A Wonderous First Night in K-L

PIC ONE: the Singapore gang seeing us off onto our two-country bus trip to K-L: left to right are Tian and Lin, our Singapore hosts; Kath's cousin Gloria and her mom, Auntie Margaret; the Canadian Mama and Baba to be.

PIC TWO: Arriving in K-L we are greeted by Sam (or Choong Lam); the second pic shows Lucilla and her closest brother in age and in shared life experience ...

PIC THREE: Kath's two cousins and their children at our wonderful first night dinner. Front row left to right is Yu Yu and Yen Yen, who are sitting on the lap of their dad, Kath's cousin Yuan; next is Yang, the wife of Kath's cousin Kok Fah; to her right is Ying Ying, cousin Yuan's 5 year old daughter. Standing in back row, from left to right: Ping, who is directly behind her husband Yuan; then Hui, who is holding onto his father Kok Fah; then Kok Fah, Kath's cousin; and standing in front of Kok Fah, his daughter Ni Ni.

PIC FOUR: Lucilla cozies up to Ying Ying, her grand-neice, who doesn't look too sure of things; Yang and her daughter Ni Ni (aka Julianne) are enjoying the dinner's hubbub.

PIC FIVE AND SIX: I slip round the table to show Ni Ni and Ying Ying the video I've taken of them; Ying Ying's delight at seeing herself on our minicam's screen.

PIC SEVEN: Ni Ni and Hui yield to curiosity, and come round to join their Canadian 'Uncle and Auntie'.

PIC EIGHT: Then lovely little Ying Ying thrusts herself up on Kath's lap, wanting in on the action.

PIC NINE: After dinner, back at Sam and Belinda's house on the mountain, I show some of my K-L relatives photos of the Arizona trip Kath and I made in September; they like the one of me on the rock bridge.

PIC TEN: A final first night shot of Kuala Lumpur, taken from the end of Uncle Sam's mountain street. A closer shot of the Petronas Towers will have to wait until we return from Ipoh, though!

What I'll Remember Best, Part 2

Six days after leaving the winter of Waterloo we left the rain-cooled June of Singapore for the hot August nights of Kuala Lumpur. The early morning bus bound for Malaysia carried us off an island city-state that felt like a very safe, very wealthy, very modern haven-version of Asia, albeit sociologically altered, geographically compressed, and demographically concentrated. In the restaurants we ate in in Singapore, I was usually the only Caucasian. Outside the downtown tourists areas, I was certainly the only Caucasian.

After a very long all-day bus ride to K-L (made all the longer by the ubiquitous traffic jams on K-L's superhighways) we arrived in a city and a society where being the only Caucasian in sight would prove the norm. (Didn't see another Westerner for days).

Lucilla's youngest brother Sam was waiting for us at the bus station, a beautiful old building that was K-L's main train station during the colonial period. From the first moments of our arrival, it was clear that here we'd encounter far more preserved history than is possible to see in clean, condo-overrun Singapore ... Exhausted after the long day of bus-sitting, it was a relief to step into Sam's big comfortable---and powerful---BMW sedan. We were whisked up to Sam's mountainside home, which afforded a terrific view over Malaysia's capital city.

The Petronas Towers are visible from Sam and Belinda's backyard.

Our first night in K-L turned out to be another memorable family reunion. This time, the restaurant was a large local neighbourhood eatery, just at the foot of the mountain. The restaurant happened to be hosting a wedding reception; but there was one spare table, a very large table---and we needed it, because Lucilla's extended family turned out in force.

The full entourage encompasses four families, counting ours:
1) The Canadian contingent.
2) A cousin of Kathleen's, Kok Fah, brother to Lin in Singapore; both Kok Fah and Lin are the children of Kath's oldest uncle, Choong Pak, who lives in Ipoh. Kok Fah is accompanied by his wife Yang and their two children, 17 year old Hui (who goes by the English name Joseph) and ten year old charmer Ying Ying (who goes by the name Julianne).
3) Another cousin of Kath's, Yuan, accompanied by his wife Ping, and their children, two sons aged 11 and 9, and a bewitching 5 year old daughter, Ying Ying.
4) And finally, our K-L hosts Uncle Sam and Auntie Belinda, who have two children, both in their early 20's: Phoebe, currently studying at the University of Victoria on Vancouver Island; and Amos, who lives here in K-L but is busy on this night, so cannot join our big dinner party.
Whew!

