Two objections could be made to the title of this blog. As with most titles, it is only a working title. A working title for a work in progress. But lest I be accused of being deceitful or delusion, let me be the first to raise and, I hope, answer them now.
Firstly, let me introduce where I live. I live in Discovery Bay, an expat enclave on the outlaying island of Lantau - one of the largest islands and where, as anyone who's landed here recently will know, the new airport was built to the north, directly in the sea. Well, Discovery Bay is to be found on the south east of Lantau, a mere 20-30 minute ferry ride from Central but - in all other senses - about as far away from China as you can get. Yes, I may work in, as I have heard it disparagingly referred to as, the 'ghetto' of Hong Kong (though I hardly think it qualifies as that!), but I live in its strict antithesis. Not a birdcage or temple in sight, barely even a cockroach (though when they do appear they seem all the more threatening and alien for that). No. Instead, we have electric powered golf buggies on the traffic-free roads, a beach whose sand was imported some time back in the 70s and which has since been mostly washed back to wherever it started, and Western coffee shops, bars and restaurants serving pizza, beer and frozen yoghurt. Palm trees line our streets, ghekos remain largely (though not entirely) outside, and children and very tiny dogs the size of rats (but generally as well-dressed as the children) roam free. In fact, our expat commune - a veritable Babel, it's host to so many languages! - is so child-friendly it is often referred to as Delivery Bay, the idea being that people come here to spawn and rear their darling delinquents.
Now, don't get me wrong, I like it just fine. When people ask why on earth a single young female as myself lives here I can honestly reply that the air is within World Health Organisation accepted levels; that I can see sea and mountains and sky out of my windows (and yes, I reply, as they coo in wonder, I actually have windows - floor to ceiling no less!); that I am blessed with a bath I can lie down in (rather than merely a shower over my lavatory); and what is for the impecunious teacher very important, the rent is really quite low. So I have a number of reasons to be grateful for not living totally in a Chinese world, for being allowed to come home at night to walk under the Narnia-esque street lamps lining pedestrian pavements under the (rarely in Hong Kong glimpsed) stars and watch the airplanes take off from behind the mountains as I fall asleep in bed. However, that is not to say that I have not encountered the occasional twinge of unreality that attends such a place: the Wisteria Lane-Stepford Wives-Twilight Zone effect. But, once I realised what DB (to give it its term of endearment) reminded me of, this feeling of latent anxiety magically subsided. It was that it took me back to my days as a college student working in a theme park in my home county of Staffordshire; of the long hot summer as a 17 year old when I spent day after day there without a care in the world, hanging out with friends and boyfriend, earning more money than I had time or inclination to spend, and never thinking life would ever get any more complicated than that. Well, clearly I was wrong (as just returning to A-Levels that September revealed!), but that sense of theme park wonderland is what Discovery Bay exudes: all the fun and fantasy of the fair without any of the substance. More or less.
So that, I hope, is the first disclaimer explained. The second refers not to me being English for, while my accent and intonation changes with the proverbial wind - whether I am talking to my Aussie neighbours, or HK students, or Oxford-English friends - I can assure you I am White British and have the passport to prove it. No, it refers more to that quaint use of 'girl.' For while it is most uncouth to ask a woman's age and most undignified ever to answer, I do confess that when a friend recently told me about The Times' list of 'Books you should have read before you're 21' he was quite right to point out that it is 'a bit late for you,' but rather obliging in offering to send it anyway. (Tact isn't his strongest point, but generosity I suppose is.) So, we shall see when it finally gets here just how behind in my age I really am. But, guessing from the number of times, while on holiday in the UK last year with my mother, I kept getting taken for a child and charged entrance fees accordingly (if only my mother had gone along with it quietly we could've saved a fortune!) and the fact that I still now (left to my own more dishonest devices) manage to get away with a child's ticket to work every day on the ferry (thus leaving me with some money for alcohol each month out of my measly wages), I am guessing about ten years. I mean, sure it could be to do with the fact that I am usually to be seen with GCSE textbooks or children's books tucked under my arm, or the fact that the hemline of my skirts has sufficiently shortened since moving to a warmer climate; or it could be to do with the amount of time I spend with my head somewhere between my legs - backward bends, according to my yoga teacher, being particularly good for extending one's life expectancy and youthful good looks - I don't know. But when they say that you are as old as you feel, I often think that it must be this because for better or worse, I cannot feel how old I really am, by which I mean I cannot actually believe it when I tell others. As when I first went for coffee with my new neighbour and she, clearly uncertain, asked. The silence that followed could've added a few years to both our lives before I would've been able to tell her the answer. I simply did not know off the top of my head and had to revert to calculating it. And now you will think that I am ancient - such an age as cannot be arrived at but by the most complex mathematical workings. So I shall tell you I am 25: old enough to know my age, but not quite old enough to feel it.
So maybe not exactly an English girl in a totally Chinese world, but not too far from the truth either, as I shall uncover.
