When I left Hong Kong, my dear friends presented me with a cardboard cut-out doppelganger. I felt ambivalent about this gift because I knew that one day it would have to be disposed of, and that would somehow feel 唔老利 (inauspicious/bad luck).
After I departed, one of my colleagues kept the Cardboard Yuen in her office, until she too left. Today, another colleague informed me that she was given a fright when she entered her office to find someone had placed it there.
Finally, she said, Cardboard Yuen has been put in the rubbish dump outside the Humanities Building.
“Can you take a photo?” I asked.
Too late, it’s probably gone already, came the reply.
When the day came, she disappeared quickly, quietly, without a goodbye and without a trace.
“Very New Hong Kong”.
Indeed.
But a fitting end, I believe. I walked past that rubbish dump every day for nine years. Among the things I’ve rescued and used: an ironing board, a music stand and a school desk. The rubbish dump was a part of my life at CUHK and now I have become a part of the rubbish dump.
It is as it should be. 唔老利? Maybe not.
