The conflicts of identity which Monique Tang Sze-wan has wrestled with privately during an upbringing divided between Canada and her bithplace, Hong Kong, have been shaped for public contemplation in the form of a play, Diary of the Ga Charn.
Ga refers to the first part of the Cantonese word for Canada, where Tang lived for seven years; Charn refers to a country bumpkin. And for Tang, who returned to Hong Kong last year, the term was not one she expected to be applied to her.
'People here don't see me as a Hong Kong person anymore. They see me as a ga charn,' says the 23-year-old returnee.
'It was disappointing. I consider myself a Hong Kong person, but only here do I realise that other people see me as Canadian. They think that I don't know how to get around and that I get lost. But I know people who have never left Hong Kong who still don't know every place.' While discrimination in a different country is an experience some emigrants have sadly come to expect, it comes as a surprise when they encounter it in their birthplace, the place they consider home.
The mixed emotions Tang has experienced since returning to Hong Kong in March last year are revealed in the hour-long satirical play she has written, directed, and will perform in at the Fringe Club next weekend, exploring notions of identity and home.
Touching on the cliche of adjusting to life in Hong Kong without boring her audience was one of the greater challenges, she says. Timing was also important; she wanted to perform the play before she settled too comfortably in Hong Kong and started taking people's reactions towards her for granted.
