"Observations" — ASIAN CHA Issue 32 Editorial

My love for you is not like new linens—nice for the first week but shrinking after the first wash.

“If” is the French for yew. A coniferous tree.

I wish I knew who sent me this dream: “Tammy (or Lai-Ming?), I had a dream about you last night. You were managing a restaurant and were very busy. I couldn't understand why you would become a restaurateur in addition to all the other things you do—teaching, editing, writing, loving—but I figured it is best not to interfere. I went to the opening, you and your colleagues were working and I just tried to be quiet. But there was a big mistake with the food, the cook had not prepared the potatoes right. It did not seem like such a good restaurant. At some point you and a friend of yours (who was also one of the restaurant owners) and I went to buy candy. I hesitated to pay for the candy, because I didn't want to subsidise your failing restaurant business. But then it turned out that you wanted the candy for yourself, so I cordially offered to pay after all. But you had already paid. You didn't need my money (and what else could I offer?) Then your friend got shot for no reason. And we needed to catch a train, but we were late. And we got into the wrong train or bus. And then I woke up.”

“Good night, my little Brussels sprout.”

I wear the world map as though it's a dress. You can touch me on Hong Kong.

On the street where his gym is there is a bookshop called Le Merle moqueur (The Mockingbird) and a café called Le Colibri (The Hummingbird) though this odd coincidence might be lost on French speakers.

“We are fucked” is not very difficult English to master.

“I am going to bed now, my little miraculous medal.”

The horrible thought that one can walk past any number of people without knowing any of their names. The narcissism of this thought.

Making proving people wrong our goal.

Did you know? Humans are the only mammals that can’t breathe and swallow at the same time. Did you know? Mosquitoes prefer biting people who are inebriated. Did you know? There are tongue prints.

“Good night my little duffel bag.”

It is not misunderstanding but partial understanding. One has to guard one's story, one's history, so much, these days. 

Your games are so small I need a microscope to see them.

Some say distance makes the hearts fonder. Some say out of sight, out of mind.

On language fluency: I know it when I hear it.

I sometimes feel like I am a yew tree whose roots have been cemented.
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The Chinese government hasn't censored the temperature in Hong Kong yet.

“I am going to bed now, my little doubloon.”

I should have been born with bigger breasts. I am the kind of woman who would ask people to describe me in five adjectives.

In a Chinese restaurant in Europe. I imagine all is a cover up for some illicit business. The entire family fled China. Duck tongues. Aubergine. Like a film by Jia Zhangke. Takeaway, not good. The sauces congeal quickly. The woman is like a gangster woman. You are the only foreigner when we get in. And I am the only Chinese when we leave. I order chicken feet, thinking they were going to be chilied but they were chilled. The woman who speaks exaggerated accented Italian. The husband knows nothing.

An old Cantonese pop song can be the music that ignites my memory when I am old and have dementia.

“I am off to bed now. I love you, my little artichoke heart.”

It is exhausting when you deal with walls.

My father wanted to be more handsome, perhaps. But the mole, after it was removed, left a faint dent. Where was it? On his right cheek... if I remember correctly. It only now exists in memory and old photos that you cannot zoom in to. When I was small I was myself made fun of because of the mole that sits in my philtrum. If I die, my mole will tell you it's me.

Should I give you an old pair of high heels to remember me by? Of course not.

Slept for a bit and dreamt of naked us in a room of empty frames; we are mid-conversation, not an argument, but somehow you are hurt and I console you. I ask “Look at me. Do you know?” You give a non-smile, like you sometimes do. And then I woke up. I am sleepy again now.

Will I dream once more of your eyebrows?

“I must sleep. Good night, my little pumpkin seed.”

Tammy Ho Lai-Ming / Co-editor

Cha

10 June 2016

"Peculiar Imperatives" — ASIAN CHA Issue 31 Editorial

I am a proud, obsessive aunt. I ask my sisters to tag me whenever they post pictures and videos of my niece and nephew on Facebook. These are the notifications I love to receive the most. I play the videos over and over and I often have a few pictures of my little relatives open on my laptop when I am preparing for a lecture, agonising over research or reading Cha submissions.

