Week 1 Diary

Feelings in Kaiping

The Kaiping trip is indeed very special to me as it is my hometown! Yet, my parents and I have never been there. It was actually a pity that I cannot visit my relatives there as my parents didn’t contact them for long time and they lost contact already, but they should still be there. If I know before, I would definitely visit them. Out of my expectation, quite a lot of UBC students have their relatives there and it was their first time to see each other. It’s so amazing that the villager found out a “far relative” that have foreign faces and gather in such a special occasion. I talked to some UBC friends about Kaiping as my hometown and they said villagers will be willing to accompany me to visit my relatives if I asked for. I feel this as a regret in my trip. In the coming years, I wouldn’t have such an opportunity to visit Kaiping like this or maybe I can never contact those relatives in the future. However, I feel happy for those UBC students who were able to connect themselves back to the heritage and meet relatives. At the same time, I feel bad for them because they will be hard to see each other again in near time. Some of them even need another friend to keep them accompany just for the translation. This made me reflect, isn’t it very frustrated if we don’t even have a common language with our relatives? Isn’t it equally frustrated if the new generations don’t have a chance to know their relatives or even the language. During the lecture about language in Kaiping, many UBC students burst into tears and voiced out their opinions about the demerits of being bilinguals. This really did shade a new light on me as I always appreciate bilingual people because they can be native in two languages which seems very cool. Yet, they told me that it’s hard to be integrate in two cultures as well, and some of them feel bad when they are not allowed to go back their home country or learn that language just because their parents want them to stay in Canada. Also, some of them can understand Cantonese but cannot read and write, this is another kind of frustration to them as well. For me, I heard about Chinese Canadians before as nearly all of my father’s side of relatives migrate to Canada and have their next generations born there. I met them once per year or not even once for years, I didn’t have chance to talk to them and this placed a wall between us. I always want to know about Chinese Canadians as my parents stayed in Canada for a period before I born, and they said they planned to bring me up as one as well but end up they didn’t. So curious about how would I become if they bring that plan into action at the end.

During the Kaiping trip, I watched lots of performances about Chinese Culture as well, including lion dance, calligraphy, traditional painting and martial arts. These were not only fresh to UBC students but also to me as a Hong Konger because I am not familiar with Chinese culture at all. This was my first time to watch the full performances as a live show. My family is more western when talking about cultures, and they never go back to China with me for any reasons. Meanwhile, I don’t have good command in Chinese reading and writing, which made me avoid all knowledge about Chinese cultures as they are always printed in Chinese characters. Though to be honest, I still don’t feel interested in those performances (just because of my taste) but as a Chinese, I think I should at least know about them so they are worthy to me. I was so lucky to get exposed to all these Chinese arts in just a shop trip.

Feelings in Vancouver

The first sentence that popped up in my mind is “Oh, so this is Vancouver?”. I seem to be in a new city but at the same time it seems not. The buildings look as modern as those in Hong Kong, especially in some areas. And the point is, there are so many Asian faces here! Frankly speaking, seems like I heard Mandarin and Cantonese more than English when I was on bus. I didn’t feel like I am a “tourist” when I was walking on the streets because there are Asian faces everywhere. We cannot distinguish who are Asian tourists or CBC if they don’t talk. For the first few days, I spent most of the time around the St. John College part in UBC, so I still haven’t got the real picture of Vancouver. But one thing I’m sure is that there are lots of greenery and the weather is always sunny and cool.

In the weekends, I got some free time to go around. We went to Gastown, Stanley Park, some places in Downtown and some supermarkets. Up to now, I cannot say I feel the beauty of this city yet but I feel comfortable here. The air is good and most people are nice when we asked about the directions. Once I was buying a coffee in Tim Hortons, I cannot even distinguish the coins, and I got messed for the order as well. I thought it was like Hong Kong, standing somewhere farther to wait for my coffee after taking the order, instead it’s actually getting in the same place (for that branch). And I will weird and nervous when the sales usually asked me “How are you?”. This seems to be a very easy question, but I feel like I cannot answer what the textbooks taught us when we were small, like “I am fine, thank you.”. This seems weird to me and I am not used to this. I just answered like “I am good” but in my mind it’s blank. Next time I may try to open a topic when possible, maybe say like I am new to here.

Another thing that I am not used to is that shops closed at before 7pm. This made me feel frustrated when I am actually a “tourist”. I always wanna be productive in going around places during a trip, though I should enjoy a slower pace of life here as well, but I need some time to adjust. I feel disappointed when shops closed before the sky turned dark.

Also, it’s so tired to walk so far for a bus station or a skytrain station in between our visiting. It’s really not that convenient here if we don’t have a private car. And I feel confused everytime even when I were walking from St. John College to Exchange Bay 4 for a bus as well. I really need more time to practice on finding the directions and remembering the way.