I try to imagine you as a girl-
a street of four-storey plaster buildings,
carved wooden doors, weathered, almost shrines
(like in those postcards of old Hong Kong you loved)-
you, a child in bed, the neighbours always in
and out, a terrier dog, half-finished bowls
of rice, the ivory Mah Jong tablets
clacking, like joints, swift and mechanical,
shrill cries -ay-yah! fah!- late into the night.
My heart is bounded by a scallop shell-
This strange pilgrimage to home.
From Crossing from Guangdong by Sarah Howe
Sarah Howe is a British poet and academic. She was born in Hong Kong. This excerpt is from her first full-length poetry collection Loop of Jade, winner of the T. S. Eliot prize and the Sunday Times/ Peter Fraser and Dunlop Young Writer of the Year Award.
Read more here:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/11/poet-sarah-howe-named-young-writer-of-the-year
I’m still trying to figure out what “-ay-yah! fah!” means in Cantonese? Any ideas?
Leslie
I only know Manadarin so I can’t tell you, but it does sound like the kind of thing one hears in bad martial arts films. In my imagination I can hear tiles clacking and triumphant calls of ‘ ay-yah !fah!’, meaning ‘take that’.
Makes sense.
Leslie
NI shuo han yu ma?
Wo shuo yi diandian zhongguo.
Leslie
Hen hao!
Hen hao, indeed! Our neighbours are from mainland China.
Leslie