February 1997, my birth-month; July 1997, Hong Kong’s handover; July 1997 and onwards, the Asian financial crisis. What do these events have in common? I desperately sought answers to this question while taking my second creative writing class in college.
In my sophomore year, I learned about the process of deletion – erasing failure, heartbreak, death. Deletion equated to power. Writers who utilize erasure act as “authoritative hands,” controlling and manipulating the words of others. I adopted multiple methods in writing poetry, including erasing others’ words and rewriting them as my own. Such acts function as means of self-expression, empowerment, and censorship. By construing what someone else has said in a unique manner, both the reader and writer have the opportunity to reiterate the erasure process until the original authors’ text is imperceptible. I use erasure in this collection to generate a narrative about origins, family, and identity.
Before I dive into the content of this selection, I must give credit to the creatives, Lo Mei Wa and Sara Howe, for crafting letters voicing their perceptions of Hong Kong. I began writing this collection to understand my role as an Asian-Canadian returning to the “East.” I started by reading Hong Kong government texts; later, I decided to read personal accounts, as the content produced was politically-charged and not conducive to the narrative I originally envisioned. I also read a novel called “Hong Kong Noir” by Feng Chi Shun that highlighted the grit and history of Hong Kong. After reading these texts, I knew I was to select excerpts of the authors' writing to feature. I deal with the following interconnected themes in my anthology: a country's handover, riots, several government crackdowns, the mainland, the meaning of home, and the notion of paradise.
The entire collection is titled, ASTRONAUT. This name reflects how many East Asian fathers are “astronauts,” always in transit between their families and businesses. Within many traditional Chinese families in Vancouver, the father is the breadwinner while the mother functions as the housewife. He is forced to juggle family and business commitments, while his children and wife operate as a separate family unit. Such is the case in my family. I wanted to parse the struggles of first and second generation Asian-Canadians and Asian-Americans, many of whom have had family or friends relocating from Hong Kong to the West.
The first section, the letter, is from the perspective of an Asian mother who emigrated to Canada. She is tenacious and well-versed. The mother speaks directly to her son, the writer of the following series. The second collection, some thoughts on climate, is related to her child's experiences of living in Hong Kong. ASTRONAUT ends with two poems encapsulating what it means to be the only child of an astronaut family.
I hope this collection resonates with you. Please feel free to critique my work, as I am always looking for ways to improve and tweak my creative endeavors. If you enjoyed reading, please give this post a like or a share. Thank you!
ASTRONAUT
[太空人]
composed by david zhang
a brief table of contents
i. the letter
ii. some thoughts on climate
iii. an essay
the letter
inspired by lo mei wa
dear son,
i grew up with
eastern south china
sea from my window
a cluster of towers rose–blocked my sunrises
hong-kongers have lost
more than their sunrises
1997;
your birth-year, the
return of hong kong
from the british to
the chinese
hong kong;
special administrative
region with basic
law
one country
two systems
before
1997
two plus two equaled four
fifty years hong kong has to
learn two plus two equals anything
some have embodied this new logic
some resist protesting against
white elephant projects
workers buried people
people bankrupt indigenous
villages destroyed endangering
chinese white dolphins
the only time i saw a dolphin was
while i travelled on a ferry;
perturbed forces playing
with a floating corpse
iii days before your father proposed, a riot
broke time in fifty years, right in the heart
of mongkok; mecca of the lion rock spirit
intersecting triad activities, prostitution, hawkers
tough-spirited locals made their own lives
billionaires rose from nothing
poor kids turned wild
dangerous, dirty, lovely
the essence of
yau tsim mong
8 february 2016
day one
lunar new year
fire pervaded
son, i grew up poor
buying skewers from hawkers
the very same people who began the riot;
street-sweeping–a lunar new year ritual
going stall to stall, after dinner
bursting stomachs
hawkers, unlicensed
dollars earned, unearned
government crackdowns
sham shui po, no more
retreat to mongkok
flock, support, protect
police formula
tear gas skirmishes
hurling bins streets
bins afire firing
shots into the night
illegalities turning into legalities
ii.
