Once Upon a Time There Have a Place Called Hong Kong

When I left Hong Kong in 2016, I wanted to write a love letter to the city. I wanted to wax poetically about the skyscrapers, the ocean, the jungle, the dim sum, the mountains, the cultural mishmash. But as I started typing, it felt wrong. The words were so sappy and my perspective felt too shallow. So much had already been said about this place, what could I add? 

Since then I have lived in three other cities and visited dozens of others while Hong Kong has come under existential attack. What once felt over-the-top now felt therapeutic, and the time away allowed me to offer a knowledgeable yet outsider perspective. With the intense protests beginning in 2019 followed by the pandemic, during which strict quarantine requirements for arrivals reaching as much as 21 days were enforced, Hong Kong became this far-off unreachable place where no one went in and only bad news came out. 

They finally dropped the quarantine in October 2022, and I returned in December. Though the intense Covid protocols had turned the airport into a medical site, the consistency of the city amazed me. That simple jingle of the MTR (subway) brought out a feeling of internal dissonance, as my soul struggled to reconcile how this MTR station had operated unchanged while I had changed so much, like when you return to your high school and see strange young faces doing what you used to do. Returning to find the city so resilient after several traumatic years and aware that the future may call for further resilience gave me some courage to at least put out that love letter.

I believe there are hundreds of cities in the world where residents who love their home can argue in good faith that they live in the best place on earth. When you get to know the nooks and crannies, the founding mythologies, the juicy political scandals, the hole-in-the-wall restaurants, the hidden walking paths, the generational stories of family-owned businesses, the cheapest happy hour deals and the best sunset view, you feel a sense of earned personal attachment. Each city has its own story that makes it like nowhere else.

Even given this caveat, Hong Kong objectively stakes a singular claim. It is a true creation of merging civilizations, the type of place that made the English language steal a word like entrepôt. Hong Kong has as complicated a colonial legacy as anywhere, but is unlike most former colonies where either the indigenous culture was dominated or dominates. In Hong Kong the colonized Chinese maintained an independent identity but English law, customs and know-how were thoroughly integrated. Many aspects of English rule, starting with its origins in the Opium Wars, remain despicable, but the small fishing settlements did soon transform into a major outpost for maritime trade. Not only did many more Chinese move in, but many whose ethnicities had left them essentially stateless - Armenians, Jews, Parsis alike - found a home in Hong Kong. Their legacy is largely forgotten today but remains in institutions and place names, like Kadoorie Hill, Mody Road, Chater House. Hong Kong was a place of all nations and no nation, a stateless city state.

Hong Kong retained geographic continuity with Cantonese culture, even after China became the People’s Republic of China and legal migration became limited. During the turbulent early years of the PRC, Hong Kong benefitted as a haven of relative stability and its population nearly tripled from 1.75 million in 1947 to 5 million by 1981, driven largely by migration from the mainland. The migrants found a capitalist society with a bustling harbour and accentuated it with industry and manufacturing. Aided by English rising to global lingua franca status, entrepreneurial people of many nations found their way to Hong Kong.

And so Hong Kong became this city of contradictions. Its cityscape inspired futurist films like Blade Runner, while its preservation of Buddhist rituals and Tin Hau temples make it a bastion of traditional Chinese culture. It’s a city where you can walk from a luxury mall allergic to blemishes directly into a filthy back alley with exposed pipes and chefs on their cigarette break. It’s a finance hub that still runs on cash. It’s a city operating at breakneck speed but filled with slow walkers. It runs on the most intuitive, efficient subway system but also a semi-lawless minibus with its own special jargon. It's filled with skyscrapers of steel and glass built using bamboo. It’s half concrete jungle, half actual jungle. It’s overwhelmingly cosmopolitan and also 95% Chinese. It can feel so global and simultaneously so parochial. It's a place where many people find freedom, despite not being particularly free.

Immersed amidst all those contradictions, living in Hong Kong is inescapably a love-hate relationship. The incessant fighting through crowds and the cost of the cramped housing gets to everyone, and these two struggles join forces when air conditioner condensation (aka building juice) drips over you on a Mong Kok sidewalk. Many Hong Kongers are fiercely pragmatic to the extent that dreams are not entertained. Sometimes it seems all people talk about is buying a flat. It is a society particularly glued to their phone, that loves the pre-packaged tour industry. And it's easy to walk into a dinner party where everyone works in finance and complains about their job.

New York has this belief that dreamers move there and non-believers move out - “if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.” However, for most born in Hong Kong, there’s really no moving to the 'burbs. Thus Hong Kong has to cater to everyone, including those who don't like the urban busyness as well as the elderly and disabled. Communities like Lamma Island and Sai Kung offer rural camaraderie just beyond the shadows of the skyscrapers, while top-notch facilities and a sense of community obligation make Hong Kong a good place to grow old.

After years I'm still amazed how much there is to do in Hong Kong. The skyline view from Tsim Sha Tsui Kowloon-side is the best in the world, matched possibly only by its reflection from the island-side. Central is a concentrated block of the fanciest shopping and offices mixed in with historical gardens, government buildings and prisons. There are kilometers of continuous elevated walkways through past Admiralty, even more kilometers of electric trams locals call the Ding Ding that somehow are still useful. There's a Times Square in Causeway Bay,  sketchy nightlife solicitation in Wan Chai, beach and market life in Stanley, artists working in warehouses in Aberdeen, a chill waterfront bar street in Sai Wan Ho and 100 trails from the Peak to Shek O. There's betting on weekly horse races in Happy Valley, and a jetfoil to Macau for even more intense gambling.  And that's just Hong Kong island! 

In Kowloon and the New Territories, collectively making up >90% of Hong Kong's total area, there might be 1,000 shops in the kilometer and a half between Yau Ma Tei and Prince Edward via Mong Kok. There's history and Thai food in Kowloon City, a Buddhist complex near Diamond Hill, and the former airport in Kai Tak that doubled as the endpoint of an aerial obstacle course. There's a street that sells goldfish, a street that sells toilet seats, one that sells dried seafood, one that sells kitchen tiles, one that sells elaborate funeral provisions, another that sells flowers and a bunch that sell electronics. There are scores of hiking trailheads accessible by public transit, and when it gets too hot and humid to hike, it's junk boat season. There are 10,000 Buddhas in the hills overlooking Sha Tin and the highest bar in the world in the ICC overlooking the whole city. There are African bistros, great South Asian food and the sketchiest backpacker stories all within the legendary Chungking Mansions. There are waterfalls and infinity pools hidden in the wilderness. And I can't even get started with the food for fear of salivating over my keyboard. Despite all this, swarms of tourists visit just for Disneyland.

For multinationals like me, Hong Kong was/is a dream city. Everyone could find bits of culture that made them comfortable and bits that piqued their curiosity. It was routine to attend at a large gathering where everyone had lived in multiple countries, where everyone spoke multiple languages. It never ceased to amaze me the range of people with whom Hong Kong resonated. The success and brilliance of Hong Kong was a celebration of internationalism itself, a celebration which has come under attack with the recent global rise of nationalism, a rise which has rendered Hong Kong a pawn in a much larger contest.

On my recent trip, I found in Tai Kok Tsui this graffiti saying "Once upon a time... There have a place called Hong Kong" from which I've taken the title for this post. I found it a simple and encapsulating work of sidewalk penmanship. Hong Kongers have never taken that their way of life for granted, aware that their city could be undone by political turmoil at any minute. Nor have they always written English with correct grammar. Once upon a time, there have a place called Hong Kong, and the world was better off for it.