My favourite picture of the past few weeks is one of my niece wearing a red top that I bought her for Lunar New Year. She's smiling and looking contentedly at an empty rice bowl. The bowl, bigger than her head, is made of plastic and has several traditional Chinese characters on it. Three jubilant bunnies dance on her blue bib. Like her "Big Aunt Mother" 大姨媽 (me!) her eyebrows are thick and well-shaped, while her hair is dark, sleek.

I am infatuated by that utterly sweet, satisfied smile on her face. Why is she so happy holding an empty bowl? What is the secret? What is on her mind?

I wish I could be happy so easily.

Instead, I find myself gloomier and more sullen by the month, by the week, by the day. I sometimes get annoyed at the smallest things. I sometimes really do not want to smile at people. Sometimes, on the worst days, I carry a face that announces "I am not impressed" wherever I go. I think it is not an exaggeration to say that I project a negative aura which wipes out the joy of others. This is partly why I worry about going to public events or being in a crowd. I'll only murder your happiness!

But that doesn't mean that I am down or bitchy all the time. I do appreciate minor amusements and there are many moments when I suddenly realise that I am contented, that I have been engrossed by something I am reading or a face in front of me. That life, after all, does not have to be an aggressive trial of the spirit. No longer looking for constant excitement and laughter, these little moments sustain my days—a moderate rather than a gluttonous diet.

Looking at the picture of my niece, I hope she can remain this innocent, this happy, for many years to come. One day, she will learn that she has to put food in the bowl herself and that those who love her however deeply can’t give her everything that she needs. But most importantly, I hope she will learn to be able to just let "The hours flow… amiable, carefree, almost happy."* 

Tammy Ho Lai-Ming / Co-editor
Cha
23 March 2016
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*Claudio Magris, Microcosms (translated from the Italian by Iain Halliday), p. 12.
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"Please Do Not Film Me" — ASIAN CHA Issue#28 Editorial

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PLEASE DO NOT FILM ME

In May this year, I was fortunate enough to be invited by poet Ricardo de Ungria to be a foreign panellist on the second week of the 54th Silliman University National Writers Workshop in Dumaguete, the Philippines. The workshop is the oldest of its kind in Asia, and I cannot say strongly enough how much I enjoyed the experience, and how welcomed, taken care of and intellectually stimulated I felt while I was there. My co-panellists César Ruiz Aquino, Patricia Evangelista and Eliza Victoria also constantly impressed me with their knowledge, wit and humility.

There was one little episode, however, that discomfited me. During my one-week stay, apart from the daily workshops in which we discussed pieces written by the very talented poetry, fiction and creative non-fiction fellows, I also gave a lecture titled "Ghosts in the Machine: Photographs and Poems." When I walked into the room in the Silliman University library where my talk was taking place, the first thing I noticed was the video cameras. I froze. I panicked. I then entreated Rina Fernandez and Philip Van Peel, staff at the English Department of the university, not to film the talk. They very kindly indulged my irrational request.

You see, I have a condition. I have a physical revulsion of video cameras when I know that I am their subject, target, victim. There have been a few rare exceptions, but as a general rule, the thought of another me captured on film and alive—talking, smiling, sulking, moving around and breathing—makes me nervous, frightens me even. I assume it must have something to do with movement and sound as I am more or less fine with having my photograph taken. But I find terrifying the thought of more Tammy Hos out there, on repeat, having escaped the frame, moving in secret, finding new audiences, talking in my voice but completely unable to hear my wishes. Do they know they are merely copies of me, inferior but forever younger? Do they know I want them deleted?

I have had this psychological inhibition for quite a while, and I have previously declined commercial opportunities when I was asked to talk in front of a camera. I have been flattered by the invitations and mildly tempted by the financial rewards. But thanks, no thanks. Other times, I have tried to avoid the camera, only to find it was avoiding me. Once at Hong Kong Baptist University, just before the start of a short story prize-giving ceremony (I was one of the three judges), I asked the technician not to film me while I was giving my short speech, only for him to retort that the video cameras were for the keynote speaker (emphasis his). I was more relieved than embarrassed. I relate this story often, not only to amuse others but to remind myself that I am not that important.

