Friday, June 25, 2010

dragon-boat festival

the festival has passed for nearly 10 days already, but my father sent me a bundle of photos yesterday. Poor him. He had to ask somebody else to do that for him, while he is afraid of seeking help from family members. I tried to teach him using computer whenever I visited him. Nevertheless, my stay was always too short, while he was always occupied with a lot of other activities.

anyway, since he requested from our last phone conversation for that I should give him a message once I received those photos, so I did it today right after got up. (I couldn't do that before going to bed last night, because I didn't want to wake him up by the beeping of phone, in the middle of night.) From his photos, I saw a poem which he wrote in dragon-boat festival, so I sent him several lines as well together with the notice message.

father's poem:


which means:
dragon-boats contest at the ferry for over thousand years
and the remembrance of Qu Yuan gives the most legitimate ancient cause.
the amusing Koreans, who are ignorance of shamefulness,
dared to cheat the world's heritage council for the renown of the cheers.

mine:
which means:
the dragon-boats furious the custom long long ago,
while the dumpling-leafs wrap thousand years folk.
the raindrops favor the desire of a chanting tour,
while the heat cooks the stickiness of the fragrant rice-bowl.

2 comments:

Spring Day said...

Ha, your father's poem is just a contribution to the struggle for cultural hegemony - which certainly the Korean effort to "own" the dragon boat festival is as well. I wonder what would happen if Germany would try to enter "carnival" into the cultural heritage list, and then Brazil would claim that Germans are frauds... It may be possible to find some roots of a festival in the darkness of history, yet it is really difficult to say who "owns" a festival.
Your poem is certainly much deeper, and will require further thinking from my side, especially about the connection between raindrops and chanting tours.

ayu1234 said...

it cannot help. you know, although my father is actively doing cultural business, nevertheless, I am the only person in this family, who have had formal literature training. Besides, I guess most of Chinese people are just to used with the sense of fighting, while all these kinds of fighting are meaningless to me.