Definitive Post, Conclusion

If you were like the many who thought that I was done, you’re wrong. I need to conclude the gargantuan endeavor that is this blog with one final post. I’ve been back in the United States for about a week and a half now, and I’ve begun packing and preparing for my return to the University of California, San Diego. Workload permitting, I’ll edit over this whole blog so it flows like a novel, consolidating posts where necessary and refitting everything so it works, more than partially so that I can relive the experience that I am so missing, and know that I will continue to be nostalgic of for the foreseeable future.

And if because of the reverse-chronological format of blogs you arrive at this post first, I encourage you to start at the beginning four months back. Though I’m biased, I think it’s worth it.


Des Amis, Des Ennemis

I have this nasty habit of getting sick in some way or another before entering a new environment. So before heading off to Hong Kong, I happened to be going through the usual. It kept me going to the bathroom in short and my head was persistently and consistently hot. Thinking there was the possibility of getting quarantined, I can’t say I filled out the health declaration form truthfully, and I self-medicated to get me through the lines should they take my temperature.

Showing how much I knew, since Hong Kong just gave sick people respiratory masks and advisory literature but nothing more, I entered the cab on the way over marveling at the sheer number of bridges on surface roads that there were and the lights of Central, only to be nearly shocked at the superficial condition of buildings outside of the tourist drag.

I was sick and I get sick in such situations because of my nervousness and I know it. I didn’t know who my roommate would be, how cliquish the locals would be, how accepting my fellow exchange students would be of the contrast between my national origins and my ethnic roots. All I could tell myself was that it would all work out and that whatever happens happens.

And as I’m blessed time and time again, through privilege and circumstance, everything worked out better than I could have ever assumed. Out of my perceived adversity, though profoundly false, I guess I could say that I became a stronger person in my first learning experience of my four-month exploration.

I guess I’m a naturally shy and soft-spoken individual. Though I do enjoy the company of others on a regular basis, I also enjoy my own company alone, reading a book, writing (this blog), and much less often watching television.  For some reason I had a hunch that I would be the second case more often than not. That’s not to say that I can’t have fun, because in new situations I turn up social butterfly mode and go with it until I have at least a few good friends.

And more than a few good friends I got. They weren’t exactly the friends I was hoping for, being that I wanted to immerse myself in Hong Kong and its locals, but in some ways making friends with other international students gave me a better world view, especially an Anglophone world view, rather than just a Hong Kong- or Chinese-centered one.

Of my friends, of course some were better than others; for a few we parted ways over personality, never ideology. So I guess I’ll go bad news first.

My luck with roommates varies a lot over time. I know he doesn’t read this blog, so in this conclusion, I have few qualms about describing our dealings, especially keeping him in anonymity (at least from those who don’t know him).

He happened to have come from Illinois, the same state where I can say my parents are from (having been educated there, met there, married there, and lived there for a long time). That’s not to say that he’s like my parents though, because he turned out not to be in so many ways.

In being cordial we were good friends for the first month and a half. Though it sounds corny, this was what I like to call the honeymoon period—that being before people fully get to know each other and personalities fully materialize. Things that were so minor to me during the honeymoon period, such as his perceived need to get a girlfriend right then and there in the first two weeks, and his staying up way late to play video games only to complain of exhaustion and boredom during the day began to really annoy me.

In addition, his preconceptions of me came out one by one, one by one revealing themselves to be more specifically misconceptions. For one, he kept insisting that both my parents are from China, to which I had to remind him that my father’s from Detroit and my mother is originally from Hong Kong and immigrated mid-childhood. It followed that during a discussion about learning languages he believed that I speak Mandarin natively, as taught to me by my parents. I had to remind him that my father is a natural-born American and that my mother is from Hong Kong (where they overwhelmingly speak Cantonese over both Mandarin and English), to which I told him he should be able to speak standard German, since he claimed Austrian roots.

And I’m no saint, but on the other hand many of my hunches about him turned out to be true. For one, he whined a lot about not having enough money, though he blew it like no other, spending plenty on drinking and partying. And when he found out that I don’t get financial aid from the government, he assumed that I’m from a rich family, thereafter pointing to expensive sportscars and telling me to buy them for him. The cherry on top was the rigid attitude that he had to all things world. He described his disdain for Islam Week at HKU and described the locals in terms he should have thought twice about before saying to me and my Asian self. In his intelligence, he managed to tell his mom about me in not-so-excellent terms with me in the room. He assumed since I had my earphones in that I wasn’t listening when in reality he should have saved it for later, when I wasn’t present.

It all culminated towards the end of reading week, when after landing at the airport from our group trip to Beijing, he said that had to get off the plane to go meet his friends, with the implication that we were not his friends as denoted by his overly forward tone.

That friend turned out to be a “girlfriend” located an hour’s ferry away in Macau who he probably met on the Internet. In earlier weeks, he would browse the personals section of Craigslist in his boredom, telling me about them while I was trying to study. I ended up disappearing to the library more often than not to study or at least get away from him and he ended up disconnecting from the group and disappearing to Macau nearly every weekend to go see her. That’s not to say I assumed their relationship was one of convenience, because I know how he described her to some of my other friends.

And on the upswing, throughout the whole semester, his opposition to picking up a few words of Cantonese became quite irksome. Yeah, others were like that too, since it’s plenty evident that it’s not hard to get by in Hong Kong on English alone, but with him, it fit his personality in such a way that could only be described in American English-only campaigns by many of the uneducated too lazy to press number “1” or “2” on their phones when prompted.

This isn’t to say that we weren’t friendly though, being that we had to be as we were roommates and all. We parted ways on the appropriate note. He packed away all the People’s Liberation Army “Commie” hats at Mao Zedong quote books for his friends and had be chuckle at the appropriate time. I told him he gets cheap thrills from that stuff. He said it was for his friends. I modified my statement to say that he and his friends get cheap thrills from that stuff. He also was trying to figure out how to pack away a rolled poster for his right-wing father that featured Obama morphed into Mao. He thought I was laughing with him at the witty piece of art. I was laughing at him since he couldn’t get it into his backs without crushing it, putting about thirty folds in it. And as much as I can disagree or even hate someone, defiling someone’s image simply isn’t constructive and if you have to lead with your emotions than you aren’t going to get anywhere (or haven’t gotten anywhere).