In his description of John Berger's 1972 BBC miniseries Ways of Seeing, the critic Oliver Preston writes: 

I prefer the pleasures of the moving image, not least of which is Berger himself: his wide eyes, his unerringly grave gestures of address, his haircut. […] In a favourite scene, a gaggle of schoolchildren crowd around an image of Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus, speaking over one another, calling out their interpretations of the painting's central figure. Berger, sitting among them, grave as ever, inclines his shaggy head and listens. (Paris Review)

I prefer the pleasures of the moving image too, but of others, not of myself.

I sometimes worry that my reluctance to be filmed could limit me in a world saturated with moving images, may stop people from inviting me to give lectures, talks, seminars or make public appearances. But then I remind myself not to get carried away, not to worry about problems that haven't occurred yet, to keep things in perspective. The future's not ours to see; video is for the keynote speaker. 

A photograph, still, thankfully, of me from Dumaguete, listening to a question put to me by an audience member. My head leans a little forward. I am not grave at all. (Photograph by Sha'ianne Molas Lawas)

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Tammy Ho Lai-Ming / Co-editor

Cha

21 June 2015

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"Valiant Beauty" — ASIAN CHA Issue#25 Editorial

Valiant Beauty

Seen on the Hong Kong Baptist University campus

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Words from educators in Hong Kong:

My students have told me they're boycotting classes indefinitely. I am proud of them. How can one not be moved?
—Eddie Tay

I applaud the courage and restraint of the protesters, who are mostly students, and am as proud as ever to call myself a Hong Konger!
—John Wakefield
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... and you see, you see,
Love is disobedience, disobedience love,
And the dungeon doors open for you
And your questions to walk through.
—Shirley Geok-lin Lim
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Hong Kong students continue to put 'civil' in 'civil disobedience'.
—Colin Covendish-Jones

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[A] movement such as this one, defined by youth, by love and peace, by aspiration and inspiration, will always find a way to win.
—Lucas Klein
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I've seemingly always already been way more cynical than sentimental. But I found myself crying in the face of the generous and caring humanity of Hong Kong's youth, both in Mong Kok and in Central. Hong Kong is my much loved home—and it's the Umbrella Uprising that has delivered this sense of home to me.
—Jason S Polley
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100,000 people on the street in Hong Kong (a reporter told me it was that many) singing, applauding, chanting. There is a feeling of great hope.
—Michael O'Sullivan
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I hope that all of the students participating in the protests will stay safe and remain optimistic for a better future of this place we call home.
—Heidi Huang
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Hong Kong's higher education system should be proud of the exemplary"knowledge transfer" and "experiential learning" that our courageous students have been exhibiting.
—James Shea
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Teachers, like many others, have doubts all the time. One that I often ask myself is "Should I keep teaching?" But seeing all of you in the streets, I am moved and I know the answer. Last night at 2am, I encountered a confused 18-year-old, who kept wondering what's next. No one knows, except the battle will be long. And a quote from Hemingway may help: "I did not care what it was all about. All I wanted to know was how to live in it."
—Nicholas YB Wong
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You'll learn more at the barricades than in my class. Take your notebook with you, this is history, you're making it, and make sure you write it too.
—Justin Hill
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I have run out of umbrellas to lend to my students,
braving all weathers, all scorn, for a future they no longer have any option
but to believe in.
Now it is my heart I would shelter them with.
I do so happily, without reservation.
They were the first, and will be the last,
to welcome me here.
They have always stood by me.
—Stuart Christie

 

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Over the last week, Hong Kong has transformed—gone from a city that, while not politically apathetic, was generally willing to put prosperity and business first. But Beijing's refusal to allow Hong Kong open elections and the growing unease among its residents about the SAR's future in China have finally come to a head. The Umbrella Revolution has shown that Hong Kong is no longer content to allow Beijing to dictate its fate. The city has decided to stand up and fight. And it has brought umbrellas.

The struggle for free elections is nothing new—the pro-democracy camp has for decades been determined in its efforts to bring self-rule to the city. But something changed this week: the passion and energy of youth. Young people, yellow-ribboned, faces covered with cling film and goggles, and equipped only with umbrellas to fend off the fierce sun, rain and tear gas, have fought peacefully, proudly and insistently, for genuine democracy in their—my—beloved city. It is their efforts—nonviolent but still resolute and resourceful—that have not only captured the attention of the city, but of the world.