Hong Kong 2019

I felt a little ridiculous walking with the face mask on, passing by people out walking their dogs on a bright, normal Sunday afternoon. It was only until I was in sight of other face masks and black shirts when I glanced around for hidden Chinese cameras, and quietly slipped on the face mask. In the middle of Astor Place, New York, I joined a crowd of 300 odd strangers, and started shouting slogans in Cantonese. Some of them I knew - others I pretended to know. Together we sang the new adopted Hong Kong anthem 願榮光歸香港. We all had to look up the lyrics, no one pretended to know. A bunch of speakers involved in the Hong Kong democracy movement spoke, headlined by Denise Ho, the singer turned activist banned in mainland China. She was in town for a concert the next day, and despite not knowing any of her songs, I bought a ticket right there. 

Her concert took place in Town Hall, a proper venue near Bryant Park capable of seating 1500.  That Monday night, roughly 600 Cantonese speakers occupied the hall.  The lights dimmed, but an awkward 5 minutes elapsed without anyone taking the stage. Then, a male voice pierced the nervous chitchat - "光復香港！" (Reclaim Hong Kong!) What might have been taken as a rude heckle was instead immediately responded by several hundred "時代革命!" (Revolution of our times) Then a female voice from the other side of the balcony shouted "五大訴求!" (Five demands) and the crowd enthusiastically shouted "缺一不可!" (Not one less). I joined in earnestly, having learned all the chants the previous day. As the spontaneous cheering echoed sporadically for several minutes, and I couldn't help but beam with delight.  Denise Ho finally came on stage and opened with Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind." There were several more 光復香港 calls throughout the night. When a guest Taiwanese pianist gave a speech of solidarity and then launched into 願榮光歸香港 on the keys, everyone immediately stood up and started singing. Here in this Hong Kong bubble on 43rd and 6th was this passionate, collective political energy in the air that I had never felt before - and I was at Obama's 2009 Inauguration.

*****
This is probably the hardest post I've ever written.  As someone with strong ties to Hong Kong, the United States, and mainland China, the protests in Hong Kong have pulled me in a number of directions. However, I've been trepidatious about expressing my feelings for several reasons. Firstly, I'm aware that this is not my fight - I haven't lived in Hong Kong in nearly 4 years, and I carry an American passport. I'm not on the ground, dealing with the tear gas and the train delays.  Though I've grown my Chinese vocabulary to include 林鄭下台，被捕，黑警察，騷亂，光復， 示威，變質，暴徒 and  屌你老尾大台, I still struggle to read the Chinese news which is often cycles ahead of the English news. Ultimately, though I am deeply personally invested, I recognize this is not my fight.

Secondarily, even the limited sentiments I've expressed on social media have received hatemail. Numerous mainland Chinese friends have thrown me uninformed arguments and distaste. Like many, my family is split, with aunts, uncles and parents on either side of the conflict. Even in this divided age in US politics, the vitriol surrounding Hong Kong protests had affected me to new levels.  It is so much easier to just ignore it all.

Furthermore, I know that not being on the ground divorces me from the realities of the conflict. My view of these protests would likely change if they'd caused me to miss a flight.  I don't intend this to be a referendum of the aims or tactics of the protesters, or the emotional clashes with the police. There's enough back and forth already out there and I don't want to get involved in that.

Lastly, scary anecdotes have convinced me that by putting this out in the web, there is a non-zero chance that I will be banned from entering China. Or thrown into a Chinese prison upon arrival. It's a very low chance, but at this day and age, non-zero. I still love China, and I very much don't want to spend the rest of my life not being able to return. I really would like to see 張家界 Zhang Jia Jie and 九寨溝 Jiu Zhai Gou.

Laurel Chor - Vice News

It's perhaps my love for China that's made me uneasy. In years past, I've mostly been irked by anti-China coverage in Western media - nearly every New York Times article about China shades away from conveying the requisite China context, and instead leads toward painting a skewed dystopian attention-grabbing picture. Whether it is understanding how little Chinese citizens worry about privacy or how poor the country was in the 1960s, I have occasionally found myself reluctantly playing the role of China apologist. Even the South Park episode "Band in China" that came out this week (and I very much enjoyed) bristled me at first - South Park seemed to be punching down.

My time in the mainland forced me to reckon with my stereotypes and I became more sympathetic to a lot of PRC perspectives. I do believe that too many "international" institutions are just Western institutions. I see clearly the hypocrisy steeped in many Western critiques of modern PRC policies, especially those in Africa. It infuriates me when Americans shame other countries while lacking perspective of their own imperialism and genocide. Discussions I've had with mainlanders have convinced me that democracy is not some magic political panacea to societal ills. Educational dogma blinds most Americans from being introspective about this. At a time when American and British democracy are legitimately failing, it is not a good time to preach.

And I definitely believe that the PRC should be proud of the 300+ million people lifted out of poverty. The high speed rails, the QR mobile payments, the skyscrapers, the wind turbines - these are all awesome achievements. Not to mention the karaoke, the food, the millennia of history. Nowadays Beijing/Shanghai boasts a quality of life that I find comparable to New York, and I seriously considered moving there this year. In addition, I have so much respect for the hardships that nearly ever PRC citizen has endured. From the migrant workers to Shenzhen who toil in the factories to the Gaokao survivors now overeducated and underemployed, most mainlanders are tough.

The injustices carried out by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) have hovered over us my whole life.  There is a cognitive dissonance to knowingly that this same government processing your visa is simultaneously repressing Tibetans and Uyghurs, performing forced abortions, and detaining political dissidents without trial. It's the sort of dissonance that one must maintain to have to stay sane and function in modern society. I don't believe that living in or working with China need be an endorsement of CCP policies.

With all those caveats out of the way, I intend to be very critical of the CCP, with a target audience of Americans without ties to China. I want to spread awareness of the protests in Hong Kong. I want people to be aware of their fundamental makeup promoting the will of the Hong Kong people and rejecting the CCP. I'm resigning myself to enraging many people.

The part that has surprised/infuriated me most is the angry and vocal reactions of mainlanders with no connection to Hong Kong. Seemingly apolitical acquaintances have suddenly come out and expressed outrage at Hong Kongers, whether or not the protests directly affect them. In Chinatown, NY in early August, protesting Hong Kongers were surrounded and outnumbered by people wearing red and waving the red and yellow flag. I had not thought that Chinese immigrants to the US would maintain this party line. Clearly I had underestimated the endurance and diffusion of the CCP-constructed nationalism. I did not engage directly with the counter protesters then, but there are two main anti-protest points that I would like to refute here.

The first is the quickfire accusation of "foreign interference." This shot, always unaccompanied by evidence, echoes the claims of "northern agitators" made by the segregationist Southerners during the Civil Rights movement. I could accuse these accusers of being agents of the CCP with just as much evidence. It's a lazy, and frankly offensive, point to dismiss the movement as artificial and take agency away from the Hong Kong protesters. Sure, there are many reasons for Western governments to root for unrest in Hong Kong, but this movement is very much homegrown. It's clear that these young activist leaders have done their homework, reading up on Gandhi, MLK, the Baltic Way and other non-violent movements. The demonstrations on the streets of Hong Kong were not drummed up in some US consulate boardroom - they matured in City U student group meetings in the 5 years since the Umbrella Revolution, exacerbated by the actions of Carrie Lam's government. The "foreign interference" accusation is mere willful ignorance of the true extent of the divide.