And in another falling out, this friend happens to read my blog instead of updating his own (October, November, and December all went down without a single word). This is the friend who I described as not understanding face (in the universal sense) and social relationships that I used as an example in my Traditional Chinese society class.

All of a few hours after my post went on screen he called me during class. I hung up on him since I was in class, so he texted me describing how sorry he was and how he wanted to start anew. I forgot about it by the end of the day, so he ended up sending me a message on Facebook telling me that I defamed him to the point where I should remove and retract my statements. I told him that he was in the wrong, and since it would be sufficiently difficult to figure out that it was him (though the lack of a name and a face), and because I presented my writing as my opinion and not as undisputable fact that in no way could my statements be construed as libel (which he incorrectly termed slander). In addition, he had no career of which to speak to ruin, no would anyone care about what I say about him. I told him that those people who figure out that I was talking about him already have opinions formed of him, and that my little post wouldn’t shift things one way or the other.

With nothing good to say to him and knowing that he had nothing good to say to me, we avoided each other until the last few days. We were cordial and did not mention the disagreement we had.

Later, I was told that he doesn’t like me. I replied to her that I don’t really care. What happened happened and it had gotten to the point where I practically brushed it off my shoulder.

And for the good news, most of the people that I met were genuine and open-minded. I found myself discussing contemporary issues with them and debating the past (often over coffee). I found good travel buddies after thinking for the first few weeks that I should probably find some tours to take me travelling.

Though it seems that I sold them short in this conclusion, I described much of what we all went through in nearly all of my previous posts, from travels to classes and simple cultural differences.

Seeing all of them go was in itself the end of this Study Abroad chapter in my life, since they were more than there for all of it—they were an integral part of it. I plan to stay in contact of course, and who knows?—maybe we’ll have a Hong Kong reunion in a decade’s time.


Lectures and Tutorials

It may just be because I belong to this system, but I can’t describe fully how much I appreciate the liberal arts education. Something also must be said about learning in the common language rather than the elite language.

But first things first: liberal arts as a type and theory in methods of education has a different meaning to the general public and American university students than in the international higher education community, especially along the Anglophone front. Here, we like to think as liberal arts as primarily and often exclusively referring to those institutions of higher learning termed liberal arts colleges. Names aside, this distinction is made primarily to distinguish them from research universities—the difference having less to do with what is liberal arts and more with how big the student population is, how many students there are per class, and what the professors do during their free time.

Liberal arts colleges aim to boast more intimate student experiences, with students being able to learn better through a more Socratic classroom environment with the format more along the lines of a pseudo-discussion rather than a rote lecture in which only the (doctored) professor talks.

On the other hand there are the research universities, where professors teach large lectures with much of the grading being left to teaching assistants, often graduate students, allowing them to research with the time leftover (though often research comes before teaching). In this sense, students have to work at getting to know their professors, most notably by taking advantage of office hours. Misconceptions about research universities stem from that basis—that because lecture halls regularly encompass three hundred students, they cannot be nearly as effective as liberal arts colleges.

In my opinion, people should choose what works better for them rather than just thinking that liberal arts colleges are just better or worse. I know two things: that both formats work well for me, with me myself preferring the anonymity that a large lecture hall can afford me, and also that out of the fourteen or so classes that I have taken thus far at UCSD, most have had less than seventy students, with my smallest class having around ten. I believe that the value of what you get out of anything is what you put in, meaning that it’s irrelevant which format, whether it be large lectures or small discussions, you choose, insofar as you take full advantage of the resources at hand.

But American public definitions aside, what is really meant by attaining a liberal arts education is not the methods in which you met you ends, but rather what you get out of it. As I understand it, without consulting any literature on the matter, the liberal arts education is one of breadth, notwithstanding continuing depth, meaning that you should come out of college understanding not only your subject, but also other subjects—not necessarily all of them, but of those that you do, at least their basis or even some finer points, or in other words, well-roundedness. The theory behind this is that by getting a good depth of feel for more of what our universe of knowledge is about, you can produce more profound critical thought on your own discipline, seeing material in a more comprehensive manner if you will.

In this sense, American universities and colleges are all based in liberal arts, since all have general education requirements of sorts to gain breadth {as well as to keep accreditation). You can contrast this with vocational schools, which, being more skill-based, teach you what you need to know for your future job with much less emphasis on critical thought.

In other countries, higher education is often somewhere in between liberal arts institutions and vocational schools. In Hong Kong for example, general education is advertised by the university as something for personal enjoyment rather than as a requirement. So in this sense, breadth is more an optional asset rather than a requirement for graduation.

Of course, there are pros and cons. Using the simple comparison between the American education system and that of Hong Kong, graduates from American universities and colleges come out as highly skilled in terms of critical thought, or more pragmatically put—problem solving. Graduates from Hong Kong universities will come out with more specific knowledge on the specific fields that they’ve trained for.

So automatically, one would compare the two and ask which one is better. On top of the fact that I just got back from Hong Kong, I compare the two because of their similar economies. Hong Kong’s is based on the service sector, largely in finance, with much industrial manufacturing having gone to nearby Guangdong Province in Mainland China. That of the United States is going in that direction, with (industrial) jobs going overseas because of cheaper labor in places like China. As such, Americans are finding it more and more necessary to upgrade their educations with children now being expected to go to college or likely end up in a dead-end job.

So which system of higher education is better? Though I’ve tried to fully express my viewpoint in earlier posts and very simply stated my ardent appreciation of the system I happen to be in, I’m not going to delve into that again here, because then I’ll end up going into dollars and cents, and past subsistence (including security), I’ve never felt like happiness or the meaning of life were embedded in numbers of any sort.

The second point of contention that I intend to mention is the language of instruction. Hong Kong, having been a British Crown Colony for the vast majority of its successful history, tends to over-idealize and overestimate its colonial heritage. As such, much emphasis is placed on English-language education, with the appropriate policies being in place and in action in the territory’s major universities, of course including the one that I attended on exchange.

Before coming to Hong Kong, I read in the pamphlet that the school sent me to help me find my way upon arrival that though classes are all in English, the local students speak to each other in Cantonese. I took a double take at the sentence, knowing that there is generally the tendency to prefer speaking in the language with which one is most comfortable in. It was in a sense of what was to come, because the pamphlet was correct as expected.