Like many people who care about Hong Kong's political future, I have been able to focus on very little else over the past few days. At times, I have been worried—worried about the safety of the protestors; worried that their efforts will fail to bring change; worried about the future of the city that I love. But I have also been deeply moved and inspired. I have never been so proud of Hong Kong. It has never been so determined.

For those of us who support democratic change, we realise that the time has come, that we have to fight now, before it’s too, too late. We are uncertain of what the outcome might be, but we are nevertheless united, hearts with one purpose, and we are fighting.

Will we succeed? We already have. Hong Kong will never be the same again. A valiant beauty has been born.

Tammy Ho Lai-Ming / Co-editor
Cha

1 October 2014

ASIAN CHA Issue#24 Editorial

A Touch Of Cruelty
In The Mouth
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Looking at old photos leads me to believe that the body evolves.
—Edouard Levé

I love to recall my dreams, no matter what is in them.
—ibid.

Of course, telling someone your insult is like telling someone your dream; the specific emotional core of it cannot be communicated ...
—Sheila Heti
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The golden boy Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde's memorable creation, continues to capture our imagination, as seen in his most recent representation in Showtime's Penny Dreadful. Who doesn't want to stay delicate, young and exquisite? Skin flawless, teeth intact, hair shiny. In fact, our modern beauty industry relies on nothing but this overblown desire to slow down the clock. I am sure many of us, while reading Wilde's story or watching an adaptation, have imagined, even if only very briefly, what it might be like to be Dorian.

For a large part of the story, Dorian's physical appearance is unaffected by the passage of time, while his painted double, hidden in the attic, ages, withers and becomes loathsome and unrecognisable. That face on the canvas evolves with the sordid force of life, as it absorbs the negative energy of its original. This all begins with "the touch of cruelty in the mouth":

He had uttered a mad wish that he himself might remain young, and the portrait grow old; that his own beauty might be untarnished, and the face on the canvas bear the burden of his passions and his sins; that the painted image might be seared with the lines of suffering and thought, and that he might keep all the delicate bloom and loveliness of his then just conscious boyhood. Surely his wish had not been fulfilled? Such things were impossible. It seemed monstrous even to think of them. And, yet, there was the picture before him, with the touch of cruelty in the mouth.

The cruelty here is Dorian's, conferred to his pictorial likeness. But cruelty is an inherent element of every portrait or photograph of a human subject. The American comedian Mitch Hedberg, whom I admire a great deal, sums it up wisely and poignantly: "Every picture is of you when you were younger." Everything that bears a reproduction of your image, then, is an inevitably cruel reminder that nothing good lasts, that you will grow old. Very old if you are lucky. Or unlucky.

At some point, you will envy your younger self, sitting awkwardly on an uncomfortable rug, drinking a cheap red wine as you and your friends couldn't afford anything good, or wearing an embarrassingly slutty dress, silver and black, with no cleavage showing, for you had none (you still have none) or grinning so goddamned happily for something so life-defining then and so insignificant now that you don't remember what it was that sparked that bright smile or even who else you were with at the time. You grow old ... you grow old ... You shall wear the bottoms of your trousers rolled. 

It is perhaps disingenuous of me to complain about ageing, for I am still regularly asked if I am a student due to my small size and unaggressive chest. But all the above acts as an introduction to a vivid dream that I had one night some weeks ago. I am one of those people who remember their dreams quite well and that particularly dream, I remember intensely. 

In the dream, I am in my old family home in Tuen Mun with my parents and two younger sisters. It is a small flat, with two small bedrooms, and, at night, we turn the small wooden sofa in the small living room into a small bed, which I sleep on with one of my sisters (everything was small in my past, nothing is grand in my present). My mother must have turned off the lights, and I, without much thought, reach for a torch that gives out enough light that familiar household objects cast strange, enlarged and dreamy shadows on the wall, which is by day covered with crayon marks, traces of my sisters' creative vandalism. 

In the dream, I am looking at an older picture of my parents, my sisters and me sitting on a leather sofa so worn that it had been replaced by the wooden one. My mother is holding Ying on her lap, and my father has Ching on his. I stand in the middle. Squeezed in the middle. No one is holding me. I am too old.