The second is even more offensive: the attack that Hong Kongers have been corrupted by "Britishness." Mainlanders claim colonial rule instilled an inferiority complex in Hong Kongers, making them ashamed of their Chinese heritage. The problem with that argument is that Hong Kong is not particularly British. Hong Kongers do not sip tea like the British, do not care about cricket, do not have panel shows, and do not cook bland food. While here is not the place to unpack the skewed social dynamics created by colonialism, the most important outcome of 150 years of British rule was not to make it more British. Rather it was to insulate Hong Kong from the Communist takeover and keep it a part of the global community. While mainland China was closing borders and smashing ancient treasures, Hong Kong was both competing with Taiwan to preserve "authentic" Chinese culture as well as welcoming international influence.  Alongside the British and Chinese,  Jews, Parsis, Armenians - with names like Sassoon, Mody and Catchick - helped shaped the city. They remain memorialized in street names and descendants.¹  In modernity, the notable influence of Indians, Nepalese, Filipinos, Indonesians, Singaporeans, Malaysians, Japanese, and Koreans amongst others distinguishes Hong Kong from any mainland city. It is the success of this international city with a Chinese backbone that most upsets the CCP, and thus they in turn try to spin this strength as a weakness.

Laurel Chor - Vice News

This has made me realize how integral unity is to the Chinese nationalism preached by the CCP. It is an insecure nationalism, one propped up by propaganda instead of naturally inspired. The refusal of the Hong Kong Chinese people to buy into this nationalism undermines its entire existence. CCP leadership must think, "Our country is so great now! Why don't you want to be part of it?" They legitimately cannot understand how after all the high speed rail and economic growth, why Hong Kongers don't want in. Especially after so many CCP officials suffered so much in their lives to not have freedom, they feel bitter at these spoiled Hong Kongers who haven't suffered so much and don't seem to understand patriotism.

The CCP only knows two ways to instill patriotism - propaganda and force. This is a party founded by a man who said "槍桿子裡面出政權 - Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." Winning the war of ideas, is not their modus operandi. It is one matter to get your citizens used to the cards they've been dealt, and quite another to get people to choose to give up their right to free speech. Chairman Xi and the CCP have chosen not to engage in this sort of debate. I see this Hong Kong protest not as a protest for Western systems, not as a protest against Chinese culture, not even as an expression of economic anxiety in a brutally unequal society - fundamentally this is a refute of the Chinese Communist Party and the ideals it stands for.

If the CCP really believed that Hong Kong was an inseparable part of China, then they should approach Hong Kong as partners. Instead of coming in with simplified characters and Mandarin speeches and treating the directorship of the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs office as a rotational bureaucrat role, they should allow Cantonese from Guangdong to handle affairs and emphasize the deep cultural ties. The actions of the CCP reveal their true beliefs: Hong Kong is not an inseparable part of China, Hong Kong is a subservient part of China.

Xi Jinping's CCP is not Mao's CCP or even Hu Jintao's CCP. Chairman Xi has stepped up the extreme nationalism and authoritarian oppression. Tibet and Xinjiang are not able to stand up to this CCP. Hong Kong is luckily in a better position, and should fight hardest, not just for her rights but also for the rights of Tibetans, Uyghurs and the more oppressed. Not only is it the moral approach, but it's the logical one - we are all fighting to allow for our identity in the Chinese nation. It is a fight against the CCP's iron-fisted approach at converting every citizen of the PRC into the same linguistic and cultural creature.

*****
I think I get why mainland Chinese are so worked up. In explaining Hong Kong's status to Americans, I have previously used Puerto Rico as an analogy. But a better analogy might be a situation where democrats won the presidency, and Texas tried to leave the nation. Liberals would be justifiably outraged. "Who do these Texans think they are?" Jurisprudentially, this is a terrible analogy, but it demonstrates the level of pride mainlanders have invested in this situation. "You are delusional to disagree with us. You cannot survive on your own."

****
This is an amalgamation of several conversations I've had recently in Mandarin with mainland Chinese (MC) immigrants in America, who don't think I look Chinese.
MC: 為什麼你會說普通話？Why do you speak Mandarin?
CAL: 因為我是中國人。Because I'm Chinese.
MC: 你不像中國人。 You don't look Chinese.
CAL: 可能你有道理。我是香港人。 I guess you're right. I'm a Hong Konger.
MC: 香港是中國不可分離的部分。Hong Kong is an inseparable part of China.
CAL: 所以我是中國人嗎？ So I'm Chinese, right?
MC: 但是你不像中國人。But you don't look Chinese.

I think this encapsulates what's so wrong with Chinese nationalism. Humans don't fall neatly into ethnic national buckets. You can't build a society by suppressing ethnic, religious and linguistic differences. You have to embrace our humanness because that's the basis we all share. That is what the Hong Kong protests are fundamentally about. It is about a vision of the world that respects human dignity and difference.

1 Some of these descendants moved around the world and now write blogs about the Hong Kong protests.

The Book of Job

Rumors had been whispering for a month. The new financing round hadn’t gone well, the expected deals hadn’t materialized, and something had to give. Free lunches had been cancelled, the weekly company updates had changed to biweekly and the last one of these had been mysteriously cancelled. I started updating my resume.

One Tuesday I learned from backchannels that there would be “a layoff of not insignificant size” the next day. Despite some reassurances from a colleague that I should be safe, that night I tossed and turned until 3am, when I firmly concluded that I would be laid off. A mix of terror and exasperation hit me. I’d been laid off just a year previously, and I didn’t want to be unemployed again. When I awoke Wednesday morning, the commute to work felt like marching to the gallows. 

The process was efficient. They called half the company one-by-one into private offices, handed us exit papers and collected our badges and laptops. By 10am I was out, and by 11 had rendezvoused with other ex-employees at the Friendly Toast, where the bar was empty but open. The ensuing hours reached a level of day drinking rivaling my senior year St Patrick’s Day.

When I sobered up, I was sad, bitter, exhausted but excited. I was sad because CiBO had been my most enjoyable job. I had done interesting work with smart coworkers serving a great high level mission. It paid well, hadn’t been too stressful, and I could run to work on occasion. It had even taken me on a crazy 1 day trip to Malaysia. While the job didn’t trap me in the office long, I found myself home practicing Scala and studying the growth stages of corn. It bristles me now how fruitless this effort feels. Furthermore, the immediate termination was much rougher than the 1 month notice GE had given me. I had no time to mentally prepare to wake up the next day with absolutely nothing to do. I was bitter that after this long journey of changing careers, having spent so much time reflecting on what I wanted and then working so hard to actually get there, I had ended up with nothing. Twice. And during winter again. My browser cookies still remembered the Massachusetts unemployment website. I joked that I was now an expert in company collapses, of all different sizes. I got plenty of sympathy laughs, but when faced with the reality of yet another job hunt, I was exhausted before I even began.

Considering how much I care about my career, it’s a bit ironic that I’ve spent so much time funemployed that I'm able to name each period. Leaving Hong Kong, backpacking around Asia and returning to the US was my SabbatiCal. The period between GE and CiBO that included two international trips were my Callivanting days. This period? More like a Calamity. While I’m lucky to have had so many employment breaks - so many of my friends haven’t had any - this one was ill-timed and unwelcome.