While I fully believe in language rights, certain things about Hong Kong local students weren’t quite clicking as I was hoping. The pamphlet itself used funny English. It had funny constructions, odd prepositions, and “the” before nearly every noun, whether it needed it or not. I assumed that the way the pamphlet was written simply reflected the variety of English used in Hong Kong. I don’t think this was an unreasonable assumption at all. It is well known that especially since English has such large geographic spread, there are bound to be vast differences in various technical usages of certain words and even different grammatical features. For example, a British English speaker would say, “at weekends,” whereas an American English speaker would say, “on weekends.”

As I would find out, it’s hard to classify Hong Kong English as a true variety of English. This is because the differences in word usage between Hong Kong English and American English were anything but consistent (and hence not predictable and not easy to internalize). When Hong Kong English speakers would say something, it seemed often that any preposition could go in conjunction with any verb, and because of that, it took a great deal of effort during my entire stay there (meaning it didn’t get any easier) to understand what people were saying.

Their lack of English skills was in large created by the fact that they don't speak English with each other, and based on what I have heard and witnessed, that they seem to subconsciously view English as a hindrance to their educations despite its advantage in their futures. The reason I say that is because during a floor meeting at Lee Hysan Hall, the students conducted all their business in Cantonese despite the presence of non-Cantonese speakers. This meant that instead of everyone switching to English (which they are all expected to be able to speak), they had one member translate for those who could not understand. It seems as though if they had more practice, they would either get their prepositions correct or at least consistent.

I say this to mean that everyone should speak English properly, like many Americans would have it be, just that in a school that boasts English as its language of instruction, it might be good as a student to get to speaking well a consistent variety of the language if not an already existing standard.

This isn’t to say that everyone was a bad English speaker, for I’m sure there are. What I mean is that overall, the local student population needed dearly to refine their English-language abilities.

What this meant for my classes was that in my opinion they were largely diluted. Ask me what I learned in class and I’ll tell you I’d rather talk about my travels. Professors had to speak slowly so that students understand. This meant that in the fourteen-week semester (my quarters at UCSD are ten weeks), I feel I learned less than back in California during a significantly shorter term.


La Gran Obra de Arte

I know I’m not the first in using my passport as a something of a symbol of my travels, but I’m going to do it anyways. Doing so is popular because such a representation is apt. After all, that little booklet accompanied me all along the way.

The original sections of that little booklet were completely full by the end. If you recall, by mid-November, it readily became clear that my passport book was filling up with stamps. Since Hong Kong and Mainland China have separate immigration schemes, the fact that I did a lot of frequent traveling to the mainland meant that most of those stamps were red rectangles and ovals. Under advice online from the Department of State, I ventured over to the consulate-general to have more pages added to lessen the likelihood of being turned away when going through immigration. Unfortunately, none of those pages were actually used since no one wanted to be the first to stamp on those pages, being that they are a different color from the rest of the booklet. Instead, they took the liberty of being economical and went backwards the booklet, stamping wherever they could find a corner here and there.

Most know of the pride I take in my passport, and the fact that I will have to get a new one soon means that this one, once invalidated, will likely find its way into a bank vault somewhere (though probably not). I may be one of the few who do this, but I like to exhibit my passport when people ask about my travels. The fact of the matter is half of them are asking to be polite more than out of interest, so handing over my passport to them for the first time gives them something physical to match with the various stories wandering around my brain. I know that I’m not the best storyteller in speech, and I don’t deny that there is always room for improvement in my writing.

Before going to Hong Kong, I had been to China for the first time in my life on a two-week tour of some of the major sights. Prior to that trip, my international travels consisted of one road trip to Canada from Ohio with my aunt and uncle in Dayton. Back then you didn’t need passports to re-enter the United States through that border—just American birth certificates or American naturalization certificates plus identification. Even now with passport control, the United States doesn’t stamp Canadians (I’m pretty sure) and Canada doesn’t stamp Americans (I’m certain).

I went through Canada again at the end of an Alaskan cruise, having been routed through Vancouver. But the bottom line is that I got my passport first for my trip to China. I used it again for going to the Schengen Area when my family and I toured Paris and much of Italy. This means that in the first three years of having my passport, the first two pages were used: one with my Chinese visa and one with immigration stamps.

Applying for my Hong Kong student visa through the university and receiving my new full-page sticker made me pretty happy despite the fact that it was one of the ugliest pieces of paper ever designed. It made me realize both the definite fact that I was going to be going on a long trip and that that trip was happening soon.

And as visas go, I had to get one more to enter Mainland China, for which I applied and received in Hong Kong. The process reaffirmed my nationality in the fact that my visa cost over $1000 HKD when most other people in line paid less than $300 for exactly the same piece of paper.

And on my multiple-entry visa, I got most of my passport stamps. On exchange, I went to Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Beijing, Nanjing, Shanghai, and Guilin, crossing the border between Hong Kong and Mainland China twelve more times. Other trips that I made were to Macau and Taipei. Outside of Greater China though, I only made one trip—to Phuket, Thailand. I genuinely intended to get to Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Seoul, and Tokyo, had it not been for the increased costs in traveling alone, and I’m confident that had I stayed for the entire year, I would have gone to Vietnam and Cambodia as well.

I guess it’s difficult for me, especially as an American, to say that I'm not well traveled. Because although the farthest trip I made when I was under 10 was from northern Los Angeles to San Diego and my first plane trip happened the summer right before September 11, 2001, it’s hard for me to claim such a statement in the present. The fact of the matter is that not only have I gone to New York state and back through thirty states, but also my passport has become the great work of art that it now is.

With my internalization of the fiction that is nationality, I understand that talking about my passport in such a manner can be construed as a double-edged sword, but because it’s recorded the majority of my travels in such a succinct yet unique way, it serves me more as a momento and a souvenir rather than a document proving my citizenship.


Dollars, Yuan, Baht, and Those Unsung Heroes

In planning this conclusion, I initially intended to list out the costs of my study to Hong Kong. I’ve decided as of now though to stop short of this. I will say that after making my final summations the number is not small, or at least not nearly as small as I would have expected.

I consider my lifestyle comfortable, perhaps upper-middle class, but not lavish or particularly elitist. My travels were much of the expense. Encouraged my mother in words and parental financial assistance, I found myself going somewhere nearly every other weekend. In short, traveling outside of Hong Kong added up to about 40% of my total expenses.

However, my biggest single purchase came in the form of a digital single-lens reflex camera, which, being on sale, I splurged about 9% of my total expenses on. I got a Nikon D90, which sits at the top of the mid-range section, right under professional.

