• 貓仔專有嘅“樂房”

Hong Kong Cats by Evette Kwok, August 2018

Simon Patton 著

我雖然已經學咗好多年廣東話，但係有時仲會犯一啲愚蠢嘅錯誤。譬如，我香港朋友上星期寫咗封電郵俾我，信上提到佢冇耐之前去“樂房”，見到兩隻貓貓喺度調緊情，場景好得意！

讀完之後，我零舍佩服：哇，香港真係好勁！除咗海洋公園為人興建“水上樂園”之外，嗰度亦都有人專門為貓隻設立類似嘅娛樂場所，以便貓仔成日都可以玩得好開心！睇嗰張相我哋知道，香港為貓貓提供嘅“樂房”真係好正，到處有好多好味道又好聞嘅食物（其中肯定包括魚肉！），又有可以玩伏匿匿嘅地方，亦都有唔少暖粒粒適合瞓懶覺嘅匿處。總之，咁樣嘅地方真係一個貓有所樂嘅天堂。而且，玩得好開心嘅貓仔又可帶嚟好處：佢哋可以做出好大貢獻俾食環署，令到香港唔少鼠患嚴重或鼠患指數過高嘅地方，漸漸獲得紓緩。

上個月，我有機會再次睇到一位土耳其導演嘅紀錄片，題目正正係伊斯坦堡城市嘅街貓，嗰度啲貓貓梗係多到數唔到㗎啦。佢哋嘅日子過得好唔錯，有好多當地人助貓為樂，好鐘意餵貓仔、照顧啱啱出世或者生病嘅貓仔。不過，雖然如此，都仲係冇香港咁好，因為伊斯坦堡市内，一間專門為貓建立嘅樂房都冇！

哎呀！我真係一舊“大番薯”，一個“大傻瓜”，諗法點會咁惃頭惃腦呀？！對香港貓貓樂房諗咗好耐之後，我先至意識到信上寫嘅係個“藥”字，同樂趣冇乜直接關係！不過 ，低B嘅語言錯誤有其獨特嘅魅力，可以令到我哋人類活得活潑啲，想像力多啲，喺十分乏味嘅現實生活中，提供機會俾我哋向著充滿希望嘅方向出發。

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Tibet: Recent Photographs by Yu Jian (1)

Streetscape, Tibet. Photograph by Yu Jian 2018

Notes on Thick Brown Paper: In Tibet • Yu Jian (1994)

