I froze in front of Hankow Center. As if in a trance, I stepped into the building’s open-air ground floor. There I found the directory, in the same place it had been sixteen years earlier when I lived in Hong Kong. My eyes scanned the names: J, K, L… and there she was, my former doctor. Seeing her name again pulled me back to a place I had tried to escape long ago. I blinked back tears.
It had been a Saturday in October, the day warm and dry, as it always is that time of year in Hong Kong. My doctor, a British woman named Sally, had placed her hand on my shoulder while I stood in a daze in the middle of her office. Even now I could still hear her words.
"You have an infection that is usually sexually transmitted. Please know that in Chinese culture husbands might cheat, but it doesn’t mean they don’t love their wives.”
It felt as if Sally had punched me in the stomach. Tottering back against the examining table, I softly asked, "Could I have gotten it from something else? Swimming or a toilet seat?”
"I suppose that’s possible, but it’s not common.”
No, it couldn’t have been Li. It must have come from the YMCA where I swam most mornings. Maybe I had unknowingly placed my suit on an infected area in the changing room. Just twenty-six then and going on my second year of marriage, I not only wanted to stay married to the mainland Chinese man who had wooed me during my first semester in graduate school, but I also couldn’t imagine leaving Hong Kong. I hadn’t planned to stay there for just a couple years while I studied; I wanted to spend all of my adult life there. When I confronted Li over the phone a couple days later—he was in China for a few months to extend his student visa and passport—I believed him when he insisted that he didn’t have a girlfriend. For years after that I kept quiet, fearing that my family, friends, and doctor would convince me to return to the US if I allowed it to become real. It was easier to be in denial than face the ramifications of the truth.
For a moment, staring at the white letters that spelled Sally’s name and office number on the black directory board, I pictured taking the ramshackle elevator upstairs to see her. I could wait in the reception area, flipping through Hong Kong gossip magazines just like old times, until she had a few free moments. My new husband Tom was napping back at the hotel and wasn’t expecting me for an hour or two. But instead of walking toward the elevator, I found myself turning away from the building, from the cramped jewelry stores and bank branches on the ground floor, in the same zombie state I had been the day Sally told me that Li had cheated.
Sally probably wouldn’t remember me. It had been so long ago, a year before the Handover. And if she did, what would I say? I was in the neighborhood and thought I would say hello. You were right all those years ago. I’m sorry I didn’t believe you then, but wanted to tell you that I’m happy now, a mother of three and married to a man who treats me as an equal. Thank you for trying to talk some sense into me.
But it seemed silly and sentimental to go back there after all this time, not just to see Sally, but also to revisit the pain I had kept inside for years until I finally gained the courage to leave Li. Since my divorce, I had learned to stand up for myself and trust my instincts. Or so I thought. For the last decade, my interactions with him—by phone, by email, or in person—were all conducted in America. I had been back to San Francisco a couple times since I left Li there, and had lived in Chicago for the twelve years since our divorce came through. But this was the first time I had returned to Hong Kong or anywhere in Asia since I had left my expat life—still married to Li—a decade and a half ago.
After I returned to the US, I often wondered if I would ever make it back to Hong Kong. The city wasn’t just a fleeting stop. It was where I had come of age, arriving as an innocent college student who had never had a boyfriend, and leaving as a married woman, pregnant with my first child. When I repatriated to San Francisco at twenty-seven, I was hopeful for my future. Now at forty-one, I still had hope, but also security and the knowledge that my bills would be paid on time and that my kids were safe in Chicago. I didn’t have to worry that their father would whisk them off to another country without telling me.
Not too long after our divorce, Li had moved back to Hong Kong for a few years. During that time, the territory was plagued with SARS, bird flu, and swine flu; there always seemed to be a reason to stay away. It wasn’t until my youngest child was two that I thought Tom and I could sneak away for a quick trip to Hong Kong while my mom watched the kids. Li had returned to China and was remarried, too.
*
Drifting away from Hankow Center, I found the underground walkway to cross Kowloon Park Drive. When I reemerged on dazzling Canton Road, I saw that it had transformed over the years from a street of electronics and souvenir shops to one packed with European and American luxury boutiques. I made my way to a Hong Kong home ware and clothing shop that I’d hoped to visit on this trip. While I perused the store for almost an hour, the emotions that had welled up in front of Sally’s building seemed to dissipate.
But back on the street, I paused again. As throngs of shoppers strolled by, I stared across Canton Road, a street I had traversed hundreds of times during my expat years. A street where Li’s other family suddenly came to life again.
I felt as if I was back in the mid-‘90s, accompanying Li to the ferry terminal across the street. China Hong Kong City, it was called. The first time I sent Li off to southern China to visit his ex-wife Wei Ling and daughter Ting-Ting, many questions raced through my mind. How would he interact with his ex-wife? Would his daughter take to him after a three-year absence? I was doing the right thing in supporting this reunion, wasn’t I? These were heavy issues for a twenty-four-year-old newlywed.
I had wanted to greet Li at the terminal when he returned that Sunday, and thought the two of us could stroll along Canton Road toward the MTR station, perhaps stopping in our favorite food court in the Tsim Sha Tsui district before boarding the train back to our campus apartment up by the China border. I usually ordered a large bowl of Japanese udon soup and Li a Chinese-Western hybrid dish like thin pork chops served over white rice, topped with a ladle of gravy. But Li had insisted I wait for him in our dorm room. He didn’t want to trouble me.
