Where is home?

"Where are you from?" and "where is your home?" have always been difficult questions for me. The first one seems easy enough as I am American by birth and passport, but at the age of 26 I have spent almost half of my life outside of the United States. The time spent in the USA was divided between four different states, but more perplexingly I felt the most connection to a state I never actually "lived" in (North Carolina). How does this work?

Then, to add insult to this serious geographic injury, proclaiming that I am American is recently not the best friend-maker here in Asia as most of the world dislikes us "free" Americans for our lack of rules and morality and our arrogance and our overt excess in the way we lead our lives. For me it is easier here to say yes I am American but originally I was from Denmark, Germany etc. which is technically true. However it's not as if my family came in a boat to Ellis island twenty years ago with nothing but a couple of suitcases in tow. The United States of America by construct is a nation of immigrants, but people seem to overlook that truth when I spout my Scandinavian heritage and immediately I rise a few places on their list of worthy people. They overlook the "American" part and focus on the fact that my heritage is Danish and that I "look more Danish than American" (whatever that is supposed to mean, can one "look" American? ... not in the Hawaiian tourist shirt, poor grammar, fanny pack and camera kind of way).

I've noticed that lately people also get their feathers a bit ruffled when the USA is referred to as "America" because in truth there are two continents with dozens of countries that comprise parts of an America. It is just another excuse for people to think Americans are arrogant ... acting as if the USA is the only part of the "America[s]" that is noteworthy.

Is "home" where you are currently living? For me that would be Hong Kong, but that doesn't seem quite right. Is "home" where your parents live? Most likely yes, home is where family is. But what if you don't necessarily identify with the area where your family lives? Is it still home? Often people have called me a "citizen of the world". It is a strange phrase to me. On the surface it appears to encapsulate my life quite well .... I've lived on three continents and multiple countries in 26 years. But if my citizenship is the world, does that mean I do not belong to any particular part? And if I do not "belong" then where is "home"? I don't know that I have any sort of answer to these question. At the end of this long rambling process I suppose I would have to just admit that "home" is the USA and leave the details for someone else to jump to conclusions over as to lay "home" in what state.

One final query that I really have no answer to .... can you be glad to be from somewhere but at the same time be very ashamed that you come from that place?

The measure of a quality city?

On Thursdays here in Hong Kong I do not have class. I often spend these weekdays exploring different areas of of the Island, Kowloon and the New territories. Having this "free" weekday is a sort of luxury because the parks and attractions around the city are not as crowded as during the weekend. It is on these days that I put down the human rights reading, stop trying to come to my own conclusions about the world, and explore the world for what it is.

Over the last six years I have lived in six vastly different cities and I came to love each one of them for their uniqueness (St. Louis, USA; Shenzhen, China; Malibu/Santa Monica, USA; London, England; Den Haag, Nederlands; Hong Kong, SAR). On thing that ALL of the cities have in common is the concept of a park. Parks are places where communities and families thrive amidst the bustle of modern life, and parks are places where an individual like me can go to feel included in a community.

In St. Louis I spent countless hours a week running, walking, reading, exploring, and daydreaming in Forest Park. It is a park that I will always love what with its rich 1904 World's Fair heritage. Before I started university my grandmother took me to Forest Park and gave me the "grand tour" by car showing me the museums, the massive glass greenhouse ("Jewel Box"), the outdoor theatre, golf course, pavilions and the grand basin. It was a place she loved as a child and she spread that love to me.

Parks in China are places that I also happened to love. Since grass is at an extreme premium in populated cities such as Shenzhen, the grassy areas of the park are always cordoned-off and signs in Chinese and imperfect English tell you to keep your feet and bum off the grass. Instead of grassy knolls for patrons to sit on, chinese parks have ponds and bridges and many benches. Old men are seen liuniar (walking with caged birds), playing the erhu (two-string upright fiddle), practicing qigong, playing majong, or writing beautiful Chinese characters on the pavement with a giant water brush and comparing the quality of calligraphy with others engaging in the same activity. Perhaps my favorite thing about Shenzhen parks was the kite-flying. On Sundays when there are fair skies and a breeze, perhaps the only free day for families each week, many city parks are carpeted with patrons flying kites. I love watching families fly kites; they look happy and carefree.

In Malibu, I shall call Zuma beach my "park" - technically it is a part of the LA county parks systems. I used to love running or walking on cool winter mornings at low tide when only the locals could be found at the water's edge. The beach becomes almost private once the labor day crowd drives down the PCH one final time.

In London I fell in love with first Hyde Park, then St. James Park, and finally my heart was left in Regent's Park. Regent's park is up near Russell Square/Euston and is an amalgamation of football pitches, fancy educational institutions, ponds for rowing and paddle-boating, cafes for tea, an outdoor theatre for summer plays, a japanese garden, and my favorite spot ... Queen Mary's Garden. During the spring and summer months meticulous groundsmen ensure that flowers bubble over from every pot and planter and that the water in the fountains flow crystal clear. I distinctly remember spending a lazy summer afternoon with Adam reading books in Queen Mary's Garden, our noses constantly filled with the fragrance from her roses. I was at peace in Regent's Park.

When I arrived in Den Haag it was August, the height of summer. Before acquiring my bicycle to get me around everywhere, I walked nightly home through a string of three parks. There were no restrictions on using the grass and often fellow law clerks at the UN could be found in the park playing football until dark. I also love another park that skirted the beach near my house in Scheveningen. Serious cyclers used to pedal through there and I had to be careful not to get mowed down on my cheapy bike only meant to get me from point A to B.