As the dishes are brought forth---many dishes sampled by all, the norm for meals throughout Asia---we are introduced to the various members of the family. Before long it comes out that the teen Hui, son of Kath's cousin, is a fledgling writer of SF stories; he switches seats, snagging the chair adjacent to mine and asks me about the craft of writing. I tell him of the long journey that lies before any teen who aspires to publish fiction for a living ... Hui's kid-sister Ni Ni joins us, and it's clear to me that brother and sister are close. When I say that I also have a younger sister, separated in age by seven years, in fact I have twin younger sisters that I am close to, Hui launches into the story of his sister's birth.

More dishes arrive, and Hui and I are cautioned for talking more than eating; I listen to Hui's description of the favourite SF books he has read, as kid-sis Ni Ni nestles in between Kath and I, wanting to be part of the conversation. Around us, the table is in a hubbub, as Marcus and Lucilla fill everyone in on their granddaughter Robyn. And around our table, the wedding reception grows boisterous, tables of wedding guests cheering and drinking.

Before long, the youngest children of Kath's cousins are squeezing in round Kath and I, wanting a picture with their new Canadian 'Auntie Kit Yee and Uncle Patrick'. 5 year old beauty Ying Ying, normally very shy we are told, climbs fearlessly up onto Kath's lap; Ying Ying understands Mandarin, and I show her photos of Maeve, and she corrects my pronounciation of 'xiao bao bao'.

More dishes arrive; I stand up, shoot video of the table (the wedding guests stare over at me, a fish-out-of-water Westerner who's landed a long way from the regular tourist routes through K-L). Our table becomes boisterous too; now Yuan's young boys are offering themselves for a hug, and wanting their photo taken with us.

We feel overwhelmed with love and honour in this magical moment, in this city so unlike HK or Singapore … Here in Kuala Lumpur we have reached a place that seems farther than the far side of the world. We are in another world altogether, one where glimpses of the deepest past are still visible, as we'll find out in the following days, journeying to Lucilla's ancestral hometown of Ipoh.

Singapore, Day Two Pics

First pic a government building in Sing; appears the future's landed on top in the form of a UFO!
Then Lin and Kath and I outside the Museum of Asian Civilizations. Then out by the Singapore River, historic waterway where local boys used to undress and leap in (Kath encouraged me to join them, but didn't want to shock the other tourists).

Then pics from the fabulous Swiss Hotel tower: me against the backdrop-view of the city; other pics taken through the windows near our high tea table, showing the islands in the strait between Singapore and Indonesia, as well as container ship tankers floating by. Then the family at high tea, Aunt Margaret sitting across from me, beside her Lin, then Chung-Chee, and the rest you know ...

A pic of sister and brother, Lucilla and Chung-Chee, smiling and sharing stories.

Finally, all of us on a high, high above an island-nation.

Ciao!

What I'll Remember Best, Part 1

Our expedition to Maeve offers us once-in-a-lifetime-moments simply because there are so many firsts involved … On this South East Asian leg of the journey, the firsts for me come in the form of wonderful moments with Kath's aunts, uncles, cousins and their children, close family members I've never met before but have heard much about.

Our final day in Singapore before departing for Malaysia turned into one of those precious confluence moments, a never-to-be-forgotten family get-together that felt like a Fong-side follow up to the Fordes' games-plus-surprise-announcement get-together we held at our home on Christmas Eve.

Kath's cousin Lin took the day off to accompany us on a tour of Singapore's malls and museums. Naturally, Lin knew precisely where to take us to have the best experience of Singapore … Driving us deep into the island-city's sprawling commercial district, Lin parked beneath a gallery of shops arranged on several floors around a broad open court; down on the central court floor was a bazaar of artisans from different parts of China. The bazaar was one of Singapore's many preparatory offerings prior to the big Year the Pig celebrations. Gong Xi Fa Choy!

