French Toast and Ovaltine

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note: this is extremely unpolished — will be back to edit 

Sometimes, around sunset, I take a walk along the chapel fields. I tread the little dirt path near the treeline that's been littered with footsteps, and I'm thi​​nking about how these trees seem to bend and curve away from the path, about how their branches stretch toward untouchable strips of sky. Obviously, there's very few people around — I wouldn't be here otherwise. A listless breeze tosses my hair into my face, and I let the tresses plaster themselves to my skin, knowing that attempts to brush them away are futile. I look across the vast, open swath of land in front of me, with its quivering strands of grass and hesitantly gold-streaked horizon, and decide I hate the restrictiveness of nature.

Maybe I dislike nature because there's barely any in Hong Kong. Some white boy once told me that my city sounded like "King Kong's cousin", and he's not wrong. My home is just that — all behemoth skyscrapers, gleaming metal exteriors, and roaring steel monsters on wheels, topped off with neon sign boards that flash bright in the dark. Hong Kong runs at a determined, dogged pace. Oftentimes, I look out of the window from my apartment room late at night and gaze at the rush of blinking lights across the highway beyond, smiling at the knowledge that this city, just like me, never sleeps.

There are these local "tea cafes" all over the place, and my favorite go-to cafe on Sundays is the one on Braemar Hill, where they serve the best Ovaltine. I can't quite place the taste, but the drink flavor on my tongue feels like a mixture between chocolate and cereal. That, along with french toast, is my usual order in tea cafes such as the Braemar Hill one. So, when my friends suddenly invite me to lunch in a tea cafe not on Braemar Hill, I'm completely unprepared as the waitress tells me they don't serve french toast or Ovaltine.

At that moment, dread latches onto me like a dying man. I can feel the stares of my friends as they pierce through me, hear their unintentionally mocking laughter, sense the judgment in their eyes. They had once asked me, jokingly, why I never ordered anything but french toast and Ovaltine; I had therefore, jokingly, responded that I liked my regular orders so much that I just couldn't get bored of it. I believe there's a truth to that. Back then, I believed it was the truth. But I was just too afraid to admit to my friends — and myself — that I never deviated from my usual order not because I didn't want to, but because I couldn't.

14 years of learning and speaking Chinese, and I still couldn't read the menu before me. Chinese really is a strange language — it's not like English, where you can pick apart the individual pieces and string them together like perfectly-matched seashells. Chinese isn't guesswork — you either know the word or you don't. So I can't do anything except scrutinize the few characters I recognize and smile as my tongue flails uselessly in an attempt to decipher the words. It's pathetic. My friends start laughing at me. It's a running joke among us that, out of all six of us in the group, I'm the non-ABC ABC. English is my non-mothertongue turned mothertongue. I'm a local through and through — but sometimes, when they make jokes like that and laugh, and I laugh along with them, I feel less like a local and more like a foreigner. Sometimes, when they talk too quickly and use common Cantonese slang they don't teach in school, I feel like a fool for not understanding my own native language. And sometimes, when they tell me my Cantonese has an accent — a distinctly English-sounding accent — I feel like an alien, like someone with arms too long and gangly and disproportionate to the rest of their physical features.

That's actually why Mom and Dad sent me away. They won't admit it, but my Chinese is so bad that if I'd stayed one year more at my local school, I would've been unable to graduate. By the time I arrive in the US in late August, it's that time of the day when the sun's just gone up and you can only barely see the faint glimmer of translucence on untouched leaves, the plushness of overgrown grass yet to be plundered over, and the grey streaks pigeons leave behind as they wing across the building tops. The sight of nature, mixed with the familiar silver-grey streaks of metal and steel and pavement and tarmac, is strange. Boston is strange. It is a strange, foreign city with strange, foreign people. The old woman on the streets who shouted at me and my family, unprovoked, just proved that. I've never felt more like an alien here, and simultaneously, I've never felt more at home.

To have a foot in both worlds is to never belong to either. As of now, I sit at the edge of my dormitory bed, feet dangling over the carpet, typing out the hundreds of questions milling in my head.

So, are you American?

I'm not American.

Are you a Hong-Konger, then?

Maybe I was born there, but I've never quite felt like I've met the requirements to be a Hong-Konger.

If you're not either, then what are you?

Instead of answering, I simply sit at the precipice and listen as my heart thumps synchronously to the beat of the city.

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