A Second Home

by Vanessa Lai (Australia)

I didn't expect to find Hong Kong

The skyline was a grey mishmash, knotted and tangled, a delicate web of powerlines crossing each other and blocking out the blue sky. I stared out the window, my heart also tangled in the same way. How beautiful the polluted grey skies were. My mind floated inside that picturesque white hotel room. A blank canvas of softness and light, floating yet aware. It was my first time going to Hong Kong, the place where my parents were from – but where I was not. It felt strange, but familiar; in a painstakingly beautiful way. A land I did not know, a place I could call a “second home.” The breeze smelt like stars, of hope, of promises, of finding lost things long forgotten. Having being born under the bright cerulean summers of Australia, warmth and heat were things I was used to. It was the shining flashes of memory caught on the edge of my childhood. But though there was heat and warmth here, it was different. It was not hot and sticky, but humid and pressing. Not unkind, but slightly broken. I thought to the past nights me and my family had, the first-hand fun of travelling through the streets and alleys, the gorgeous night markets I had come to adore. The sound and smell of sizzling around every corner, salty and sweet intermingled on my tongue… And a blast of cool air from entering the supermarket. A moment of relief from the heat. My mum asked which ice cream I wanted. I pointed to the drumstick. I ate a big bite and grimaced. It didn’t taste as good as the ones from Australia. Not creamy enough. I wanted the Milo my brother was having instead. I gave the drumstick back to my dad, who finished it off for me. Outside at nights again, the shopping was intense and I haggled for a panda purse for the first time. I lost. But I still brought it anyway. The price didn’t matter. I was having fun. There were tents set up, to predict your future. I was in awe, pointing at this and that. My hands were full of new soft toys and clothes to bring back home. And we had a sweet dessert sold on the streets, something I had tried before but tasted completely different when I was in Hong Kong (maybe it was the adventure that turned sugar into a special, unique kind of taste rather than the way they made it) – a glistening jelly, clear like liquid gold (called tong shou, my mum said and I pronounced it proudly and right). I was surprised to find an unfamiliar ache within my floating, thoughtful conscience in that hotel room. My heart ached. Staring out at the broken, grey buildings outside, devoid of people or light, I saw two sides of beauty. A broken, left-behind fragile beauty I had never seen before. And I was sad because I didn’t know how I could help, or if it could ever be repaired. And there was pain and compassion and sorrow for the people who had to live there. And there I was, in a white-washed room, chalky walls I could rub off on my finger with a mere touch. I was split between two worlds, the halves of me strung out below the tangle of telegraph poles above the streets below. One part of me left in Australia, my friends and home and life sheltered there. And a new growing part, budding beneath my heart, to help people in a country I had never known. And I promised myself, the ache in my heart lessening slightly (for things unfulfilled, for promises unkept, for all the heartache and loneliness and misery) that one day, I would be back. And I vowed to myself, that I would come back one day. Able to help. Forging a new path into the unknown depths of the future, breaking free to reclaim a sliver of humanity. That is what happens when you fall in love with a place.