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Derek Chung (author), May Huang (translator), A Cha Chaan Teng That Does Not Exist, Zephyr Press. 2023. 140 pgs.
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As a translator, editor, and writer who has made her home in Hong Kong for the better part of a decade now, I was delighted when my husband handed me a copy of Derek Chungโs bilingual poetry collection A Cha Chaan Teng That Does Not Exist (2023, Zephyr Press), translated from the Chinese by May Huang. To me, the title was the perfect evocation of a not-quite-gone Hong Kong that lives on as a palimpsest, or as something liminal, like the overlapping sections of a Venn diagram showing Hong Kongโs past and present. Knowing that Chung has the respect of Hong Kongโs literary community as both a local poet and a translator into Chinese, I dived into the collection with enthusiasm, reading the entire volume cover to cover.
When I was later invited to review the collection for Cha, I found myself dipping back into it at random. As I re-encountered various poems, I considered this all-important question: what should a good collection of poems in translation do? My immediate answer is perhaps the obvious one: it should examine the poetโs specific experiences and translate them for a much broader audience than the originals could ever expect to reach. On the whole, the collection succeeds in this. May Huang has ably translated Chungโs experience of being a Hongkonger, offering a selection of Chungโs work that is permeated by nostalgia yet relevant to our present moment, often poignant yet never weighed down by sticky-sweet sentiment. These are poems that will undoubtedly resonate with anyone who grew up here and that also paint vibrant, emotionally authentic word-portraits for anyone who did not.
These are also poems that draw on layers of meaning, that often feel slippery in the way they play with pronouns and point of view. As such, the reader is rewarded by close and multiple readings. Opening the collection at random, for example, I reread the first stanza of โPineapple Bunโ:
How did you walk here from childhood
Even the wide streets have worn themselves thin
Calloused fingers fight the sliding glass door
Nearly shaking off a piece of your epidermis
Is the golden yellow yesterdayโs tea-stained plate
Or the rust on the mirror from opening day
You sit in the center quietly trembling
Wondering about your insides
Suddenly losing their contents
Like most of the poems in the collection, the lines resist easy interpretation. We must untangle the ambiguity of who โyouโ is meant to beโapart from the obvious reference to the titular pineapple bun, something or someone else seems to inhabit these lines. Perhaps it is the poetโs memories or the poet himself. Perhaps it is the tangible presence of Hong Kongโs bygone days. Perhaps it is all of these things. In any case, a pineapple bun is not just a pineapple bun, or as the translator says in her introduction, referring to one of Chungโs central motifs, โa house is never just a houseโitโs a site complicated by hope, constraint and legacyโ.
โBowrington Bridgeโ is another standout for me. To borrow an additional observation from the translatorโs introduction, we have in both cases poems that โbreathe life into otherwise inanimate objects, imbuing them with meaningโ, but whereas โPineapple Bunโ feels intrinsically local, โBowrington Bridgeโ and its emotional themesโa sense of isolation, a once useful item no longer valued, ambiguous others who avoid contact or who are simply oblivious to such a small detail as they go about their businessโare deceptively universal. Arenโt all big cities like this? And yet, these are themes that unquestionably represent life in Hong Kong, a sort of cultural temperature-taking that speaks to the challenges of life in this city. In the poem, we see a scene through the eyes of the poet-observer:
A piece of paper on the road
Isnโt swept up by the windโฆ
Unable to bear anymore, a torn corner
Doesnโt seem to be hurting
As I read these lines, I step into the role of a โuniversalโ observer. And yet, in writing this poem, Chung was evidently inspired by a very specific local custom as well as a poetic tradition from outside the city. (For more details, see William Lauโs April 15 review here in Cha, in which he comments on Chungโs work as a translator of William Carlos Williams and โvillain-beatingโ as inspirations for this poem.) Here is a different kind of layered meaning, one that is embedded in the poem and yet remains invisible without some knowledge external to the poem itself. As fascinating as such details are, however, โa piece of paper on the roadโ still carries psychological weight for a reader who has no knowledge of them.
โThe Houseโ is another poem that is likely to speak to many, whether they live in Hong Kong or not. High rents and home prices are not unique to Hong Kong. Home ownership is increasingly a dream that feels close to unattainable for many and that actually is unattainable for many more. But while this may be the starting point for Chungโs poem, it is certainly not where it ends. Economic realities aside, I cannot help but read the first line of this poemโโThis house is not mine, itโs my fatherโsโโand think about my own and other peopleโs relationships with their fathers, as well as the broader definitions of the places we call โhomeโ and their psychological impact on us.
While so many of the poems in the collection strike a bullseye for me, however, there were a few that left me wondering how someone unfamiliar with Hong Kong would relate to them without some additional context. Poems such as โLanternsโ and โFestivalโ, for example, are unlikely to have as much resonance for someone unfamiliar with Mid-Autumn and other festivals observed in Hong Kong. Even for me, who is familiar with these holidays and has celebrated them with friends and family as an adult, these particular poems fell a bit flat. If I may be permitted to be so picky, I would say that these and a few of the other poems included towards the end of the collection dilute its overall brilliance. In contrast, a poem such as โHouseworkโ uses a Hong Kong domestic backdrop to far more powerful and universal effect. Even โPineapple Bun,โ which relies on a highly specific local food for some of its emotional resonance, seems likely to work better for someone unfamiliar with Hong Kong because of the other powerful imagery in the poem.
Such small, subjective quibbles aside, this is a collection to be recommended, and I most sincerely hope that A Cha Chaan Teng That Does Not Exist will not be the last collection to bring the beauty of Derek Chungโs poetry to an English-speaking audience.
How to cite: Bradley, Mary King. โBeing a Hongkonger: Derek Chungโs A Cha Chaan Teng That Doesnโt Exist.โ Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 1 Jun. 2024, chajournal.blog/2024/06/01/exist.
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Mary King Bradley is a Chinese-to-English translator, freelance editor, and writer who received her MFA in Literary Translation from the University of Iowa in the United States. Her translations have appeared in The Georgia Review, Mekong Review, Voice and Verse Poetry Magazine, and the bilingual anthology Writing in Difficult Times. She has also translated Peter Wing-kai Lokโs Emotional Capitalism: From Emotional Dictatorship to Emotional Redemption (Iff Books, 2024). A personal essay by Mary can be found in the Hong Kong English anthology Making Space: A Collection of Writing and Art (Cart Noodles Press, 2022). [All contributions by Mary King Bradley.]