It cost me so much that in a very stable, rational matter I assure you I just about didn’t hand over my debit card to my salesperson. After the fact, I lamented for weeks about how much I paid for it, comparing it to how much money I would have spent on more trips and such, how much it costs to free a modern slave, how many times over I could have paid off my friend’s library late fees.

Since I did study abroad rather than just travel abroad, I should probably mention how much I paid for my education abroad. At just over 30% of my total expenses, tuition was about $4000 USD, paid to the Regents of the University of California. I actually don’t know how much it costs to go to the University of Hong Kong because since the University of California sends as many students to the University of Hong Kong as the University of Hong Kong sends the University of California (under the exchange program), students pay their home institutions. This means that the amount that I paid was about equivalent to how much as semester would have cost at Berkeley or UC Merced.

And herein I start my thanks. At the urging of my father, I applied for a $500 USD-scholarship at UCSD (with multiple recipients). This is one of the very few merit-based scholarships that don’t look at financial need.  I happened to get this scholarship (for whom I have no idea who to thank) and it was automatically transferred to my EAP program in a miracle of the bureaucracy that feeds into UCSD Finance office.

For the longest time I had no clue where the $500 came from in my EAP financial accounting. I assumed it was a glitch in the system. When I had to pay a bill to UCSD though for a Programs Abroad Office administrative fee, I saw the two register lines devoted to this scholarship (receipt and subsequent transfer). So to whatever committee or person thereof that I got this scholarship from I owe my first thanks.

My second thanks goes off to the Programs Abroad Office here at UCSD, the staff of which (save one particular advisor for the Global Seminars Program) were all extremely nice and helpful. They, along with the system-wide Education Abroad Program office helped me and all the exchange students sift through all the paperwork involved. Especially regarding immigration-department paperwork for Hong Kong students, these two offices, along with the Center for Student Development and Resources (CEDAR) pushed all my paperwork through the bureaucracy of Hong Kong immigration.

If memory serves me right, I had to submit about ten forms through the offices. The two big forms were the application to the University of Hong Kong after my acceptance to the program which took me the better part of an hour to fill out in English and my student visa application that in all its thirty pages was divided into parts “A” through “K” with every letter in between.

Of course, my greatest thanks go to the financiers of this expedition and my support crew, both of whom happen to be my family. As cliché as it sounds, my family has always been there for me, if not emotionality at least in person, and without them it is clear that at my age, and especially because of my financial viability, that this trip would not have gone as far as it did. Without their assistance and their blessing, I would not have had the ability to jet around East Asia. I also acknowledge that while my parents pay for much of what I do so that they have a controlling interest in what I do, it is always for my own good if not for the good of the family.

And in this sense of family, there is one thing left of my heritage that I think is not only important but also incredibly moral. I vow never in my life to ever just send them off to a nursing home. The fact of the matter is that while I’m told I was an easy infant to take care of, the amount of good that my brother and I brought to their lives in constituting a family is offset by the negatives, such as opportunity cost in careers lost, significantly long periods of sleep deprivation, and financial well being. At one point in my mid-teens, my parents noticed I was drinking expensive lactose-free milk at such an alarming rate that I equated the situation with water being flushed down a toilet. But ultimately from a moral perspective, it would just be wrong to cast off one’s parents in their time of need.

Honestly though, I can’t say that it’s only because of my heritage that I aim to espouse such a principle in my conscience. My parents have always struck the right balance between being imposing and controlling to the point where I’m led in the right direction and laissez-faire to the point were I could find the right direction by myself. Because of that, not only have I never had an intense period of rebellion, whether it be in middle school, high school, or right after leaving the nest, but also my parents are the two people who I’m most open with, whether or not they would like to believe it.

And though friends don’t usually get mentioned in such a context, I feel I owe thanks to my friends both at UCSD and at HKU who gave me first-hand support. From my friends at UCSD, their interest in the normalized craziness of what I was doing have a certain kind of value to this endeavor that, while kind of superficial, made me enjoy the whole thing that much more. And my friends at HKU, who came to the territory as disoriented as me helped pull me through all the changes set in front of us, though many of us came from different backgrounds, different homes per se. I guess it was through diversity that we aided each other in perceived adversity and because of the lot of them that I went from missing California then to missing Hong Kong now.

If you haven’t slipped into beta mode yet, you probably realize that I gave you enough information to figure out how much I spent in acceptable detail. I just didn’t want to throw numbers around for people to preoccupy themselves with.


In the Quest

This blog itself had an interesting role in my experience abroad. Though I had no intentions of telling anyone about my blog because I wanted to have the freedom of conscience in a sense to write whatever I wanted to write on it, word leaked. I could blame Facebook for not allowing me (at least at the time) to promote my blog to friends back home at the exclusion of new friends in Hong Kong—but that would be somewhat irrelevant.

In this age of social media, I knew what I was getting myself into by starting a blog for the whole thing rather than just writing my thoughts down into a physical journal. And therein lies a paradox in my said motivations in writing a blog rather than a traditional journal.

I have said a few times that in all my writing I write for myself. And it’s true. So the paradox that seems to be lies in the fact that I write for myself yet I publish it on the World Wide Web for the whole world to see. Now I wouldn’t be publishing it online for others to read in my own self-interest.

Actually I would. Let me explain. I write for myself in the sense that most directly I write for my own purposes—say so I may be able to read this when I’m old and crumbling. I also write for myself in the sense that ultimate benefit will come to me. This isn’t to say that you lot who have read my blog won’t get anything out of it—just that by you reading it I get some ultimate benefit, often in addition to yourselves.

This works on two levels. I talked about how on a superficial level seeing that other people take interest in what I’m doing gives me satisfaction in the sense that what I’m doing is worth something rather than in the sense that now I can become popular. On the higher level, me publishing what I have to offer (in a sense) puts something out there for everyone, including people to whom I have no connection, to comment on. This means ultimately that as I get older and mature into a career, I will have mileage posts to speak of about my life. From there not only will I able to reflect upon my past, but also what other people have to say about my past. For all my uncertainty in life, this blog is staying on the Internet.

To me, this means that this blog can prove more interactive and in a sense provide advantages over traditional publishing. Taking a step back, I write papers for class ultimately because I need to get a good grade on it to a good grade point average to go to a good graduate school and establish a solid career in which I will hopefully be able to do meaningful work. These papers are unlike a blog though in that there are only a few people who will ever read them.

