House locks: The behemoth of Chinese families

A Hong Kong family that immigrated and then returned, and a Hong Kong journalist who has long cared about the disadvantaged, revealing the scars that have been sealed in their own family for many years.

The truth is muddy; family is a tangle of love and hate. Without love in this private world, it would be impossible to sustain such years of unwavering care. Like an immigrant unwilling to give up their love of cats, my parents firmly believed they were the most capable of caring for my brother.
I review the records of my interactions with my family. The emotions that emerge from our communications are fragmented and mixed. The bond of family affection is real, but the suffocating feeling of high pressure is also extremely real. The behemoth of family often nourishes and harms its members at the same time. - Tam Huiyun

To outsiders, this family was a model of happiness. Their parents possessed middle-class financial resources; their children achieved excellent results in public examinations, earning them the title of "top scorers in the Hong Kong Certificate of Education Examination." These exceptional circumstances enabled them to immigrate to Canada before 1997. The author subsequently returned to Hong Kong to study and work, becoming a highly regarded journalist and a journalism professor at a leading university.

However, there was never a moment in her heart when she was not pained by the huge difference between the external image and the internal image of her original family. My brother had emotional problems before leaving Hong Kong. When he arrived in Canada, he was unable to continue to seek medical treatment due to various cultural shocks and the Chinese family's attitude of putting face above all else. The family members have not actively integrated into the immigrant society. In the isolated big house, the interactions between them are full of tension but have no boundaries, accumulating into a pathological structure of excessive entanglement. Every time she visits relatives, the author can clearly feel that the situation at home is deteriorating, but her parents choose to avoid it. Her father is proud of the author's professional performance, but also requires her not to mention the situation at home and her brother's illness in the report. This is a gag order given by the father as the authority in the family to his youngest daughter.

Because of their age and the pandemic, elderly parents could no longer care for their middle-aged son, who had been ill for years. The facade they had worked so hard to maintain was ultimately shattered. In 2020, when Hong Kongers once again emigrated in large numbers due to the dramatic changes, the author bucked the trend and returned to Hong Kong with three elderly and sick family members. She faced the long-term care of two children, a mentally ill brother trapped for nearly three decades, and the physical and mental stress and pain she had accumulated from her long tenure in this family.

This book is a poignant exploration and analysis of her own family by journalist Tan Huiyun. It recounts the family's past, reconstructing lost memories and the brother she never truly knew and approached. It also chronicles how, in three years, she transformed the family's nearly thirty-year predicament. The author argues that reconstructing family history is akin to transformative justice within the family: when old values ​​or authority are eliminated, the first step is to acknowledge what happened and allow the oppressed and vulnerable to speak openly about their experiences.

The unique vitality of text has also transformed the family. To write this book and better understand his brother's inner world, the author sought out artists to interpret his long-hidden works. By chance, they were selected for the 2025 Art Basel Hong Kong exhibition. It turns out that the works he created during his illness were his brother's way of speaking, finally allowing his voice to reach the world.

Celebrity recommendations

Zhuang Meiyan (playwright); Professor Wu Zhaowen and doctoral students Heather and Ann (Department of Social Work and Social Administration, University of Hong Kong); Su Keqi (youngest daughter of the bus mother); Chen Yawen (clinical psychologist, Hong Kong)
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2025-06-17

春山出版

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