Englishes.” Strictly speaking, I do not write (or speak) “Hong Kong English” or even
“Chinese English,” nor do I think at all in scholarly linguistic terms about the language when
I write. But in trying to find the right voice for my kind of fiction, the notion that multiple
Englishes exist as legitimate (or at least recognized) forms of the language is useful. Writing,
after all, truly is a series of fumbles through a maze, and language the means to bumble our
way through.
Some of this search for the right literary voice was informed by my peculiar auditory,
rather than linguistic, sensitivity. As a rule, I do not learn foreign languages easily. I
struggle with pronunciation, cannot remember enough vocabulary, hate the study of
grammar and rules and have a hard time learning to hear any foreign language (this was true
for Putonghua and French, my only two other languages, marginally). My two sisters, whose
linguistic and Hong Kong educational backgrounds mirror mine, have a much easier time.
One can learn to read almost any language with relative ease (Sanskrit, French and German
are among her languages) while the other can learn to speak pretty much any language she
has to (Bahasa, Putonghua, German and French are among her other languages and she can
learn tourist catch phrases easily in any language). My only brother (who had the same Hong
Kong upbringing) and I are the language duds, and are relieved we can handle English and
just enough Cantonese. My brother is, however, a composer and professional singer and
musician, and, when it comes to librettos and lyrics, he can mimic anything he must (Italian,
French or German for opera or Latin for religious hymns). I am an amateur pianist and avid
jazz fan. Over the years, my ear has become attuned to chord changes and I can readily hear
the melody behind jazz improvisations. I also have an absurd memory recall for lyrics,
especially from the American Songbook of the twenties to the sixties, far better than for
poetry of the same era. Likewise, I can hear and comprehend most Englishes, regardless of
the speaker’s accent, mother tongue or in whatever position it belongs on the World
Englishes’ linguistic circle. In Hong Kong, this is further compounded by my knowledge of
Cantonese, as I can hear Cantonese phrases in English (and oftentimes, the absurdity of a
literal translation) as well as the oddly non-Chinese perspective of standard English as it
functions in a predominantly Chinese society. The “code switching” that many Hong Kong
Chinese engage in, with both English and Putonghua, falls into the range of my auditory
sensitivity. As a result, I instinctively eavesdrop on conversations in this city that are carried
on in English, Chinese and Canto-lish.
Which is a reason why, I’ve realized, dialogue in fiction was never much of a problem for
me. However, what I didn’t realize, until an editor pointed it out, was how much I wrote in
between the silence of communication, as, for example, when two people are speaking on
the phone, or by email, or in person in terms of what they leave unsaid. Hong Kong became
the petri dish for my study of the global culture that most interested me for fiction. Here was
a city where two languages must co-exist, but where cultural and linguistic confluence did
not necessarily occur; Hong Kong is significantly less bi-lingual (or trilingual) than the
government pretends it is. Hence the need to tell story of the life in between, in that “crack
in space,” as I have elsewhere deliberately mistranslated the “gap” of the subway
announcement in Cantonese (空 隙). In particular, when my characters are speaking in
English but thinking in Chinese, or speaking in Chinese that I represent in English on the