I recently changed my profile name on Sina Weibo to "小岛上的考拉," which literally translates into "Koala on a Little Island."
(a side note, of the more than two dozen SNS Typepad currently links to, Weibo is still not one of them! I think that's a pity and a significant oversight since Weibo has just surpassed 200 million users, and catching up to the likes of Twitter and Facebook quickly, not to mention that Weibo actually has combined the best features of both)
Actually this name evolved from conversations I have had with a good friend (on Weibo too) over the past few months, we affectionately refer to Hong Kong as the "little island" both for its minute size and for the fact that it is a second home to many of us. I think it is rather endearing to some extent.
Come to think of it (as I've summarized after some recollection), I have spent a majority of my lifetime on one island after another, from the archipelegoes of Zhoushan as a child, to the city of glass skyscrapers of Manhattan, then off to the British Isles and finally back to this little island by the Frangrant Harbor. Maybe I have a subconscious preference to islands that is deeply rooted in my ancestry (after all, they were fishermen to my best knowledge), but by choice or coincidence, here I am.
This is second time I've lived in Hong Kong for an extended period of time, sufficient to call it a home (at least for now, if not "the" home) . Last time I was here almost exactly 12 (!) years ago, I was still a college student clueless about this industry called "investment banking," and Hong Kong was still barely two years into its post-British rule, for all practical purposes, no one spoke Mandarin and there were far fewer tourists and shoppers in malls (the Asian Financial Crisis had something to do with it). A lot has changed since then, from the rise of China and its economic influence comes a flood of mainland shoppers and tourists, financial institutions now all see Hong Kong as "the" platform from which to cover Chinese clients' offshore financing needs, to the Mandarin announcements one hears in the MTR and malls, but yet somehow a large part of this little island has remained familiar to me.
Perhaps I have always been drawn to metropolises such as Hong Kong, London and most of all, New York City. Of course, those three cities are quite different in their cultural mix and feel, but I suppose having spent my teenage and part of my post-university years in Manhattan, I have come to appreciate and love a city that is a cultural melting pot (in this respect, NYC is second to none). My own experience, perhaps more so than anything else, has determined that I would always feel a bit out of place in a very "Chinese"-oriented city, and likewise, a very purely Western town (such as the US South or Midwest).
I remember the discussion I had with some of my friends when I first entered Cornell, it was a crowd of no more than a dozen students, each having arrived in the US in their teenage years after spending the first dozen or more of their life in China, we found that what drew us together was that we shared an unique experience and cultural identity that was somewhere in between the ABCs and the recent Chinese immigrants or Chinese graduate students (of the time). We all harbored a deep sense of belonging to the Chinese culture in which we grew up, yet we have become sufficiently inculcated in the American mainstream culture to feel quite comfortable in mainstream society.
Therefore it is not at all surprising that many of these friends, and those I came to know in NYC and elsewhere that shared this cultural trait have come to live and work on this little island.
As I randomly jot down my admittedly very unorganized words sitting in this little café, I look up and see a wall full of eclectic albums ranging from jazz to new age; the other patrons around me speak in English, French, Russian, Mandarin, Shanghainese, with some Cantonese here and there. The last time I walked in here, I was welcomed by Enya's music. It's not difficult to imagine why this has quickly become my favorite weekend hang-out.
Time to do some reading, a jazzy tune has begun to play.