Because of my inhibitions about my work, I am and have always been hesitant about putting it out in the open for everyone to view. But because of the fact that blogs and the Internet come off in my subconscious as quite anonymous, I have few qualms about putting nearly everything about my experience out there on the web.

And honestly, it’s nice not having any editors past yourself. I’m ultimately going to have to go over this monstrosity of over well one hundred ten thousand words (a mid-size novel) to make it flow. My photos that I have put in separate posts out of convenience could be integrated into my text, ultimately reducing the number of posts (currently one hundred forty-six), which I’ll make look more like chapters, yet increase the number of words in smoothing everything over.

As for the style of my narration, I wrote everything descriptive in the past because everything of substance happened in the past. In terms of flow, I understand this blog to be more formal-sounding than most. I have also been told that I write like I speak, which meant close to nothing to me since I think the best writing is genuine thought, regardless of research. My conventions I wrote in my native dialect without regard to Standard American English (except in orthography). This means that the overwhelming majority of grammatical mistakes you seem to find are actually perfectly fine in my eyes. If you see few and far between in the way of weird words and odd grammatical constructions, it means that you and I have more in common than you may outwardly imagine. Bottom line is that my balance between sheer informality and stringent formality strikes a tone of authenticity in myself from which you can gauge yourselves.


After the Quest

I go to UCSD, but when I was applying to Harvard I wrote for one of my essays something I entitled “The Last Prologue.” Obviously it either wasn’t enough to get me accepted or it was enough to get me rejected, but either way I mean the title as a way to see how I positioned myself in my surroundings.

You could say that immaturely, I felt like my childhood was kind of a prologue to me real life, which would begin when I became an adult. The first time I doubted this conviction came the day I turned 18 and felt nothing different. In my newfound adulthood I was no different than the day before, and at that moment I thought in a different way how there are so many young people who have wisdom beyond their age and so many old people who lack the years that they possess.

I don’t mean maturity in playful banter. In this regard arrogant people would be classified as immature. Ultimately though, if my childhood of eighteen years was my prequel, then my old age lasting a few decades, say from retirement, would be my afterword, my conclusion, and my epilogue beginning with my death. In my reformed mindset, I feel that since to call old age an afterword would be unfair, to call childhood a prologue would be nonsensical.

I now firmly believe that one’s life is the entirety of one’s life. So though there’s no getting rid of your past, for the rest of your life there is always opportunity for maturity.

In the same regard, I will be graduating college within a year and a half. It could even be as soon as fifteen months, each month of which I am confident will fly by whether I want it to or not. Before studying abroad, I’ve gone through my childhood and the various levels of education in the public school system. I’ve worked in a few very small jobs as a tutor and as a translation assistant and I’ve also sat on a large non-profit’s Board of Directors. After studying abroad, I’ve lived and studied outside the country. I’ve felt lost in translation but not as lost as some people. I’ve discovered that I’m a dual national. Most notably yet most simply though, I’ve advanced one term in my university career and became a more mature, open-minded individual in the process.

People like to say that the journey is the destination in that what you learn is in the journey. I would like to modify this to say that the journey is but after. I have learned so much my studying abroad, but I know that as much as I have learned and will have learned by the time I, say, turn 50, there will always be more to learn. Hence, the journey is after, and in that sense, you’re always in a journey, since the day after tomorrow is but tomorrow come today’s tomorrow.

And so in the title I refrain from calling this the last post, because though this is indeed my last post to this blog, in no way is it my last bit of writing. And though it’s usually uttered in a different context, it’s always the case that when one door closes, another one opens, even if it’s not the one you planned for.

So out of college in less than a year and a half, what’s my next door to open?

After the Quest

Class, Decorum, and Americans

Despite what anyone tells you, Americans are not the rudest nor the loudest of them all. This point was proven to me the other day over a bowl of congee. I’ll try to speak tastefully, but this may be my one post to be frank without letting it all go.

My friend from Scotland told me a couple months ago that she’s never met a mean Californian. Aww, that’s nice, was around the lines of what I replied. I mean, I know the Californians as I know them—and as with any group of people, the subset who study abroad aren’t exactly the average lot if you know what I’m saying. That’s not to say that I’m tooting my own horn, nor are all of the exchange students here like perfect little angels or at least sponges ready to learn about more than academics—because they’re not.

Despite what a lot of people think, Americans are much more reserved than the media would have us believe—scratch that Californians are much more reserved than the media would have us believe. Either way, there’s a bit of a caveat—we’re only reserved around people we know.

In the imagined nation that is the community of the United States of America, we don’t know each and every one of each other, of course—but what we do know, is a rough set of social norms that translate into etiquette and decorum at the personal level. In this sense, it’s easier to be more open off the get-go with people of your own roots and than with others.

I was in Global Lounge with two of my friends. One was studying for her Mandarin self-introduction presentation that afternoon, for which she felt she needed more practice on if I’m not mistaken. Her classmate sat down on the cushy chair near us and recognized my two friends. One she knew from Mandarin class, the other she know as a fellow Australian. She made a point about being able to let her tongue loose around other Australians. She said Americans got a little wide-eyed when she let out an F word or two around them. I said it was because you need to get to know people first to see if cursing offends them or not.

And on the bowl of congee, if you’ve ever seen congee, you’ll know what else it looks like. Congee also happens to be the popular breakfast food of Hong Kong. One of my friends over dinner decided that she was going to speak her mind about what she thought it looked like. I thought it was a rude comment. She thought nothing of it.

Nanjing: 300,000 at the Gate of China

After freshening up at the hotel for a bit, it was only 3:00 PM, so we decided to get a bit of sightseeing in. The major thing that Nanjing is know for outside China is the Rape of Nanking as termed in American history textbooks, now seemingly recognized properly at the Nanjing Massacre.

To this effect, we went to the appropriate memorial, named the Memorial for Compatriots Killed in the Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Forces of Aggression (侵華日軍南京大屠殺遇難同胞紀念館/侵华日军南京大屠杀遇难同胞纪念馆) after eating at a western restaurant. The food was quite good, there was just too much of it, so we ended up overeating.

The whole memorial was quite somber, as it was designed. The memorial was designed on a black and charcoal gray template, with the death toll on a cross made purposefully dirty juxtaposed with walls across a gray-pebble courtyard (evocative of Zen gardens) from the museum.

One point popped into the back of my head. It probably would have just gone away if my friend didn’t say anything about it. This memorial wasn’t built over any sort of ruins. The museum had fake ruins adorning the materials about the conflict and in no way was this site more historical than the rest of Nanjing.

