𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐑𝐈𝐁𝐔𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐒 featured in the Neighbourhood section in Issue 71 of Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine—Tammy Lai-Ming Ho (editorial) ◎Yu Xuanji (five poems, trs. Lucas Klein) ◎ Derek Chung (four poems, trs. May Huang) ◎ Collier Noges (one poem) ◎ Jennifer Wong (one poem) ◎ Chris Song (one poem) ◎ Ben Keatinge (one poem) ◎ Angel Yip (one poem) ◎ Yam Gong (two poems, trs. James Shea and Dorothy Tse) ◎ Andrew Barker (one poem in five parts) ◎ Cheng Tim Tim (two poems) ◎ David W. Landrum (one poem) ◎ Lian-Hee Wee (one poem) ◎ Ricky Garni (five poems) ◎ Lut Ming (one poem, trs. Tammy Lai-Ming Ho) ◎ Andre Magpantay (one poem) ◎ Donna Pucciani (one poem) ◎Lydia Kwa (two poems) ◎ Wei-min Sun (one poem) ◎ Mallika Bhaumik (one poem) ◎ Dave Drayton (one poem) ◎ Lorraine Caputo (two poems) ◎ Elizabeth Kate Switaj (one poem) ◎ Shakhawat Tipu (one poem)
Touch-me-not, Forget-me-not
by Tammy Lai-Ming Ho
When I was a little girl, Tuen Mun, “one of the earliest settlements in what is now Hong Kong and can be dated to the Neolithic period”, was my whole world. We almost never ventured outside of this coastal town on the far western edge of the New Territories. Every now and then my sisters and I would go to the small shopping centre in the housing estate where we lived, but only because our mother was going to the wet market in its basement. To our young minds, the mall was a labyrinth: so many colourful shops selling sweets, lovely pencils, and stamps from foreign countries. Many times my sisters and I would sit on a bench outside a supermarket, waiting for our mother to finish shopping. She probably didn’t want us all in the supermarket with her, as we little ones could be too curious, touching everything on the shelves. On some Sundays, she would take us to a dai pai dong to have classic Hong Kong breakfast sets—e.g., macaroni soup with ham, scrambled eggs, buttered toast, plus a drink. My mother never ordered anything for herself; she just had the bread that my sisters and I didn’t eat. Once or twice at Christmas, my parents took us to have dinner in a restaurant in that small shopping centre. It was nothing extravagant but even then I knew my parents were at least trying to give us some special moments.
Our kindergarten was on the ground floor of our building and later, our primary school was within a ten-minute walking distance. Sometimes my sisters and I played in the playground, which was not far away from our building. In the playground there were touch-me-nots, whose leaves I remember flinching from me as I touched them. I ran around the ground with my sisters, laughing without a care in the world, because the playground was our world. Occasionally, we saw our maternal grandfather, who lived with our grandmother on the floor above us, sitting on a bench in the playground. His legs had given up years ago and he couldn’t walk far; his walking stick was his permanent companion. He would beckon us to him and give us a few coins to buy snacks from a tiny stand nearby. We would thank him hastily, impatiently, with scant gratitude, and run off to buy crisps or something else. The cruelty of children. Was a child supposed to know this might prove to be a pivotal memory of their grandparent? My sisters and I also passed the time helping a neighbour to assemble plastic flowers, unwittingly participating in a now-finished chapter of Hong Kong industrial history.
As with most children in Hong Kong, the Mid-Autumn Festival was a big deal for us. For days leading up to it we were allowed to spend lots of time outside of our home. And it was then that we got to mingle with many kids in the neighbourhood, who were also given permission to be out at the same time. As the Hong Kong poet Lut Ming writes, “children gathering makes a district, noisy merriment forms childhood”. We would melt candle wax, a local tradition that was banned by the Hong Kong government on safety grounds in 2003. We would put the candles in a Coke can or a mooncake tin and place the container over a flame until the wax had melted into a gloopy mass. One year, during the Mid-Autumn Festival, we were burning the wax as usual in the playground with some other kids. It must have been around eight o’clock, not late in the evening, and the molten wax accidentally spilled onto the leg of one of my sisters. She ended up in hospital and that was the last time we were allowed to play with wax and fire.
I have never been good with geography and I envy those who can meticulously describe streets or entire neighbourhoods. I am not even really equipped to describe what’s in my mind. For me, wherever I am, the neighbourhood is a collection of memories. Of objects touched, of words said, of feelings felt, of people seen and remembered. I will never be like Xi Xi, who wrote so engagingly and lovingly about her neighbourhood To Kwa Wan. I will never be like Sampson Wong, whose knowledge of places in Hong Kong is deeply impressive. I will never be like Dung Kai-cheung, who can talk about Spring Garden Lane, Ice House Street, Sugar Street, Possession Street, Tsat Tsz Mui Road, and Sycamore Street. Perhaps I can never be a true Hongkonger, I think, because I don’t pay enough attention.
But our contributors do pay attention, whether they be from Taiwan, Bangladesh, the US, the UK, the Philippines, Ireland, Australia, India, Canada, and Hong Kong. The section has a strong Hong Kong presence. And I am pleased to present translations of Yu Xuanji by Lucas Klein and of Derek Chung by May Huang, taken from forthcoming collections. This has been one of my proudest selections for Voice & Verse.
Sunday 9 April 2023
聲韻詩刊 Voice and Verse Poetry Magazine 