My family moved eight times before I turned eleven. The biggest of those moves took place when I was three, when my parents moved us from Singapore to Hong Kong. We spoke English at home, but growing up there, I began Cantonese, the language that now feels the most intimate for me and yet one that’s always also felt foreign because of where I learned it: at school. Some of my earliest memories are of feeling like an observer in every situation, because my lack of Cantonese kept me from being fully part of it. Ever since I can remember, I’ve played the game of reading something that appears in both languages–the back of a cereal box, a subway ad, a book–and trying to figure out which came first, the English or the Chinese. Article continues after advertisement On Singapore’s subway, called the MRT, announcements are sometimes made in as many as four languages; on Hong Kong’s subway, called the MTR, announcements are made in three.…