Identity

When I was younger, identity was a much simpler concept.

For example, I had a clear idea of what it meant to be German: spoke German, ate sauerkraut, grandfather used to wear lederhosen. But what about the Turkish immigrant who has lived in Germany for twenty years? What about his seven year old son who has spent his entire life in Germany and grew up speaking German?

What about the white farmer in Zimbabwe? How long does she have to live there before she gets to assert that she is in fact a Zimbabwean?

Or the how about Alberto Fujimori son of Japanese immigrants to Peru? At what point does he get to claim to be a Peruvian? Was it when he became President of Peru, or did he secure his Peruvian-ness at some point before that?

Like I said, concepts of identity where a lot simpler when I was young.

Shortly after arriving in Hong Kong, I remember asking somebody “So what do you call a person from Hong Kong, anyways? A Hong Kongan? a Hong Kongite?”

Well, it turns out the preferred term is Hong Kongers. That’s cool, I thought. I can work with that.

If I had been an American living in Beijing or Shenzhen or Fuling for two years, it would never presume to claim that I was now Chinese. But Hong Kong isn’t Beijing or Fuling. Despite her return to China in 1997, Hong Kong is not just another Chinese city or province. It is a Special Administrative Region with the operative word being special.

Hong has always been a mash-up of many things. From the day it was established as a British colony over 150 years ago it has been a blend of Chinese and Western influences. Many of the places in Hong Kong bear very English names: Chatham, Queensway, Aberdeen, Victoria. Many observers thought that after the handover, one of the first orders of business would be to start changing place names in an attempt to China-fy Hong Kong and scrub it of her colonial past. But that didn’t happen. There was no rush to shrug of names like Glouchester and Hennessey. Hong Kong knows who she is and that is a mix of East and West. No sense denying it. No sense trying to change it.

What’s more, the population in Hong Kong is very fluid. In an end-of-the-year goodbye note my principal started by writing “I have lived here long enough to know the drill.” He went on to say that people leaving Hong Kong was in inevitable part of life here. There does seem to be a constant stream of people settling down in Hong Kong and of people pulling up stakes and going to university in Toronto or taking a promotion with their employer in London or reverting back to a teaching job in Chicago.

As a result departing isn’t a barrier to being a member of this city. Rather, transience seems to be part of the definition of what a means to be a Hong Kong-er.

I spent my youth living in three different cities in Michigan. For the last twenty years I have lived in Chicago. But I can honestly say that I have never engaged and embraced a city the way that I engaged Hong Kong. Maybe it was because I traversed so much of it on foot. Maybe it was because I knew that our tenured here came with a deadline and I was committed to soaking up as much as this city had to offer.

Hong Kong wormed its way into my heart and has become a part of who I am. And I like to think that maybe in a small way, I impacted my little corner of Hong Kong through the students that I taught and the people I worked and lived with for two years.

So at what point does the young man from Turkey get to call himself German? I don’t know. I guess I will have to leave it up to him to decide.

But here is what I do know.

For two years I was –and I suspect that to some degree, I always will be- a Hong Konger.