Just minutes after entering the gallery, Kath, Lin, Lucilla, Marcus and I wandered into a row of Chinese children's boutiques---the first one we entered was the best of the bunch, and had such fabulous baby and young child finds within that we bought several items for Robyn and Maeve, and a shirt for Miller that was the gift-find of the whole trip to Asia so far.

From the bazaar we moved on to the Museum of Asian Civilizations. This was a fantastic venue; the displays revealed Singapore's distinctive geocommercial role in Asian history … If Turkey (and Istanbul in particular) was fated by geography to be the great crossroad of trade in the West, then Singapore was surely destined to be the crossroads of the East, for it bottlenecks South Asia's most important sea passage: the straits between a long longitudinal land barrier (the Malay peninsula) and a long latitudinal land barrier (the Indonesian island chain).

The museum's displays used a combo of artifact and high-tech to tell us the fascinating history of the bottleneck island: the waves of foreign religions that swept through (Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam), unifying this Earthsea-like region of local island-ethnicities and narrow peninsula peoples partially because they were so top-down, emphasizing obedience to a central authority; the arrival of the West, the Dutch pacifying the wars between religious sects that had broken out across Indonesia; then the British seizing the high ground when Stamford Raffles realized that seizing Singapore was the key to controlling the whole of Asian sea trade.

Leaving the Singapore floor of the great museum, we entered a visiting exhibit called Mystery Men of China---the pieces on loan from central China are among the most spectacular ancient archeological finds of Asia. So spectacular that a party of visiting dignitaries arrived, journalists in tow, their enormous bodyguards brushing past us for camera cameos in front of the most awesome Mystery Men pieces. Our party gave the diplomatic group a wide berth---except for Marcus, who probably ended up on Singapore's evening newscasts because he stayed right where he was, cameras pointing at the dignitaries and at him, dressed in his tourist shorts and t-shirt in the midst of the black-suited six-foot-plus bodyguards.

From the museum Lin led us out to the Singapore river waterfront, past the city's most historic buildings, and then to a rendezvous with the energetic aunt Margaret and her husband Choong Chee, Lucilla's older brother. We all met in the base of the Swiss Hotel Tower, then shot up the 70 floors for a high tea so high over the island's center that we could see the ships in the straits of Singapore and many of the surrounding islands. What a fantastic place for high tea!

And for a surprising family revelation … After sampling the marvelous buffet---lots of local dishes, congees, lahksas, different soups and delicacies from the sea, dals and nan breads for dipping, delicious desserts I've never seen before much less tasted---we sat down for one of those family meals where the truth comes out. Discussing Maeve's adoption, the family asked why China refused to consider Kath's Chinese heritage. Expedited adoption is the usual case for Canadians of Chinese descent. But one of the problems, Kath told everyone, was lack of proof of her maternal grandmother's heritage.

Whereupon Lucilla and Choong Chee began talking about the old days, what papers they had, how much had been lost during the Japanese invasion. They launched into the story of how they'd hidden in caves near their home in Ipoh to avoid the soldiers; Lucilla revealed that she'd actually been born in one of those caves … She asked Choong Chee if there could be any records left, any papers stating their mother's birthplace tucked into a drawer at their oldest brother's home in Ipoh (the next morning we intended to bus north into Malaysia, and visit Lucilla's eldest surviving brother in Ipoh).

"All we need is one official document," Lucilla told Choong Chee at the table, "one paper proving that Mama was born in China. Then Kathleen and Patrick can adopt another daughter from China in a shorter time than three years."

"But Mama was not born in China!" Choong Chee declared. "She was born in Penang." (An island off Malaysia's coast) "Didn't anyone ever tell you?"

Lucialla's look of incredulity was akin to Brenda Blethyn's in Secrets and Lies, when she realizes she's held a mistaken assumption about birth origins all her life … "Penang? My Mama was born in Penang?" She shook her head, refusing to believe it or perhaps glimpsing the truth of it. "You mean ... But I am almost seventy," she said, blinking at her older brother in shock, "and only now I know Mama wasn't born in China? Mama!" Lucilla cried, turning now to her daughter Kathleen to explain apologetically, "Mama was from Penang."

