83, Winter
When the weather is cold, a plate of lap-mei rice can make you particularly warm. After such a meal, you feel a warmth all over. If it’s even colder, you’ll see hotpot and claypot rice for sale in the street. The flickering flames resist the cold.
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I don’t much like winter, it’s like I am more slow-witted, more sluggish in winter. Someone says: ‘you’re always sluggish, it’s got nothing to do with winter!’ When I think it over, that does make some sense.
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No matter what, when the hot weather is gone, the cold weather comes along, and the street scene changes. Winter, whether you like it or not, always arrives on time, just like TV commercials, debt collectors, toothache, and bad luck.
Note: lap-mei rice is a traditional Cantonese dish of preserved meat with rice cooked in a clay pot.
83 冬天
天氣寒冷的時候吃臘味飯，特別感到暖。吃了彷彿整個人就暖和起來。再冷一點，你在街頭就可以看見火鍋和煲仔菜。晃動的火光，對抗寒冷。
我不大喜歡冬天，在冬天裡，人也好像呆一點，遲鈍一點。有人說：「你平時也是那麼遲鈍的了，關冬天什麼事？」想想又有道理。
不管怎樣，每年熱天去了冷天就來，街頭又有一番景象。冬天，不管你喜歡不喜歡，照樣準時來臨，像電視的廣告、像收賬的人、像牙痛、像噩運。
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Other poems from this series:
21, Cold after the rain
46, Taste
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● Ye Si, pen name of Leung Ping Kwan (1949-2013), is a celebrated Hong Kong poet, essayist, fiction writer and photographer. He has published many volumes of poetry, essays and stories, including: Paper Cuts (1982), City at the End of Time (1992), Foodscape (1997), Travelling with a Bitter Melon (2002), Postcards from Prague (2000) and Postcolonial Affairs of Food and the Heart (2009). He was Chair Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of the Centre for Humanities Research at Lingnan University in Hong Kong.
●Audrey Heijns, based in Hong Kong, is working at Shenzhen University. Her translations of Chinese literature have been published in literary magazines, including Het Trage Vuur, Twee Ronde, KortVerhaal, Terras, Renditions, Exchanges and Poetry International.
Photograph: Lam’s Cha-siu, Tai Po (Audrey Heijns)
Chinaman Creek 