February newsletter intro from Ya-Ling

Hi dear translators,

here is the next thing that needs translation: it's the abridged version of Ya-Ling's blog post, for the February newsletter. I've pasted it here as the blog post is the long version and you don't need to translate all of that.

It would be great if the translations can be done this week. Please write in the comments if you are translating.

thanks!

helen : )

Text to translate:

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Ya-Ling Peng writes about her project of investigation into Hakka culture and poetry, from women's perspectives.

Voices of Hakka Women

During the epidemic, as a theater person who works with the public every day, I suddenly got a rare and quiet vacation. However, the news I kept reading made me feel frustrated and uneasy about what was happening in the world. In 2018, when I went to Brazil to participate in Solos Feries, I established a group called HaHaHaKKa Family. In July 2021, someone asked me to come up with something that we could do together. So I suggested that we read a poem by Hakka poetess Chang Tian-Wan, Wait a Moment, Dear Sun, in each of our own languages. When we read the last sentence ‘Wait a moment, dear Sun.Wait for me to make a torch, And let me light Mom’s and Dad's way home.’ everyone was very excited. They felt that their power was positively expanding to every corner of the epidemic-raging world.

In 2022, I went to Odin Teatret to participate in TRANSIT 10. We cherished the moment of meeting and realized the impermanence of tomorrow's world. I was inspired to select poems from six Hakka poetesses . Each was translated into English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Mandarin and I invited more Magdalena women to join the project to read and record these poems.

In September 2022, Suzon Fuks and her husband James Cunningham came to Taiwan to film ‘Voices of Hakka Women’, inspired by these poetry readings. I took them to visit Hakka villages, to meet Hakka poetesses and artists, and to sample Hakka tea and cuisine.  I remembered my own surprise when visiting Hakka villages in 1995. I hoped that Suzon and James would represent their own surprise through videos, and that the spark of cultural collision would enrich the traditional colors of Hakka.

Whenever I share Hakka stories wth Magdalenas, they share similar things that they have encountered. Through the female Hakka voices, we gather the light of female artists from all corners of the world to illuminate the murky world with fragile gleams.

By Ya-Ling Peng
Uhan Shii Theatre, Taipei, Taiwan
25 November 2022

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