you used to be alright

home again, home again

with christmas and new year’s around the corner, i’m in countdown mode for my trip back to the states, which is nominally home for me.

of course, i’m not really sure what is home anymore. let’s review a bit:

pittsburgh, pa

i left at age 2 or 3. don’t remember a single thing about pittsburgh. have never been back. so pittsburgh isn’t home. (although if i was mainland chinese, i’d be a pittsburgher)

la verne, ca/los angeles area

well, i spent from age 4 to age 17 . . .so 13 years . . . in the los angeles area. i certainly feel at home in la, but i no longer have any place of residence there. many of my friends no longer live there. and when i visit, i spend a lot of time on the west side of los angeles, which i enjoy, but it’s certainly not the la (suburban, boring) that i grew up in. so is la home? I tell people i’m from la, so maybe.

berkeley, ca

14 years after leaving college, a good quarter of my t-shirts still say “cal” or “california” on them, so i obviously have some affinity for my university. but i could never live back in berkeley, nor would i ever call it home. how about the rest of the bay area? it’s possible, but it’s not as much home as la. so, no.

chini town, huadu city, guangdong.

yeah, i was only here for 9 months. but next i moved here:

hong kong, sar

ah, hong kong. 1 year of residence in the 70s, 6 in the last 90s and early 2000s. a permanent resident. and i tell everyone that i’m half from hong kong and half from la. i feel at home here. the only thing is i don’t have a place to live here. so yes, hong kong is home.

sacramento, ca

i only lived here for a few months, but this is where my parents and my stuff is.

that’s not home. but it’s where i’ll be spending most of my time at “home” over christmas and new year’s at.

and of course, shanghai, prc

hmm. i’ve been here 3 years. i do somewhat feel at home here, but a lot less than los angeles, hong kong or even the bay area. but this is where i live. this is where a lot of my friends are. this is where my life is right now.

this is where many people would write some pablum about home being where the heart is, or where the family is, but honestly i have no idea where my home is.