Photograph by Yu Jian

• The etymological root of the Tibetan world is “origin”. There is nothing static about this notion of origins, for this world in its vital energies is originary. It is not only a spiritual quality; it is also immediately apparent in the land, in the architecture, in the way of life. For someone who comes from a world of which the etymological root is “progress”, it is simply not possible to make use of the word “backward” in the case of Tibet. Tibet rejects the outlook of Darwin’s theory of evolution so widespread in our world. Everything in this world takes place in an untrammelled time-space, an integrated whole, a powerful consciousness of life and history. Here you might gain an immediate sense of what is known as “eternal life”. When you discover that the time shown on your watch is totally out of sync with that of the Buddhist elders seated on the stone slab at the Jokhang Temple, you begin to suspect that the time of your “progress” is in fact regressing this moment in the direction of death.
• In no sense is Tibet a place where spiritual beings are ethereal like the wind. This is pure conjecture on the part of atheists living in the world of “progress”. In Tibet, a spirit is something you can meet with on the road. They are not insubstantial air: they are tangible and have all the intense reality of stone. They are things capable of inflicting injury on the wind and its ilk.
• A materialist visiting Tibet who did not become—if only for a split second—a mystic would, I believe, have to be devoid of any feeling.
• I do not like discussing the supernatural. Nor am I fond of poets given to liberally sprinkling their works with the word “soul”. I am certain that there is no spirit to speak of in those places where the word “soul” is spoken of with such gusto. I didn’t hear the word once during my stay in Tibet, nor did intellectuals there debate its loss. But the spirit was everywhere.
• Prior to my trip to Tibet, an avant-garde friend back from New York told me that he found it surprising that there were people still wanting to go there. Surely such behaviour was well and truly passé? I didn’t quite know what he meant. Could the progress of time mean that places such as Tibet were out of date? To which parts of the globe would future ages travel? No, I felt hopelessly out of step with fashion—I had always imagined the Tibets of this world to be timeless.
• In Tibet I was culturally deaf, dumb and blind. I knew nothing. Only such honesty enabled me to see it.
• In Lhasa, I experienced several different worlds in a single day. In the imposing hills around the Drepung Monastery, I watched the public display of a thangka (picture) of the Buddha in a crowd numbering thousands. Beneath the dazzling sunlight, several dozen monks unfurled an enormous, resplendent Buddha from the top of a slope. In an empty part of the monastery I came across a hundred dogs; they turned in unison to stare at me. I promptly withdrew, scared out of my wits. In another part of the city, I attended a meeting. Those present were neatly dressed in clean clothes. A serious mood prevailed. The leader made a speech which lasted 30 minutes. This was followed by a reading of three articles, each of which was 30 minutes’ long. Then the leader declared the meeting over, a formality which took another 10 minutes. In a small, unlit shop in Barkhor Street, I drank yak-butter tea with Tibetan-speaking mountain people, my nostrils stabbed by the drink’s bizarre smell. The furs worn by the clientele, even their knives and jewellery, all looked to me as if they had been smeared with the stuff. Outside another shop in the same street, my nostrils were assaulted by the scent of imported French perfume, the bottles arranged in the manner of some third-rate Western bar. The store was full of white people jabbering away in English.
• Outside a modest shop I saw a dark, fluffy-haired man with a sheep-skin bag slung over his shoulder. The bag was enormous; it was nearly large enough to hold a sturdy ram. The wear and tear of the bag, its patchy shininess, creases, holes, straps and smell immediately struck you as being extraordinary. At a glance it transformed into a metaphor, a symbol that instantly called to mind the words “true grit”, “prairie”, “the Wild West”, “range”, “cowboy”. It became a tactile poem more intense than that poetry divided into lines.
• In teahouses across Lhasa they were screening the film Journey to the West. It was shown day after day, and the same audiences watched it over and over again with undiminished enthusiasm.
• In a certain spot on Barkhor Street, groups of Khampa men do business by thrusting a hand into the sleeve of their trading-partner and moving it around inside. They look as if they’re putting on some kind of play with hand-puppets. An expert on local affairs told me that this was how they haggled. They bargain with their fingers in their sleeves, communicating prices by means of gesture.
• A brawny man with long braids coiled on the crown of his head came up to me, blocking my way. I saw the gleaming knife hanging from his belt. He pulled back the fold of his robe to reveal a shiny bronze Buddha perched smilingly on his belly. He said I could have it for 350 yuan. I told him I wasn’t interested. At once, he closed the fold of his robe and the Buddha vanished. I found out later there were many such exquisitely wrought statues in Tibet where a whole spectrum of art-forms derived from religion exists: the popular, the practical, the extemporaneous, the mundane, the professional. Back in the Interior [i.e. China], religion means history, myths, exhibition halls, something done in one’s spare-time. In Tibet, religion is the pots and pans of daily living, a way of life.