This friend happened to have seen some of the major holocaust sites in Germany. She said that the Nanjing Massacre Memorial lacked the same authentic feel that Dauchau concentration camp did. I could see her point, but being that most of the museums that I’ve been to in the United States have been built on nothing more than their foundations of concrete and steel, this fact didn’t irk me.

The museum was more informative than anything else. Everything stated was presented as fact, and though the words “Japanese Invaders” were used more than once (or twice), artifacts from the conflict seemed to be displayed in a very impartial manner (though at the same time it was quite clear what country you were in).

It made me realize how much about Asia, and for that matter the world outside Anglophone North America and Europe I don’t know. I construe it as a simple statement on our Eurocentric public educations. I remember that in sophomore year of high school, the state set up a curriculum based on “World History,” but with our class being European History Advanced Placement, we were going to wait until after the AP test in May to cover the rest of the world. Thought it seemed to be a daunting task, covering the rest of the world in less than a month, we failed to accomplish anything at all. Instead, we watched Monty Python and the Holy Grail as well as Forrest Gump.

I do understand that in comparison with the eleven million people (six million Jews) that the Nazis killed, a simple 300,000 doesn’t seem like much by the Imperialist Japanese. The fact of the matter is though that 300,000 people make up still 300,000 lives, each one precious in its own regard.

To make matters special, whereas Germany likes to distance itself from its Nazi past, it is highly questionable whether Japan cares to do the same. Maybe 300,000 is a high estimate; “impartial” observers estimate 260,000; but Japanese historians head down to 100,000. I suppose the number isn’t important, but some Japanese officials say that all the deaths were military-related and that no war crimes occurred (being that you aren’t to target civilians nor attack when civilians are known to be present). Former Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi decided to go pay respect to the Japanese memorial honoring their fallen soldiers in the conflict.

The fact of the matter was that Japan was clearly the one that violated the well-established international law principle of territorial sovereignty, and in doing so continued to murder innocent civilians. I don’t hold anything against the Japan of today, because what’s past is the history. And though you are supposed to learn from your mistakes, I well understand many Chinese people’s anti-Japanese sentiment.

I suppose in some ways I’m a product of the whole conflict. Had Japan as well as Germany not started their courses in history in World War II, I, James Philip Jee, as I know myself would not be here today. People like to take guesses at my families’ histories. In Guilin, one American tourist decided to guess without solicitation that I have relatives who moved to the United States to build the railroads. Almost everybody assumes that having parents that are Chinese (meaning ethnicity) means that you can speak Chinese. To them it makes so much sense when I say that my mother’s from Hong Kong yet so much humor when I say my father’s from Detroit.

Because my parents didn’t meet in China, I don’t say my family’s from China, though I am proud of my Chinese heritage. In fact, my father’s never been outside of North America, so to say so would be an inaccuracy. If the conflict never started, would my mother’s parents have moved from Hangzhou? Would I have a much different set of relatives? Would I even exist? Could I be an only child?

Though my circumstances are rooted in a history so ugly, I guess I can say that thanks to my parents I have reestablished my roots in a way that they never would have predicted. In a way, I like to think that no one predicted it would come out this way.

I understand that I am one privileged individual. While I wouldn’t call myself filthy rich, I understand my circumstances well as being well, and it bothers me to see wastefulness in life and in spending.

So there is a reason I went to visit Nanjing, and it’s fitting in a way that it happened to be my last trip out of Hong Kong before my time here. Never should I forget where my past lives have been lived out, never should any one forget the horrors that we people have placed each other under.

I’ve come to appreciate my roots for my culture and my heritage for my traditions. I’ve come to respect my nation as something to subscribe to and my state as something to rely on, and though immigration regulations places restrictions where people are allowed to reside and work (which most notably means that certain places are more prosperous than others), we are all ultimately people, and the future of who we are and where we are lies nowhere else than with us.

Germans All Have Blond Hair and Blue Eyes

I guess I just can’t shake it off. Most incidents are minor and not worth mentioning, except perhaps in larger contexts, because a constituency is made of its smallest parts, right? At this point, I don’t plan to exempt myself from this observation, because I know I do it too—I just wish it would all stop.

I guess the basis of this whole thing starts from a simple rule of thumb in English class in high school—never make absolute statements in essay writing. I’ve learned a long time ago now that applies to speaking now, because almost all absolutes are wrong, if even by the smallest degree. I’ve just learned that if all people believe the same absolute, it’s fake truth wills out against the real truth—which I guess is to be expected, since as records are reflections of events and not the events themselves, what’s “true” is largely up to interpretation, whatever the truth may be.

I’m guessing that this post is just going to amount to episodes of logical fallacies and the sense I’ve made of them.

The Germans

I once said to my group of friends here, something something something “is like saying that everyone in Germany has blond hair and blue eyes—it’s just not true.” Now, I’ve seen the statistics and I’ve seen it for myself (meaning I’ve been to Germany), but the fact that even though a vast majority of Germans have blond hair and blue eyes, the fact of the matter is that not all of them do, even if you only include ethnic Germans in Germany. I’ve met plenty of people from Germany who don’t have blue eyes and plenty more who don’t have blond hair.

My logic was lost on them though, as it often seems that 95% equals 100%, but any one who’s studied any form of science (natural or social) would tell you that it’s not the same, however damn close it is.

My statement got the reply, “Well have you ever been to Germany? Because I’m always surprised by the sheer number of blond-haired, blue-eyed people there”—to which I said yes, and that it’s still not all, to which I was rebutted, “Yeah but it’s a lot”—and I to that I said that yes, there are a lot, but it is still not all, and that’s the bottom line. And though I was ultimately right in logic, my statement got rejected because the falsity of notion and not the logic was what was agreed to.

In the Middle of China

Fine. On the train to Guilin, this guy started a conversation in Mandarin with me and the three other people in my group. I was the one with the highest proficiency (with two being nil), so I did most of the talking. They all said where they were from (Scotland, Australia, and Norway), and I said I was from the United States, using it as an excuse for my lack of proficiency. I am well aware that I’m noticeably of Chinese decent (though many perceive my attitude of that fact as meaning that I’m ashamed of my past or that I’ve got false notions about my appearance—both of which are false), so the guy pressed further at me. I asked the others what I should tell him.

