It had been a good day; at night-time we were more open to each other than usual.
“Hey,” I asked, reaching over to him, as he was about to strap on the plastic mask attached to the breathing machine for his sleep apnoea. He turned the machine off. We both fell into a comfortable silence.
“Should we migrate?” The question sounded less loaded, almost naive in the dark; it was cast blind, like casting a fishing line into the darkness.
“Why?”
“Well. The usual reasons.” I didn’t bother going through them as we’d been through them, everyone had, and they were up there like glow-in-the-dark stars stuck on the ceiling.
He gazed up at them for a while then turned to look at me. “And?” he asked, waiting for the real reason. He knew me too well.
I sighed. “Everyone’s leaving.” I felt like I was being picked last on my school tag team again, fidgeting on the field amongst the coloured cones.
“Only the people that do things make the news. The many others that stay don’t.” He said it only to provide a counter for my point; I could tell he was also trying to figure out where he belonged on that field. My child-self wanted to run over the grass to his child-self and give him a hug, the podgy, bespectacled eight-year-old boy I’d seen in photos but had never known.
“And our kids?” he asked.
“Alia and Bett are still young, 4 and 6 are such adaptable ages. They’ll grow up smart and international and have good accents.”
He sighed and put his hands behind his head. “They’ll grow up more complicated. They’ll be struggling with identity complexes way into adulthood.”
It was clear to me too. Going there, we would be not-them. It was simple. The kids would grow up to be them but not really them. Staying here, identity wouldn’t be an issue, or at least it didn’t have to be a glaringly visual one.
“I don’t know what’s better for the kids.”
“Me neither,” he said. We felt the sadness of parents, nestling neatly upon us like fallen petals.
“I’m scared of racism, too.”
“Me too.”
There had been university days abroad when I realised ladies at the counter made small talk to the people in front of and behind me in the queue but not to me, because I looked different. Everyone had smiled so I guess it wasn’t racism, but I still felt it.
“And with you and your thin ski–”
“Yes, I know, I know,” I said, annoyed, as he’d touched a nerve reading my thoughts. We let the dust of antagonism settle down for a bit.
“Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if we stayed,” I said slowly, trying out the words, seeing how sounding out the future felt to me.
He pulled me close to him, his arm around my shoulders. “I don’t know.”
Let’s wait and see, was what we both wanted to say. The answer will come, raining like truth, like fireworks in the night, like bombshells in the distance.
We made love that night, a slow, steady and deliberate process. Afterwards, he pulled his breathing mask out again, cupped it over his nose and mouth and switched on the machine. I held onto him and we rose and fell with the help of continuous positive airway pressure, two bodies drifting in a starry night ocean attached to a single tentacle of air, more intimate and alone than ever.
This piece was originally published in the Jellyfish Review in April 2021.
Notes three years on
The sentiment has changed slightly. The initial impetus for writing this story was spurred by FOMO during HK’s peak migration years. If I were to migrate now, it would be because the values I am facing every day— at service counters, on the train, with the people I talk to or watch on TV— jar and chip away at my worldview, and leaving is a way to find the correct climate for it to preserve and grow. Writing (on substack, like this) is also a way to nourish it.
This post by
illustrates everything I want to say beautifully. Some sections read like a prose poem. Specifically, I can feel the truth of the following words running in my veins—When you make the decision to move to the other side of the planet in your thirties, it has an earnestness and weight that is starkly contrasted against the detachment and open-ended possibility of your twenties. This isn’t just about embracing the potential for things to be different. It’s an overt rejection of how things are right now, and how they have been. We built a life, looked around at what we had created — its costs and compromises as well as its joys — and thought “Actually, no." It forced us to prioritise forms of work that didn’t serve us. It pushed us both into environments where we didn’t fit and were constantly reminded of that. So we’re stopping. We’re beginning again somewhere else.
Most of the talk where I live is centred on emigration, whereas in the States, Canada and the rich European countries, most of the talk is centred on immigrants and people coming in. I wonder if nations can be divided into “leaving nations” and “coming-in nations” and how developed a nation is factors in at all. But, at least where I am in HK, while a class of people may leave for a better quality of life, there will always be an influx of people immigrating in for economic reasons (lifestyle vs. economic migration).
At least we are fortunate enough that migration is more of a lifestyle choice than driven by economic or sociopolitical necessity, unlike so many others around the world.
Would love to know everyone’s thoughts on migration and any personal experiences you might have gone through. Drop a comment below!
Thank for reading 🤍 Till next time
I migrated for love in my 30s. Before that it had, truth be told, been on my mind anyway. Migration. Back then I didn't see it as migration, just living somewhere else, try things out and see if it can be "home". We are lucky to have the privilege to see it this way, that it is not a one way ticket, like for so many. We don't have to say goodbye to where we are from, we are still connected in many ways and can always come back (for now).
As someone who migrated here at 18 and also as someone who saw many friends leave over the last three years, I get it. So far it hasn't prompted me to pack up my bags and leave but the thought of HK as just a pit stop has never left my mind.