father, chinese-born,
finding a home,
for us, staying-in-tandem
your birth,
chinese-canadian, not
relevant to our summer home
cannot show you turtles
fed in ponds, frogs losing
their skin in wet markets
cannot teach you autumn’s arrival,
the color of winter’s sunlight, or
feeling lost in a big city
standing over footbridge,
watching cars pass by
loneliness;
under neon lights
watching strangers kiss
loneliness;
old cantonese songs, all
cannot be experienced;
no more existing
hong
kong,
disappearing
i
want to raise you in hong kong
i
want you to feel your home there
i
want you to lose with me
i am crazy
for not wanting you
to start life in “paradise”
my parents, though
they arrived in “paradise,”
fled from china to hong kong
you, though
born in “paradise”
left for a distant island
nowhere
is
“paradise”
no way exists to
bring back everything
i have seen
scratch bubbles saying
“i am very unhappy”
draw darkness bombs death
in art class, attempting scisso–
suicide by six to avoid
attending school
depression–
an un-rare phenomenon in hong kong;
youth work eighteen hours
daily going nowhere,
hang themselves before ten
last night,
a commercial encouraged
parents to give children
an hour of play;
yet, park is a
foreign concept
last year, tens of
thousands of youth
sought counselling
cutting hospital budgets for rails;
the government subscribed
new mental health patients to
three-year waitlists
one was i, sitting
alone in a waiting room
surrounded by blank faces
hollowed eyes, waiting
to be restored to happiness
driven crazy, despised
by the city, taking three
years to be sent home
with generic green–grey pills
we were young; your
father & i used to hang
out at the airport, travelling
two hours via shuttle
to get there
this is the real border;
entire nights spent in
the liminal zone between
hong kong and the
outside world
just a flight away;
the old saying is
hong-kongers are
cockroaches, anywhere
can survive, no problem
we are nobody;
we can become anybody
obsessed with the
backstreet boys;
american
speaking in aloof english
british;
certitude in daily
gestures–speech
japanese;
dreamt of wandering
paris without
underwear on
in college
french;
philosophizing
in art history
class: hegel, kant,
nietzsche, marx, heidegger
german;
hong kong is a place without
gravity; the airport, the furthest
we could go in its dead orbit, was
neither here nor there, not knowing
or caring who we were
we have our first riot;
violent actions in
mongkok were not just
directed at police;
no looting or excessive
damage caused;
the only option
is not to go gain
ground but to stand
ground, to resist;
our mongkok
burning injured
furious shaking
off its desperate
chapter
sky-high is
the price for
protecting
hong kong’s
status quo
after futile years of
marches, hunger strikes
come over
september
pre-screening candidates
for our election.
our chief executive
the umbrella movement
erupts, students
protest beijing
scholarism,
occupying admiralty
causeway bay mongkok
teargas fired, children
sister, ferrying me
over with fruits
vitasoy, cartons
as weapons
of choice
virgin,
never attended
protests
no fear,
only fury
standing in front
of police shields
like prisoners
shoved around
until round two;
tear gas
running at riot police
crying hysterically
throwing fruits
pulling away
holding up umbrella
ready to fight
pressed down
i am not not not pro-violence
but i am am am pro-defense
i want to protect the kids
in the street, protect our future
our hong kong
son, this is why i
developed asthma;
teargas
the umbrella protests
started peacefully rationally
ended infernally
joining umbrella
comrades was easy
non-violent
intellectual
valid reasons turned mad
by our crippled
government
as the movement evolved
things changed
small stages constructed
public speeches
diarrhea blush
tremble celibate
never imagined
speaking on the street
i stood up–spoke
fighting for you
before protest camps
were cleared, there
was one last clash
on lung wo road
at daylight
riot police charged at
front-line protestors
sitting peacefully
fled like no tomorrow
first time taking flight
was from triad members
second, riot police
looking back, saw
friend beaten with batons
ran back, grabbing him
shoeless, holding him, screaming
“fuck you,
he’s fucking injured
we are leaving
are you fucking blind?”
