There is a weird rule about Chinese handwriting that every student has to follow, not strictly, but frowned upon when you don’t: you have to follow the universal stroke order when writing every single word. I absolutely hated that I had to follow such petty and robotic rules since I was a young child, so I never did. And as smartphones became the main communication device for everyone, adults are now forced to relearn the stroke orders for words in order to use the stroke keyboard to type Chinese words.

There is no doubt that a lot of HongKong-British diaspora share one specific culture shock, which is that British people are so much more affectionate. I know I know, what a ridiculous thing to hear when you were born in this country, but for a country that doesn’t expect thankyous, a place where you can live with the same neighbour but remain uninformed of their first name, a culture where saying ‘how are you’ to strangers is considered creepy and unnecessary, the widely-spoken cliches in British culture come across as extremely tender and compassionate.

There are just some things that you will never hear a Chinese (or at least Cantonese, to my knowledge) person say. As much as it is a depressing thing to admit, It is very rare to hear ‘I am proud of you’ from your teachers, nor ‘I love you’ from parents. At a point where I imagine the phrase ‘I love you (我愛你)’ is texted out more than it is spoken out loud in Cantonese culture.

I pose myself as the paper and the ink in this piece, amplifying the saddening nature of language and cultural barrier between Chinese and English, under the lens of someone who doesn’t know whether he thinks in either of the languages, the he who can speak his mind louder in a foreign language.