However, I was excited because I had options for in 2019, data scientists are in short supply.  CiBO had been a fantastic tech environment where I’d worked closely with great software engineers. I had accrued enough confidence that I was a pretty badass data scientist and almost immediately began working with 20+ recruiters. I quickly realized though that I wanted, and had enough savings, to take my time. I wanted to explore transitioning out of a technical role, perhaps into strategy or product management. I wanted to return closer to the energy sustainability domain. And I wanted to move back to Asia. It was a tough multiple-criteria decision problem to optimize.

The best part of this Calamity was the many people who reached out to me and helped. It seems like I caught up with 100 friends that first week, juggling all time zones to the east and west. I chatted with friends about their professional lives and gained valuable insights into how other jobs worked. I had plenty of deep conversations that convinced me that my heart was still in Asia. I specifically targeted Beijing, Shenzhen, and Saigon, cities where I felt I could find cool jobs and cool people.

Saigon had vibed with me when I first visited during the SabbatiCal. I knew there was a decent tech scene, with a large concentration of foreign “digital nomads” utilizing a local ecosystem full of talented (and cheap) coders. I wasn’t sure what the options were for someone with no local country or language background, but my Saigon-dwelling friend Sam Axelrod connected me to someone who’d know. This guy gave me a rundown of the work international consultancies were doing, the locally-disconnected digital nomad scene, and the rapid government-backed digitization across the economy. He inadvertently went on a rant against those big name consultancies collaborating with government officials and multinational corporations to perpetuate modern colonialism. Having also lived in an Asian former colony, this rant won me over - he had expressed my views, albeit much more profoundly and eloquently. When he told me that in his previous role leading a UN bureau, he had made all his employees learn Vietnamese, I was sold. Then the conversation took a turn. “I lead a startup consultancy now. We have a Taiwanese manufacturing client and only one Chinese speaker on staff…and all of our work is really about using data to drive decisions….actually we could really use someone like you.” And so the informational chat turned into a job interview. A week later, I booked tickets to Ho Chi Minh City.

This is a fine ad for funemployment

In the meantime, I had already had a trip to New Orleans to visit my friend Jason Siu and partake in Mardi Gras. I took my employment frustrations out on hurricanes and Sazeracs, and somehow found myself walking down 10 blocks of Bourbon Street double fisting beers looking for Jason. The next morning, I awoke wearing a bushel of beads and needing to dry heave. I had scheduled a handful of recruiter calls before a late afternoon flight back to Boston. As I laid down on the couch in utter pain, I talked to Amazon on speaker phone and tried to go through my work history. I didn’t get a second interview. I barely made it to the airport, where I passed out on the dirty floor while JetBlue delayed us for 2 hours. When I took my middle seat, the old man sitting window asked me, in a volume indicating he was hard of hearing, “Did you enjoy the parades?” I did my best not to puke on him.

Back home, I planned an Asia trip to be part fact-finding mission and part friends catchup tour. I eschewed traveling to new places in favor of looking for jobs in familiar cities. I initially outlined a Saigon to Hong Kong to Shenzhen to Beijing to Paris to London trip, allotting myself 3 weeks. When my friend Doug Heimburger sold me hard on his 40th birthday celebration, I swapped out Shenzhen for Tokyo, then dropped Paris. I realized my dates in Hong Kong would coincide with Tosscars, the annual awards ceremony/party for the Hong Kong ultimate community. The ceremony’s hosts are secret until the event itself, and I had never been a host. I texted the organizers, and asked them if they wanted a super secret host. They replied that the theme was Carnival, and asked me to bring over Mardi Gras party supplies. Coincidentally I got that text while in a cafe in New Orleans, and walked outside to see a street vendor hawking party jackets. I got a sympathy $20 unemployment discount, and that jacket has proven to be one of my best investments.

I made a pun so bad, Vietnam decided to banh mi

Even since 2016, Saigon’s change was noticeable to me. There were more foreigners around District 1, Southeast Asia’s tallest skyscraper on the horizon and flat whites served in some coffeeshops in District 3. My first sight was a continuous stream of motorbikes street with no crosswalks and I had to relearn street crossing in Vietnam (with confidence and without eye contact). 

The startup consultancy was located above a clothing store and consisted of 6 employees. Though I’d be the only non-Vietnamese speaker, I knew I’d fit in well. My main worry with the role was whether I would stagnate technically. Though I was excited to learn about the Vietnamese economy and management consultancy in general, there was a good chance that the clients wouldn’t be ready for any interesting modeling, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to give that up. On my last day there, I was offered a role as an analyst, with the expectation that if I proved I could adapt to Vietnam, I would create and lead the company’s analytics division. There was a lot to consider. Between the motorbike traffic, lack of a subway (coming in 2020!) and inexorable heat, Saigon life is not without its challenges. But the food, coffee, nightlife and people I met in 3 days convinced me I could adapt to love the city.

Saturday morning I flew into Hong Kong. I had told myself that I shouldn’t move back to Hong Kong, that it wouldn’t be good for my career. But as my taxi zoomed down Gloucester Road past the pretty buildings, I thought to myself, I could carve a good life for myself here again. A few hours later I was in my party jacket hidden on the top floor of the Winery in Sai Ying Pun. It had been weird keeping my arrival a secret. As I heard the voices of my friends entering from below, I so desperately wanted to burst out and shout my presence. I managed to contain myself until Donna Doubet announced a surprise guest from America, and I flew down the stairs, threw some authentic New Orleans beads into the crowd, and awkwardly raised my arms, a little uncomfortable with the sudden attention. This was only my second time back in Hong Kong since I left, and I couldn’t imagine a better rewelcome party.

The next several days consisted of as many as 7 appointments a day, catching up with friends and family. I also got some intel on the work environment, and while the tech scene is growing rapidly, I confirmed my suspicions that interesting and high paying data science jobs don’t exist in Hong Kong yet. 

Doug popping his cherry blossoms

Doug’s party in Tokyo was a Hanami 見花, meaning cherry blossom viewing party, because of course Japanese has a word for that. We had rented out space at Yoyogi Park, roped off and carpeted to enforce a shoes-off policy. Organizer Niji had arranged for a small arsenal of whiskey, champagne and a buffet of sandwiches. To meet the formal dress code, I paired the New Orleans party jacket with grey suitpants. Even at this party, I met a programmer who tried to recruit me. I realized that having a skillset unbound by geographies or business domains could be a blessing and a curse - too many options means you have to restrict yourself to stay sane. I decided not to pursue working in Japan. 

Taking place a month past his 40th birthday, the Hanami was really a farewell party for Doug, as he had just accepted a promotion that would relocate him to Seattle. We spent the entire weekend bemoaning the challenges of managing an American career while smitten with Asia. Discussions with him and Austin taught me that for us, location can be more important than job, and wanting to learn a language is a legit factor in deciding location.