Choong Chee let out a great laugh, and so did the rest of us. More stories followed about Mama, how strong she was; how fierce and no-nonsense during the war years; how even the neighbours were in fear of her. How she'd chased away a man who'd been skulking in the bushes with a meat cleaver from her kitchen. Kath and I captured these stories on video, as our party peered out the windows from the highest restaurant I've ever eaten in, gazing far out over sealane-straddling Singapore and the islands beyond. Then the clouds above opened up and curtains of cooling rain suddenly enveloped everything …

A priceless afternoon, a family outing we'll never forget.

Singapore, Day One Pics

The first three pics are from our host Lin's apartment complex in Bishan; almost all condo complexes we saw in Singapore include 'hollow' ground floors, which act as built-in playgrounds for the kids who live in the building above during the rainy season. I'm sitting at a table in one of the play areas, and the sign for the area is in four languages, a reflection of Singapore's historic role as a multicultural crossroads.

Later pics show parts of the vast downtown, with structures from the past backdropped by Singapore's soaring future. Note Sing's version of Verses: a cathedral converted to shops and restaurants.

And finally, pics from various shopping districts: schoolgirls in front of the giant Paragon mall; Kath in front of a row of shops tucked up a side-street ... And another portent of our expedition's true purpose: turning a corner, we come upon a big banner declaring the same Shakespearean quote that graces Maeve's bedroom.

Winter Becomes Spring Becomes Summer … Singapore

Didn't sleep much the night before flying to Singapore. Who can sleep? We're on the far side of the world and about to go farther, much farther south. As close to the equator as I've ever been. Never been south of Florida before!

After a few hours in very comfortable bulkhead seats, watching our flight path on overhead digital monitors as we soar over the South China Seas, following the eastern shoreline of Vietnam and passing close to Ho Chi Minh City, our plane turns sharply for the final descent over Singapore. And I get my first glimpse of what looks to me very much like LeGuin's Earthsea: a large patch of land surrounded by tiny islands.

Singapore is a potatoe-shaped island city-state, straddling the straits between the longitudinally long arm of the Malay peninsula and the long latitudinal arc of Indonesia … Our plane swoops down to the potatoe's international airport, and upon entering the arrivals terminal the differences between HK and Singapore are readily apparent. Beyond the terminal's outer glass walls it looks like a hot summer day. People are dressed in sandals and shorts and saris. And within the terminal, there are plenty of families with babies and small children, waiting for loved ones to arrive.

We meet up with Kath's cousin Chui Lin and her husband Tian Soon, our hosts on this island. They explain that Singapore has undergone a baby boom in recent generations, as the 2-child-only policy of the 70's has been lifted, allowing people to have more children. But perhaps the biggest factor affecting the number of young children is the housing situation. In Singapore, citizens have to attain approval for housing; and for young unmarried singles, housing is next to impossible to get. So to move out and have your own apartment, the primary option is to marry.

In Singapore, almost everyone marries early, and has babies soon after …

Staying with Lin and Tian gives me an inkling about why the huge generational gap in HK is really more morph than gulf. Lin and Tian have two children: a 14 year old daughter Ying Ying, and an 11 year old son Tze Hong. Lin and Tian's lives are, naturally, focused upon their children. They nurture Ying Ying and Tze Hong's generational leap forward, encouraging the kids' instincts to be web-savvy, watching Much Music Asia with them, and family TV shows that manage to fuse the region's past with its future. One evening we all watched an episode of Ten Brothers, a show that combines the superhero features of Manga with the history of occupation, invasion, oppression and war.

Such is Singapore's history, as we discovered a couple of days later at the Museum of Asian Civilizations ... South East Asia is a place where enormous generation gulfs are bridged by familial bonds that seem stronger than in the West---few children move far from their parents here. And those fashionista teens teeming through Kowloon were always respectful of the elders they swarmed past.