…
by late morning
police smirked, standing on
a footbridge, after
gaining their territory
middle fingers raised,
snickers and vulgarities overheard,
lives below accounted for by
the ruthless acts of the police
after my master’s in deutschland
did i realize friends did not feel
anyhow about their passports
for them, the airport
was only a functional place
for going out, for us
coming back; that
crevasse was
home
i only want to be a
hong-konger & swear
in cantonese
i must teach you this
language before the day
i may be harassed
or arrested for
speaking it;
i need to show
you what was
beautiful in my
world, before
it’s gone; our
fishballs & hawkers
are already losing
scholarism’s
middle-schoolers
have become
grownups;
a freshman
studying
theology
convicted of
insurrection with
ten years’ imprisonment
how does this matter
after all; we are only
another disappearing
idyll on planet earth
our pain is the same
as the places forgotten:
homeless hawaiians,
forced-americans
roaming their
lost land;
hong-kongers,
forced-chinese
hong kong
scorpio city
abandoned
learning to
shrug
except,
this time
it matters
our lives are
grounded
in historical
wheels of
annihilation
a hand of destruction
forms our identity
the biggest horror
is life like your grandfather’s
not that he is poor
but rather, boorish
wholeheartedly believing two
plus two equals
whatever he is told
viscerally enthused to see students
killed by tanks at tiananmen
he loves us, but polarized
is our sense of good
amidst the umbrella
protests, my
brother said
“if you want to side with mobs
earning dirty money, beating up
protestors, i will be waiting at the front line”
to your grandfather
i do not want to give
you a split home to resist in
which standing on a side
means insanity vs. dementia
identifying, true–false
right–wrong;
this is not innate
it can be taken away anytime;
grandfather’s logic is one
take my wallet clothes
tongue freedom
but not two plus
two equals four;
my dignity
requires vigilance;
to have it is to stay awake
i fight to protect
it until my death
to pass onto you
should you be angry
i want you to feel anger
should you be sad
i want you to feel sadness
be full, be free, but
never forget this
i promise to provide
you a shelter of dignity
against the world
this, i promised
when i stood
up that night
in mongkok
i look out my
window; a
crepuscular sky
seems
permanently foreign
my heart filled with
indifference to all good
existing
around me i
return to a place
beyond landscape i
want
to miss home where the
toughest enemies are
invisible; a system
or
an ideology, i write
this under an old
cedar by the pacific
where
the breeze is with me
the lawn trees park
sky not mine
those
belonging to canada;
indigenous peoples
have lost everything
yes,
my home, too, disappears
an ocean away in
a permanent disarray
forced to choose
between the pain of
fighting in hong kong
& watching her
suffer with you
i chose the latter;
my parents left china
to give us a start in
hong kong
i left hong kong
to give you a start
in canada
i chose hope
you are
my hope
…
some thoughts on climate
inspired by sara howe
jason ng, the hong kong state of mind
perennial bestsellers:
fortune-telling, feng shui
manuals, investment how-tos,
exotic foreign cities’ guidebooks
any tourist stumbling into local
bookstores conclude hong-kongers
are superstitious money-grabbers
leaving town at our first chances
such is a wry glance of our countrymen’s habits
landing in summer home
plane door hisses open
greeted by sea-drizzled
diesel damp black hair
late july, less a fragrance
than oppressive humidity;
three months coinciding
with the hottest days
attending another book fair in
hong kong–beginning as
an effort to boost the
city’s cultural microcosm
during the dead lull of heat
more than 106 visitors cross
its threshold over the week, diving
into thick stacks of books
snaking their way between metal
barriers, queues longer than those
of disneyland; a decantation of
busses chugging on the forecourt
annual classfuls of
uniforms taking turns
to enter revolving doors
of the wan chai convention centre:
a vast construction of glass
steel shaped like stacks
of temple roof tiles,
commanding panoramic
views across victoria harbor
the structure, completed after
my parents left for canada in ’96, in
time to serve as the backdrop for
the iconic handover ceremony
marking the end of colonial rule
within these walls, underneath
two national flags: chris patten
robin cook tony blair prince charles
mournfully line up opposite
the beijing delegation on
30 june 1997
watching the footage with my
parents, taped, time difference,
on the vr, in our living room
inside the yvr
my mother; a hoarder,
worst with books lining
her bedroom walls
four-deep: a habit attributed
to scarcity in an impoverished
1970s hong kong upbringing
watching crowds throng
book fair’s stalls, one would
think today’s hong-kongers
suffer the same pang
families turn out
across generations
filling up suitcases
with abundance
the fair’s chinese offerings dwarf
the overly-modest english-language aisle:
stacked displays of commercial
fiction & celebrity cookbooks;
…nigella & jamie oliver are
too big in hong kong
thwarted, a couple of circuits
after my plan to browse
the english poetry section
for local titles, realizing
it never existed
disappointed, having hoped
to stock up on the backlist
from hong kong’s main
independent poetry publisher,
chameleon press: jennifer wong,
tammy ho-lai ming, etc.
