Becoming Chinese: how South Africa-born Mrs Hong Kong integrated into local culture

Country girl I was born on July 1, 1975, in a small diamond-mining town called Namaqualand, and raised in Cape Town, South Africa. Country life – sea, mountains and nature – has always been important to me. I was an only child raised by a single mum. My mum was in sales and watching her work hard made me want to help her. She instilled in me values of hard work, love and encourage­ment.

I was very studious because I realised she put her hard-earned money into my education. I studied at Cape Technikon and majored in marketing and communications. I went to work in a bank, but quickly realised I wasn’t cut out for that kind of nine to five. I needed to be out there, communicating and touching people. I went to night school and studied personal-fitness training and then felt drawn to prenatal, postnatal and baby yoga.

Stranger on a plane When I was 24, I entered the Miss South Africa pageant – I ended up getting into the final. I was at Cape Town airport, on my way to the competition, and had probably packed too many bags, when the man behind me in the queue at the check-in offered to help. I turned around and said, “No, thank you. I can do it.” I asked to be seated by myself, I wanted to read my book, Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway (self-help guru Susan Jeffers’ 1987 book).

The guy – who turned out to be a pilot, Richard – asked at the check-in if he could be seated next to me. He was told they couldn’t do that, but Richard managed to persuade them. When he sat down next to me I said, “I can see right through you, don’t even think about it.” It was a two-hour flight and we talked. It was real banter and people around us were listening to our conversation. Within 30 minutes he jokingly said, “Let’s go to the flight deck and ask the pilot to marry us.” I didn’t say yes or no. I described the place I wanted to get married, by the ocean, and said, “You find the place and then we’ll talk.”

A Hong Hong adventure On our first date, Richard said he wanted to meet my parents. It was surreal. He was living in Dubai at the time and we courted long distance. He moved to Johannesburg and worked for SA Express and we saw each other on weekends and got to know each other. We got engaged a year after we met and six months later we married.

A couple of months later Richard was offered a job in Hong Kong and we moved here with two suitcases, 20,000 rand in our bank account and full of love. That was the start of our adventure in Hong Kong. I began running wellness seminars, teaching infant massage, baby yoga and first aid, much of the time through the YWCA and Kids’ Gallery (a youth arts organisation). Our daughter, Savana, was born in 2003 and Hunter was born in 2007. We wanted names from Africa, made in China. We put them through local kindergarten to learn the language.