Feeling disconnected

A few weeks ago, I started hanging out with my "little" cousin. We went out for dinner and chatted and talked about everything that girls typically talk about when they get together. Before that dinner, I can't remember the last conversation we had. Come to think of it, I don't think I ever had a real conversation with her. After our second dinner date, I told her how happy I was that we were hanging out and she said "yeah! I never knew you were so good to talk to." And how could she have known? For the longest time, we never talked. I didn't see her much but whenever we did, it was the very cordial "Hi, how are you" kind of small talk. I'm still like that with most of my cousins on my dad's side and why, you ask? Well, first, I'm shy and second, they speak Cantonese and I speak English.

My extensive written Chinese vocabulary:

Ever since our family moved to Canada when I was five, I think I've been the official "gwai mui" of the family. After an intensive and exhausting year of junior kindergarten in Hong Kong at age four, I came to Canada. To make room for the English language, my Chinese vocabulary seemed to very quickly flee from my brain (...like it was Ashlee Simpson desperately running from the limelight after her lip sync/hoedown debaucle. Who doesn't love a good Ashlee Simpson reference?) When I was younger, it didn't make a difference. I spoke English with all my friends at school, at church and also with my family.

At age 9, I went back to Hong Kong with my family for a visit. At the time, I thought my Chinese sounded just fine and then someone kindly pointed out that I had a really funny accent. It was a sad day. In my head, I actually thought I sounded like a local Hong Kong person and boy was I wrong.

I think I partly use the language thing as a scapegoat and a lot of it is due to my lack of initiative when it comes to conversing with my extended family but it seems to have created a barrier and I want to break it down. It makes me sad that I couldn't have real conversations with my grandparents and didn't make the effort to get to know them because I knew I couldn't have a full conversation in Chinese. Now I wonder what kind of relationships I'm missing out on with my cousins because I'm too afraid to speak my supposed mother tongue.

As I search for jobs in Hong Kong, the regret keeps gnawing at me: WHY DID I QUIT CHINESE SCHOOL? And then I remember the stuffy rooms, the long Friday nights, the kids that came straight from Hong Kong who were eons ahead of me, the weekly dictations and the guaranteed 5/100 that I would get on those dreaded tests. Brutal. So Chinese school didn't work out, but I'm determined to make a real effort when I move back to Hong Kong. My Chinese won't just used when ordering "cha siu fan," but I will be able to speak intelligently with people about the government's Green Paper, or events that are more current in Hong Kong, as well as chill with the cousins that I've long been avoiding.

Just give me a year...or two.