Swarming has a darker meaning in the West, where respect between generations is a lost treasure …

On our second day in Singapore, Kath's charming and charismatic dynamo-of-an-aunt Margaret took us on a whirlwind driveby of the city's titanic commercial districts. Singapore is one big mall. And the wealth of both the island's port and its financial sector have overflowed, so that the past can be hard to see here: everything seems modern and mammoth, recently built or under construction. Condo complexes cover the island. We have seen no houses at all in Asia, not here nor in Hong Kong.

Aunt Margaret drops Kath and I off in the heart of the city, and we set out for Chinatown, one of the older outdoor market districts just beyond the Singapore river, a waterbody that was once the lifeline of the city's commerce, but is now mainly for pleasure boating. In the old Chinatown, we find a welter of South Asian fashions, and are now hunting for Kiera and Sarah, as the clothes are primarily for beautiful young woman …

Again, our gift-hunting turns up surprises. Stumbling into a tiny Chinese Heritage Center tucked into the heart of the hawker-stalls, we pick up some gifts for Mom and Dad. And with time running out before we have to head back to the Bishan district where cousin Lin lives for dinner, I spot the coolest teen t-shirt I've seen anywhere: it's for Dan, and it combines film and philosophy!

We rush back for a wonderful meal at a restaurant on the far side of the island, where I watch Kath continue the fall back into her childhood that began when she met up with cousin Peter in HK (Peter's early years were spent in Ottawa, so he and Kath had many memories to share). Kath drops into Cantonese at the dinner table, and her hesitant, faltering cadence with the language has vanished; I listen to my wife speak to her cousins in the rapidfire of her earliest years.

And remind myself to improve my Mandarin before we meet Maeve ...

Night Market, and goodbye to HK

In the second pic Kath is up on Victoria's Peak, overlooking the city ... and in the background distance is the top of the highest building in Hong Kong(look just to the left of the lion statue). That's the building Kath's second-cousin Peter works in.

Second last pic shows Kath laughing off HK's famous martial artist export, Bruce Lee. (Or at least, a waxwork effigy :))

The final pic: Kent, Shirley, Lucilla and Marcus front row; Peter, Kath and me in back.

Up next, a wonder-moment in equatorial Singapore!

Robyns and Millers and Brams, Oh My

Kathleen and I have two goddaughters. One's a beautiful teen---Kiera Moffat---and one's a beautiful baby---Robyn Fong, who was born so tiny when we first held her only one hand was necessary to do so. Kiera is Maeve's oldest female cousin (and if we're lucky, will be one of Maeve's babysitters). Robyn, the youngest member of our extended family, will be the cousin closest in age to Maeve. Both goddaughters were on our minds when we hurried out to scour the narrow night market back alleys after our final dinner in HK.

Kiera kept coming to mind during our stay in HK, as we took in the curiously-multilayered Kowloon catwalk styles worn by groovy girl pairs-and-trios on the Nathan Road and by girlfriend-packs prowling the massive shopping mall that Peter brought us through (it could swallow Square One with room to spare). All those instant-messaging teens, walking and stalking about as though a great leap forward in fashion and freedom did not separate them from Kowloon's older generations, who appeared to have barely made it out of the 19th century. We'd never seen street-fashions quite like those in Kowloon.

'That's what Kiera and her friends will be wearing next year', we said to each other ... Peter explained that Paris's designer-whereables are manufactured here, so they leak onto Kowloon's streets before Europe or America gets them. Kiera and her friends would love this city.

So we dashed into the night market for one final shot bout of family treasure-hunting in HK, knowing that first thing in the morning we'd be off to Singapore. We'd already scored some great gifts in the galleries of Victoria's Peak (for Coll and Nance); and in the dockside markets (for Geoff, father to Maeve's two other closest cousins, Bram and Miller); and three separate sets of purchases at the HK Art Museum yielded amazing gifts for Sheila and for my eldest sister Carmel.