The next moment in the dream, I am my current age again and frantically looking for that picture. When I find it, I see that Ying is no longer sitting on my mother's lap and Ching is no longer on my father's. They are grown-ups in the picture, and they stand next to my parents. I stand as before. I too am grown-up. My parents are eighteen years older, but on our faces we have the same expressions as before. My parents: reservedly proud of having three healthy and moderately intelligent daughters. My sisters: clueless. Me: clueless.

It dawns on me, in the dream, that all our images grow with us, age with us, probably die with us. Whatever our present age, we are now the same age in past photographs. It has become impossible to recover photos of ourselves at a younger age—our Facebook accounts automatically update; in our photo albums we are no longer babies, but our current selves trapped in the faded photos of bygone days. We are all Dorian Grays without the benefits: our pictorial selves age but so do we.

In my dream, no one could remember exactly what others looked like in the past. No one could boast, "Look at this. I was once considered a beauty." When I woke up, I instantly went on Facebook to check if my profile pictures were unaltered. They were. Thank goodness I had taken these photographs when I was younger, easier, more carefree. And better still, I remain that way in them, even though the flesh-and-blood me moves on, marching towards decay and death. Which is the way it should be, and I am glad.

 

... likeness, once caught, carries the mystery of a Being.
—John Berger

Tammy Ho Lai-Ming / Co-editor
Cha

29 June, 2014

ASIAN CHA Issue#23 Editorial

Venice, June 2013

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Meetings with Remarkable Men and Women (Selected) 
The editorial for the Sixth Anniversary Issue of Cha

i.

There was a coffee house not too far from the university library (but far enough to deter most students from taking a pilgrimage). I spent quite a few afternoons there, armed with a book or two. Thinking back, I was good at prolonging the life of a latte. I seldom paid attention to other people, and I enjoyed my anonymity. Still, I stole glances at others: some walked in wearing long black gowns that almost touched the floor; some wore masks like those on display in a Venetian souvenir shop; some carried such big sacks that I wondered if there were murdered bodies inside. I was minding my own business one afternoon, possibly reading a book about medicinal cannibalism, a man who smelt exactly like another man I'd met in Krakow (a distinctive mixture of cooked pork fat, expensive hair mousse and old leather) sat next to me and immediately drew his bulky armchair closer to mine. Despite myself, I became quite shy. He was not handsome, but he was dressed smartly, although I thought the shade of grey of his suit was perhaps too bright for a middle-aged man. There was a red dot—one of those dots you see mushrooming on older people—on one of his cheeks. We sat there, next to one another, for a long while. Then he stood up, patted my head two times and left as abruptly as he sat down. 

ii.

She was a tall, short-haired girl and she wore jeans that were a little too short for her long legs. Her socks—their colour I cannot now recall—were exposed with her every step. There was another girl with us, too, but I remember nothing about her except that she brought our number to three. That afternoon, unchaperoned, we found ourselves first in a playground, then, in a kind of grassland. All of a sudden, someone (not me) took out a small cooking pot, and we started to make soup out of handfuls of unwashed grass. The tall girl also sprinkled some crushed purple and poppy-red petals in the pot, as well as parts of other plants I did not recognise. She did this expertly, in a theatrical fashion, as though mimicking a TV chef. I don't remember how the soup tasted, but, afterwards, when I recounted the incident to an aunt, she said that we had been silly and that we could have been poisoned and that our organs might rot. Before we departed, the tall girl, under a barren tree in a courtyard, said to me in a tone that was neither indifferent nor insincere: “We never know how quickly a plant sprouts.” I realised much later that she was trying to sympathise with me about my height.

iii.

