A House is not a Home, but what IS Home?

'I couldn't deal with the changes: The places that I grew up in, they've all disappeared. It is hard for me as a father to tell my son: "This is what I did as a kid and this is where I went to primary school." It's a very lamentable state. You turn around and that place is gone... We are all made up of memories; who we are depends on what we've lived through. Going back to beginnings is very important. I always tell my students you must research your beginnings; that's where the clue to who you are lies. I don't think there's been enough looking back... My work has been kind of a quest for a home, but I don't think I've quite found it. Maybe I never will, it's an impossible thing.'

Straits Times interview with poet Boey Kim Cheng who gave up his Singapore citizenship and moved to Sydney, Australia.

ChannelNewsAsia has been showing a series called 'Chinese Restaurants' where a Canadian Chinese reporter goes around the world in search of Chinese Restaurants and interviews the owners of these restaurants because he believes every one of these Chinese has an interesting story to tell.

In one of the episodes he interviewed a Chinese man living in Argentina whose wife and son did not like it and have moved to the US, leaving him and his daughter, who now works in the UN in a different city, in Argentina. In the final interview with him, he sounded so resigned as he said,

'I don't think I can ever go back to China. I will not be accepted there because I am different. But I don't think of Argentina as my home. I can empathize with the global society of the young people. For me the concept of home is fading.'

It ended with a shot of him having a smoke alone outside of a bar/pub along the street under a streetlamp, and the camera slowly pulling away from him.

Is it perhaps better to accept that there isn't such a concept of home and to go off and be a "global citizen" rather than lament and look back for something that is only a figment of our imagination - something we create to give ourselves a sense of comfort (the phrase "opium of the masses" comes to mind)? yet there will always be a longing for "home". i guess what Boey Kim Cheng said is true -there isn't enough looking back. but do we really want to look back and thus dwell in the past, in this rosy picture, tainted by nostalgia, that we always yearn to return to? is it better not to look back and subsequently be disillusioned with the present? but if we don't, will not the past be lost forever and we lose our identity?

sometimes i wonder what kind of emotional and identity strains my children will undergo if the world becomes even more paradoxical. or will they not realise it if they are not taught to ponder? no, i will teach them to think. because if we do not, we will degenerate to mere bodies with no souls, something many people have already become.