Seven days in this body — 2 Jan Today, I re-read Minor Feelings: An Asian Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong. In it, she points out that Asian people can be both victims and perpetrators. The last part stings me. I am so full of people’s intolerance to me that I am entirely defensive about my people, whether that…

Saying an excited hello and an early goodbye — Tomorrow is my last Lunar New Year as a resident of Hong Kong. It feels quietly important, subtly monumental, like reaching the end of Gilmore Girls or turning 29. Some people do a lot of reflecting on the precipice of a new year. I’m sorry to say that I am…

Surnames matter when you’re an ethnic minority — The hallmark of my thirteenth year on earth was Sisqo’s Thong Song. Not for its lowbrow lyricism or its objectification of women — it was much more complex than that: the word thong rhymes with Kwong, which is my surname. Pre-pubescent teens may not know how to calculate Pi, but…

For those with a dual heritage, languages are about more than words — As a mixed-race person, I can just about find myself on Google. I see myself in articles and the odd documentary episode (still not enough, but that’s a bigger conversation). But as a mixed-race person who cannot speak both languages attached to both of my cultures, I’m nowhere to be…

For most mixed-race people, the pressure to adapt is real — At the end of last year, I went to see author Sreedhevi Iyer speak about her short story collection at the Hong Kong International Literary Festival. A member of the audience asked Iyer, an Indian-Malaysian-Australian writer, if she felt she behaved differently according to the different countries or cultures she…

In Hong Kong, my name is everywhere — and it makes me feel guilty. — In the winter of 2014, my sister and I took a photo of my dad posing under a street sign. We were visiting Hong Kong and after alighting the ferry on Hong Kong Island, we found ourselves stepping onto Man Kwong Street. It was one of the most brilliant things…

That time when I kept inadvertently swapping languages — In Hong Kong, as a learner of the native language, I spend a large portion of my time attempting to listen to (read: eavesdrop) and converse with locals in Cantonese. My goal is to, one day, be able to think in the language, rather than go through the rigmarole of…

It turns out, tattoos can’t give you what you need — When I was 18, I got my first tattoo. Perched on my left hip, where the fleshiness of the tummy starts to flatten over the pelvic muscle, is the Chinese character that means the word ‘half’. As in, half-Chinese. Get it? I had thought about getting this, what I deemed…

I’m in year 10 poetry class, and we’re discussing Sujata Bhatt’s Search For My Tongue. In it, she details her fear of losing the ability to speak in her native language, and struggles to see how the two languages she knows can co-exist in her brain. Just as we reach…