Turning into the narrow night market, we expect to find a lot of Kiera's Kowloon hanging in the stalls. Instead, we stumble into a welter of traditional children's clothes. Bingo! We'd been looking at a lot of possibilities for Robyn up on Vic's Peak, but hadn't spotted something special enough for our youngest niece … Before us, a neon-backlit trove of gorgeous Chinese garments racked by gender and age. Hey, check out these. They're all possible Robyns … And over here, a rack of boys 5 and 6's---Mao Millers! And over there, a whole stall of Han-style Brams!

In the end, running short on time, and knowing China's mainland markets still lie ahead of us, we retreat from Kowloon's hypercommercial night back to the Baden-Powell to snag a few hours of sleep with only one great find: a royal blue dragon-crested traditional jacket and cap for Bram … Kiera must wait for the PRC, maybe some Shanghai Tang style in the shops of Beijing. And if we're lucky, maybe we can find Maeve's two other xiao cousins something in Nanchang, while wandering the local markets with Maeve herself!

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Greetings all from Saturday in Singapore!

The four of us are preparing to depart for Kuala Lumpur within the hour, and I haven't even got to our Singa-adventures. Very little time for blogging, believe it or not.

Explanation of the pig's noses on the three Chinese models: Chinese New Year's starting very soon, and it's the Year of the Pig! Also, the final pic shows the food court directory for a lah-dee-dah Asian mall called Paragon. We liked the funky names of the eateries: Yamagen, Nooch, Ah Mei, Blood Cafe, Starbucks, and Sushi Tei!

Ciao---and we're hoping for an internet connection from K-L, but who knows? If we vanish till Monday, we didn't find one ...

UPDATE:

We have reached our destination safely, and Kath's funky rock-climbing cousin Amos immediately linked us into his wireless network. Should be able to bring our blog up to date from Lucilla's brother Sam's home here in Kuala Lumpur, a city that is by far the most exotic and culturally distinct I've ever seen. To Kit Yee, of course, it's a homecoming to the familiar holiday sights and setting of her favourite childhood travels.

I'm bagged again, still fighting jet-leg.

So will post more after our trip to Ipoh tomorrow.

Six more pics

Arrakis Kowloon

Visual impressions of Hong Kong …

The city was in fog when we landed. So much fog it felt as though we were just feet above the runway when the ocean finally appeared, a hundred feet below. Then HK's giant airport materialized, and shifting in and out of wisps of cloud and mist, glimpses of mountains ... HK calls itself 'the Gateway City to Asia'. That phrase was all over the airport. 'Where East Meets West' was everywhere too. On the sides of double-deckers. On bus shelter posters, and bannered down the side of the HK Art Museum.

The city remains fog-ensorcled throughout our stay; China is teasing us, won't show her true self until we cross into the mainland much later on this trip. In HK we saw little evidence of the People's Republic of China (PRC) presence; indeed, a more commercial visibly market-driven city would be hard to find. We drove into town from the airport on big new highways that revealed only towering hyperdense housing projects, plus HK's vast container port as we crossed the bridge into Kowloon.

Kowloon. So far my favourite part of Asia (I'm writing this post from Singapore) ... The dizzying neon layering of signs along Nathan Road, and in the surrounding streets . The branches of fantastic subtropical trees swoon over shops; colourful alleyways snake between buildings, with small shop-doorways and stands tucked within; high rises that appear partially decayed are tucked in among architectural glitterspikes bejeweled with lights.

Heading out the first day to cross the harbour by ferry, explore the famous skyline-side, the Hong Kong side … But at the docks we duck into the massive HK Art museum, scour the museum shop for finds for my four artistic sisters. Instead, we find gifts there for Sarah, Michael, Alex. (Other nieces and nephews cousins will have to wait for a later hour, a later day, or a later leg of our expedition to Maeve. A gift from the Forbidden City, perhaps? From the exotic Malaya markets in Kuala Lumpur?)

But it's only our first morning in HK, and we rush out to the ferry. Crossing against the current I'm channeling Fitzgerald, watching the engines beat on, bearing us east-westly into the past … or is the farther shore the future?