• During the day in Barkhor Street there are stalls everywhere selling handicrafts. It’s a paradise for women: everywhere you look there are necklaces, bracelets, rings, perfumes . . . From India, Nepal, the upper reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River . . . A multitude of glittering objects. Tibetan women positively chime as the move around like living musical instruments. Chinese women from the Interior express surprise at the low cost of the jewellery.
• Everywhere you go in Lhasa you meet with people looking through the viewfinders of their cameras. I certainly enlarged my knowledge of extraordinary photographic equipment. But such cameras generally capture this extraordinary world on mediocre film. An extraordinary world cannot turn ordinary men and women into extraordinary beings. Their beginning is their end. Common sense is very important to people. Those who come to Tibet to look from the angle of common sense are better able to perceive its extraordinary aspects. Many poets and painters are under the impression that a trip to Tibet is all they need to produce something out of the ordinary. In fact, their visit renders them even more mediocre. Unfortunately, this has already become something of a fad in creative circles in China. Even those who do not make the journey seek to invent a subject to rival the enigma of Tibet whenever they sit down to work.
• In certain parts of Lhasa one finds windy, ethereal-looking Chinese men and women who grow their hair long, wear big leather boots and dress in the uniform of hippies. They all call themselves artists or “freelance writers”. They look like something straight out of a cartoon by E. O. Plauen.
• On the stone slab in front of the Jokhang Temple, an ageing mother has been performing full-length prostrations since early morning. She has even gone to the trouble of making her own special gear: a pair of hand-pads cut from the inner tubes of car tyres. Because she will spend the whole day repeating this movement, the pads will prevent her from injuring her hands. This activity has already become her speciality.
• A woman who had come to burn incense at the temple asked me for some money. I gave her ten mao. She returned nine.
• Someone tried to sell me a lump of rock. He said it was a cat’s eye. I’ve read in books about the legends connected with this kind of stone. It’s a part and parcel of the paraphernalia of mysticism. He wanted a 1000 yuan for it. I couldn’t afford it. I am destined, it seems, never to rub shoulders with the ineffable.
• At any time you were bound to see men urinating up against walls without the slightest compunction. Caught out by the workings of my own bladder, I learnt on the spot to do the same. A surprisingly uncomplicated affair, after all.
• Less than ten kilometres out of Lhasa you came to an age-old wilderness. While wandering alone over ground strewn with white stones, I felt sure that I had an appointment with Moses.
• Dusty-yellow villages. White villages. Every single window-frame a black border. Clear lines, stark contrasts, and yet plain, uncomplicated, solidly three-dimensional and almost monochromatic. This world belongs to Cézanne. Gaugin would be hard pressed to find a pigment on his palette for this.
• Certain parts of the mountain range could suddenly flare up a yellow-gold. Their natural colour was ash grey. Rembrandt’s light.
• The mountain peaks: like traces scratched out by the fingers of gods. Or the hems of their flowing robes.
• Spinning bits of cloud scattered in all directions like a madman’s hair. In their midst, the sun—a hole. Or a screamer’s gaping mouth.
• On the day I arrived in Lhasa, the sun I saw looked particularly strange. It sat directly in the middle of a circular patch of haze, the outer circumference of which was ringed with a line of darkness. It wasn’t an eclipse because everything else was still light. I have a photograph to prove it. I was left feeling like a mystic for several days afterwards.
• I bought an object cast in bronze, a sort of trough shaped like the petal of a lotus flower. It was an antique, mottled with dark spots and very heavy. I liked its shape and bought it for its beauty. I had no idea what it was used for. It didn’t really matter, did it? Nevertheless, when a Tibetan woman by the name of Zhuoga told me that it was a yak-butter lamp, I lit up inside.
• There wasn’t a single tree on the hills. Not a blade of grass. Stones everywhere, round and white like the heads of monks. You look at a group of stones. Then, at single stones. Then at the stones growing out of other stones.
• The clouds looked like great bolls of cotton growing on the mountaintops. But with the constant transformations of yin and yang, they also resembled immense primitive animals.
• I didn’t see a plant on these hills in the course of my journey. There, suddenly, was a solitary tree planted amidst the jumble of rocks. Only the hands of a god could have planted a tree on a hill like that.
• At the monastery I noticed that the demons trampled underfoot by the gods all had the faces of human beings. The gods, however, looked exactly how I’d imagined the demons to be.
• It was only after I happened to read a book by the Austrian writer René Nebesky-Wojkowitz entitled Oracles and Demons of Tibet that I realized how concrete such beings were in that country. The particular duties for which each was responsible—as well their clothing, headgear and weaponry—is all stipulated right down to the last detail. There is a passage on this world of gods and demons that describes the realm of supernatural beings as a shadowy curtain which is only partially visible, or a semi-transparent shade that lies beyond the reality of this universe. It can only be seen through the eyes of religious belief; it can only be brought under control by means of such techniques as meditation, strict codes of conduct and complex religious ritual. What else does Nebesky-Wojkowitz say in his book? He says that religion is game, and that it has a set of rules that can be manipulated. A mysticism that relies on the manipulations of reason? Behold the paradox of Tibet.