One friend said that I should say that my family’s from China. I told her that’s not true (because to me that would imply that my parents met in China and moved to the United States, which isn’t true, with one parent never having been outside of North America and the other speaking better English than Chinese). By that logic though, I should have asked my Australian friend whether she would say that her family is from Britain, since her father’s from there and that overall she could trace her entire ancestry back to the Isles, because I’m pretty sure she would have said no.

American Dad

It seems funny to me that no matter how much things are illogical, the most superficial aspects of something just make up for the rest, even if it makes something more illogical.

Just a couple days ago, I got asked where my father is from since I always say that I’m trying to learn Cantonese, partly so that I can use it back home with my mother, who’s originally from Hong Kong, having left the Crown Colony at the age of eleven. I said Michigan, which is the complete truth.

Though I ultimately understand, I’ve always wondered why I get such a variety of reactions when I say my dad’s from Detroit. The fact of the matter is that that’s the truth. It’s where he was born and where he spent the first half of his childhood (the other half being in Chicago). He’s got those annoying double negatives to prove his difference in dialect.

So my friend asked me just a few days ago where my dad was from. I said Michigan, which elicited surprise. I was kind of taken aback. I wasn’t offended, but I was surprised, because I spend a lot of time with this friend and I’m sure I’d told her before. She had it in her head for some reason that my dad’s from Hong Kong like my mom is. I said that if that were the case, my Chinese would likely be much better—native even, if not at least near.

The Locals

The time I went to dinner with my floor here, I got local students asking how I could possibly American. After all, I look Chinese. To that I tried to say that why can’t you be both, or why can’t you be one in certain aspects and the other in other aspects? Unfortunately, I couldn’t convey that, nor could I convey my surprise that those students have never heard of populations that are not homogenous. (Hong Kong is 95% Han Chinese whereas the United States is less than 70% non-Hispanic white with California coming in at less than 50% non-Hispanic white.)

The Disconnect of the Upper Echelons

What’s the funniest is who knows what. Earlier this week, I walked into the Finance office to apply for my caution money back (a $350 HKD deposit) now that the semester is coming to an end. I asked for the proper forms not knowing what I needed, and though I’m 華人, I got the form for exchange students. The secretary for the office had heard my foreignness in my accent and judged my origin based on that rather than my skin color, so to speak. This feat would not have seemed so impressive had the pro-vice-chancellor on Monday not said what she said.

As I said earlier, the Pro-Vice-Chancellor Amy Tsui came in to speak at the last lecture of Hong Kong and the World. I’ve got my opinions of school administrators, most of which along the theme of being disconnected and haughty (though not overtly arrogant). She of all people is someone you would expect to get this straight, having done her Ph.D. (in linguistics) in the United Kingdom.

Seeing our class of forty in attendance, she noticed the two white people in the lecture hall and referred to them as the “two foreigners in the class,” (though there were about ten of us), without thinking that maybe some of us happen to be of Chinese decent. Of all people, I would have expected her to understand well that culture, like language, is passed down through socialization and isn’t dictated in our genes. (Unlike the many people back home, including some of the people closest to me, who overtly believe that I am more comfortable around people who look like me rather than the people in my hometown—composition: 85% white).

I guess it just goes to show that those at the uppermost echelons of society are often the most ignorant whereas those of us who have our feet firmly planted on the ground—the ones who interact with everyday people—really know what’s going on.

Add It All Up

The bottom line is that I hold none of the above statements against the people who uttered them. This is because I’m well aware that as much as I try to monitor myself and bring myself back down to logic, I still fall victim to the same forces.

So the base line is that I really dislike when people hate that they are expected, especially in public situations, to be politically correct all the time. All that means is that you ultimately don’t care about anyone else (in feelings, emotions, situations, etc.), even if you think you are just joking. It gets worse when such is followed by a request not to judge, and I’m sorry, but the fact of the matter is that I already will have.

Just try and try hard, that’s all I can and do hope for.

Notes on a Close

Eventually all things come to an end. Eventually I will have to go back to the United States, finish my university degree, find my life, and establish my career. And I know that eventually will start to take place around noon on December 21, when I have to board a plane back to Los Angeles via San Francisco.

It all had to end eventually, I keep telling myself, but somehow it’s just not enough. I didn’t even come here that long ago. I now have just under three weeks left here and I arrived only fifteen weeks ago. Though I keep telling myself that I couldn’t’ve extended for a year, I know that my biggest piece of advice to others will be take the whole year—because now I wholeheartedly believe that it is.

I know that there are people who disagree with me. I’ll wait until they go back to their home countries and see if they still feel the same way, and if they do, so be it. I know I still feel like I’m learning every day, but I know some of the people I talk to remain close-minded and naïve. I guess I wouldn’t be the best to judge naïveté, but the fact that many of them haven’t made the slightest attempt (but a phrase or two) to learn Cantonese is a huge indicator.

I suppose the grass is always greener on the other side, though, as cliché as that is. I have one friend who attends Berkeley in the States but is studying abroad at HKU like me this semester because she felt like I do now. She filed to extend and was accepted, and now that she is staying, she’s not going home for the holidays, and she feels that she misses her family.

So the best thing to do is to reserve judgment I suppose. I’ll wait to get back home, I suppose. I’ll see the wide roads and giant cars (one of which I’ll likely be transported in), I suppose. I’ll see the wastefulness that Americans are so known for possessing and realize that people in Hong Kong aren’t all that different. Maybe by the time I get back, I’ll understand intuitively and subconsciously in addition to consciously that we are all just people, and that everything else really doesn’t matter.

I'm not ready just yet to go back—but then again, who is really ready for anything?

Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author. 

The Prince and the Pauper

I am now convinced that nationality is so fickle and so fake. While I still see merit people identifying themselves with their country, which individuals a country identifies itself with is another story.

In no way would the People’s Republic of China grant me citizenship and or nationality (two distinct concepts in United States law). For one, my parents’ parents were the ones with Chinese nationality and since those born outside China who receive a different nationality upon birth are not entitled to Chinese nationality, there was no way I could become a member of another country—or so I thought.

Dual nationality or citizenship though can be a messy thing if you don’t fully know what you’re doing. Countries like the United States levy taxes on all their citizens regardless of what country the money is earned in. Countries like Singapore have conscripted military service that can more often than not put other citizenships into danger.

If you enter one country on one passport, you may not be afforded another state’s consular services guaranteed by another passport. If you’re from certain countries, you don’t need visas to certain countries. For countries with exit customs, you cannot leave if you never entered. It’s all very artificial.