Hard to tell in HK. Like Kowloon, this side of the city is a misty labyrinth; unlike Kownloon, the streets here are steep inclines that arc up the peaks HK clings to. Unfamiliar plants and giant trees compete with futuristic financial architectures, all so tall they render the roads into deep deep canyons, narrower than those of Manhattan, far more exotic. Nature bursting through here and there. Manhattan's canyons on San Francisco's slopes, but the canyon-sides are not New York's concrete but Neuromancer's neon and mirrored liquid-steel.

The fog continues to congeal, conjuring ghost-clouds in this city perched between ocean and mountain. The HK side mounts precariously upon itself, higher and higher. Kath and I revel in the disorientation. In love with the place in a matter of hours. Great Gatsbying on, against the current of fog, letting out gasps. Look up there. See that tree? That temple? Look at that colonial building, those skywalks. No, look down there, a beautiful mosque at the base of new condo superstructures, and hey---

Look at that baby.

Hardly any babies to be seen in HK. No babies or children glimpsed in HK's brobdignagian airport when we landed. Virtually no babies nor small children in Kowloon, or here on the Kong side. The few that we see happen to be baby girls, and they take our breath away. We sneak some video of one chubby cheeked China girl up on Victoria Peak while pretending to pan scenery; but otherwise we see only pre-teens in private school uniforms gaggling by on the roads with names like Nathan, Austin, Salisbury, Gascoigne, Wyndham.

Hong Kong China. An east-meets-west miasma. The melange of Asia. The spice mélange ... Given this blog's title, given our entry point into China, it's hard to avoid referencing Gibson, Dick, LeGuin. Now for a dash of Herbert: spice mélange is the addictive substance found everywhere on Arrakis, the exotic planet that's a character unto itself in Herbert's "Dune".

Here in Hong Kong, the addictive mélange that's visible everywhere is the seamless melding of east and west, past and future. Emphasis on seamless. There's a gulf here, noticeable no matter where we turn. An older generation of Chinese slowly walks by, going about their old-world tasks, wearing traditional clothes, selling pre-Leap Forward wares.

But more striking is the younger generation weaving in and around their shrunken elders, their gait fastforwarded to remorseless catwalk lithe. They are laden with high tech, chatting to themselves---or rather to wireless friends alleys away in the fog. They appear to be wearing next year's fashions. Kath and I have never seen such a welter of wired chic-teens.
Kiera's Kowloon, we call them.

Somehow the gulf between the handsfree fashionista-teens and the traditional bent-over elders seems bridged here in HK ... The evening of our first day in the city, we dine on the Kowloon side in a restaurant chosen by Peter, Kath's second cousin. And we are gasping again; the view Peter's found for us is the best in town. We gape through the restaurant's dockside picture window across the harbour at the financial district, ablaze in a way no city in North America can match. At 8 pm the skyline pulses through its ritual laser lightshow. Fantastic!

And Peter leans over to me, murmurs, "Have you noticed that HK is one big mall?"

We've noticed that HK is one big morph. Past and future welded together. West melanged into east. Emphasis on fusion, addiction, intoxication. Intoxication is what Maeve's name means, my sister Nance has discovered. (Thanks Nance!)

With only one day to explore Kath's dad's hometown, we want to see so much more of this enticing city. But we're leaving HK very very soon, so we whisper to each other the promise, 'Next baby.' That part of HK must wait until the day we return for Maeve's xiao mei mei, younger sister ... A dream beyond a dream at this point.

First we have to reach this baby!

Searching for signs in all the Hong places

When Kath and I made our Christmas Eve announcement about Maeve, who's current Chinese name is Yu Cai Ling, my mother blinked and told me in a rush that her grandmother's maiden surname was Ling ... and so it must be a sign.

Last night we went out to dinner in Singapore with Lucilla's older brother and other family members from the Lucilla's side. And when Kath told her uncle what Maeve's current name is, he leaned over and told us with delight that the Mandarin 'Cai' in Cai Ling is the same Han-Ze character as the Cantonese 'Choi' in Lucilla's Chinese name, Choi Yoong ... So it must be a sign!