In Beijing I was fortunate to get connected with good tech people. My friend Joohee had moved from Hong Kong, and it was only face-to-face when I learned she now worked in Chinese tech venture capitalism. She connected me to the CEO of an AI startup trying to develop the flying car, and through another friend I met the former head of data science at Mobike. I learned about the speed of China’s 9/9/6 tech culture, the role of WeChat in everything, the way government-led directives influence entrepreneurs, and the sheer abundance of data available. Joohee evangelized her bullish views on China, and I was reminded how much I missed the uniqueness of Beijing life when I found myself telling my life story to an attractive group of film producers in Mandarin. I seriously wondered if I should focus on returning to China. However, barriers included the vast amount of competing Chinese programmers and the increasingly domestic nature of China’s tech scene that render multilingual people like me no longer highly valued. And this is before getting to all the moral and logistical complexities enforced by the Chinese government. 

By the time I got to London, I was exhausted. I met with friends there in interesting companies, and tried the city on for size. In my most productive conversation, I talked with a former coworker and ultimate teammate about how moving to Vietnam might mean missing weddings and/or an ultimate tournament in Amsterdam that I’d been invited to. “Oh, you have to go to Windmill.”  And so I did. I returned from my round the world trip with lots of renewed friendships, and lots of discussions comparing the social joys of living in Asia, the family warmth of staying in the east coast, and the asymmetric way America treats international experience. While Asia would always respect my US work experience, the converse was not necessarily true. I decided I needed to at least explore interesting jobs in the US to compare with the offer in Ho Chi Minh City.

-----

I was full of energy the first month back in Boston. I pursued all those things I never have the energy to do when working. I read voraciously, studied languages, attacked the gym, played ultimate and went through a TensorFlow tutorial.

The second month was harsh. The job interview process plodded along frustratingly slowly, and all my hard work towards self-improvement was largely irrelevant to the interviewers. It became difficult to sustain such intensity, and the uncertainty slowly ground me down. Not knowing where I’d live or what sort of income to expect made it difficult to plan things, date or try new activities. 

The Vietnam offer was still outstanding, while two local options were in play. One was a tech startup where I had wanted to work back in 2016 that was now recruiting me. They had given me a dataset assessment back then, and I laughed when they sent it again, virtually unchanged. With years of practice now under my belt, I did a way better job on the assignment. In the followup interview, a kid just out of college review the assignment with me. It was a little stunning to see 2018 as his graduation year, but he introduced to me a little trick transforming linear variables like date or time into cyclical variables, by taking the sine and cosine of them. The interview went well and they indicated they would bring me onsite. Then without explanation, they wished me luck and rescinded the onsite interview.

The second was a large tech firm where my friend had internally referred me as a product manager. I was excited to pivot away from straight technical work, which often strained my extroverted personality. That firm’s HR operated slowly, and weeks elapsed between followups. Finally in mid May, they brought me onsite for a marathon session of interviews. While the experience was largely positive, I reflected over the weekend and realized I needed to follow my heart to Vietnam. With that realization, I then booked my Europe trip for Windmill.

That following week my brother and sister-in-law visited, and I told my whole family that I was moving to Vietnam. They did not take the news well. They mainly believed that the low salary, distance from tech thought leadership and lack of any incredible valuation growth were wrong for me. Only my father, who had spent a decade working in Shanghai, considered the possible upside of being in a growing economy at the right time. The next day at breakfast, my brother asked me if I was happy at my last company. I had been, because we had been working towards real global impact, and that in the months since I hadn’t come close to any company that excited me like that. “Oh there was this company in New York that tried to recruit me last year. They’re using machine learning to solve city sustainability issues. Would that interest you?” “Uh, yeah, no shit that’d be cool.” “Damn, I should have remembered to bring this to you earlier.” “Yes, you should have."

I figured it was too late to apply as I had already interviewed onsite at the big firm. But my brother emailed the CEO, who responded extremely quickly, and the next day I spoke with the head of their urban analytics team. The conversation went shockingly well and I learned that this guy’s previous role was leading analytics for the city of New York. A Google search revealed him to be kind of a big deal, as well as a visible minority in the field. It’d be really cool to work for him. They sent along their dataset assessment and told me to take a week on it. I pulled an all-nighter and turned it back in a day and a half, producing some of the best modeling I had ever done including applying the cyclical transformation trick I’d learned just a couple weeks before.

Finally on Monday, a full two and a half weeks after I’d gone onsite, the big tech firm gave me an offer. It was at the level that I had wanted and legitimately thrilled me. It’s funny how much more interested I’d become in the role when the offer became tangible. Still, I made arrangements to speak with the Vietnam CEO and sent an email to the New York startup informing them of the offer. Again they got back to me right away, and I soon had a call scheduled with the CEO for Wednesday morning. The Vietnam CEO also asked to speak Wednesday morning, and I had a followup with the big tech firm for Wednesday afternoon. Wednesday evening I would fly out to Spain. It would be the most eventful Wednesday since the CiBO layoffs, and similarly, I couldn’t sleep at all the previous night. I had 3 separate timelines at my fingertips, with 3 very different cities and 3 very different roles.

The New York CEO informed me that they typically bring people onsite before offering roles, but he’d be willing to make an exception if I was committed. I replied that if they could meet my salary expectations, I’d also take an offer without coming onsite. He then said he’d have his people get back to me.

The Vietnam CEO and I had a good heart-to-heart chat, but he was not able to meet the salary expectation that I wanted. It was an enormous risk for both of us, and while I’m not exactly risk-averse, I realized that his startup probably wasn’t as ready as other places to get value of data science.

Finally, the Boston tech firm gave me their final offer and told me I had until Friday 5pm EST to accept it. After how long they took to get back to me, I was a bit resentful about the tight deadline they’d given me, but they had other candidates in queue.  I then proceeded to fly to Spain.

When I landed in Madrid on Thursday, I had emails from the New York startup. They wanted me to go on Google Hangouts with some more employees. Sigh. I wanted to vacation, but this was my future, so I said sure, how about 4pm EST/10pm Spanish time? Considering I’d done my final interview with CiBO in Tokyo, this wasn’t even unusual for me. I flew to Bilbao, met up with Antonio and his wife Raquel, grabbed a quick dinner and drink, then hustled back to get on Hangouts. The interview was full of challenging questions, but by now I’d done so many interviews I was almost on autopilot. In one of the last questions, they asked me how I approached a dataset. Tiredly, I asked back, did you see my assessment? Surprisingly, one of the interviewers excitedly responded, “yes, I thought it was awesome, it was so cool how you transformed those cyclical variables.” Fuck yeah, I thought. Finally I told them I had until 5pm tomorrow to respond to the tech firm.

¿Donde esta el email de Nueva York?

The next day we touristed around beautiful Bilbao. I tried to enjoy it as much as I could, but the whole day I was aware of the time in New York. 9am... they’re getting into work... lunchtime….no email yet. 11pm Spain was my deadline. By 9pm we posted at a bar with wifi. I tried to be a fun conversationalist but the anxiety was real. At 9:30, the New York startup sent me an email…all it said was “hang in there, we’ll get back to you within the hour.” By 10:30, they still hadn’t. 10:45, the inbox was still unchanged and I’d lost the ability to make conversation. At 10:50 Antonio lent me his phone and I called someone at the company. No response. Finally at 11:00, I sent an email to the big tech firm saying, “I accept!”

The burden was gone. I’d be a product manager in Boston. It’d be a good life. I approached the bartender and said, “Tres tragos de tequila por favor. Tengo un nuevo trabajo!”

I brought the three shots back to our table and prepared to do a toast to the new job. Glass in the air, I sneaked a peak at my phone and glimpsed one new email. “Wait hold on! We have an offer for you!” I put my glass down and sighed.

