For this week’s Translation Tuesday, we bring you an excerpt from Hong Kong novelist Lo Yu, translated from the Chinese by Fion Tse. In this short, plainspoken tale, an unnamed member of the Hong Kong diaspora travels to Paris to spend Christmas with her girlfriend, all the while haunted by thoughts of another lover, her “Hong Kong girlfriend” who she has left behind in London. Lo Yu’s prose has an urgent, almost frantic quality, which perfectly captures both the desperation of the narrator’s girlfriend, terrified of being left for another woman, and the despair of the narrator herself, who has only just realized that her Hong Kong girlfriend regards their relationship as more than a fling. In a bittersweet allusion to the surrealist paintings of René Magritte, the narrator finally understands how mistaken she has been. Read on!
You, Your Girlfriend, Your Hong Kong Girlfriend
Perhaps you’re already on the EuroStar to Paris, hurtling towards the city you were born in. Next to you is your girlfriend, elegant yet lost. You have yet to break up. You’re headed to her family home because it’s Christmas, and Europeans celebrate Christmas with family. And of course she wouldn’t dare to leave you on your own for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day, all alone in London.
You probably won’t go back to your family home in Paris, possibly to avoid Cantonese—because when you talk to your family, you’re reminded of that Hong Kong girlfriend, like a character in the Hong Kong shows Grandma likes to watch.
How many girlfriends do you really have?
Your girlfriend won’t let you live on your own again. Three months ago, you decided to live apart because you wanted to have your own space. So she let you live on your own, also because she had to leave London for a while, but in the blink of an eye she was back and flat-less, so naturally she moved into your flat. And so now you live together again, but in a smaller space. You wanted more, but in the end you were left with less.
Last week your girlfriend found a postcard in the mailbox, signed
Best,
Y.
Instinct told her this person wasn’t just a friend. It upset her, but really she was scared. Half a year earlier you began planning to live alone, and she knew she would slowly lose you, bit by bit. Reality was drawing in closer and closer, in her face even; it made her want to scream but when she opened her mouth nothing came out. On the days when she wasn’t around London, how many women had you shared your bed with? She barely dared to think, she was terrified, she was weak, she couldn’t believe she was already teetering on a breakup, she had no more tricks up her sleeve, she didn’t want to spend the holidays swimming in anxiety, she couldn’t live out her days alone, she craved your company, she wanted someone by her every minute, every second, she was terrified of being alone, just as you were terrified of being alone. She knew she couldn’t make you stay, but still she used every method she thought possible, or perhaps she was determined to make the most of your remaining duty to her by transforming your alone time into time for you two—like the last-ditch effort of an animal, the way a fish twists and struggles for water before its last breath, too desperate to consider next steps. So for the Christmas holidays she had to keep you by her side, no matter if it was to visit the city you hated, no matter if you had said over and over, “Chinese families don’t celebrate Christmas,” she told you there was no harm in going home.
No, she couldn’t let you stay in London.
“You’re my girlfriend, aren’t you?” Because of this label you couldn’t get out of it, even though there was technically no rule against it; and because your relationship had been one where she always took what she wanted from you, and you always gave her what she wanted, and you called this love. You loved her, she loved you, and this should have solved all your difficulties. You believed this unfailingly, up until you began to doubt it.
The Hong Kong girlfriend wasn’t actually your girlfriend, just someone to flirt and sleep with. She never asked for anything from you, always saying, “I can take care of myself.” And you knew she really could, because she didn’t mind solitary life and enjoyed her alone time. You didn’t understand, or perhaps understood it as her not really liking you that much. You were of the belief that everyone could be replaced: to you, she was replaceable; to her, you were also replaceable. But you had never considered this: that the heart of the matter was not in whether people could be replaced, but in whether they wanted to be replaced. Sometimes you felt like you could just return to her side anytime you wanted and be welcomed back with open arms—but once, you called her when you returned to London after a long trip with your girlfriend. Her cheerful tone felt to you like a burden, though, because you knew that you didn’t treat her well enough, that your silence disappointed her. In your emails you had said you didn’t miss her and her missing you made you anxious. You felt guilty and wanted to reconnect with her, but when faced with her you had no more tricks up your sleeve, you didn’t know what to say or do, just like when you first met.