• The Potala looks like no other palace I’ve ever seen. Inside, it looks more like a labyrinth: various mysterious passageways appear and disappear again in the enigmatic gloom as they lead you to rooms in which you never expected to find yourself. I was blindly following in the direction others took when I heard someone say This is the bedroom of the Dalai Lama. And there I was. Next thing I knew, someone announced that we’re standing in the uppermost room in the Palace. As I made my way around, there was absolutely nothing to indicate that I was about to come across a room of particular importance: there were none of the signs you inevitably encounter in Chinese palaces. None at all. Not only did all the rooms look more or less the same, even the main gate of the Potala Palace looked very much like any other large gate. The only extraordinary thing about the Potala Palace was its overall configuration.
• But climbing the stone steps leading up to the Potala, I did in fact experience something sublime.
• The Potala Palace is a place where you can actually touch things. None of the distances dictated by sightseeing have been placed between it and humanity. Thus my long deprived hands were able to stroke the gold and precious stones set in a spirit throne. I caressed a diamond as big as a tennis ball. It could have come from the Ganges River, from a deep, secluded cave in the Kangkar Tesi Mountains, or from the hand of a monarch, and it could have been drenched in the blood of several individuals. What I do know for a fact is that it was the coldest stone I ever touched.
• Beneath the Potala Palace, I saw an old man with a dog. He looked as if he had been walking for ever. He was covered from head to foot in yellow dust. The dog too was yellow. I thought he must have come all the way from India.
• I had the good fortune to be present at a public display of a large thangka of the Buddha at the Potala Palace. The last ceremony of its kind had taken place forty years ago. In Lhasa, any vantage point from which the Palace could be seen was jammed with spectators. I saw many mountain people of modest physical stature waiting in places where even a glimpse of the image would have been impossible. Nevertheless, they stood there facing in its direction, weeping in silence. This was so different from my own perspective (for me it would have been a complete waste of time if I hadn’t seen the image). Later I understood that it was I who had not seen the Buddha.
• On the day of the public display, tens of thousands of people circled the Potala Palace on foot in a clockwise direction. They walked in a cloud of dust. Tibetans, Chinese, Westerners, monks, common people . . . The aged were supported and children were led by the hand as if taking part in one of the great migrations of history. But this was no progress. It was a form of stationary displacement.
• The Lhasa River. Smoothly it flows past smooth sand bars and smooth fields of grass. One has no difficulty walking right onto its banks. There are no raging waters, no spectacular falls. A river of silence. And in the distance there are quiet, black hills. Soundless cattlehide rafts. It is a river of high altitudes, in a land of beginnings.
• Tibet is remote. Even when I was there I still felt this to be so. Remote means that it is forever out of reach. Remote means that one never “arrives”. Remote means to be in mid-journey, for eternity. Yunnan is one of the remotenesses of my life; Tibet is another. I will never reach either of them. But the remote also belongs to the present. It can only be apprehended and experienced on the spot, in the process of movement.
• In Tibet, most women incline forward as they walk, slightly bowed as if carrying something on their backs. Could it be that remoteness they shoulder?
• Metaphors in Chinese such as “willowy”, “cherry-lipped” or “rosy” cannot be applied to Tibetan women. For a start, these plants do not exist in Tibet. Secondly, a woman such as this could never exist in a place like Tibet. Tibetan women have a beauty of their own, although I have no idea how to describe it. My vocabulary on the subject of women is rendered invalid here. In fact, I am convinced that the entirety of my language loses its validity when it comes to speaking of this world. This however gives me the courage to say whatever I think. When a speaker knowingly speaks nonsense, his words become a work of art.
• The red Tashilhunpo Monastery is of an incomparable splendour. As a piece of architecture, it has acquired an unforgettable life of its own—it is eternal. It terrified me. My strongest emotion here was one of intense fear: I didn’t dare pray. All the monasteries I had ever seen before coming to Tibet were false.
• The light of Tibet is astonishing. Here is a light that issues directly from light, the light of immense altitude that turns the world transparent. That does not hide it from view.
• I asked a Tibetan man rich in a particular presence whether I could take his picture. He came to an abrupt halt and gazed at me, unruffled, waiting. There was something so direct about his gaze that my hands began to tremble, my self-confidence demolished at a stroke. Could I really match this penetrating sincerity in transferring him onto film? I had a vague idea that there was nothing in the slightest bit honest about the intention which lay behind my recent confident request for a photo. I was hunting for novelty; he was my prey. He of course knew nothing of my deliberations.
• In August, the waters of the Yarlung Zangbo River are grey. The road to Shigatse unfolds beside it. Under a similarly grey sky, I could see no other people; there were no buildings. All I saw were soaring crows.
• There are many things in Tibet which cannot be put into words. Everyone has this feeling, but still they believe that they have something worth saying. As I thought this, I realized that I have already gone on for far too long. I thereby conclude my notes at this point.

