| Blogs > swallowtsui > Hopping Swallow 鍋爐焰焰 |
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Egg-flower Last night, I passed by the egg-flower tree on a slope nearby where I live. In the alternation of Summer night's light and shade, the tree was quite luxuriant. Ah, the egg-flower tree is still here but time has changed, a lot. Last and last last summer, when egg-flowers were blossoming, exposing or hiding in the branches' leaves, we, my friend J and me stopped and took deep breath to absorb their fragrance. Then J rolled her eyes, "We can cook egg flowers into Chinese desert!" We really plucked some back home. We were cunning flower-pickers who thought if we didnt do it, their fate was to wither and drop to the ground. J cooked a very sweet and fragrant sugar water with these egg-flowers in my kitchen. Incredible taste and smell! She said it's very good for beauty. J lived in same town w/ me and we had some good past good time. A soft woman in skin but prowess inside. Some friends viewed her as a dangerous woman but this would not hinder me. Both lost in the manifolds of life, long time I havent met J. But I know she is busy involving in her favorite things - going to exhibition, drinking coffee or travelling. I should call her later to ask, "will we cook again egg-flower desert?" P.s. Egg-flower has 4-6 petals, the color is like egg-yoke. pic. by Macau Photographer Kuong Iao Lam **Afterwords: I called J several times and finally got in touch w/her. Friendship needs some ordeals. If I didnt insist,who knows,we may have buried each other to time's barren hilltop. For she thought I had left Macau. Macau is very small but without appoitment I seldom meet friends/acquaintances in street and public spaces. Now she stops her restful life and works in a enigma-like cafe. "If you sneak out of office in the afternoon, come here join me, take some coffee snack, and have a nap on the comfortable couch." She also invites me to a Tibet trip. But... 
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7/18/2006 9:20 am |
Written with beautiful delicacy. Do you have it in Chinese also? I can read some jiantizi. So it is an extra compliment that I would make the effort to read it in Chinese too, lol.
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Mould, I would re-write a Chinese pc in later days when I am more free. Btw, are you w/ Chinese heritage? sonyia, Clever! Mixture of malice and art. But not sure if my egg-flower is those you saw in Chinese palace movie.
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7/21/2006 6:49 am |
Dear Swallow, I’m a lost Chinese, Chinese only at the skin level. So, I am humbly at your disposal for being patronised as an ignorant foreigner. My maternal ancestors just happen to be from “Zhong Shan” (?) in Guangzhou province, paternal side from Shantou in the Teochew part of the same province. I have never felt drawn to visit. A bit like what His Holiness (whom you call DVC) said in another context, I’m more a product of environment than genetics. I lived in England longer than anywhere else, and feel a bit more Southeast Asian than anything else.
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HI Mould, Let me correct you, Guangdong province, not Guangzhou, Guangzhou is the capital of Guangdong. So, a/c to yr lineage, you are a geneticly Cantonese. Shantou, Teochew part usually breeds very smart businessmen - astute and caculating, like Lee Kai Seng and his son. Do you inherit some? Btw, Zhongshan is very close to Macau. Shantou is where i attended university, famous for its kong fu tea. Exquisite Tea art,mellow voice girls,tasted seefood, a nice place. Well, seems you've been rooted out your ROOT after so many years living abroad. World citizen? Do you still have some Chinese morality in your blood?
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7/22/2006 3:14 am |
Swallow, Let me put it another way. How can there be anything to “root out” as you call it when I did not have it in the first place? My paternal grandparents from Shantou were of peasant stock and illiterate. They didn’t have time to pass down family histories, never mind high flown ideas about “culture”, “history” or “civilisation”, because they didn’t go to school, were too busy struggling to survive and feed their family. If they were alive today, their main concern would be a comfortable material life, the daughters of each successive generation needn’t finish school, would be systematically sold off as servant girls, concubines, or if they were lucky married off as one less mouth to be fed. My maternal grandfather was born and raised an Anglo in Malaysia and worked for the colonial civil service. If I went on a Chinese binge and went "back" to China in a bid to reclaim my "roots" it would be as artificial as a Caucasian embracing Rastafarianism. My culture is my adoptive culture, my environment, not my genetics. I only learnt Mandarin as a second language in school which government policy erroneously labelled “mother tongue” because most of Chinese extraction in Singapore have origins in southern China, not the north. And which I consider a foreign language. In recent years, the government has climbed down and admitted this unnatural social engineering. My first language is English, second Indonesian, third Thai/Lao, fourth Tibetan... the last three I chose and taught myself out of genuine interest and personal relevance. I have encountered this attitude of Mainland Chinese towards those they still claim as their brethren “Overseas Chinese” but discern as “second class”, mocking that they have “no culture” when what they are doing is exercising a cultural authoritarianism over all others which happen not to be Chinese and therefore inferior. I consider China a foreign country, albeit an interesting one, but no more, no less than any other foreigner with no immediate connection to it. It is not my Motherland. I visited it once, not to GuangDONG province (thank you for the correction) but Yunnan, out of curiosity. I hold the rest of China in healthy curiosity, without a trace of sentimentality which someone would of course for “home”. I hope to know more with your anthropologically informative posts and I will continue to ask questions, if you don’t mind. I don’t mind the tourist corrections, I welcome them. But I do request that you do not use the attitude of rehabilitating me so I can “return to the fold”. In my previous post I was making a self referential, self deprecating double ironic remark. It wasn’t an actual invitation for you to wipe your feet on me as a doormat. Southeast Asia is my heart. You don’t appear to have heard of it or want to, unless it acknowledges vassal-like status in deference to China and bows to the “Greater China” concept. Yes, I’ve heard of Li Ka Shing who is ethnic Teochew. My father worked for him for a while in Hong Kong but that did not cultivate any more “guanxi” or familiarity than the Caucasian Australian executive he replaced. Business is business. And sorry to disappoint, I’m afraid I do not have any of the traits that might be associated with the group. I’m hopeless with money! If there is entrepreneurial gene I wish I had it! But I doubt the Teochews have a monopoly on that ‒ otherwise that must make Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates and Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Alsaud of Saudi Arabia Teochew. People can make all sorts of arbitrary parallels or see patterns in order to support any argument. In the study of genetics it has been shown that the widest range of differences in humans is between individuals rather than between ethnic groups, which is a social bundling using an over simplistic colour coding based on mere outward appearance, not a genetic one. Again, there is simply no argument that environment is far more important than genetics. Oops. Another long post. I don’t know what you mean by “Chinese morality”.
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