In the international adoption-from-China community, a tale is repeatedly told of two rivers flowing down from the mountains, flowing towards each other without being able to see each other, their meeting-point foreordained. A Chinese legend that suggests the role fate plays in bringing people like Kath and I together with our still mysterious, wondering-what-will-she-be-like Maeve ...

Signs and portents of destiny lie in the deep-heart's core of all ancient cultures. So winging our way to China, our daughter's historied homeland, Kath and I playfully looked for signs ... The movie she watched on the plane? The Departed. Yeah, that's us. The movie I watched? The Queen. On our way to Mabs, Queen Maeve (a queen from the British Isles, for those of you who've never heard of her) ... Kath's already bought Maeve a tiny t-shirt inscribed "I Rule Therefore I Am."

Uh-oh, two queens in the house upon our return from this trip. That leaves me as peon and serf to both. Ah well, fate again.

And yet again: As we passed close to the North pole on our long flight to Asia, my amiable She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed wife became She-Who-Can-Sleep-Anywhere. And I, ever the insomniac, gazed out the plane window at the stars over the pole. Then opened up the book I'd brought along to get me through moments like this. Le Guin's "The Farthest Shore", a book composed in simple beautiful prose-poetry about a place called Earthsea. Apropos when visiting Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, etc.

As the plane crossed from Russia into China, Le Guin's novel offered me this line. "'Your roots are deep,' he said. 'You have strength and you must have room, room to grow.'" Natch, Maeve came to mind. Will she be as strong as her mother Kit Yee, the strongest person I've ever known? Kathleen inherited her calm gentle nature from her father Marcus, a quiet happy calm she shares with her brother Andrew. But from her mother Lucilla she inherited an unusual, bendable but unbreakable strength and practicality. Maeve will hopefully inherit both from Mom ...

Later in the flight, passing over Jiangxi, Kath still asleep, and me knowing both of us are as close as we've yet come to our daughter (she's a mere 8 miles below, somewhere far below, beneath the clouds. Sleeping peacefully like her Mom-to-be up at 40,000 feet?), Le Guin offers me this: "Each deed you do, each act, binds you to itself and to its consequences, and makes you act again and yet again. Then very seldom do you come upon a space, a time like this, between act and act, when you may stop and simply ... wonder who, after all, you are."

Kath and I, between acts, high in the sky above our daughter. But we know ourselves well. So the question we've both been wondering for the past two years of adoptive pregancy, the question we ask ourselves, is who we're about to become.

We know one answer: Mama, Baba, Bao Bao. 'Mom' and 'Dad' are titles we've been testing on each other since receiving our proposal for Yu Cai Ling--soon to be our Maeve Lili, and to assume her own title. 'Daughter'. Nuer. (Thanks, Nance, for inscribing the Han-Ze for daughter in your beautiful card!)

One final sign: before the four of us (grandma, grandpa, new mom and dad) set out by night limo for Peason, I gave my own mom a tape of songs we'd put on my laptop to play to soothe our new baby Nuer. The mix included songs like the heartbreakingly sad and gorgeous 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' by IZ (Peter, can you comment-in the link to the IZ video for anyone who wants to click it?). Songs like Loreena McKennitt's 'Marco Polo', a westerner who headed east to Asia (the route we did not have to take, fortunately!). Songs like 'Orinoco Flow' by Enya, chosen for it's journeyish chanting of 'Sail away, sail away, sail away', as well as its references to Beijing, and for its symbolism of the great river's flow, waters of destiny bearing us to Maeve ...

And so a musical sign reaches us out of the mists of our first day in Asia. Meandering through Hong Kong's maze of alleys and streets, we pass stores piping Chinese music into the fog-shrouded financial district. Then Marcus leads us up to the high ultrahip district called Lon Kwai Fong, where we discover not one but two Irish pubs. The Whisky Priest, and the Dublin Jack. Piping out of the Dublin Jack is the first song in English we've heard anywhere in Hong Kong.

Enya, Orinoco Flow. 'Sail Away, Sail Away, Sail Away!' Signs hovering all about us, and we're floating on air over here. The air of anticipatory happiness.

Ciao for now!