It’s great for me, though, because as an American I can easily get into most countries and since the United States has relations with most countries, it’s easy to get consular assistance if need be.

I’ve got a friend here who’s originally from China, born in Taishan, Guangdong, to Chinese parents. As such he was afforded Chinese nationality and enjoyed it even after immigrating to the United States. This last year though he decided to become an American citizen, having met all the criteria for a while but finally doing it to make it easier to apply for EAP (the same UC program that’s facilitating my study abroad).

After the tests and oaths, he became a naturalized United States citizen. As part of the oath, one renounces all other allegiances, citizenships, and nationalities prior to becoming American, which in reality is not enforced. As such, the United States, as of late, has recognized dual nationality.

My friend went after that though to the Chinese consulate in San Francisco as he was advised to in order to tell them of his new nationality. There, he was asked to present his Chinese passport. In front of him, the clerk cut off the corner of the identification data page (I’d imagine dramatically). Forwardly, his Chinese passport had just been invalidated. I believe personally that he had then effectively renounced Chinese nationality. I imagine that the clerk had also documented this in some form of a Chinese national database.

I know for Americans, you have to present your old passport when you apply for a renewal. So for though he says it’s really quite easy to get a passport in China, if it’s anything like in the United States, they verify and verify that you are qualified to receive that passport. So if it’s anything like in the United States, he’s not easily getting another Chinese passport.

My friend seemed to me to have fallen to nationality laws. I myself had also fallen to nationality laws, except in my case, they were applied to me in theory before I was even born. There was no way I could become naturalized as a Chinese national without giving up my United States citizenship—or so I thought.

I have no intentions of naturalizing myself as a Chinese national—mainly because, I  found out just a week ago that I’ve been one my whole life and just never knew it. It’s not like this was due to some secret my parents had been keeping from me until I was exactly seven thousand, eighty-five years days after birth.

And this is how it worked.  My mother was born in British Hong Kong to Chinese parents. As such, she had British National Overseas citizenship (that does not transfer to one’s offspring). Upon naturalizing herself as an American citizen well before I was born and as such well before the transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong to China, she probably didn’t see any reason to maintain her BNO status.

When Hong Kong became part of China again, all BNOs of Chinese descent became Chinese nationals. Under terms of the one country, two systems framework, Hong Kong was permitted to keep its own immigration controls. As such, rules regarding who has the right to live and work in Hong Kong (right of abode) were established. It fits in with Chinese nationality as such:

The first clause states that all Chinese nationals born in Hong Kong SAR are Hong Kong permanent residents with right of abode. All Chinese nationals living documented in Hong Kong for seven years are eligible for permanent residency and right of abode. Chinese nationals born to either of the above also become Hong Kong permanent residents with the right of abode. I’m going to stop there, but more provisions exist for non-Chinese nationals as well for permanent residency and right of abode as well.

I read these clauses over and over, in addition to the laws regarding what is makes a Chinese national to see if I was eligible. I guess many would ask why I would care to have another nationality. Dual nationality is messy and can create problems when you’re not careful. But then again there are plenty of dual nationals in the world and in the United States, so would it really be so bad to have it?

So since Hong Kong controls its own immigration, many of its people are Chinese nationals. In a misnomer of a term, Hong Kong nationality, Hong Kong controls Hong Kong Chinese nationality separately from Mainland China as well. In Hong Kong, and not in China, there are provisions for Chinese nationals by descent that allow for dual nationality when that Chinese national is given another nationality upon birth. As such, I am eligible for Hong Kong Chinese citizenship. As I also found out Hong Kong and the United States have special provisions allowing dual Hong Kong Chinese-American nationals access U.S. consular services and protection, even when entering as a Hong Kong Chinese national.

I figure that having the protection of two governments can’t be a bad thing, and if say, one country or the other were to implode, without legal issues there would be another place to live. In addition, if I ever want to work in Hong Kong, it would be my right to move here and do so. And if in the farther future I would ever want to move to China to work, it would be a lot easier (as a Hong Kong Chinese national) to do so.

As for conflict between the two nationalities, I would always have to pay taxes to the U.S. government. But as far as I know, Hong Kong does not have similar tax laws. In addition, nationality is one thing that’s easy to renounce. If someone doesn’t want to be part of a country, it would not benefit that country to force that person to stay a part, so if it ever becomes more of a disadvantage than an advantage to be a dual national, it would not be difficult to go into the local Chinese consulate and renounce my nationality.

The process by which I would substantiate my claims of permanent residency with an appropriate Hong Kong Identification Card is a different story, and it’s a convoluted process, something I hope to start in a few years.

What strikes me though is that my being a Chinese national is still so foreign to me. Still, I would call myself an American long before Chinese. Whereas I was born, raised, and educated in California, the first time I stepped foot in China was in 2007, when I was 17 years old.

It’s so fictitious the fact that I’m Chinese in this regard—and it’s all because of luck. If my mother had been born anywhere in China instead of Hong Kong, I would have no chance of being a Chinese national.

On the other hand, my friend who spent the first ten years of his life in China, and is, as such, much more culturally Chinese than me, has less rights than I do. It’s easier to go from Hong Kong or Macau (being the other special administrative region) to Mainland China than the other way around. Whereas I have recently discovered my right to live and work in Hong Kong, though this is the first time I’ve ever been to the south of China, he, despite having grown up partly near here, has no such rights, and would need to live here for seven full years before being given the same permanent residency that I, when the paperwork gets pushed through, have the potential to enjoy. And even if he were to live here for seven years, it would not be as an American, and as such not covered by the second clause of Hong Kong immigration law.

On the macro level, rules are rules, and laws are there for a reason. Hong Kong would be flooded with Mainland Chinese if there were greater freedom of movement in China. This would create plenty of problems, as Hong Kong has very little usable land without additional flattening and reclaiming.

On the micro level, why should I, never having even been outside North America, let alone to China until I was nearly an adult, have the right to live and work in Hong Kong when people who are from China, just over the border, have to make much more effort to get a permit to first go to China, then live there for seven years before being allowed to stay for good.

My friend wants to move to and work in Hong Kong much more than I want to, and he’s have to get a visa to do so.

Is it really fair? I was lucky enough to be born into it. My friend was not.

Copyright © 2009 James Philip Jee
This work may not be reproduced by any means without express permission of the author.