放飛機
say: fong
(third tone)
fei
(first tone)
gei
(first tone). A Cantonese proverb indicative of broken promises. To throw a paper airplane.
The Treaty of Nanjing in 1842 ceded the New Territories of Heung Kong to the Imperial Empire of Britain.
We were fishermen, but we have our folklore too. A promise of two sides:
One: Of China, of reds and nations and lions and a dive into the sea.
Two: Of Imperial, of steam, of opium, of the new.
And yet, there are four: the Tanka, the Hoklo, the Hakka, the Punti. And then there is silence as we breathe in the steam. Lou Ting scorns our kind: why do you forget how we swam?
Lantau Island is inhabited by a significant number of humans. And yet, there are the nets. The beaches (where if you dig deep enough, maybe you will find the “technological Heung Kong” that the world says exists). The trans-Asian fantasy of a robot other-land. But we are fishermen, and we are artists.
The King of Kowloon (Tsang Tsou-Choi) believed that he was descended from a Tang Dynasty emperor and had the official claim to the sprawling, fractured lands of Heung Kong. He drew ugly, scrawled characters up and down any government-owned appliance from Mong Kok to Tsuen Wan. When he died, the words were erased, and only photos remain.
What is trade?
The Qing Dynasty failed to industrialize in a changing world, and was taken over and battled relentlessly by Imperial Britain and a growing Meiji super-force.
Riddled by internal conflict, ethnic Han citizens disapproved of the Manchurian noble class. While the nobles defended Harbin against the Tsar and Mutsuhito, the world closed in on itself. The Opium Wars have tired the Chinese as they fall to the ground in mass graves.
But we are fishermen, and when the white men came, we waited for the Sek Si Zi to collect their share
a pair: a female and male lion that safeguarded the hills
Cantonese yin-yang, to be crude.
Or Pak Tai, god of the sea– will you stop the iron ships? Defeated the Demon King, a venerated Shang Dynasty legend, will you protect the tradelands of Kwangtung? Or will we lose our lives as merpeople, to come back as iron-clad robots and militant, unfeeling Canton armymen. And to the West, we do not swim, we watch with
Mongoloid
features and broken sentences and no more is the silk, or the nets, or
the smiling eyes of Lou Ting.