In Hong Kong, one of the first "Thursday outings" I took was with a new friend to Kowloon. Without really intending it, we ended up wandering through two of Kowloons nicest parks: Kowloon Park and the Walled City Park. The Walled City Park is very new. It is located in Kowloon City and covers a stretch of land that used to be filled with highrise slum buildings that were notorious for triad (Hong Kong mobsters) activity. The government finally had enough of the crime in the area and pulled down all of the buildings and ironically built a park full of serenity. The park (see above photos) is fashioned to be like a Chinese park and it is a lovely sanctuary to stumble upon after having traversed the bustle of Hong Kong to get to it. We saw few people in the park; not much of a sense of community in it, but still it was beutiful and peaceful.

While I adore museums and greatly appreciate quality architecture and historic monuments, for me, parks in cities are the places I love to be. They are places where you can watch life go by, but at the same time feel very included in life. Parks are places where you can watch children grow up or grandparents grow old. I believe parks reinforce community and I am grateful for every community in which I have belonged.

Universal human rights or regional human rights ... acceptable contradictions?

Are human rights universal???

I came to Hong Kong this fall to learn more about human rights. To me, talking about human rights has always been an exercise in passion, me believing that since no person was chosen to be born, that therefore each person has some sort of inherent protective rights. While many of my fellow colleagues came here with strong notions of their beliefs of human rights, I am still finding my way. In a field riddled with contradictions and being a subject that pulls on the heartstrings of most, I am trying to make sense of this subject of human rights.

There are many arguments that human rights are purely western constructs, that human rights are used by the north to control and admonish the south, that countries like the United States are “above human rights”. It is true that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is the foundation of much of international customary law and the impetus for subsequent UN Conventions was created in the wake of World War II and largely out of a fear of what Western nations might do to each other again in the future, but does that make it only applicable to the west? China’s P.C. Chang was very instrumental in the document’s drafting. But say for a moment that the Western notion of the UDHR holds water, then must we believe that human rights are really a regional set of beliefs, that each region of the world should have different rights? If that is true, then there is no universality of human rights at all. But then, is regionalism good enough? After all, technically Asia consists of the majority of Russia, the Middle East and China, India and Southeast Asian nations. Can a “regional” set of human rights really encapsulate all major world religions found in Asia as well as Russia ….? And if that answer is yes, then arguably that’s a point for the universality of rights and not for regionalism.

While I learn more and more on a daily basis, I am still yet unsure how to ultimately weigh all of this knowledge. I think my curse is that I can see both sides of the human rights issues. I see the contradictions, I recognize the weakness of some ECHR cases whereby the rationale is deemed to be based upon self-evident truths rather than historical legal maxims, I can detect frustration with the south being bullied by the north through means of human rights, and yet at the end of each day I come back to the notion, perhaps a naïve one, that every person matters. No person chose to come into this world and in that sense we are all equal, not matter what we produce or do not produce, no matter if we live under a tyrannical dictator or in a free society (which some would also consider a tyrannical prospect). In that sense, if we are all equal, should we not be equally protected? But then does equal protection require regional sensitivities? You see, I come full circle and cannot decide if regionalism flies in the face of a belief of the universality of human rights.

Hopefully my beliefs will crystallise in the not too distant future, or I will decide that the contradictions are not fatal.

Durios.....

I have been most remiss in blogging lately. I've been in more of an "experience" mode than a "reflection" mode.

One thing that caught my eye a couple of weeks ago in HK was a yellow package of cookies. Now if any of you know me well, you'll know I am a cookie fiend and even got grounded in middle school for sneaking cookies from the kitchen and stashing them under my bed to eat while reading books late at night from the comfort of my sheets. However, as undiscerning as I tend to be about cookies, I cannot decide if this yellow package of cookies is worth trying. You see, they are Durios. Much like Oreos, Durios are sandwich cookies with a creamy filling. Only instead of that uniquely-flavored white Oreo filling, Durio cookies flank durian flavored creme.

I pride myself on being an adventurous eater and once even ate a fried scorpian on a stick in Beijing. But durian sandwich cookies, masking themselves as Oreo wannabes may just go too far for even me. But you say...it's only a cookie? Well you see my memories of durian started in grade school in Indonesia. First came the tshirts sported by 10-year old classmates from Singapore with the slogan "Singapore is a F$NE city" and one of the fines included bringing a durian into subway cars for fear some tiny lady would drop the scorned fruit and the odor would noxiously waft throughout the car. Then, as a child in 4th grade my classmates and I studied "things from Indonesia" (handy b/c we were all living in Indonesia) and my mom offered to help with "fruit day". She and I went out to the markets and collected starfruit, dragon fruit, rambutans, jeruk bali (think giant grapefruit), mangos, jackfruit, and......DURIAN. When my mom cracked that fruit open in our classroom, we all ran for the door. I would have rather stuck my nose in my gym shoe than have to continue working in that room with the durian smell.

So the question of the moment is: am I finally over my durian phobia? I have many friends that adore the stinky fruit, shamelessy eating it in the form of popcicles, freezed dried slices, hard candy, and right from the spiky rind. If so many others can get over the smell, why can't I.

Will the cookies smell like durian?

Stay tuned for the post-taste-testing sentiments.