My big move: leaving Sydney for Glasgow, suddenly I was an old-school migrant again | Australian lifestyle

I haven’t lived underneath the identical roof as my mother and father since I used to be 22. However within the winter of 2021 I moved to Glasgow and, for the primary time in my life, awoke every day to roughly seven seas and an ocean between us.

Again house in Sydney, like most Asian mother and father, Mum and Dad open most conversations with: “你食咗飯未呀?” Have you ever eaten? It doesn’t matter what time of day it’s – or which meal, particularly. However since I moved to Scotland they’ve dropped the ice-breakers and began merely sending me screenshots of random Cantonese dishes.

“That is Candice,” I wrote again the primary time, assuming that they had texted the incorrect daughter.

“Candice, that is Loopy Wok,” Dad replied.

Like Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, my mother and father’ sprawling anecdotes typically start in medias res. They privilege narrative urgency over context. A number of messages in, I realised Dad had been trying up Cantonese eating places in my neighbourhood and located one not removed from my condo: Loopy Wok. Quickly, Mum’s congee recipe and Google Map instructions to native Chinese language groceries adopted. In a lethal pandemic, what saved my mother and father up at evening was the phobia that I may not get sufficient Asian meals to eat.

I moved to Glasgow due to a geographer. We met the old school method – on a relationship app – on the finish of 2019. Our first date occurred to be the day after my mother and father’ fortieth marriage ceremony anniversary. We’d laughed at their ultramarathon of a relationship. Clearly, we have been completely different. We had the web. Each of us had simply watched Noah Baumbach’s Marriage Story. That we favored one another greater than we anticipated was inappropriate.

Plus, he was from Canada and moved each few years for work. The pandemic struck quickly after we’d met and I didn’t count on to maintain seeing him. I didn’t count on my Cantonese mother and father to immediately bond with him, both. However having moved a lot themselves, they noticed he understood what it was prefer to stay as an outsider, to yearn for house, to really feel rootless. I didn’t count on to fall in love.

I additionally didn’t count on he can be supplied a job in Glasgow a yr into our relationship. The information felt like a impolite shock. I assumed we’d break up, he requested if I’d transfer with him.

Generally you end up in the midst of a narrative. After I broke the information to my mother and father, they each went quiet. It was a dry summer time’s afternoon, Dad saved watering his orange tree. After a time, he mentioned: “In the event you don’t prefer it, you may at all times come house.”

Within the autumn of 2021, the geographer and I married. By June we have been headed for Glasgow. That was our first abroad journey collectively.

Earlier than transferring, every little thing I knew about Glasgow got here from the songs of Belle and Sebastian. In our first week within the metropolis I used to be excited to see the River Clyde in actual life. However we discovered there was little life close to the water. In contrast to different European cities, the place cafes and parklands spring up by riverbanks, the Clyde is flanked by stark, industrial buildings. A lot of the waterfront areas are uncared for, in disrepair – because of a historical past of “managed decline” within the 70s and 80s.

Quickly, we bumped into different surprises. In Glasgow, there isn’t a Chinatown – no less than not in the way in which we knew it. As a substitute there’s a restaurant named China City with a number of neighbouring shops in a purchasing complicated. Glasgow could be the most numerous metropolis in Scotland however 88.3% of the inhabitants is white. My mother and father’ meals worries weren’t solely unfounded.

Migration can really feel like perpetual jet lag. Within the early days I discovered myself having flashbacks to my teenage years, after we’d moved from Hong Kong to Australia. As soon as once more, I used to be unable to decipher on a regular basis exchanges. I blanked when somebody invited me to “sut doon”. I couldn’t inform whether or not to run or smile when an aged pet proprietor talked about his “wee dug”. It was each a shock and a validating reminder that even English-to-English translations might be troublesome. All of the sudden, I used to be an old-school migrant once more – strolling in the identical footwear my mother and father had by leaving the life they knew.

A number of months into our transfer I met Sean, a British-Cantonese poet and performer, who had been residing in Glasgow for seven years. The primary time we met, he took me out to eat. He’d simply written a poetry assortment referred to as Sikfan Glaschu – a tribute to the migrant life instructed by way of Glaswegian eating places. He quickly grew to become my first good friend within the metropolis.

Then there was Karlie, whose restaurateur mother and father appear to know each Cantonese household right here; Taylor who runs a chat thread that retains us posted on the most effective Asian eateries and the native artwork scene; and Eddie, a Korean-American poet –who provides the city along with his home made kimchi. Away from our households we’ve made our personal village. I believe again to my mother and father’ buddies – intimacies cast by likelihood and wish, bonding with one another by way of the sheer gravitational pull of kinship.

It’s now my third winter in Glasgow. Once you purchase one thing right here, quite than saying “cheers” or “right here you go”, shopkeepers bid farewell by saying: “That’s you.” It’s considered one of my favorite phrases. On this metropolis, on the finish of an change, we’re returned to ourselves. Nonetheless oceans other than the folks and locations that formed us, maybe – however entire.

• Candice Chung is a Glasgow-based author and editor. Her first guide, Chinese language Mother and father Don’t Say I Love You, is being printed by Allen & Unwin

• This text was amended on 25 January 2024 to alter a reference to ‘88.3% of the inhabitants’ of Scotland being ‘Anglo-Saxon’. What was meant was white.