To whom do you fascinatingly belong? he asked, referencing Henry James without naming him. To the highest bidder? he asked again, and I remained silent. A young man whose sideburns were artificially curled, he could have been a bartender or a university student or a writer plotting his third “experimental” novel.

iv

My mother, a woman of virtue, is not someone you would proverbially call “fun-loving.” I thank her dearly for that. For example, when my sisters and I were young, an uncle wanted to give us an old video game before buying a new one. My mother quickly and assertively declined the offer, believing that nothing that didn't get us to read or write or sleep could come to any good. I was only given a fake Barbie when I was hospitalised, aged six or seven, for mouth surgery—my lower lip had become infected after my paternal grandmother had accidentally kicked me from the other end of the sofa while talking on the phone. The lip grew to such a size that speaking became difficult; I now believe that that imposed bout of silence might have been the impetus for my generally quiet disposition. The fake Barbie made me understand at least two things: 1) that dolls are truly boring and 2) that as Barbie didn’t have nipples (I didn't know the word then), mine must be unnatural. On the day of my discharge, I was also given a new red dress, with a flourish of lace around the collar. But my initial elation at the gift was dampened quickly enough: it became obvious that I was only getting my Chinese New Year dress a couple of months early. On the short walk from the hospital to the bus stop, an old and seemingly kind woman was giving out balloons with smiley faces on them to sick children to cheer them up. I had been taught never to accept anything from strangers, and so when the old lady handed me a big blue balloon, I swatted it so hard with my Barbie doll, it burst. The popping sound was loud, and the woman's shocked and injured face—I was ashamed to understand, even then—suggested she thought I was rejecting her, not the balloon, not even the idea of a balloon.

Tammy Ho Lai-Ming / Co-editor
Cha
28 March, 2014

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ASIAN CHA Issue#20 Editorial

