If you wish to read Part 1...
For the next few days, our routine would be pretty much the same; We would wake early in the morning (generally somewhere between 4:30am and 6:30am), eat some low-key breakfast (cereal for me, oatmeal for Mom, nothing for Dad), then wait around for my Auntie Myna to wake up so we could go in to town with her and eat some awesome food, see some sights, eat some more food, and return home.
Naturally, this meant I had a lot of free time between waking (4:30am!) and leaving for lunch (around 11:30-12). Now even though my aunt is exorbitantly rich, she really never saw a need to have a TV outside of her bedroom, so my parents were, how shall I say... low on morning entertainment. My dad probably did one hundred thousand billion Sudoku puzzles, while my mom tried to do the same and also read some books. I, in my infinite wisdom, brought my laptop along with me for just such times, and thus I had my entire collection of nefariously collected episodes of "How I Met Your Mother," "The Big Bang Theory," and "Game of Thrones" to watch over, and over, and over again. And I did, over, and over, and over again. I even got my mom hooked on TBBT, so now she can understand a bit about what my life is like on a daily basis.
When my aunt awoke on the 2nd day, we went into the city, did some crazy electro-therapy acupuncture thingy (yea don't ask), and then went to lunch at the Craigengower Cricket Club. Yes, that is some crazy alliteration. Now the CC Club looks something like this...
Yes, those old men are lawn bowling, and as my father told me, they probably play for about $10,000 per ball. Which made me barf a little in my mouth at first, but considering the membership fees are probably ten times that, most people who are members at this club are not exactly lacking in funds.
The awesome thing about the CC Club is that it is huge part of my old memories of Hong Kong. When my grandfather was still alive, he was one of the oldest living members of the club, possessing an extraordinarily rare lifetime membership. Most of my memories of my grandfather as very vague and fleeting, but perhaps my most vivid one is us walking to the CC Club, perhaps because we did it so often. So every single trip back to Hong Kong was riddled with visits to the CC Club for fun things, like playing tennis, bowling (real bowling, with lanes), and swimming. As expected, this also included large amounts of eating, and we ate at a luncheon area right next to the lawn bowling... lawn.
My parents did point out one thing that I did not notice at first, and that is...
... this very humble building right behind the CC Club, that just so happens to be the place my grandfather and grandmother lived before they passed away (more on the apartment later).
From there, we went to pay respects to my grandmother's "resting place."
Now, I can't really call it a grave, because it's not. Note, most "graveyards" in Hong Kong tend to look like this...
...a literal mountain of graves. This means that "real estate" for the dead is in extremely high demand. When you are recently deceased (my grandmother having died a couple years earlier), you have to wait your turn before you can be buried in the cemetery. Thus, my grandmother's "resting place" looks like this...
Indeed, that is a literal hole in the wall, in the attic of a crowded building, next to a bunch of other recently deceased persons.
Now I'm not big on rituals, especially spiritual ones involving the dead. I believe that when we pass on, we're gone, totally and completely disconnected from this living plane. But perhaps it didn't really hit me that the reason we perform such rituals isn't necessarily for the person being honored. In many ways, this was more about my living family and me. So when my mom handed me the candles, told me to stand in line next to them as they spoke to my grandmother, I made no argument, and bowed my three times when told to do so. I was filled with a deep sense of regret, mixed with shame; Here I was, someone expected to honor this woman, someone whom by all accounts I barely knew, and who also barely knew me. And those facts bring me incredible shame.
I didn't know her at all. I knew some stories, some things my mom had told me, but I was never able to connect with her, not on my own, not by myself. Someone who had profound effects on my mother, who had and still has profound effects on me, was someone that I probably couldn't name three things about. It makes me incredibly jealous of those of my friends who have deep relationships with their grandfathers, grandmothers, great grandfathers, great grandmothers. I would give anything to go back and talk to her more, to go back and be a part of her life. Perhaps it's because I grew up as an Asian in a small town full of white people, but I've never felt like I really "belonged" anywhere.
I've long since learned to deal with this lack of belonging. As an ABC (American Born Chinese), you have to deal with it. Perhaps it's why I'm so willing to embrace anyone as a friend or ally, because I don't have a "group" to belong to, to hold me to any stereotype. But in that moment, when I was bowing in front of the grave of a grandmother I barely knew, I felt it all again. Like here's where I could have belonged. Here's where I could have been.
