Disappearing into the Vast Main
by Chris Song, translated from the Chinese by Tammy Lai-Ming Ho
{{{ Hong Kong—Friday 31 July 2020 }}}
The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases is 121. Consecutive days of intense heat; the heavy rain this morning brought a sliver of refreshment. Wanchai tends to be packed with people and choked with traffic, noisy, even in the evening. Because of the pandemic, there are fewer people out, and fewer cars still. The streets are even more desolate in the rain, and the city is surprisingly calm. Not too far from here, near the Hopewell Centre, large machinery thunders away, its sound seems particularly distinct, much like an invisible behemoth descending upon us, announcing its arrival, menacing the world…
At dusk, the rain almost stopped. We took a walk on the near-deserted Central Waterfront Promenade. Every tall mansion on either side of the harbour was submerged in cloud and fog. The weather was unpredictable: cloudy or bright. There were barely any pedestrians but journalists wielding cameras and monopods were rushing towards Tamar, where the Chief Executive was giving a press conference. When we arrived at Tamar Park, the rain picked up again. There were expats running in the torrent, their ears plugged with music and podcasts but their faces unmasked. Perhaps these preventive measures mean nothing to them! We walked for a few more minutes in the direction of the Convention Centre, and the rain swiftly thickened, gusts and rain crisscrossing. We had no choice but to turn back towards home. Colourless rain beat down on the surface of the water in the harbour, each drop finding its sense of purpose before disappearing into the vast main. Against a darkened sky, the raindrops were like tiny chocolate chips…
People were leaving work. Office staff finish their day earlier on Friday. Everyone had been tortured enough after being pushed around by such unreasonable policies for almost a week; finally they could relax a little. We saw two nurses waiting for takeaways on the ground-floor McDonald’s in Admiralty Centre. Perhaps they didn’t go in because their clothes were wet, their shoes soaked? They leaned on the handles of long umbrellas, obviously exhausted. And the umbrellas looked like they would break at any moment…
Returning home, a Typhoon No. 3 signal was hoisted…
今天香港121宗新冠肺炎確診病例。連日炎熱，早上終於下起了大雨，帶來一絲清涼。灣仔人多車多，通常比較嘈雜，就連晚上也不例外。疫情之下，街道上的人和車本來就少了很多，下起雨來更顯蕭索，城市出奇的安靜。不遠處合和中心附近的工地仍傳出大型機械運作的聲音，這種聲音在雨中好像特別清晰，彷彿一頭看不見的巨獸君臨天下，正在宣告他的到來，威嚇世人⋯⋯
接近傍晚時，雨幾乎停了，趁人少到去中環海濱長廊散步。雲霧環繞著維港兩岸的每一座高樓，天氣正是陰晴未定。一路上罕有普通行人，只見背著「長槍短炮」的記者不斷趕去添馬艦。到達添馬艦公園時，雨勢開始變大。仍有expat穿著運動服冒雨跑步，戴著耳機，但沒有戴口罩。看來很多措施對他們不起作用吧！往灣仔會展中心方向走了幾分鐘，雨勢更加猛烈，橫風橫雨，只好回頭了。海面波濤洶湧，原本無色的雨點灑落海面，每一滴在消失於海裏之前，都有一個屬於自己存在，一個暗黑的時空，彷彿灑落海面的是朱古力豆⋯⋯
回家時剛好是下班時間，禮拜五打工仔都比較早放工，被各種不合理的措施折磨了一個禮拜，終於可以緩解一下抗疫的疲勞。走到金鐘海富中心樓下時，看到兩位護士在麥當勞門口等外賣，沒有進去也許是因為身上在滴水吧，鞋子也都濕透了。她們用長雨傘撐著地面，支撐著身體，顯然已經很疲倦，傘似乎隨時都會折斷⋯⋯
回到家時，天文台掛起了三號風球⋯⋯
Rainy Cheung Sha Wan
How to cite: Song, Chris. “Disappearing into the Vast Main.” Translated by Tammy Lai-Ming Ho. Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, 31 Jul. 2020, chajournal.blog/2020/07/31/vast-main/.
Chris Song (author) is a poet, translator and editor based in Hong Kong. He has published four collections of poetry and many volumes of poetry in translation. Chris received an “Extraordinary Mention” at Italy’s UNESCO-recognized Nosside World Poetry Prize 2013 and the Young Artist Award at the 2017 Hong Kong Arts Development Awards. In 2018 he obtained a PhD in Translation Studies from Lingnan University. More recently he won Haizi Poetry Award in 2019. Chris is currently Editor-in-Chief of Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine and Executive Director of the International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong.
Tammy Lai-Ming Ho (translator) is the founding co-editor of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, an editor of the academic journals Victorian Network and Hong Kong Studies, and the first English-language Editor of Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine. She is an Associate Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University, where she teaches poetics, fiction, and modern drama. She is also the President of PEN Hong Kong, a Junior Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities, an advisor to the Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing, and an Associate Director of One City One Book Hong Kong. Tammy’s first collection of poetry is Hula Hooping (Chameleon 2015), for which she won the Young Artist Award in Literary Arts from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. Her first short story collection Her Name Upon The Strand (Delere Press), her second poetry collection Too Too Too Too (Math Paper Press) and chapbook An Extraterrestrial in Hong Kong (Musical Stone) were published in 2018. Her first academic book is Neo-Victorian Cannibalism (Palgrave, 2019). Tammy edited or co-edited a number of literary volumes having a strong focus on Hong Kong, the most recent one being Twin Cities: An Anthology of Twin Cinema from Singapore and Hong Kong (Landmark Books, 2017). She guest-edited a Hong Kong Feature for World Literature Today (Spring 2019), the Hong Kong special issue of Svenska PEN’s PEN/Opp, and an e-chapbook of Hong Kong poetry published by Cordite Publishing. Tammy is also a translator and her literary translations can be found in World Literature Today, Chinese Literature Today, Pathlight: New Chinese Writing, among other places, and International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong volumes (2015, 2017 and 2019). Her own poems have been translated into Chinese, French, German, Japanese, Latvian, and Vietnamese. She is currently co-editing several academic volumes in addition to 2020: A Bilingual Anthology of Hong Kong Poetry.
(Header photograph © Oliver Farry.)
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