such as Decoded Pride, Good for Her, and The Secrets We Keep. She holds a PhD in French Literature from Cornell University. She is on X (Twitter) @sarenete and Instagram @featheredhopes.