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Preface
When I was small, we didn't have a television. After dinner and our evening
walk, my family sat on the front lawn to relax. Between sipping tea and whacking
mosquitoes with nipah fans, Ah Poh and Ah Ba entertained us with stories about
our Hakka ancestors, folklore and legends. Some were funny, others were thought-provoking and sad. I was fascinated by the world, people and spirits within
them.
As I went through school, I had to write my own essays in Chinese, Malay and
English. Whenever I lost courage, Ah Ba reminded me to keep trying, as I am the
granddaughter of Ah Kung, who wrote winning essays in classical Chinese.
However, my literary adventure was limited as a university science student
to writing logical research findings.
As a professional with development organizations,
I wrote policy and implementation papers with complex social concepts and jargon about
"gender empowerment", "sustainable development", "poverty alleviation", and the like. The
grassroots people I dealt with in projects had their lives and feelings translated into
theories, assessments and conclusions in official documents and conferences.
I was reading a document about women's
development when my mother asked me what it was all about. I tried to explain the complex
concepts in Hakka, finding myself long-winded
and boring. Worst of all, I couldn't translate jargon like "empowerment" into Hakka.
My mother, however, looked at me with admiration. "These clever things can only be understood by
those who have a university education", she said.
"They aren't for an old woman who has never lived anywhere except Ipoh. I'll go to university in
my next life and I'll be able to understand what you said."
Tongue-tied and ashamed, I realized that my presentation had given an impression to my
mother that social and development concepts are for the highly educated. I asked myself
with frustration, "It's not meant to be this way! Everybody who speaks any language, with
or without education, should be able to understand them! But why am I not able to convey them
meaningfully to my mother?"
I mulled over the question for several years until I was in the Middle East. In awe with my
new life - colors and sounds, movements and stillness, openness and secrets - I saw that a
most effective way to convey my experiences to my mother was in the form of short stories.
After I returned to Malaysia to give birth to my daughter, I asked an old friend what I should do
in between housework, breastfeeding and baby care.
She suggested, "Why don't you write up those stories about your international experiences
that you used to tell us?"
The question ignited my desire to write. Remembering Ah Kung writing each Chinese character patiently
with brush under candlelight, I started to write stories on my computer in simple English, meant
for translation into Hakka for my mother.
These became Stories for My Mother, a weekly column in The Star since 1995.
This first collection was written between the period when my daughter was three months to
two years old.
Chong Sheau Ching
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Malaysian
Voices 