I could almost smell the smoke-filled screen where Tony Leung and Maggie Cheung were seated in In the Mood for Love, or the dusty basement Takeshi Kaneshiro’s character returned to after a day’s worth of swindling in Fallen Angels. The ambiance of Hong Kong in the late 90’s frozen in time on the small, grainy screen. When I mention this era to my father, who was born in Hong Kong during its colonial days, he simply reminisces on this forever-lost moment in time as if it were a hazy figment of his imagination.
Three weeks ago, I was on a call with my cousin in the metro, imagining all the places we would travel to as a reward after graduating. While we are both Cantonese, only she had ever traveled to Hong Kong, reacting to my desire to visit as a “return to the motherland.” I entertained her joke, agreeing with the notion that it was my duty to visit the motherland once and for all. After arriving home, and considering what the term entailed, a knotted feeling soon bubbled from within. I pictured the bustling streets of Hong Kong, but not myself in them. It was more than a disconnect, but an inherently alien feeling of non-belonging.
At the age of 19, my father traveled to Hong Kong for the first time since moving to Canada when he was five. Throughout his trip, he immersed himself in the culture of his true motherland, something I fear I will never be able to do. My identity is not rooted among the Cantonese people. While I weakly participate in cultural engagements of Chinese New Year or Sunday dim sum brunches, the only semblance I have of these ethnic origins is in my appearance. When I watch Wong Kar Wai’s films, or others that capture the sentiment of Hong Kong at the turn of the millennium, I wish for something that I have never had: a true motherland, or a nation I can refer to as my home.
Identity, though, is construed in a web of entanglements. It exists externally and internally to us. While I spent much of my childhood and adolescence with my grandmother in Türkiye, despite speaking the language and engaging in the culture, my identity was always assumed; I was foreign — something they approached gingerly. However, they, of course, respected my effort of trying to assimilate. What I believed to be my motherland refused to welcome me. I wanted to identify with the Turkish people, but instead of being offered their warm embrace, I was shunned and forced to face a cold shoulder. Individuals spend their whole lives fighting for their belonging to a nation, but there I was floating in the abyss.
If our identities emerge at different levels, I would say the first is a belief that we exist in the world we live in. Our second-order identity would be belonging to a group, whether that is to one’s family, among a class, or linked to culture. After several failed attempts of trying to find that stereotypical “place I belong to,” I resorted to the belief that our identities are not chained to a nation, but are rather determined by the people you spend your time with.
Yet, the status of our identities is never that simple.
I look at the state of the world right now, and ask what am I missing? Palestinians are punished for wanting to retain the autonomy of their people and the land that has been violently taken away from them. Ukrainians seek to fend off Russian forces who want to seize the territory for themselves. Stateless ethnic groups, like the Kurdish, are repressed by regional governments amid their efforts for nationhood. There is constant opposition in framing one’s homeland against another, as a result of greed and power. For this, I believe, the homeland, or motherland, is critical to our existence in society.
Where has my motherland gone? Has it slipped through my fingers, or am I unconsciously averse to such containment? Growing up in the United States has further deteriorated my ethnic identity. No matter how white-washed I get, I will never be accepted by the masses. I have learned to bite my tongue and keep such apprehensions at bay. But as I watched Wong Kar Wai’s film reel echo in my living room with my father beside me, intently staring at the scenes of empty Hong Kong streets, a strange serenity entered my subconscious.
Perhaps our motherlands exist in a particular time and space. As we grow up, we are preprogrammed to reminisce on the memories we still remember of our quickly fading youths. But the world around us is constantly changing against our bitter wills. We almost beg for time to remain frozen. Rather than claiming my motherland is in Hong Kong itself, I have become attached to the media produced in the short period of Hong Kong’s handover to China. Wong Kar Wai and his contemporaries were able to portray the sentiment from that decade: a celebration of Cantonese culture and community, filled with unsettling dread from a population painfully aware of its imminent erasure.
Everyone has a motherland. Whether that exists in the land itself, or through a reproduction of that land in a particular era, these spaces are sanctuaries for our most primal sensations of belonging. We move through the world and operate under the assumption that the most fundamental aspects of our beings are contained to that land. Contemporary battles for the retention of this “motherland” are evident of its enduring power.
At long last, I have found my motherland. Maybe that motherland has found me, too.