– 老外！老外 ！

It’s me, Zhu. I’m a laowài, a for­eigner, a white woman, an object of curios­ity. An odd­ity in the streets of Hong Kong.

This sum­mer 2001 is hot and humid. The typhoon sea­son is in full swing and some days, I can’t even leave the 32^nd floor of the build­ing where I live. The whole island is reg­u­larly swept by strong winds and pour­ing rain. I live in Hum Hong, about twenty min­utes from my office in Tsim Shat Shui. When the rain isn’t too strong, I still make my way to the office, know­ing that my co-worker will oth­er­wise make fun of me : “you’re not gonna melt… it’s just a bit of rain ! Just wait till we get the black rains alert, then you can stay home”. The walk to Tsim Shat Shui is pretty bor­ing : I take under­grounds tun­nels and it’s kind of creepy. I’m always afraid I’m gonna get lost… I only remem­ber where to turn thanks to the adver­tise­ment posters, strate­gi­cally dis­played at every crossroad.

I’m 18 and I really want to belong to this crazy island. I just grad­u­ated from high school and this is my first job, my first glimpse of free­dom. I left France with a one-way ticket and I’m wait­ing for Hong Kong to adopt me.

But I don’t speak Can­tonese, and few peo­ple can com­mu­ni­cate in Man­darin. I strug­gle to read signs, writ­ten in non-simplified Chi­nese : I learned the post-Mao char­ac­ters. I try to live like a HongKongese : I work hard dur­ing the week and go to Lan­tau island on week­ends, I eat Xiu­mai for break­fast and coconut bread for snacks. I rush every­where I go and feed other peo­ple every time they visit me at the office.

HongKongese rush all the time. They rush to go to work, they squeeze in the sub­way, they gob­ble food to back to work faster, they speak fast, they think even faster. I can’t fake it, I’m a laowài. I’m stared at every­where I go, even though the whole island prob­a­bly know me by now. When I meet a main­land Chi­nese, I feel relief : at least, I can speak Man­darin. I’m uprooted. I can’t fake it. No mat­ter how hard I try, I’ll never be Chinese.

In this post-apocalyptic month of Octo­ber 2001, I flew back to France. I was to go to Mex­ico soon. Lost but not stranded yet.

My quest seemed pretty easy to me. I wanted to see the world and find a new home. Could have been any­where on earth – I just wanted to belong some­where. I wasn’t unhappy in France, but I didn’t fit, for some rea­sons. I didn’t want to be what peo­ple expect me to be. I didn’t want to carry the bur­den of his­tory on my shoul­ders. I wanted to be in con­trol of my des­tiny and thus choose where I live rather than just being a pawn on the big chess­board wait­ing to be checkmate.

Dur­ing the next three years, I was a trav­eler. I was a lambda back­packer in Aus­tralia and New Zealand, a Latina in Cen­tral and South Amer­ica, immersed in sounds, col­ors, accents and the road, the omnipresent road we were fol­low­ing, miles of con­crete, sand or gravels.

By the time we came back from the last trip in 2004, I was long­ing for a place to live. Canada was going to be home, although it wasn’t that easy as the time con­sid­er­ing the chal­lenges : paper­work and adjust­ment to my new way of life.

Life’s funny. After trav­el­ing so much, I pretty much felt like a state­less per­son. My Eng­lish was pretty good if not almost flu­ent, I could speak great Span­ish, and I had no idea what hap­pened in France dur­ing that time. After being a “for­eigner” in China, I had been a world’s cit­i­zen and wasn’t think­ing much of myself in term of citizenship.

When I arrived in Ottawa, I was back to being French. The North American’s way of life was a total mys­tery to me. Why so many TV chan­nels ? Why so much food every­where ? Why don’t you guys read books ? Why do you live 10 miles from the city instead of enjoy­ing liv­ing downtown ?

Que­be­cers would spot me right away. I was French, that’s for sure. That posh accent, these end­less sen­tences, this blind respect to gram­mar… gram­mar for god’s sake ! And these Eng­lish words, “park­ing”, “camp­ing car”, “estie pas au Québec lô!”. “Mau­dite française”, “damned French” was my new citizenship.

As far as Eng­lish Cana­di­ans were con­cerned, I wasn’t a Canuck obvi­ously, but polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness pre­vented peo­ple from call­ing me names. I was a new­comer, a new Cana­dian, West­ern Euro­pean maybe, but rarely I was seen as French.

And here I was, stuck in between. I was sup­posed to be French and felt Euro­pean at best. Peo­ple would ask me about Paris despite the fact I don’t have a clue about this city, I would be asked for advices for a French trip, for an answer about French kings on Jeop­ardy… Too bad peo­ple. I do not know. I left French when I was 18, haven’t lived an adult life there and only knew my home­town. I wasn’t much help. The only thing I could offer was French lan­guage and it was a bad idea to brag about it on front of Quebecers.

Time went by fast. I can’t believe I’ve been there for 4 years. Lit­tle by lit­tle, I adapted. Peo­ple rarely ask me where I’m from now. Only from time of time, I get the “you think THAT’S cold ? You’ll see this win­ter !” when I com­plain about mild tem­per­a­ture. To which I can now reply : “I know, it was fuck­ing freez­ing last year !”

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2. Igno­rance Is Bliss
3. The Huge­ness (4÷10)
4. A Cana­dian Mind­set (8÷10)
5. The World For Dummies