In the ensuing telephone call, I admonished the New York startup for being late. They quantified their offer, apologized for missing the deadline by 5 minutes, and asked me to consider rescinding the acceptance. That thought literally made my heart quiver - I hate going against my word. I sighed, told him I’d sleep on it, and to please send a formal offer via email. When I checked my email that night, there was a formal offer that was slightly larger than what he’d said on the phone - turns out accepting the other job was a good negotiating tactic - as well as a response from the big tech recruiter revealing her joy at my acceptance. 

I did sleep on it, sent the offer around to my family, and ended up choosing the New York startup - Urbint. The email to the big tech firm rescinding my acceptance was the hardest email I’ve ever had to write - I had to get my brother to draft it for me. I clicked send on the train to Paris, and now, two weddings and a painful move later, I’m in New York City.

The Calamity was longer than desired, but was an invaluable period reconnecting with friends. My lessons learned:

• It is so valuable having a strong, diverse peer network to inspire and raise you
• It's important to be patient
• It's important to be bold
• It's ok to prioritize location
• Jobs are like buses. You wait around for ages and then they show up all at once

I've chosen to be patient, to put off my return to Asia for an exciting job opportunity. Hopefully I'll be here in Urbint and New York for a long while. If I'm in this position again in a year, I'll know I'm truly cursed. But if that happens, I'll tell big companies to pay me to work at their competitors.

Guide to Cantonese for English speakers who know Mandarin

The official languages of Hong Kong are English and "Chinese", the latter in quotes because it actually encompasses a language family. The Hong Kong government calls this policy "biliterate and trilingual - 兩文三語" to indicate that printed texts have English and Traditional Chinese versions and spoken English, Cantonese and Mandarin are all accepted. Cantonese is the de facto spoken language, the home language of about 90% of the populace and the historical language of the region (although some of the earliest settlements in Hong Kong were Hakka speaking). Lots of educated people, whether civil servants, business people or Disneyland staff, regularly conduct services in three languages. While there are more multilingual regions of the world, the overall trilingualism in Hong Kong is still rather impressive. Since the colonial reign ended in Hong Kong in 1997, even the casual observer can tell that the general level of English has worsened but the level of Mandarin has improved greatly.

People often ask how different are Mandarin and Cantonese. It's suffice to say they are mutually unintelligible, but the nuances get complicated. If you are familiar with the Romance language family spread in Southern Europe, you could analogize that Cantonese and Mandarin are like Spanish and French. The Romance languages probably started diverging mainly following the decline of the Roman Empire in the 4th and 5th centuries, and Mandarin and Cantonese probably diverged from Middle Chinese around the 6th century. However the geographic spread between North and South China is much greater than between Italy, France and Portugal. Nonetheless a single Chinese written script and a sense of ethnic unity kept the language from diverging as much as it normally would, while the emergence of nationalisms and independent orthographies in Europe divided a dialect continuum into distinct official languages.* Tl;dr - you could say the Chinese languages are more divergent than the Romance languages in some ways, and less in other ways.

Carlos Douh - The poster boy for a westerner who's learned good Cantonese

Most English speakers who move to Hong Kong (and plenty who grow up there) don't learn Cantonese or Mandarin. They already speak one of the official languages so it's easy enough to get by in Hong Kong. Obviously though, being able to speak English and Cantonese in Hong Kong leads to a much fuller experience. Learning the language is difficult and the Hong Kong environment doesn't make it convenient. While Mandarin-learning resources are bountiful, Cantonese-learning resources barely exist - which is why I'm writing this. One major problem is the lack of a phonetic standard - there is a system called Jyutping but it's not commonly used. Nevertheless, I believe it's definitely possible to learn Cantonese in Hong Kong especially when you come in with a background in Mandarin. My office was very Cantonese heavy, and mainland Chinese arrivals would nearly always be conversant in Cantonese within a year. Hong Kong has a thriving community of former China expats, who eventually move to Hong Kong for its unique blend of China with western characteristics. If you're one of them and don't know Cantonese, this is for you. From my anecdotal experience, there are 100 adults who learn Mandarin well for every 1 that learns Cantonese well.

Every word in Mandarin can be said in Cantonese as well. In fact all Chinese speakers can read the same text. However the modern written language is similar to formal Mandarin, and so even though Cantonese speakers can read written Chinese, they will use different words and expressions in conversation. The most important things to learn are 1. common sound changes for the words that are mutually shared and 2. these colloquial expressions.

I know that I'm not the most qualified person to write this, but I don't see the more qualified people writing this, so here goes. Instead of using jyutping, I've chosen to use subjective phonetic English spelling, which is kinda what I've always used. I'm also going to ignore Cantonese tones here, even though there are 9 and they are important. However I subscribe to the school of not focusing your language-learning efforts on tones. Nearly every Cantonese speaker I've talked to would be hard-pressed to name all 9 tones, and do not actively think about tones while speaking. Languages are organic and make human sense, and I think with enough repetition, the tones will naturally come to you.

Let's start with the sound changes:

1. Sound Changes

qi -> kay

星期 －xīngqí - sing kay - Week

奇怪 - qíguài - kay gwai - Weird

其中 - qízhōng - kay zhong - Among them

國旗 - guóqí - gwok kay - National flag

zhi - > jee

一至九 - yīzhì jiǔ - yut jee gau - One to nine

只係 - zhíxì - jee hai - Only

支持 - zhīchí - jee chee - Support

手指 - shǒuzhǐ - sou jee - Finger

知道 －zhīdào - jee dou - Know

(jik is also a common change, such as 直 - Straight)

bai -> baak
一百 - yī bǎi - yut baak - One hundred

白色 - bái sè - baak sik - White color

(some other characters like 拜 are just pronounced bai)

xian - > seen
先生 - xiānshēng - seen sang - Mr.
電線 - diànxiàn - deen seen - Electric cable
 新鮮 -  xīnxiān - sun seen - Fresh

ji -> gay
幾多 －jǐduō - gay do - How many
飛機 - fēijī - fei gay - Airplane

自己 - zìjǐ - jee gay - Oneself
基本 - jīběn - gay boon - Basic
記得 - jìdé - gay duc - Remember

you -> yao

有 -yǒu - yao - Have

又 - yòu - yao - Again

左右 -zuǒyòu - jor yao - Left right

郵件 - yóujiàn - yao geen - Mail

石油 - shíyóu - sek yao - Oil

Note: when I first started learning Mandarin, I always got 有 and 要 confused. Cantonese 有 just sounds too much like Mandarin 要. Vice versa isn't quite so true, but it's still confusing.

yao -> yiu
要 - yào - yiu - Need

姚明 - yáomíng - yiu ming - Yao Ming

腰 －yāo - yiu - Waist

gao -> go

蛋糕 - dàngāo - daan go - Cake

高興 - gāoxìng - go hing - Happiness

報告 - bàogào - bo go - Report

jian -> geen

再見 - zàijiàn - joi geen - Goodbye

一件事 - yījiànshì - yut geen see - One thing

建築 - jiànzhú - geen jook - Building

堅定 - jiāndìng - geen ding - Firm

(many jian are also pronounced as gaan such as 簡單 gaan daan and 一間房 yut gaan fong)

yang -> yeung

太陽 - tàiyáng - tai yeung - Sun

羊肉 - yángròu - yeung yook - Lamb meat

Ok I think that's a lot right there. First note: every single one of those sound changes have exceptions. They are just general rules that I tend to use whenever I come across a word that I only know in one language and need to guess in the other language. I'd say they work more than half the time. Second note: A bunch of sounds have no common changes, like shi and xi. Third note: I decided to just write all these examples in Traditional Chinese, as used in Hong Kong. If you are only familiar with Simplified, I honestly don't think it's that hard to gradually adjust to Traditional. This post may serve as a primer for your transition. However below, I do write the Mandarin phrases in Simplified and the Cantonese equivalents in Traditional.

