POETRY / FREE VERSE / EKPHRASIS
The Time Her Big Black Braid Comes Loose
“Descendants of Dragons and Snakes” & “The Story of the Braid”
have you seen waves twenty men tall
hoarse over her boat floor
have you felt her heart leap ’n fall
Rrroarsshhhhh…Rrroarsshhhhh…
her child afloat with hollow gourds
bouncing on winged sea demons’ claws
pouncing to snap umbilical vines
desperate to climb aboard
have you ogled at her big black braid bewitching
once huddled on sea-blue linen now waving wanton
on honey bronze skin aching
Rrroarsshhhhh…Rrroarsshhhhh…
have you touched her Asian child’s European face
have you glimpsed her shame cascade
Rrroarsshhhhh…Rrroarsshhhhh…
the Tanka maiden crooning freedom
soaring shyness braving darkness
swallowing gales since two thousand years before
red haired tassels brushed her fore
Rrroarsshhhhh…Rrroarsshhhhh…
her songs stream through sails porous
her fishrice contains no grains
her lessons of heavens’ tempers
her firewood but sunned driftwood
her nets bleed calloused fingers
her defense barren body ’n crooked toes unshod
her love incest or rape
her ancestors cursed sea gypsies raised
Rrroarsshhhhh…Rrroarsshhhhh…
have you ached for her descendants of
snakes ’n dragons of
shakers ’n movers ’n
global wanderers
seven centuries’ land arrogance
seven centuries’ identity shoved
dirt sees no low
but by the grace of Tin Hau
land tyrants’ cage of wrath she escapes
Rrroarsshhhhh…Rrroarsshhhhh…
Rrroarsshhhhh…Rrroarsshhhhh…
in night’s howling blanket a head bobs distress
haste! the umbilical vine thrusts forth
Rrroarsshhhhh…Rrroarsshhhhh…
fear not she bears no grudge on land rots
Rrroarsshhhhh…Rrroarsshhhhh…
a waveless ocean an ignorant notion
alas. her toe prints banned on solid shore
her people nonexistent in official cores
Rrroarsshhhhh…
© Pseu Pending (Seu) 2023
Dialogue between two art installations
No shoes. No schooling. No land rights. Not even to fetch firewood on land. Marriage with land people forbidden.
Smash! Goes the eggshell. Tanka 疍家 (“egg-community”) aptly alludes to fisher folks’ fragile livelihood. Survival fishing in Pearl River Delta was a gamble. The subject of derogatory terms under feudal laws in 1300s China, they did not escape tremulous fate until well after WWII.
Portuguese writer Henrique de Senna Fernandes’s novel The Bewitching Braid, fictional romance set in 1930s colonial Macau, sent artist Zhang Ke down the rabbit hole. What did the privileged young Portuguese student see in the outcast Chinese girl, a water-seller — on land, one notch above the Tanka — other than her luscious, long black braid?
Have the outcast no culture?
Illiteracy did not stop Tanka people from creating lyrics of rich oceanic rhythms. Tanka saltwater songs are now a protected folk heritage, tale-telling imageries abound, not found in official history.
兩盅白飯 任君施為…
有姑落水 無姑浮頭…
(excerpts from a saltwater song)
In desperation, “two cups rice” for the fisherwomen became the colonial sailor’s vice. By a stroke of misfortune, her fall into sea depths meant she disappeared forever.
The glaring neons on red and green, in a style often seen on traditional local seafood eateries’ signboards in Macau, proclaim A waveless ocean 海不揚波. A metaphor for peaceful times. A provocative curatorial touch. The dialogue against the backdrop of a third artwork begs the question: What’s behind the illusion?
Ironically, being banned from land had its benefits. It meant sea people were free from such oppressive, antiquated rural practices as punishing women with relationships outside wedlock by drowning in a bamboo cage.
Tanka women were the earliest Chinese women to encounter Europeans on the sea routes. They are the unknown maternal ancestors of many of today’s Eurasians in the region.
Zhang Ke calls out the colonial continuum.
In the end, I want to return dignity to these strong women.
Dignity.
Artist Zhang Ke
Zhang Ke lives and works in Macau and Shamian, Guangzhou, China, where Tanka people used to moor.
Born 1991. Zhang obtained her doctorate from Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, 2021. Her works are collected by the Art Museum of Central Academy of Fine Arts and Macau Museum of Art.
Does being married to a European husband make her less judgmental? Does she get dubious ogles?