"It’s no trouble,” I said. "You know I love going into Kowloon. We could hang out there a bit. It’d be a nice change of pace.”
Li wouldn’t hear of me schlepping forty-five minutes to meet him. At the time, I just thought he didn’t want me to take out two hours from studying to travel to the ferry pier and back. Later on I would gradually realize that Li preferred to compartmentalize his life, including me in some things and not in others. As he was getting ready for his first trip to see his daughter, I didn’t want to make a big deal about it and agreed to wait for him in our dorm room.
When he arrived home from that trip, he seemed refreshed and encouraged by his reunion with his then six-year-old daughter. I sat next to him as he pulled out a small album of prints he had developed at a one-hour photo store in Zhuhai. Ting-Ting looked bashfully at the camera and to my surprise, resembled not Li but both of his parents. That was all the more apparent when Li flipped the page and I came face to face with Wei Ling, her almond eyes and gentle smile illuminating the page. His rundown of the weekend confirmed that Ting-Ting took up his attention in Zhuhai, not Wei Ling. I felt secure enough to see him off a couple more times to visit his daughter and ex-wife, trips where again I accompanied him to the ferry pier but went no further.
*
Looking around Canton Road, I could almost picture the day I spent with Wei Ling and Ting-Ting. Any one of the red taxis cruising down the street could have been the one we shared all those years ago.
When Li learned that Wei Ling and Ting-Ting would be passing through Hong Kong after a group tour to Thailand, I volunteered to take them out to lunch. He would already be back in China because of an expired Hong Kong student visa, a month before we were to move to San Francisco. I was four months pregnant with my oldest son and only child with Li. Nervous and afraid that Wei Ling would be cold and closed off, I planned to spend only an hour with them, enough time to eat lunch and give Ting-Ting a few art supplies and a money envelope from Li.
But the moment I met Wei Ling, my feelings changed. She seemed nothing like the plain, selfish woman Li had described over the years. Instead, Wei Ling had big brown eyes and a petite, slender frame. Her warm smile and soft-spoken words had a calming influence on me that day.
After lunch at a hotel buffet in Mongkok, Wei Ling turned to me. "Would you have time to go with us to the ferry pier? We could talk a bit more in the taxi.”
"That would be wonderful,” I said, relieved to hear this. I was just getting to know Wei Ling and Ting-Ting, so it seemed premature to end our afternoon together quite yet.
Once we arrived on Canton Road, I playfully argued with Wei Ling over who would pay for the cab ride. I won in the end, with Wei Ling promising to pay next time. Next time, I told her, perhaps we would meet in San Francisco.
"It would be great if Ting-Ting could visit us after we have the baby and settle in,” I said, presuming the latter would come true.
Wei Ling peered up at me sheepishly. "Thank you. That sounds like a great idea. Being a single mother is so tiring.”
As an overhead announcer called for their boat to board, I understood that Wei Ling would accompany Ting-Ting on the long flight when the time came, at least on that first trip. And that was fine with me. It was a weird relationship, I knew, but Ting-Ting was Li’s daughter. Plus, I liked Wei Ling. I hugged her tightly and turned to Ting-Ting to do the same. After we let go, she waved as she and her mother headed for the door that led to the boat ramp.
That meeting turned out to be the only time I saw Wei Ling and Ting-Ting. Settling into San Francisco never happened, and Li and I never followed up with Ting-Ting about visiting us. That day I met Wei Ling, neither of us spoke much about Li. Over the years I wished I had asked her about her marriage to him. But I knew if I had, I would be admitting that mine had problems, too.
Now back on Canton Road after all these years, I wished I could go back and freeze time. Shoulder-to-shoulder shoppers crammed the streets, their faces and bodies a blur. Even so, for the first time in years I could see my twenty-six-year-old self. She might appear confident on the outside, but inside she was struggling to stay afloat in a complicated, confusing marriage for which she was ill-prepared. Yes, if I could stop time, I would embrace her tightly because no one had done so for me back then. That was because I never confided in anyone, not my best friends, my mother, or close coworkers. And when Sally tried to warn me, I refused to listen. Now I longed to go back and tell my younger self to have confidence, trust your instincts, and put yourself first.
I felt tears fall down my cheeks, but made no effort to wipe them away. In true Hong Kong fashion the passersby left me alone, either letting me save face or perhaps not even noticing me. It was only now at forty-one, back in Hong Kong, in Tsim Sha Tsui, on Canton Road that I remembered how alone I had felt back then.
How could I have been so naïve to think that these memories were just a thing of the past? Just because I had moved on from Li didn’t mean I had reconciled my issues with my twenty-something self. The choices I made, the problems I ignored, the stories I told myself to sustain my marriage to Li—they all resurfaced here on the tip of the Kowloon peninsula.
There was still time before Tom and I were to meet a friend for dinner. While I had planned to stay out a bit longer, wandering through the narrow streets in Tsim Sha Tsui as the sun went down and the neon signs illuminated the area, that all seemed trivial now. Tom was back in the hotel room and I wanted nothing more than to crawl under the covers next to him until dinner. I finally wiped my tears and rushed back to the hotel, putting to an end that part of my past once and for all.
Susan Blumberg-Kason is the author Good Chinese Wife (Sourcebooks, 2014), a memoir of her five-year marriage to a musician from central China and how she tried to adapt to Chinese family life as a wife, daughter-in-law, and mother. She is also the books editor of Asian Jewish Life magazine and can be found online at www.susanbkason.com. Remarried, Susan lives in suburban Chicago with her husband, three children, and a clingy cat.