Translated from Chinese to English by Christina Ng
Translator’s note
This poem is from Dan Ying’s poetry collection 发上岁月 (The Years in My Hair), where quite a number of poems depict marginalized characters in Singaporean society or history. I was interested in this poem as it was a tragic portrayal of Majie—or maidservants—who gave up chances at love and freedom in order to provide for their families. I was drawn to how Dan Ying vividly used the imagery of hair and water; in Chinese poetry, these elements have a very delicate and feminine quality to them, and she made great use of their fluidity and amenability to allude to the soft yet strong Majie character. It took strength for a woman in those times to leave her homeland full of hope, only to be left behind in a foreign land to spend her final days in loneliness. When translating, my main concern was to truthfully translate these feelings of desolation and fatalism through the indelible imagery and emotional intensity so delicately woven by the poet into her words.
The compound nature of Chinese words makes it difficult to translate some imagery into English in as economical a way as the Chinese language does. With Chinese, a string of words could be intense, succinct and still keep to a consistent internal rhythm. Sometimes English can do the same but at the risk of losing some of the original musicality. What I chose to adhere to here is emotional vocabulary: to evoke the same emotion and stay true to the central image but give myself a bit more liberty with the musicality of the poem, allowing myself to respond to it as I hear it. I wanted to cleave to the original music in the poet’s words but also be able to ‘sing’ it in the rhythm that it had evoked in me, so to speak.
Comb of Chastity
It is not
just the soft fall of black, shiny
hair on her shoulders
It is, ah,
the dazzle
of youth—
As she winds her way
from Tangshan to Nanyang
Caressed by the breeze through banana leaves
Drenched by the rain on coconut plantations
The black waterfall of her hair tumbles down
a thousand li to a tiny waist
A graceful sway, a shape of svelte
Sends the hearts of many lads
…………..a-flutter
Sends the thoughts of many honest fellows
…………..a-wander
On the ninth day of the sixth lunar month, the sparrows’ chirps
rouse the sky from its slumber
Every living thing opens its eyes and discovers
how wondrous the world still is
Not noticing how the beauty rising to the day’s brim
would be swept up with a small bamboo comb held in palm
An upward brush of the hair patted into a bun
that stays, lifelong, up—
Strands of dreams, wisps of romance
combed away
Bottomless affections, endless wistfulness
of lads and honest fellows
combed away
The row of teeth lined up along the comb’s shaft
pulls through her tresses to
bring it to order, to rigour
So chaste, no room for blunder
Even her gaze over the shoulder
is as crystal clear
as ice and jade
Feelings collected into 3,000 strands of hair
Coiled up high on the head
Since the ninth day of the sixth lunar month—
Smoothed, servile, sealed
Never again will they fly loose in the breeze
Never again will they entice Heaven’s heaves
Never again will they be adorned
Every gaze that falls upon the hair
is sad, every look that falls upon the hair is
crestfallen,
a disconsolation
Why are the dazzles,
the dazzles of youth,
fettered to a long and lonely road?
Why are the ripples,
the ripples of a girl’s water-like heart,
calmed by a comb into sighs
night after night?
Why is the adoration of young lads
arranged into lifelong regret?
Why? What is the reason?
Buddha, Goddess of Mercy
Seated on their lotus plinths
Eyes compassionate and kind, they listen
in silence
to the young girl murmuring
a vow of chastity
For the Tangshan home in tatters
For the brothers carrying on the family name
For the chance to flee
from an unknown fate of marriage
…………..……….….of being someone’s daughter-in-law
No resentment lingers
When you offer up a lifetime of loneliness
with your whole heart
and two soft hands
to feed and clothe your family
On the day you decided to make a vow of chastity, you said,
‘The temple bells rang loud and bright
in the smoke’s tendrils, the smiling faces
of my father, mother and brothers cloud my sight’
You said,
‘There was so much joy in my heart’
Is that the whole truth?
Would you never, ever regret?
A whirlwind fifty years
Roiled away choked
With dirt, grease, filth
With no hate and no love those years slipped by
Only calluses on your hands as you toiled away
For the family and nephews far, far away
Building their houses one after another
Now, the twilight wanes with age, the night exhales with care
You are a guttering flame on the candle
These relations, these people who carry your blood,
Would they gift a tile of roof
over your head? An inch of earth
for your feet?
That year when you knelt before the altar
Devoting yourself to a life of chastity
Your heart bursting with joy, your one filial heart
stirring many others
Have you ever thought
how half a century later
you would comb
your tangled strands of sadness?
Is every comb a deeper cry of sorrow?
Is every comb a messier jumble of knots? Finally,
the tangles in your hair become
an interwoven web of woes
knotted together like words
entwined, as if they were
memories too dishevelled
to look back upon
Afterword: During the early 20th century in the Guangdong Province of Shunde in China, there was a custom for women to take a vow of chastity. These women who combed up their hair into a bun are called ‘Majie’, and many of them came to Southeast Asia (or Nanyang) to be maidservants. There was a Singaporean TV series called ‘Years of Being a Self-Comb Woman’ which shows the origin of this custom, and it features interviews with a few of these old Majie. A lot of them suffer in old age; one of them, who sent her pay back to her hometown every month for fifty years and paid for seven houses for her nephews, was not welcomed back when she wanted to go home to live out her old age. There are some whose employers look upon them as family and take care of them in their old age, but they are few and far between.
Illustration by Griselda Gabriele
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