2. Phrases 

是 －係 -  hai - To be

不 － 唔 - ng - Not

你怎么样？ - 點啊你？deem ah lei? How are you?

为什么？ - 點解？ deem gai? Why?

什么 - 乜嘢 or 咩嘢 - mut yeh or meh yeh (interchangeable) - What

没有  - 無 or 冇 - mou - Not have. Cantonese just combines these two words into one. Despite this, the usage doesn't change. 有冇 is exactly the same as 有没有. Because the writing of Cantonese-specific characters is not standardized, you do see both characters used.

我们 －我地 - ngo** dei - We. 地 is used exactly like们. 你地 (lei dei) means you plural and 佢地 means they (keui dei). 他 is only used in writing.

这里 - 呢度 - ni dou - Here. Substitute 呢 in all cases you would use 这

哪里－邊度 - been dou - Where. Substitute 邊 in all cases you would use 哪

刚刚 - 啱啱 - ngaam ngaam - Just now.

现在 －而家 - yee ga - Now.

听得懂  - 聽得明 - tang duc ming - Understand.
喜欢 - 鍾意 － zhong yee - Like

饭馆  - 餐廳 - chaan tang - Restaurant

乘电梯 - 搭𨋢 －daap leep - Take the elevator. Hong Kongers throw in more English words in general than Mainland Chinese, but this is an example of a nativized word. Leep actually comes from "lift"
当然 - 梗係 - gun hai - Of course. Although dong yeen has now entered common parlance.
美女 － 靚女 - liang leoi - Pretty girl. Useful.
帅哥 － 靚仔 - liang jai - Handsome guy. 仔 is used much more in Cantonese to denote child or dude.
老外 －鬼佬 - guai lo - If you're a white guy, this might one of the first phrases you learn.
的 - 嘅 - gor - possessive indicator. This is slightly tricky. Cantonese doesn't do possessions quite the same way, using the measure word instead. This word is used when the measure word is 個, as in 佢嘅朋友 keui gor pung yau, his friend. In fact most people just write 佢個朋友, but technically the tone 個 changes slightly. For different measure words, just use that measure word, i.e. 我隻貓 - ngo jek mao - my cat.

你吃饭了吗？ －你食左飯未呀？ - lei sic jor fan mei ah? Have you eaten yet? There's quite a lot going on grammatically here in this common greeting. First, Cantonese has it's own word for eat, 'sic'. Second, 了which is pronounced lieu in Cantonese, is hardly used in conversation. "jor" (which sounds similar to the pinyin zuo) is used instead to denote past tense with the character for left typically adopted, and is (usually) used in verb + 左 + object pattern unlike the Mandarin 了. Third, 未 is the Cantonese word for yet. This word is in Mandarin too, but isn't used as often or in the same way as in Cantonese. Sometimes 未 replaces 还, other times like here, it comes at the end of the sentence like in English. Finally, 呀 is a common Cantonese interjection at the end of sentences, like it is in Mandarin. 吗 is not often used as a question word - in fact in Hong Kong Cantonese, ending a sentence in an upward inflection can in fact connote a question, just like in English.

谢谢 － 唔該 or 多謝 ng goi or duo jie - Thank you

Ah the Cantonese thank you. This tricked me up when I first moved to Hong Kong and I kept using the wrong thank you for months. The two thank you's are for mutually exclusive scenarios! Use 唔該 when someone does a basic task for you or something that you asked for, and 多謝 when someone does a medium to large favor, especially if you didn't ask for it and definitely if money is exchanged.

Hope that's a good starter course! If you want to thank me, please say 多謝.

*It's an urban legend that Cantonese was 1 vote away from becoming the official language of China. The language in Beijing has been the government language for three dynasties, and got its English name because government employees (Mandarins) were required to learn it regardless of origin. The Qing Dynasty promoted Mandarin for official purposes in 1909.
**If you can't pronounce the ng in 我, just say o (same vowel as in wo) - half of Hong Kong has dropped the ng anyways.

Mixed Feelings

It's an all-too-typical scene for me: I walk up to the cashier at Manning's and greet the cashier with a casual "你好." Perhaps this is my giveaway - Chinese culture tends to be light on unnecessary formalities. "Have membership card?" the cashier replies in an incredibly strong Hong Kong accent. The slight is unintended and perhaps unperceived by you. But I come across it daily, and while I typically ignore it, today I take it head on. I ask him, "你可不可以同我講中文？ (Can you speak to me in Chinese?)" The cashier apologizes with a deep shade of embarrassment, and quickly tells me the price in Cantonese. I thank him after collecting my change and move on.

An all-too-typical question to me: "Which of your parents is white?" As many times as I've heard this question, I still lack a quick response. The answer the questioner wants to hear is "my mother", but this answer sells out my mother, with which I'm not comfortable. I gauge how long I want to spend talking to my conversation partner(s) and I choose either the simple answer. "Neither. They're both Chinese." A true statement that I'm perfectly comfortable delivering. Generally, this is accepted with minor acclaim and the conversation proceeds as normal. Occasionally, I get retorts of disbelief and accusatory follow up questions. I will hear "then why do you look like what you do? Are you sure?" from generally well-mannered people unaware how rude they sound while assigning someone a race to their own satisfaction. To avoid this line of questioning, I sometimes give a longer response. "Neither, but my mom's family is mixed. Both my parents were born and raised in Hong Kong." The conversation will never stop here. The most common followup question I hear is "oh so you're 1/4?" I'll generally take this comment in stride, while making a note to self that I probably shouldn't talk advanced mathematics with this person and their limited vocabulary of fractions. For these simple people, I'll sometimes say, "Sure," more willing to sell out a grandparent I've never met.

Young siblings

An atypical scene happened in the waning days of 2005. I was in the dark days of college applications, having just spent my entire winter break writing college essays for Ivy League schools and non-common app schools (damn you Northwestern). My parents had been overly involved in this process from the very first page of the application form and had poured a lot of sweat into making me express the very best of myself. For every application, I checked Asian in the race/ethnicity box without much thought. However as it came time for me to send out the application for Pomona, a school I only knew about because of my cousin Andrew Barnet, I thought about filling in an extra box. Andrew's father is a white man from Ohio, and I figured if my biracial cousin could get into Pomona, maybe I should try being biracial as well. I stealthily went back to page one, ticked "White" as well, and closed the application before I felt too guilty about it. It felt like a bold lie on an official form, but I told myself, "technically you are part white."

