After a series of returns to my hometown over a fifteen-year period, a trip in 2017 confirmed a truth I’d been avoiding: Hong Kong did not feel like the same place I had known as a child. Between failed attempts to get by with my faltering Cantonese and an inability to recognize the once-beloved neighbourhoods that had defined my childhood, I felt like a stranger in my own home.
On my last day, after saying goodbye to my grandparents in their apartment, I looked back at them standing by their door. They seemed frail and dejected, and my grandfather turned away while holding back tears; ever since I moved away, I had felt we shared a mutual understanding that each goodbye could be the last time we would see each other. The painful memory would often reappear whenever I reminisced about my time in Hong Kong. I’d try to avoid feeling nostalgic at all, because I didn’t want their pained faces polluting my happy memories of home.
