1958-07-12 — Page 5

Let's Take Hongkong's Word

By R. W. Thompson

CHUCHO: A pear-shaped vegetable 'which grows on a vine.. It Is the scehlum edule of the botanists. In the West Indies, it Bas the same name in Jamaica but is called Christofine in Trinidad. In Mexico, where I believe the Spaniards Orsi daw this vegetnile, the name is Chayote.

....

CHONG BAM! This was originally nothing more than a long town, as the Cantonese words, ch'eung alam imply. In Hongkong English chong sam by the name given to a dress style which incorporates a high Chinese collar and a spilt sided skirt. Thin name appears frequently in the English- Inngunge press.

THE CHINA✨ MAIE,

SATURDAY, JULY 12, 1958,

Another Short Story By A Hongkong Writer

THE LEGACY OF LIU PUI

highly of those paintings. For Llu Pul had always thought him there was something you

to

in

Page

in this kind of student demon- stration and that kind of student demonstration. One time, I think, he demonstrated gaifist the Treaty of Versaillos. Two of tila, best friends were killed in that demonetration and he himself was almost killed. But what did it accomplish? Tho Treaty of Versàllion remained Just the same." was right"

They did what they thought

Yu-ming can do.". "That is the only thing a man' "Evon, a righteous man must

Phocyle said.", She

mid,

LIU

IU PUI sat at his black ebony desk, silent, Madame Soong's on your Way

causes, Liu Put thought, but ono sald, "for I do not believe austere and immobile. Although the electric attend a show, with her." Phon running away either. What has

tò: the offico. I have agreed to cannot go through life always, what, he saya.”

Lit Pulsmiled as he listened radiator at the foot of his desk had already done one of the two black ebony chairs and truth? Have they really be- ism. When he smiled ho became

nde cald, She seated herscif in become of honesty, integrity to his son's comments on Too much to dispel the coldness from the room, he sat which separated by small come lost causes? During his Lenigh. The intenseness of the with his hands thrust deep into the broad sleeves matching table-stook against university days when he was so eyes softened and bilm fea know when to show his, right-

the wall between Llu Pul's much involved in the May Lures last their austerity. cousucas," of his cotton-padded jacket of dark blue silk. desk and the teakwood book- Fourth Movement and all tho There must be come truth looked at her watch and

He had been sitting like that since dinner, our scroll paintings of land the West, he

case. Abaye the chairs hung student demonstrations against in the statement that ono added: "I have no time to argue used to believe turns to Taoism only In the with you. It is time for me to enveloped in a silence that somehow conveyed the scapes representing the four that the most courageous thing twilight. of one's life, he go out. But I forbid you to take quality of thought. His eyes, dark and very exons. They were done in the a than could do was lay thought. Thirty years ago, his part in this nonsense... With that style of the Southern School of down his Bfe for lits cause. reaction to Taoism had been she got up and, after saying intense, dominated his gaunt and hollow-cheeked landscape painting, as begun by Now he knew that the real much the same as Yu-ming's,, goodbye to 'Liu Pul, left tho face. insinunting some lingering sadness in his life. His

They were tragic eyes, tragic and lonely, the Tang Dynasty.

Wang Wel, the poet-painter of courage was to Huo wills one's Ho too had thought in terms of room.

cause, for to live tuas to doubt, organisation, industrialisation to be uncertain, and to see one's and machines. Now recog- nose was sharp and unusually tall for a Chinese. It

the context of Wie's complicated mad rush towards dehumanisa Left alone in the study, both cause not in the abstract but in niech the munia for what it is, a added to the severity of his features and at the

truthu.

tion and a standardisation of life. father and son the misty mountaina - and

were lost for same time lent his face a slightly foreign air.

How he longed for a return to words. Only their eyes met, and varty. BEER which seemed to

sanity, return to the Tao. at the moment of meeting, they CHE TAAL: Car tyre, In Hongkong Cantonese.

convey the essence of nature, The second: Behind him, a large collection not to have been decried. It had something simple yet enigmatic.

Aloud, he said: "You are right spoko more eloquently than element is an Englisit toan-word. In short, f English canot "books--mostly in English meant too the planting of fake Seeing hig wife against that Just then, Yu-ming entered in what you say, but Mr Hau is words. borrow Cantonese terms for once unfamiliar things, so can-lined the wall. The arrange items so that his employer could background of pervading charm, the room: Yu-ining was Liu right also."