Translated by Simon Patton

Untitled Fragment

Photograph by Yu Jian, Tibet 2018

She hears the voices in her head,
each echo boasting second bests
which add their racket to her cause.
Flocking cockatoos — at least —
make no less noise.

What breaks her back? Honesty’s stone.
Its weight has made her what she is.
She was the flower and the flow,
but now her veins begin to freeze:
they can’t let go.

 

For an Eternity (Mollison Street, West End)

Near the roundabout,
opposite the Coles supermarket,
in a semi-industrial urban complex

(the graffiti says: There is no gravity —
the earth just sucks),

past a stack of freight containers,
at the end of the line of a lane,
a cypress tree looms.
Remnant of yesteryear, its timeless contour
summons from the discounted backdrop
a grave sky — staid cloud fissured
by patches of sky-blue blue
faint to the point of a human thought’s full stop.

 

Opus 4 • Yu Jian (1983)

I have been re-reading Yu Jian’s second book of poems, The Naming of a Crow (《对一只乌鸦的命名》) from 1993, just to see if there was anything in it that I hadn’t really appreciated in earlier encounters. Here is one poem that suddenly struck me with a force that I had never noticed on previous occasions: without any clear idea of why, I decided just to get to work and translate it, and I was pleasantly surprised by the way the text seemed to open up as I went along. I’m a terrible reader sometimes; I rely on translation to do my reading for me!

If you read Chinese and are interested in how the language works in this poem, there are a few points of grammatical and lexical interest: I’ve listed these after the Chinese version.

“Opus 4 • Yu Jian (1983)”

One half of that white snake of stones is wound around the mountain
basking in the sun, while the other half
crawls through the legs of a pine forest.
A crow watches me grow up out of a field of grass:
it circles overhead to investigate
before hitting the road once more with the clouds ―
it thinks I’m a tree.
A herd of cows keeps a 12-year-old king company
as he dreams beneath Spring’s regal new canopy.
He sees a red bee in his dreams.
I pass as quietly as I possibly can but he wakes suddenly with a start.
In the spaces between mountains and towering trees between grass and the squirrels between sunlight and streams
we have swapped eyes forever.
He stays put far away in his mountains like a fairtytale about a forest spirit.
I spend the rest of my life trying to imagine the sound of his voice.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

《作品第4号》

那条石头的白蛇缠着山晒太阳
另一半身子爬进松树林的腿
乌鸦看见我从一片草地上长出来
侦察了一圈又和云一起上路
它视我为树
一群牛陪着一个十二岁的国王
在春天新织的华盖下做梦
他梦见一只红蜜蜂
我轻轻地轻轻地流过去但他突然惊醒
在山和大树在草和松鼠在阳光和小溪流的空间中
我们永远交换了眼睛
他远远地留在山中就像一个有林妖的童话
一生中我都在想象他的声音

• The particle 着 can be used to indicate that a verb serves as a “background” or “accompanying” action to another main verb. So in 白蛇缠着山晒太阳, the main action is the basking in the sun, while 缠着山 gives us some more information about how this basking is done. Basic Chinese by Yip Po-Ching and Don Rimmington has a brief explanation of this point.
• You don’t see the noun 华盖 hua2 gai4 very often. It has two meanings: (1) canopy (as over an imperial carriage) and (2) aureole, a meteorological term referring to “a ring of light around a luminous body”. Fortunately, “canopy” in English is a common metaphor for the sky.
• I’m a bit unsure of the meaning of 交换眼睛. It may be an idiom, but it’s not one I’m familiar with. There’s a hint of swapping places with another person, of exchanging (if only imaginatively) lives: I suddenly saw everything around me with his eyes . . .
• I guess one would expect the poem to say: he was like a forest spirit. Yu Jian makes a delightful modification here, by suggesting that he was not just like the spirit but the whole mood or atmosphere of a tale for children: 像一个有林妖的童话.

 

《蛙文》/ Frogscript 9 • 郭少鳳 Evette Kwok

Please scroll down for the English translation!

《蛙文：蜻蜓》

郭少鳳著

記得細細個時，屋企冇咩玩具玩，好多細蚊仔都鐘意落公園玩，公園除咗有超長嘅滑梯、超刺激嘅氹氹轉玩之外，仲可以同好多好多昆蟲玩遊戲。好奇怪，仲係細蚊仔嘅時候，唔會點驚昆蟲，好多時會想捉佢哋嚟玩，仲記得有時會特登帶一個盒仔去捉昆蟲。細個又成日會聽到呢首童謠：「點蟲蟲，蟲蟲飛，飛去荔枝基，荔枝熟，無埞伏，伏去邊？伏去你個鼻哥窿」，一邊唱童謠，一邊搵蟲蟲，真有趣！

有種昆蟲成日企定定咁畀我望，佢哋有好多唔同嘅顏色：有艶麗嘅絨紅色，有金光閃閃嘅黃金色，亦有較低調嘅暗藍色、黑色，但都總有一對巨型嘅眼睛同埋兩對透明嘅翅膀。試過去捉佢哋，可惜未成功過。你哋估到係邊種昆蟲未呢？對，就係蜻蜓！

