voice from the root, reclaiming
In the past two years, I had asked my father to teach me his mother tongue Hakka with a recorder in an impromptu way. Together with recordings of conversations with his relatives and friends, I jotted down notes in codes of Cantonese, Mandarin, English and self-invented symbols. The recordings are transposed to a TV set and two speakers. Audience can listen to the dialogues between me and my father and learn Hakka together.
Artist’s Statement
My father is a Hakka (“Hakka Chinese”) from Dongguan, China. He came to Hong Kong in the 70s and has lived here since then. As a half-Hakka son, I could not speak or even understand a single word in Hakka. Not knowing your parents’ mother tongue from Mainland China is, however, the “norm” in Hong Kong. After living with the taken-for-granted Hongkonger identity for over 20 years, the “crisis” of not knowing the Hakka language as a Hakka suddenly emerged. Therefore I asked my father to teach me Hakka, and tried to initiate dialogues with him.
