So, who am I?
Well, I’m a Hong Kong born, British-Filipino.
Yup, get your head around that one! I was born in HK when it was still a British territory. Before it was handed over to China, we moved to the UK where I have lived ever since – until this year.
I’m a meagre musician and a language lover.
So, I’m a musician first and foremost. I have enjoyed the better part of my life in some form of incredible music making. I had been teaching music in central London for nearly a decade when, in the summer of 2019, I decided to take a leap of faith and pursue a career as a musician outright. At the time, it was the best decision I had ever made. I was loving life, playing amazing music, and touring new countries. I was living the dream. Then the dream ended.
Cue: Pandemic – 2020.
Sigh. Need I tell you the rest of that story? As it was for all musicians across the globe, our industry was decimated by the word cancelled, and as quickly as I had started up, I was, in effect, jobless.
I was lucky that I could teach and thankfully able to sustain some income by teaching online. It was not what I had set out to do, but it would suffice for the time being.
It has been a very dark 18 months with some quite significant life events thrown in. I could not have survived it without the unending love and support of my partner, mum, brother, sister, friends, and family.
So I had to do something. I set out trying to come up with a new plan. Beyond music, my other passion is languages. I don’t speak anything other than English but I do enjoy learning them and have dabbled a fair bit in several others to varying degrees of success. But how would I combine the two?
I had the idea of revisiting Hong Kong at some point and thought that learning Cantonese or Mandarin, or both(!) would be a brilliant challenge. I did my research and found an amazing music teaching job in Guangzhou (formerly Canton), in southern China. That’s not Hong Kong, I hear you say. Well, it’s as close as I could get. It’s an hour’s high-speed train away and I’ve been told that it’s a regular trip for many of the staff (when the borders are open). Perfect.
And now, I’m actually IN China! So, head back to the Blog to find out more about my journey so far…