“What’s the Spanish word for ‘contact’?”
“Contacto.”
“What about ‘product’?”
“Producto.”
“And ‘exit’?”
“Exito!”
As my husband (then-boyfriend) and I were laughing so hard on my silly Spanish mistake, I reflected on my language-learning journey:
I was practically born with three languages.
Born and raised in Hong Kong, I naturally speak Cantonese, English and Mandarin. In high school I picked up Japanese as a serious hobby thanks to a detective novel series I couldn’t put down. I ended up passing the N2 Japanese exam in 2016, years after I finished high school. I wanted some official acknowledgement of all those late nights.
Since then, I dabbled into other languages: French for a little while, because I wanted to eavesdrop my boss; Turkish for around a year as my ex-boyfriend was from Turkey; and then Dutch and German briefly because I wasn’t sure if I wanted to move to Amsterdam or Zurich.
And now Spanish – the first language I’ve taken seriously since Japanese – because there are people I love who I want to reach in their own words.
Language reflects culture directly. It shapes how we think, how we feel, what we can even conceive of. You see the world differently as your vocabulary expands. Which is probably why I keep collecting languages the way other people collect passport stamps.
Did I mention I am based in Sydney, Australia?
By now I’ve spent almost half my life here, in this beautifully complicated, multicultural city.
And I still struggle every time someone asks where I’m from.
On Being a Hong Konger
My sense of identity formed late. It wasn’t until I left Hong Kong at 17 that I realised how proud I was to call myself a Hong Konger. Distance did that – made visible something I’d taken for granted.
Hong Kong is a specific place. Particular slang, particular humour, a particular way of moving through the world that I can’t fully translate into English no matter how long I try. Every week when I’m teaching my husband Cantonese – correcting his tones, watching him attempt sounds that don’t exist in Spanish or English – I’m reminded not just of how difficult this language is, but of how beautiful it is. How much it carries.
I can only call my hometown a city now, despite having her own currency, language, education and banking systems. It had not been easy for me since 2019. I was working there as an accountant as I left Sydney in mid 2018, but then I returned in 2020 to study a Master’s degree.
Even though I’ve decided never to go back, a part of my heart still belongs there.
On Grief and Preservation
Holding an extra passport or marrying someone from a different country doesn’t make me less of a Hong Konger. Everything I grew up with shaped who I am. I’m grateful for that. Genuinely.
But I would be lying if I said I’m not frustrated. Or saddened. The city I grew up in exists now mostly in memory. My home changed irrevocably in 2019, and the version of it I loved isn’t coming back.
I know I’m not alone in this. Hong Kongers are preserving their culture in corners of the world – London, Vancouver, Sydney, elsewhere – holding onto something that the place itself is no longer holding. That’s a particular kind of grief. Loving a place that no longer exists in the form you loved it.
Maybe home was always more conceptual than a location.
But it wasn’t easy to leave any familiar situation despite feeling hurt and frustrated.
On Exits
It took me an embarrassingly long time to realise that quitting is a skill.
I quit a career that paid well and felt like slow suffocation. I quit relationships that were like lukewarm water. Alright, but no space to grow. I quit the social script I was handed at birth: good grades, stable job, appropriate partner, predictable future. I quit a version of Hong Kong that only existed in my mind long after the real one had changed.
Every time I quit something, it felt like failure. Like I was admitting I couldn’t make it work. Like I was giving up rather than moving forward.
And then my husband taught me a Spanish word by accident.
Éxito. Which I thought meant exit.
Which actually means success.
I’ve been thinking about that ever since. Because in my experience — and I have more data points than most — every significant exit I’ve made has eventually become an éxito. Not immediately. Not painlessly. But looking back across the last decade of deliberate quitting, I cannot find a single exit I regret. Only ones I wish I’d made sooner.
Maybe exit and success aren’t false friends after all.
Maybe in the language that matters most — the one you write your own life in — they were always the same word.
On Being Made of Several Places
Maybe this is what collecting languages has taught me.
You don’t become less of one thing by becoming more of another. My Cantonese doesn’t diminish because I’m learning Spanish. My Hong Kong-ness doesn’t erode because I’ve spent half my life in Sydney, because I love someone from Colombia, or because I sometimes talk to myself in Japanese when I cannot recall the equivalent Spanish word.
I am not from one place. I am made of several.
The Cantonese my mother spoke to me before I knew what language was. The Japanese detective novels that kept me up past midnight in high school. The Turkish I learned for someone and kept for myself. The Spanish I’m building now – slowly, imperfectly, with a lot of laughter – because there are people I want to reach in their own language.
And Australia, which has been mine long enough that leaving it would feel like a loss I haven’t prepared for.
When someone asks where I’m from, what they’re really asking is: how do I categorise you? Which box do you fit in?
The honest answer is none of them, entirely.
The better question – the one I find myself asking about everyone I meet who genuinely interests me – isn’t where are you from.
It’s what made you.
The answer to that one takes a while.
Venus is a music therapist, former accountant, and Hong Konger based in Sydney. She writes about identity, wellbeing, and building a life that doesn’t follow the script. Consider subscribing to the free weekly newsletter for more insightful content: https://www.venuskwong.com/newsletter