Tenn Nga-I, Freelancer

Sleek Full Moon 

(Translated by Tenn Nga-I)

Sleek full moon

Shines down on winding paddy levees

Sleek full moon

Slides into tea groves with seed-laden trees

Sleek full moon

Tints gold her little child’s eyes

Sleek full moon

She tenderly hums old lullabies

Sleek full moon

She hears the sweet magnolia bloom

Sleek full moon

Showers down on the young woman’s bosom

Balmy moonlight

Heart-searing night

Her beloved has gone afar, leaving her alone

On a barren moonlit night

In the Hakka language, the terms ngied va (月華) and ngied gong (月光) both mean “moon.” And in Hakka culture, as in many others, the moon symbolizes gentleness and femininity. Female poet Zhang Fangci’s “Sleek Full Moon,” an ode to the lunar orb, conveys the loneliness of a young woman pining for her absent husband.

In an earlier period, most of Taiwan’s Hakka people lived by subsistence farming in rugged mountain areas. Because their lives were hard, Hakka parents encouraged their offspring to leave home to seek education, opportunity, and a better life. Before the era of mass transportation, husbands often went off to work for years at a time, the responsibility for raising crops and children falling on young wives. Hakka women are frequently praised as strong, independent, and hardworking, yet despite this reputation for sturdiness, they too need love and affection.

In the first three stanzas, the title ngied fa (月華, moon) is expanded to ngied gong va va (月光華華), or “sleek full moon.” The phrase appears again and again, not only generating rhythm but also reinforcing the imagery of lunar brilliance, the repeated va va construction producing a musical effect. But the moon’s radiance in fact hints at Hakka women’s repressed emotions: weighed down by onerous daytime duties, these unacknowledged feelings emerge only gradually, in the still of the night, with the rising of the moon.  

In the opening stanza, a young woman seems to be looking out a window; gazing afar, she sees paddy levees, winding, uneven in height, and a tea orchard. In the second stanza her line of vision moves to the infant she is holding, whom she is singing to sleep. In the moon’s radiant light the young mother softly hums a lullaby, the moonshine tinting the baby’s eyes a gold color. 

The perspective then shifts to the woman’s sensory perceptions. She seems to hear sounds of the coconut magnolia (Hakka: ya hab) opening, and feels that the moonlight is like water, showering down on her bosom. The flower’s blossoming echoes the woman’s body, which is in the bloom of youth. In contrast to the radiant moonlight, a restless anxiety lies deep within her – she yearns for her husband, hoping they will soon be reunited. 

In the final stanza the moonlight is like a balm, moistening the earth, a counterpoint to the lovesickness and turmoil in the young woman’s heart. On this lonely moonlit night, she can no longer suppress the feelings welling up in her like boiling water, all because “Her beloved has gone afar, leaving her alone / On a barren moonlit night.”

Qiu Maojing, MA student, Graduate Institute of Taiwan Literature, National Taiwan University

Zhang Fangci (1964- ), a native of Greater Taichung’s Dongshi Township, began writing essays at nineteen years of age. She graduated from Hsinchu Normal College’s (today’s National Hsinchu University of Education) Art Department in 1985, and later earned a master’s degree from her alma mater. Affirming the nativist spirit, she joined the Li Poetry Society in 1986, serving on the group’s business and editing committees. She has also served as a Taipei City Hakka Affairs Council committeeperson, Ministry of Education Hakka language copy-editor, and is currently an instructor at Xiulang Elementary School in New Taipei City.

As a student Zhang wrote short stories, essays, and modern poetry, receiving numerous on-campus literary prizes. She won the Wu Chuo-liu Literary Award for modern poetry two years in a row with the poems “Flower Market” and “Reincarnation,” subsequently publishing Off Track (1993), her first collection of poems. Grounded in life, her writing is characterized by concise language and simple imagery.

Zhang Fangci cofounded La Balena Poetry Society with Du Pan Fangge, Jiang Wenyu, Shen Huamo, Li Yuanzhen, Chen Yuling and others in 1998, publishing La Balena Poetry Collection. The following year she released her second poetry collection, Red Vortex (1999), which won the Chen Xiuxu Poetry Prize. From the early years’ “mother” imagery to the later “female Other” writing, critics have lauded Zhang’s creative “feminine consciousness.”

In 2001 Zhang began writing Hakka poetry, her proposal for Who Will Come to Sing Mountain Songs winning a grant from the National Culture and Arts Foundation. Tomorrow (2004), her first collection of Hakka poetry, was published in the Hsinchu City Culture Bureau’s Literature from Northern Taiwan series. Zhang’s Hakka works are concerned with the gradual disappearance of collective memory and Hakka feminine consciousness. Because she speaks and writes the rare Dapu Hakka dialect, her work is particularly formidable and valuable. Poet Chen Yuling has praised her poetry’s “scent of mud.” Among female members of the Li Poetry Society, she and two elders, Du Pan Fangge and Li Yufang are known as the “three Fang,” implying that the spirit of Hakka poetry has been passed on to a new generation. The National Museum of Taiwan Literature has published The Collected Poems of Zhang Fangci (2010), and Zhang took first place in the Hakka poetry category of the Rong Hou Taiwan Poet’s Prize (2012), testament to her literary achievements.