"I will think-about the Cantonese from English.

ment was without order for get a vital, thirty minutes 10 Llu Put wished that He could Pul's eldest són, a well-bullt

"How can we Both be right colfotiat", Liu Pul said, finally. John Stuart Mill stood between dump some stock or to make a be like art, pure, unadulterated, 3nd of eighteen with close at the same time?" Yu-ming Yu-ming nodded and walked CHOP CHOP: Quick. This expression is well-known fo

the Homer and Marx and die plays small fortune on the gold ex- without fls irrelevancies and its cropped hair and a

vigorously asked,

alowly from the room. English-speaking world where it was carried by Eastern of Bernard Shaw kept com- change.

harsh realities.

"That is the healthy complexion. His bearing

mystery of the Liu Pul picked up the volume Action, Eric, Partridge, A Dictionary of Slang and 'Uncon-1 pany with the confessloth uf And to think that he onco

of Toolst ventional English, London, 1053. anys that it has been recorded Saint Augustine and the poems had so many noble principles me

quotations absent- "The Old Tiger summoned was almost military and his Sun 700," du Pul said..

A silence for Pidgin since about 1860,

descended and for mindedly and began thumbing He niso states, rather vaguely, of Millon and Kents

today." Liu Pul sald, t-san type of school uniform and Ideals. Hed it all been sheer abruptly,

added to the impression. His a moment each became cecupled through the pages. What should that it is probably from Cantonese,

the hypocrisy At the opposite end of

"Oh, he

facial features wero not unlike with his privale thought. Then he write, he wondered. What has returned?

checks Yu-ming spoke. CH'OK FAN! East and West have met again here.

kind of a legacy should he leave learned some different truths, thought he was still in Shang- Liu Pul's, although his The Orst study, to the left of the en.

"Father, were well-filled and his nose

Yu-ming like, for example, the one that hat." Phoenix said, "What was lacked that quality of bleakness, darting a glance at Phoenix, as he thinks is right, that is true. element is really English chalk' and that is what the ex-books was on display.

said, behind? A man must do what trance, another collection

his wife loved to utter, that rice it that he wanted?" pression means,

These bowls could not be filled with volumes, imprisoned behind the ideals?

if he did not want her to share But how does he know what is The usual sort of thing. He Yu-ming said, es he lay a

"Father, I return your books,'

the confidence which he now wants the mayor defend volume of Tacist quotations and about to Impart

was right? Is it right, for the sake of CHUE KOO LIK; Another English loan-word in Hongkong glass door of a large leakwood

Thinking of these things ed." Cantonese. It is in faet the word 'chocolate. This word was bookcase, were in Chinese. lent to the English by the Spaniards who introduced them They included the Four Book: ught that morning's meeting"Is the mayor really so im two volumes of Chuang Tzu of

with the Old Tiger back to him.. portant to him?" to the commodity. The Spaniards themselves were obliged of T. Po and The Fu, a num- against the mayor. We will have said. "He would stand to lose a

His voice, too, was now full of pride? and the Five Classics, the poema "There is too

much clamour

"I would imagine so," Llu Pui to borrow the un

unknown beverage from ber of Taoist scripts, and the Nahual-speaking Indians In Mexico, Whether Tho Indians themselves borrowed from someone else I cannot say. Lusin the satirist.

wories of a few moderns like

CHUNAM:, A lime made of crushed and burnt sea-shells. This On the desk beforė Liu Pul

Ime was introduced to China by the Portuguese, through

spread his writing parapherna- Maevo. The earliest occurrence of this word in a European in. The thick round stick of ink source is the "Italian. form clonaipe, (1510) Many variants reled like some black phulite appear in the next four and a half centuries; clifnam, ebraam, symbol between the stone init chuname, etc. The name appears to have originated in India slab and the eight-inch where it occurs in both Hindi and the Dravidian languages,

for the

The commonest Indo-Portuguese form is chunambo,'

COLO: Just a typical Pidgin adaptation of a common English

"word: cold,

COMPOUND;

him the ability

of

high

for

or had

he merely

David T. K. Wong

hia

Perhaps kone

and the two.

nover industrialise

wonderful

his family, to live so blatantly out of tune with his ideals? Or is it right to sheriffce the wel- fare of his family for something "What is it?". Lu Pul said. as Insubstantial na integrity and He wished somebody gentleness.

would decide for him and yet at the same time he knew that only he alone could decide. Then a passage from the book caught hi eye. He read:

After Nature Was lost, опе talked of

After character was lost, then one talked of kindness;

After kindness 108 lost, then one talked of rightequances;

one

After righteousness was lost, then talked of rules of con- duct.