The postcard she gave you was a René Magritte painting of a clear sky, blue with white clouds. She liked clear skies, so she wanted to give it to you.
Worried that your girlfriend would read it, she wrote only two lines:
Ceci n’est pas une pipe. (This is not a pipe.)
Ceci n’est pas une pomme. (This is not an apple.)
It was clearly a pipe, yet it wasn’t a pipe because it was only an image of a pipe; it was clearly a relationship, yet it wasn’t a relationship because this too might just be her imagination. Was it a coincidence, or had she unintentionally revealed what was on her mind?
If you looked carefully at the traces of time you spent together, though, you’d know she cared about people, not material things: “As long as you’re here, I’m happy,” she always murmured softly. In reality you knew but you didn’t understand. You couldn’t shake the feeling that she was happy because of your meticulously planned dates, not simply because you were with her.
She often thought of you, but you had no way of knowing because she hid it too well; she knew expressing her feelings could become a burden for you. You’d never dated an Asian girl before, never had a relationship with girls of your skin tone, so you felt like the reason you couldn’t understand her must be due to cultural differences. She was odd, had a different worldview from you; she was slight, cautious, self-sufficient; she was fascinating, you wanted to get to know her, though you never really knew her. Sometimes you felt like she thought too deeply; you wondered, why couldn’t she be like you and relax a little when it comes to love, sex, and relationships? But that was also hypocritical, because her emotional depth transformed every tiny detail of your dates together into words that moved you. She wrote you stories, or perhaps she wrote your stories, tirelessly translating them into words you understood. You delighted in this, because no one had ever done this for you, and because you’ve always liked people who write. Her words anchored you, grounding the floating feeling of love, but at other times they sat tightly on your chest and made you doubt.
In truth you are her muse. She writes about you; she can only write about you.
Your girlfriend hadn’t noticed the microscopic changes in your expression. You didn’t smile as brightly as you did in photos from three years ago, your face lined with fatigue, the spark gone from your eyes. Who could say whether it was the result of life chipping away at you or of love wilting—you believed you hadn’t changed, because you hadn’t looked in a mirror in too long. But really you knew: you knew your girlfriend was your ideal type but still the relationship wasn’t working out, you knew you wanted to be single, you knew you didn’t ever want to be responsible for another or to sacrifice unconditionally, you knew all this and yet you could not refuse her anything, this person you’d lived with for three years, because that was love, an immobilizing, paralyzing love.
Your Hong Kong girlfriend followed you on social media. When she saw photos of you traveling with your girlfriend, her heart ached. You hadn’t met up in over a month. She didn’t even know how much longer your hair had grown, and she was fast forgetting the taste of your lips and the smell of your breath. Because no matter how many times she wrote it down, how many times she reread it, she could not preserve a memory of feeling.
You asked your girlfriend why she got a tattoo; she said it was to hold onto forever, because there was no longer such a thing as lifelong love. You asked your Hong Kong girlfriend if she wanted a tattoo; she said no, because her memories were her tattoos, permanently seared on her brain.
Translated from the Chinese by Fion Tse
Lo Yu, who also goes by Yin Lo, was born and raised in Hong Kong and received a master’s degree in Gender Studies from University College London. Her literary work focuses on queer sexualities, identity, desire, and diasporic migration, among other themes. Yung Yung is Lo’s debut novel. Her most recent novel, Grafting, was published in 2024.
Fion Tse was born and raised in Hong Kong, and translates between Chinese (Cantonese/Mandarin) and English. She studied Comparative Literature and East Asian Languages & Civilizations at the University of Chicago, and is now pursuing an MFA in Literary Translation at the University of Iowa as an Iowa Arts Fellow.