Hula Hooping

(First published in Berfrois on 28 February, 2013.) "First snowfall of the year, Issy-Les-Moulineaux" by Oliver Farry  I don’t want to be like a fruit that is small, round and has a bland taste. I like being written into poems but when someone does that I feel shy but also ridiculously euphoric. I have been using the same perfume since I was sixteen years old. One of the flats I rented in Hong Kong had a leaking ceiling and tropical rain came through the cracks like drizzles of piss. I want to have good taste in music but I don’t know where to begin. I like the Irish songs The Wind that Shakes the Barley and An Poc ar Buile. I don’t like hearing my voice rippling on Skype. I studied Buddhism for nine years and I am fearful of the concept of reincarnation. I don’t remember how many times I was photographed in my old school uniform. My first “jeans” weren’t made of denim. I have never arranged to bump into someone. The countries that I have visited twice are Finland and Poland. As I grow older, I try to moderate my desire for things that won’t happen. I want to write about Hong Kong like Guy Maddin wrote about Winnipeg but before I do that I have to love my city more. My sisters are twins. I would like to have a spare room so I can spread out unread books on the floor to form a small labyrinth. My favourite professor can translate Baudelaire and Lorca. I think the best way to annoy an editor is to not address her in an email, as though you are writing to a void and have never learnt to be polite. Photos of embryos fascinate and frighten me. I was amused that John Alexander Bryan said “The existence which we name a shadow, possesses more natural oneness than the existence which we name gold.” I question authority constantly, secretly, timidly. After someone has told me a ghost story I would remain upset for days because the ghost would stay inside my head. My first and most Dickens novel is Great Expectations. If there’s a Magwitch in my life I would treat him very well. My passport photos are ugly but the urgency of having them taken means that one can’t be too fussy. I have never been to Spain. I have never planted orchids. I have never seen a river full of supermarket trolleys. I have never really understood the Euler circuit. I think Joshua is a beautiful name. I believe you have to thoroughly understand something in order to subvert it in any meaningful way. I ask myself, “How much of history is lost to illegible glances?” Cambodia, 2006 I have been mistaken for Southeast Asian several times in my home city. In Cambodia, the locals thought that I was Cambodian and spoke to me in their language. Sometimes my shadow is eaten by whatever that walks before or behind me. I imagine Robert Creeley is talking about me in his poem “The Woman.” There is no particular hour in the day or in the night that I like best. I like the hour in which I have done something useful for myself or something kind to others. I can be quite selfish and I don’t want to elaborate on that. I harbour strong emotions towards the moon, especially when it’s deceptively large and I feel lonely. I never recline my seat on the plane; I hate it when others do. I was bitten by a dog once but no one else remembers the occurrence. I was dismayed to learn that human beings have a third pair of eyelids. I have noticed that if you smile to an unfriendly shopkeeper, her attitude will soften. I think it’s arrogant of me to try to convert people with friendliness. I often forget to put on body lotion after showers. I wish I didn’t occasionally think my grandfather walked too slowly on his crooked wooden cane. A sofa that can comfortably accommodate me and him makes me happy. When I was younger I collected stamps. I particularly treasured those with the Queen’s silhouetted head. I am drawn to Richard Brautigan’s poem “To England”—“There are no postage stamps that send letters / back to England three centuries ago.” I’m afraid of holding babies in my arms or touching their soft heads but I must learn how to do these. I like the letter “O.” I find it hard to be warm to people who make fun of others. In Luxemburg, a Chinese chef made me a vegetable soup that reminded me of my deceased grandmother. I am not sporty. I am not musical. I don’t balance well. I like phrases that are difficult to translate into another language. A certain thickness of beard is very charming. The universe isindifferent. I want to have a balcony in my final home so I can leave it open when I am dead. I wonder why we often forget about a pain when it subsides. Same with love. Every sigh that another person makes certainly doesn’t diminish mine. I believe in attraction only when there is a mirror in the room and we pay no attention to it because we are too engrossed with one another. I believe in attraction only when there is a mirror in the room and we are too engrossed with our reflections in it looking back at us. I agree with Borges that each of us is a caricature copy of oneself. I agree with Nabokov that curiosity is a pure form of insubordination. I agree with Johnson that to prove something exists one might as well kick it. I don’t have exaggerated ideas about things I don’t know. I may have prejudiced or romanticised ideas about things I do know. I think “love” said in a certain way can be chillingly passive-aggressive. Instead of a pair of Christian Louboutin shoes, I am happier to receive some lines for possible inclusion in my next poem. I think the intellectual, poetic and sexual itch are one. My sisters and I believe that playing with a hula hoop will give us slim waists (it doesn’t work on everyone). A famine survivor wept before me some years ago. I don’t like the buzzing sound of an iPhone in my presence, untidy sugar cubes in a broad-brimmed cup, ink stains on leather jackets, not having my English corrected when I make mistakes, poems that are titled “Untitled,” the texture of liquorice and the taste of non-alcoholic beer. I can be a little judgemental, even though I keep most of my judgements to myself and nurse them until they become irrevocable. I wonder which is more arousing—being ejaculated upon the face or in the mouth. I have been to three funerals; I wore black two times, white once. The dead body of a loved one leaves an everlasting impression. Sometimes, late at night, I imagine sleeping next to my dead beloved and that I, too, am dead. My father is getting old fast. My mother is getting old too but at a slower pace. I believe freedom is first but as Cohen says, “Old Black Joe’s still pickin’ cotton.” When I am flying on a plane, I often look outside the window to see all these stars, stars and then below, a magnificent galaxy of city lights. I wish I could sing opera or draw or tap dance. I am hurt if someone says I am competitive. I want never to become a female Casaubon. What I like from Geoff Dyer’s Paris Trance: “on the outskirts of a kiss,” “unfettered potential,” “Her English deteriorated quickly when she became angry,” “There could never be another you,” “Time has run out.” I love eating oysters with the right and appreciative person. I am amazed by the idea that we are ancient; we are stardust. I like giving myself a kind of heightened sensation that only I myself can conjure. I have never held a ribbon for too long. Twice I was moved to kiss the pages of a book I was reading. I feel sad about the conflict between Hongkoners and Mainland Chinese. I like imperatives, old encyclopaedias, small apples, temperamental kettles, cutting price tags on new dresses, a sweetheart’s handwriting, a sunny and lazy afternoon. When I read literature on the Tube I felt I was in the right place. Many Chinese New Years ago, I dreamt of my deceased grandmother. In the dream she asked me to ask my mum to burn her some new paper clothes.     My best girl friend has a boy’s name. My own name is a dynasty and a whore. I sometimes self-censor. Some of my favourite films are Brief Encounter, Make Way for Tomorrow, Solaris and Topsy-Turvy. I like to be silent together with a man and be perfectly content. I like gulping water from a huge plastic bottle. I would like to have an audience to see me do that. I used to share a bunk bed with one of my sisters. Sometimes people bore me but I bore myself too. I don’t like watching someone walk away. I don’t like walking away either. I found the view from the Centre Pompidou of ancient buildings congregating at dusk spectacular. My toenails have a perpetual sad look no nail polish can brighten. I played table tennis in secondary school. I like science fiction stories that include time-travel elements and paradoxes in general. I am never quick enough to come up with a wish when there is a stray eyelash. I want to see at least one great natural phenomenon in my lifetime. When I am lonely I imagine I am alone in a vast and still desert. I remain scornful of those who use “LOL.” I take photographs of objects that have once seen more glorious days. I have never jumped into fountains. I don’t think it’s as hard to pass from people kissing to people eating one another as Voltaire conjectured. I suppose I am likeable. I want to be multi-talented, multi-lingual. When I look at a fat pigeon I think of evolution. from left to right: Ying, Ching (my younger sisters), me Writing this for days exhausts me. It is a good kind of exhaustion, like what Hemingway said about finishing a short story. I wish the friends and family I have mentioned or alluded to will continue to love and admonish me. When I die I want somebody to close my eyes and make sure my horny feet are not exposed at the funeral. I sometimes think of hula hooping with my sisters but I don’t really remember much. I wouldn’t want to revisit my childhood. I wouldn’t want to go back to any period of my past. I imagine it’s more cinematic to part with someone at a snow-covered train station than a provincial airport. If I am to write a book in my senile days it will be The History of the Clock. I am in a seizure of love. When I read this back in a few years’ time I will probably find my current self unbearably pretentious and naïve — “hard to believe I was ever as bad as that.” I want to be happier. And I want to believe that my best days are still ahead of me before I belong to the ages. Tammy Ho Lai-Ming / Co-editor Cha 7 March, 2013

