I'm Not Chinese. Raymond M. Wong

or Houston or somewhere, but I could never relate. Sure, we shared some surface kinship, but how was I supposed to care about people I didn’t know?

      She pointed to the older man in the print shirt. “This your father.”

      I stared at him. Slim, like me, but shorter by four or five inches. The dark eyes, the narrow face and chin, the slight, flattened nose and thin upper lip, even the glistening sheen of his skin, were mine.

      He reached for my hand and held it in a light, tentative manner, as if he didn’t know how to touch me.

      I realized I was staring and let go. He turned away.

      The one introduced as my uncle took a suitcase from the cart. The cousin lifted another and my mother’s travel bag while I held mine.

      My father offered to carry my bag. “It’s all right. I’ll take it,” I said.

      He looked at me, then at the floor.

      As we walked, I tried to take the suitcase from my uncle, who tightened his grip and said, “Dak, dak, dak.”

      My mom said, “That mean he okay.”

      I followed them out of the airport into Hong Kong.

      Hong Kong 香港

      Chapter 3

      The climate brought to mind with remarkable clarity how a lobster would feel in a vat of bubbling water. Hong Kong’s suffocating humidity made it hard to breathe, and before long, my polo shirt and even my shorts stuck to me like moist tissue.

      Thousands of narrow towers stretched skyward to prism the velvet night. The conglomeration of huddled structures made it difficult to tell where one building ended and the next began.

      The air reeked of exhaust. Cars, taxis, and double-decker buses honked and hurtled in and out of the heap of confusion going down the wrong half of the street.

      We jostled our way through the crowded sidewalks and came to an intersection, where Uncle Chun-Kwok took hold of my arm. The reason became apparent when cars zoomed by as if at Daytona. On these streets, vehicles clearly owned the right of way.

      The signal changed, and we started across. I caught my father stealing peeks at me like a cheap private investigator.

      Hard as I tried, I couldn’t recall anything about my father. As a child, did I get along with him? Did we ever talk or was he like my stepfather, who spoke to me only when he wanted something? What was my mom’s relationship with him? Did they fight? Is that why she left? And how could he willingly let her go with his son to another country, another world?

      I fought the urge to look at him.

      ***

      My uncle hailed two cabs. Before we entered, he communicated with my mom. My father came to me, placed his hand lightly on my shoulder, said something, pointed at himself and rotated his wrist, indicating somewhere else. He tapped my arm twice, turned, and disappeared into a taxi that sped off.

      Without looking at me, my mother said, “He need to go work now. He working late, but he say he want to take us for dinner tomorrow.”

      We climbed into the waiting cab, Hoy in front, and my mom and I in back with Uncle Chun-Kwok. A steel mesh screen separated us from the driver, and I read the attached sign: “It is unlawful to smoke in the taxi.”

      My mother tested her hand on the metal barrier, and it held firm. “Wow, see how they need this?” She shook her head. “Very dangerous here.”

      ***

      My uncle lived in Aberdeen, a harbor town on the southern tip of Hong Kong. The cab let us off at what seemed to be an old office building in a business district with rows of closed shops facing us on both sides of the street. We entered a narrow, dingy lobby with putrid green paint peeling off the walls. It smelled of a musty gym and felt like a boiler room. At the elevator, Uncle Chun-Kwok greeted a shrunken, white-haired man hunched behind a rusted metal desk by the stairs. He must’ve been the guard because he stayed while we filed into the elevator.

      We got out on the fourteenth floor and came up to a sliding steel gate. My uncle unlocked it and spoke to my mom.

      “He say they really lucky. He buy one house, and his wife have the one next door. They have two together; not many people have that.”

      He opened the barricade and we stepped into air-conditioning. A fan attached to the wall circulated cool air. A kitchen, the size of most bathrooms in America, stood across from a closet-like toilet near the front. Two rooms together at the end of the house, with a bunk bed taking up half the space in each, could fit inside my bedroom in San Diego.

      A TV and a hexagonal aquarium sat on a counter protruding from the wall. The tank contained giant goldfish with bulbous eyes and vibrant colors. Above, a neatly lined row of books on a shelf. Higher, on a mantel, three ceramic figures, maybe a foot high, of long-bearded Chinese men—each with elaborate, ancient robes bestowing an air of importance. Still higher, enshrined on a wrought-iron stand, a framed black-and-white portrait of a man with even-cropped hair and studious eyes.

      Beneath the counter, a large cardboard box of toys held board games and puzzles piled high. Folding trays and stools were stacked next to the box.

      A woman in a light, short-sleeved beige sweater and dark blue shorts cuffed at the knees welcomed us with a smile. She wore a short, unadorned hairstyle reminiscent of a young Audrey Hepburn. My mother introduced her as Poi Yee, my aunt.

      Aunt Poi Yee ushered us to a futon couch and waved for me to put down my travel bag. After we sat, she brought a folding tray and set out a large bowl of oval-shaped fruit protected by a rough skin the color of peanut shells.

      My mom said, “Dojeh, Poi Yee.” She reached into the bowl, separated one of the fruit from a waxy vine, and peeled the skin to reveal a berry resembling a skinless, green grape. “I don’t know how to say this, but is good.” She handed it to me. “Be careful the seed.”

      A unique taste, something between a grape and a kiwi, with a big pit in the middle.

      From behind the door of a bedroom, two small heads, a girl’s and a boy’s, popped back and forth to spy on us. Seeing my aunt, they scrambled to their bunks, and she went into the room. My mother identified the ten-year-old girl as Jing-Wei and the seven-year-old boy as Ming, my uncle’s children.

      Hoy and Uncle Chun-Kwok took seats on stools near the TV and immersed themselves in conversation with my mom. Though most of their words sounded like gibberish, I recognized some phrases.

      Laughter spilled out in loud voices, and sentences ended with last syllables carrying like the close of a song. Body gestures also accompanied the words; the upper torso of the speaker leaned forward with hands and arms thrusting and sweeping in constant motion. The fully animated face—eyes, mouth, brow, temples, and even the constricting and contracting neck muscles—added emphasis to an idea or opinion.

      Laughter notwithstanding, an American watching might have thought they were arguing.

      Soon, their gazes shifted to me, and I had the distinct feeling the discussion was about to veer in my direction. I plucked another piece of fruit from the bowl.

      Hoy asked a question, and my mother shot a quick glance at me before responding. “He ask what you do, so I say you work for school, right?”

      I nodded. The details of being a vocational counselor aspiring to become a marriage and family therapist would bring up more questions than I wanted to address. I dared not mention my interest in writing to avoid being seen as frivolous or worse.

      Hoy, his face unable to contain his grin, said something to my mom. My uncle added a comment.

      She said, “They ask if you have girlfriend.”

      My discomfort grew. How does one explain to relatives, upon first meeting, about a history of dysfunctional and destructive interpersonal relationships? Would they understand the term “codependency”? Somehow, going into my last two years of intense