Now, rules of conduct indicate the thinning out of the innate honesty of mán.....

ملة

Liu, Pui read

passage again and thought for writing brush which he had set moment. Then 'ho picked up the down when Phoenix entered. He knew what he must write

THE END (Copyright Reserved)

the desk. "Shall I replace them gold, "You will not know their in the bookcase for you?"

"There is no need," Llu Pui places. Then, remembering the purpose for which his son had

"The student association1 has borrowed his books, he added: planned a demonstration against "Your essay on

Taoism, is it the mayor tomorrow," Yu-nung finished?"

said. "Everyone knows that he "Yes," Yu-ming cald. "But I la corrupt and should be,rem was very critical and Mr Hsu moved from office. JL wynele did not like il I sud Chinn help us if you would rally pub-. could brush container of light run to case the pressure," the Old lot, of government business, not become great if everyone were writing an editorial on the sub-

character;" and Nie opinion to our support y Porcelain, Within the container Tiger had said, "If he were re- the writing brushes stood in

to mention the free hand in the a Tocist." We had a long argu- ject for tomorrow."

marketing of 'UNRRA ment and Mr Hsu said I Wis

"Ming, I do not want you to clordered stalls, while at the moved from office, it would be black centre of the desk rice paper much at alake.

most inconvenient There to too supplies."

too young to appreciate Taoist get involved in this trouble," lay in a neat thin pad,

And besides,

philosophy,"

Phoenix Interjected, before Liu there are certain rules of con-

"Then I suppose, there is no, Mr Hau was an old Chinese Pul could reply, "You are going Unlike most Chinese, Liu Pul duct, The mayor is our friend alternative Used in India, China and elsewhere in the East had not forsaken the writing and we must help our friends have been asked."

but to do as you scholar whom Llu Pui had hired to the university next term. for an enclosure in which a house or factory stands, 6. brush for the convenience

to tutor his children in things Therefore you should be old Hongkong: The University Compound. Although this word the fountain pen, for he liked laughed that gruff, cynical laugh

of Then

the Old Tiger had

"No," Liu, Pui said. "I can Chinese because he wanted to enough to stay out of trouble. looks so 'Latin', (ef, the chemist's All-Prescriptions Carefully

resign."

balance.

what they learn each if the mayor is corrupt s Compounded or the etymologically doubtful pound and Im-to see his characters appear in which he hated more than hit "Do not speak such foolish day at the American missionary nothing to do with you." pound of the man who pens cattle). Our word seems to be bold forceful strokes rather usual gro

****ness," Phoenix said, a trife school. He did not want his "People ilke him are ruining Malayan kampong which is also used, according to the Oxford than thin emaciated lines. To At last Liu Pui took his hands sharply. "One cannot go through children to grow up like So our Dietlonary to deserlle a village, quarter of a town occupied characters was not just a plea were long and thin, almost like The dimeuities in obtaining a and those of China half remem- "Each one of us has a responsi

to form goed out of his sleeves.

country," Yu-ming sold, Hie always Aghiing for lost many modern Chinese, with the with all the seriousness and by a particular nationality,

His fingers causes, You are no longer young. ways of the West half-learned passionate ar, the Chinese Kampong at

Idealism of youth. Batavia. In the latter sense campon occurs in a Portuguese sant accomplishment but

a worsun's. He hesitated a mo- writer of 1813. Making fun of the Engilshman's use of exotic vital necessity, as Important as ment before selecting a brush good position are many and the bered. He wanted them to have billy to see that the welfare of words when obrand the India Gazelle of 1781 (3rd March)|huving an honest face. There from the brush container. Hondation does not make things the best of both worlds for he the country is protected." observes in doggerel that Godown usurps the warehouse place, fore he lost no opportunity in did

саміст. not want

Besides, there are the wak thoroughly convinced that to begin

"That is for the government Compound denotes each walled space,

making perfect his own.