Tse family photo

The details about my ancestry get complicated quickly. Yes my mom is the mixed one, but her parents are both mixed. Further complicating matters, her parents/my grandparents were distant cousins, sharing the same full blooded white European ancestor. There is likely at least another white European ancestor in the family. The one I'm most aware of is Charles Bosman, a Dutchman who traded in Guangzhou and Hong Kong in the late 1800's. His son Robert Ho Tung was definitely a halfie, and he became Sir Robert Ho Tung, whose bilingual skills made him invaluable in the growth days of Hong Kong and became the first Chinese knighted by the British. My uncle has set aside a portion of his retirement into investigating our heritage, visiting Bosman's grave in London and publishing an ancestry book. He believes Bosman was Jewish with roots outside of Holland, but that we likely aren't related to him at all, instead having Parsi blood (Zoroastrian practicers banished from Persia in the 1500s and mostly migrated East) through some off the books relationship. The most precise fraction I've seen for our non-Chinese part is 13/64, and I've made sure this calculation is possible, but honestly I have no clue if it's true. But it doesn't really matter.  None of these details affect my identity. I don't have a direct fully Caucasian relative alive, and neither does my mom. She grew up what they call Eurasian in Hong Kong, speaking Cantonese primarily but English secondarily, and it was only after I came here that I realized how atypical her experience was from that of the average local. But she moved to the eastern US where she was just Asian, at a time when there weren't many, and I don't think being mixed has had any part of her identity for a long time.

My dad is "just" Chinese, but even his family history takes a few lines to retell properly. He was born in Hong Kong into a Shanghainese family who were refugees anticipating Cultural Revolution purges. They spoke Shanghainese at home and identified as Shanghainese, but in reality, their history in Shanghai spanned only two generations and their ancestral hometown was somewhere in Hunan. They claim to have some Manchurian blood, with some relation to the last Emperor of China Pu Yi, but the details may have passed away with my great-grandmother. My grandfather was extremely adventurous and quite a gambler, a combination that saw my dad move to Brazil, back to Hong Kong, to Sierra Leone, New York City, Boston, Cote D'Ivoire and back to Boston. He has since lived a decade in Shanghai, a city he visited for the first time in his 30's.

My own history is far less interesting. I was born and raised in suburban Boston, and I grew up Chinese-American. I had two Chinese parents, played chess and piano, excelled at math and sucked at basketball. I went to China for 3 months in college and for the first time, I was told by a society around me that maybe I'm white. Only two and a half years removed from guiltily ticking "white" in that college application form, I was giving an English lesson to a Chinese man, and somehow I ended up writing my Chinese name. He asked me, "how did you get this Chinese name?" and I replied that my parents gave it to me. "Really? Why? You're Chinese?" Turns out he legitimately believed the whole time that I was completely white, which was an utter shock to me. This was far from the last such instance.

Too often I am assigned an ancestral history that isn't mine, and often without me realizing it. Many times I've discovered years into a friendship that a good friend had thought I was half white the whole time. They were misinformed about me for years. To a great credit to today's society, this hasn't usually mattered much, because as far as I can tell, people have treated me the same whether they thought I was Chinese or half Chinese. But when I do correct people who mistakenly call me a halfie, they rarely get what the big deal is. "But it's a good thing! Halfies are really good looking!" said my friend after she introduced me as her halfie friend, for the second time. True, halfie is nothing like a racial slur and it seems for whatever reason that most societies' conceptions of attractiveness venerate Asian-Caucasian mixes. So really, why should I care that someone gets my racial background slightly wrong?

Because the truth matters. The difference between my experience and that of a half-Chinese half-White guy has significant differences. I was never a child walking down the streets with parents who looked nothing like me or each other, receiving bewildered stares from people. I never had to choose between adopting my father's or my mother's cultural heritage. I never spoke a language that only one of parents understood (and still don't, because I think my mom understands more Mandarin than she lets on). I never heard any lessons of "good old American values" from a white grandparent. I never grew up as a mixed kid - I grew up as a Chinese kid in America.  And guess what? I never thought I looked mixed. When you grow up everyday thinking you're Chinese, everyday you look in the mirror you're going to see the reflection of a Chinese kid. Now that I've had several years dealing with people telling me that I'm mixed, I start to look in the mirror and think maybe I look mixed. But I still don't think I look like a halfie.

I am also fully aware that I'm far from alone in the experience of constantly being on the receiving end of incorrect assumptions. I bet all mixed people have experienced this in some way. Most anyone who speaks a foreign language will experience this in some fashion. I will say though, I've been the "Chinese guy" who had to rely on a white person for linguistic help while learning Mandarin in China, and I've been the "white guy" whom Mainland Chinese people had to rely on for linguistic help in Hong Kong. I'm not sure that's a typical experience.

Anyway, while most Asian Americans I know are put off when people assume they can't speak English, the "Forever Foreigner" stereotype, that rarely happens to me in the states. Probably that's part of my privilege growing up educated in liberal diverse areas, but even when it does happen it's easy to shake off. That's because my Americanness is unshakeable - it's a permanent part of my identity that I'm totally secure in, partially because the concept of American is so fluid. Try as he might, not even Donald Trump could deny me my Americanness. I'm definitely less secure in my Chineseness, partly because it's not so well defined worldwide and some people have a very restrictive view of it.

So when a cashier doing his job assumes I'm not Chinese and speaks to me in English, it doesn't seem like a big deal. But it hurts me. The U.S. equivalent would be a Hispanic immigrant who spent many years in the U.S. and learned English going into a store and having a white clerk ask in 6th grade Spanish "tienes bago?" Many such shoppers would feel offended and wonder if they would ever feel truly accepted in this country. And perhaps for me it's even more personal. Even though English is my best language, I actually spoke Cantonese first. It is inextricably tied to my identity especially my Chinese identity. When I hear parents telling their kids "乖乖地,小朋友要聽話" it resonates back to my childhood. So when someone tries to deny that language to me, I feel like a dart has been thrown at me. Even more painful is when I'm debating Asian-American issues, and my argument gets this rebuttal: "well you wouldn't understand, you're mixed." Few things would get me more riled up, so luckily this has only happened twice.


So back to the cashier. Yes I get it. We all have to make some judgement calls and when I have to ask some Chinese stranger on the street, I will talk to him first in Chinese, even though I don't know for sure that's his first language. And when I see a Caucasian stranger, I will always use English first. The reasons why cashiers in Hong Kong instinctively use English has a historical backdrop in colonialism that has nothing to do with me. These instances occur much more often in places with a long history of service to westerners like Bangkok, Hong Kong and Philippines rather than say in Taiwan or South Korea. Hong Kong is a city where westerners almost never learn Cantonese, and both the local and western community seem to accept this without any qualms. The language situation here is another post entirely (and likely will get one soon). So when I am able to properly consider all that context...no I can't really fault the cashier. Yet at the same time, I don't fault myself for feeling bothered. It's certainly a paradox isn't it?

So how do I want people to interact with me? Don't get me wrong, I totally welcome asking about my race/ethnicity. I never shy away from asking others, and I ask directly (none of this 'where are you really from?).  The point is, we have to be more educated in the way we talk and think about race. Being mixed does not mean half one race half another race, and future generations hereon out are only going to be more complicated. You will also likely encounter more "third culture kids" of mixed race. If you don't learn how to talk to and understand these people, you will be that crockety old grandparent who embarrasses the younger generation. Reduce your assumptions as much as possible, and just ask curious but respectful questions. And even if you find to your satisfaction that the person in front of you has a grandfather from Italy, a grandmother from Korea, another grandfather from Turkey and a grandmother who was adopted into an Irish-American family...well that might not actually tell you anything about who the person in front of you really is.

P.S. Pomona was the most selective school that accepted me.