a little boy (6)
trundles past
with miniature
wheelies, soon
to be loaded up
with school exam
manuals
mom (32)
shadows his figure,
left arm straddling
magazines on
high fashion
home décor fine art
right arm holding
british and american
college preparatory
materials
father (41)
absent
hong kong’s lit scene
crevasse, nic wong
i am capitalism – plastic
has taught me
about empires
spotted getting on
a ferry leaning too
closely to a man
into my tee; people
like us, travel a lot
wong’s restless pieces:
lyrical experiments
collide with luxuriance;
phrasing, ferocity of witness,
new amongst hong kong poets
wong’s american polaris
not wholly attributable, thanks
to colonial literary education;
never a choice – a poet
like him writes in a language
other than his mother tongue.
think of samuel
beckett switching
to french, hobbling
his fluency
wong explained; english
writing in asia is writing
on the edge; a
peripheral vantage
leaving you gazing
across oceans for
wider readership;
creating postcolonial, queer
hard-to-pin-down poems;
oh, the pleasure
of occupying
an edge
– margins are now less margins than blunt blades to the throat –
abductions, alarm bells
cry as fear mounts
over the erosion of
freedom of speech
& the press
regarding feverish speculation,
the incident’s larger significance
swirled around one man, lee bo–
spirited across the border;
a british citizen
the bookseller, tammy ho-lai ming
puncturing the local populace’s
initial complacency,
booksellers seldom make
the news, then one
day this all changes;
five go missing,
one by one
hong kong poet:
the currency of
constitutional uncertainty;
the former colony’s poets
find politics unavoidable
student placards adorned
the umbrella movement,
covered in poetic forms
like those of tiananmen
my mother’s anxieties stemmed from
five causeway bay
‘disappearances’ in 2016
men abducted to
mainland detention cells
records tracked of
publishing & stocking
books banned in china, including
scurrilous sexual exposés of xi jinping
she spent most of this
year imagining me
bundled from my hotel lobby
into the back of a white van
in an opaque black bag
people cared a little,
but not too much
about the first four;
after all, they vanished
to someplace else–
so long as the fire
does not burn closely,
it is alright
–ignorant hong-kongers
the defiance of the vanished, lee bo
some remove books banned
across the border, closing their doors;
others, trepidatious yet defiant,
continue to sell-print-write
the fortnight before my july visit
the last of five resurfaced; lee
wing kee, emerged sensationally
from solitary confinement telling
journalists of months of interrogations
forced confessions suicide watches
fleeing his mainland captors, lam
claimed he had been temporarily
permitted to return to hong kong
to bring back a full list of customers’
names from his causeway bay bookshop
the store’s shut-up frontage hangs messages of support
prayer: come home safely
warning: mainland public security roam here
pledge: freedom of speech never dies
hong kong is brought to a standstill
where disappointments of
pro-democracy have given way
to frightening political turmoil
frustration anger developments
one country, two systems
guaranteed hong kong fifty
years of freedom from 1997;
under threat, by heavy-
handed authorities
the encompassing nature of
being a hong-konger stretches
further than i had thought
hong kong is transformed–
enriched by people
moving through it, whatever
their backgrounds or ancestral
connections may be
words of welcome,
vouchsafed emotional
connection, hugs from those
who grew up overseas
of hong kong descent
my conjured fears of hostility &
rejection melt away: this is how
it feels to come home
…
i once heard a cantonese pop song
while eating at tsui wah with my parents–
the tunes of affective lust, subtly lining
the edge masking 1980’s hong kongers &
the promiscuity of my young parents
when they were still authentic;
life ran abysmally along
the crevasse, love which once was
succulent felt seemingly grimy yet
lucid, evaporating after distance became
a player in this supposed rendezvous;
youth evolved into adulthood
a development marked by spaces–
liminalities where realities became unrealities–
& gravity, which once brought love
together, lost its force to two
equidistant terrestrial bodies, one
an astronaut, another a satellite
drifting away, one slightly
faster because of unamendable
forces, where the satellite propelled
the astronaut back home; astronaut
a married man
eating fishballs, living
the lifestyle of
a bachelor
…
the only time astronaut
communicated with
satellite was over
a bowl of fishballs
; as
time moved on, fishballs
no longer tasted the same, like its food,
hong kong no longer remains authentic
becoming a master’s puppet; an astronaut
fakes history to create his-stories, setting up
bases in places he revolves around, circling
the earth, never finding a permanent home
; a
lumpy fishball in a bowl infinitesimally large–
a contradiction within itself