editorial, to begin that act of children to think of Yu-ming armething

would to decide," Phoenix said, "You *prostitution to which he had versity next term

will be ready- for the uni- come from the fusion of the will only get into trouble hold- COMPRADOR: The griffin housewife two days ashore talks

submitted himself so often. In

ing a demonstration and nothing familiarly of her comprador.

younger eres ore all in school. You should not show dis- will be changed. If you do not (When writing to her mother

'the past. she may give it an Italianate flourish compradore); which he was responsible as a nothing so very different from

Event the daily editorial

The editorial requested was They all depend on you." respect by arguing with your believe me you can ask your cannot go tutor Phoenix said, severely. father. When He was at the word has still a wider application in Hongkong. It was

lost fighting for seized other editorials he had written through life formerly the name of a native servant employed by Euro- newspaper editor was

"I cannot help It, Yu-ming university be used to take part peans' In India and further East. His job was to puchuse Pon as an occasion for prac, it was true, but somehow at necessaries and keep the household accounts. The name was Using his calligraphy. This he the back of his mind there was sometimes, given to a house-steward, It is now obsolete in did each evening after dinner, n vague feeling that some India. Richard Cocis in his Diary published in 1815, refers to before returning to his ofce for crucial point had been reached

and that if he an incident in which "the Hollanders... thrust their com- other work.

meant to fight prador for cats buyer) out of dore for a lecherous knave.” But tonight he made no at- for the things in which he be There is a reference in the Dally Telegraph of November 14, | tempt to write. He was con-

lleved must do.so now or 1885, to the use of this word on the Chian coust a century scions only of a nagging feel- become irretrievably lost. Ago: "The water-thieves have friends among the compradors ing that was at once anger, Then, as ho stroked his writ- of Hongkong and Shanghal.” Comprador is another borrow- frustration and despair. The ing brush on the initslab, he ing from the Portuguese when it originally meant simply feeling had haunted him all day, heard the clear, precise voice of 'buyer,' Comprar means ‘id buy' In Standard Portuguese." ever since that morning's meet his wife say: "your editorial, is ing with the Old Tiger. The Old it Anished" ile looked up to CONGEE: Rice slops, the porridge of the East. In Hobson Tiger was his employer, an al- ce Phoenix. crossing the study, Jobson it is claimed to be of Tamil origin: kanil, 'boiling, most illiterate man who through pulling on a glove. She was a The same Dictionary states that this name is given to a kind shrewd and ruthless business small woman with a round face of home-made starch in India but I have not heard it so transactions had built for him Through the red incision of her and a pair of large, alert eyes. used in Hongkong. Another Anglo-Indian word is conlet-cap self an empire which now in- 'storched night-cap. In India the lock-up was once called the cluded three banks, flue mouth her teeth showed white and sparkling, like the seeds of congee-house as conjee-house, In 1838 the Government re-newspapers, two steam ship

a freshly cut melon. commended that "all men confined for drunkenness should, companies, a dozen textile milis if possible, be confined by themselves in the congee-house ull and a score of other ventures. sober." The same word meant battle-põund in Northern India. His business methods, coupled The word congee in the sense of rice slops has been used by with his fierce face and char- many more. It is canti Ip, some of the Portuguese dialects of acteristic

Her brisks, efficient air always growbriquet.

bad carly reminded

the the East as against canla in the standard language. The earned him his

Liu Pul, of .eighteenth century Ad Men Chi Luah in its glossary of the

Phoenix he had read about in Portuguese dialect of Macao, records the name kan-chl which had not been pleasant for alt and it led him often to

Working for the Old Tiger: Dream of the Red Chamber looks like an attempt to represent pronunciation of the some Pul. It had meant involvement that his wife too would have. think form. It is probably that the English form congée is to be in the sordid world of business, made an excellent family ad- derived from the Indo-Portuguese canil and not direct from

Q world which he detested any native Indian lamguage.

at ministrator had they lived in its best but which he often saw the olden days of the large ex- CONGER PIKE: An est-like fish-Mürvenesʊx 'nrahais, Cailed |only at its worst,

tended family,"

"No," meant writing under Moon, Bin in Cantonese, There is a good coiltellon of fish-orders,

Lu Pui seld, slowly. names in English and Cantonese 'In Common Marine Food- ought not to have been praised

praising that which "I have not yet begun."

"I thought If you had finish- [Fish*s of Hongkong by G. A, C. Herklots and 5. Y. Lin,

and decrying that which ought ed you could escort

It had

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