ASIAN CHA Issue#19 Editorial

this editorial was originally posted here | read the fifth anniversary issue of Cha here

A Hundred Years of Karma

Recently I've been riding the bus a lot—three hours a day, more or less. I spend one eighth of my time on a "moving can," only slightly less than the amount of sleep I get at night. Have you heard of the effectiveness of a four-hour sleep cycle? It's not so effective.

It feels strange to think that I regularly spend so much time in a confined space with strangers. In Chinese, there is a saying, "We have a hundred lives' worth of karma to thank for our riding on the same boat today" (百世修来同船渡). My fellow passengers have faces haggard and dull and worn out by the world—what previous lives we must have shared! I have much sympathy for them, even when they are bumping into me or are taking the last seat.

I sing the song "Twenty-Seven Strangers" to myself sometimes. It is beautiful, and Buddhist in its own way. If you have studied Buddhism, you know that we could have been any organism in our past lives: ants, bees, bats, small fishes, bacteria. But now, now, in this life, we are humans. And you are with me on this journey. Rain outside. Bugs. Twigs scratching the window. A speedy and annoying bike. You are with me, although we all eventually and inevitably "separate without a sound." And the following day, "it could be the same / when I do it all again."

As commuters, we will do it all again, and it will be the same. Or at least largely the same. The route remains constant, but there are subtle changes in the trip: it moves—if not forward—at least on. It develops. More and more faces get recognised, the portion of strangers decreases, acquaintanceships develop. The weird overdressed man you first noticed that sweltering afternoon becomes the friendly guy who just happens to like heavy jackets. That grumpy old woman becomes just another person trying to get through her days. How many years of karma do we have to thank for riding this same bus, not just today, but every day?

At Cha, we have been riding this bus for five years now. Sometimes we have imagined that we are driving, and perhaps occasionally we have steered a bit. But mostly, it has been like a commute, where we try to run on time but happily let our passengers set the route. By my count, there are forty-two this time—twenty-four returning contributors and eighteen new—none of them strangers. I love seeing so many old faces on the seat across from me, but I like the new ones, too. More faces to recognise, more friendships to develop.

And I am happy to share a space with them, a space which in nineteen trips has never once felt confined. As soon as they board, our writers, artists and guest editors fling open the windows and let the air rush in. They start talking, too, and I am content to ride along and listen, let their ideas bump into me, sway to the rhythm of their words. Happy to let the cycle continue and the trip move in new directions.

Sometimes I sing "it could be the same / when I do it all again," and I hope I can do it all again and that it will be the same, if by the same you mean constantly new and rewarding.

Maybe I did something right in my past lives, because this ride has felt like a hundred years of good karma.

Tammy Ho Lai-Ming / Co-editor
Cha

25 November, 2012

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