蜻蜓係一種好靚嘅昆蟲。同美麗嘅蝴蝶比較，蝴蝶係似穿上美麗衣裳，悉心打扮嘅淑女；而蜻蜓頭部圓圓、眼睛大大、修長嘅腹部再配上兩對透明嘅翅膀，顯出高貴嘅韻味。蜻蜓擁有獨特而美麗嘅線條，難怪經常被設計成賞心悅目嘅裝飾圖案！

蜻蜒係不完全變態昆蟲，一生中經歷三個階段：卵、稚蟲、成蟲，冇咗蛹嘅階段。雖然蜻蜓係一種識飛嘅昆蟲，但係佢嘅生命同水有著莫大嘅關係。

由出生開始，蜻蜓已經離唔開水。有冇聽過「蜻蜓點水」呢個成語，雖然成語嘅意思係做事膚淺、做得不夠深入嘅意思，但其實呢個成語正正講出蜻蜓一生中一個重要嘅階段：部份蜻蜒會將卵產喺水草上或樹枝上，但最為人知嘅應該係產喺水中，雌性嘅蜻蜓用似尾巴嘅腹部插入水中，蜻蜓點水，水面即時會泛起漣漪，誕下嘅蜻蜓卵就慢慢沉入水中，真夠浪漫！咁做嘅好處係令到喺水中生活嘅蜻蜓稚蟲，一出生就喺水中。

第一次見到蜻蜓嘅稚蟲係喺嘉道理農場，當時被安排打理一個小型人工生態池，讓比較細小嘅水生動植物繁殖及生活。當時每兩個星期就要同兩個大自然愛好者 – 農場義工去清一清池水、整理一下水生植物。

生態池雖然細細，但郤住咗好多好多嘅水生動物：蝌蚪、蚊嘅幼蟲-孑孓、水黽 – 俗稱水較剪、豆娘稚蟲同埋蜻蜓稚蟲。第一次見到蜻蜓稚蟲真係完全嚇一跳，如果唔係身邊嘅義工朋友嘅介紹，我都諗唔到佢係蜻蜓啤啤：我哋熟悉嘅蜻蜓不但線條優美，而且充滿色彩，但眼前見到嘅稚蟲卻係完全兩回事。蜻蜓稚蟲全身灰褐色，腹部略胖，尾部開三小叉，用電影中嘅「異型」形容都唔太過份。雖然係水中生物，但都有對細到不合比例嘅（假）翅膀貼喺肥腹上，仲有一對腮，能夠喺水中呼吸。

蜻蜓稚蟲樣貌真係一啲都唔吸引，卻暗藏殺機。佢哋係天生嘅捕獵者，會食比佢哋細小嘅昆蟲，例如孑孓，蝌蚪等等。蜻蜓一生都係肉食性動物，長大羽化後，會進食更大型嘅昆蟲，如蚊、烏蠅、甚至蝴蝶等等。蜻蜓由細到大都係蚊一生嘅天敵，對我哋人類而言可算是益蟲。

有冇聽過「蜻蜓成群低飛繞天空，不到半日雨濛濛」呢句諺言？其實係古人嘅智慧：以前科技未有咁發達時，冇咁多儀器或數據預測天氣，就會更留意大自然嘅變化，累積經驗嚟預測天氣。呢種智慧，原來可以解釋：快要落雨嘅空氣份外潮濕，水氣會沾濕蜻蜓嘅翅膀，令蜻蜻翅膀變重，未能如常往高處飛，只能在接近地面嘅低處飛行。

蜻蜓嘅一生都同水或水塘有著莫大關係，加上交配時又叫交尾，由兩隻蜻蜓用腹部扣成一個心型交配產卵。唔知係咪呢兩個緣故，有部份廣東人叫蜻蜓做「塘尾」。再送上另一首童謠俾大家：「黐塘尾，塘尾飛，飛到菜田基，田基有條蛇，嚇親你兩仔爺」。

其實人大咗，面對忙碌嘅生活，喺成長嘅同時，會慢慢失去細路仔天生嘅好奇心同豐富嘅想像力。不過好好彩，香港呢個地方，要走入大自然一啲都唔難，行山十分方便，又有咁多有趣、生鬼嘅廣東話童謠，可以俾我哋稍微回味童年嘅回憶，重拾一下童年滋味。