Preserving intangible cultural heritage

Ballad on the Shore (2017)

Fishing boats are sinking and floating on the sea, and the old fishermen sing the ancient folk song on the shore: "Anchor large boats at the tip of Tuo Ning, a sampan sends the lover to Lai See Island....." The independent film director Ma Chi Hang spent four years shooting and producing the documentary "Ballad on the Shore", which meticulously recorded the stories of Hong Kong's old fishermen, and each of them is the few remaining fishermen’s songs singer.

The filming team hopes to preserve the fading away fishermen’s songs through text, sound, and video and hopes to arouse the younger generation's attention to the disappearing everyday scenes by recording old fishermen's life.[1]

Hong Kong fishermen were classified into ‘Tanka’ people, or named ‘People on the water’. They were also one of the aboriginals in Hong Kong. Most were dwelling in the fish junk, and some even lived in a slum, formed by the broken sampan on the remote island. Because of their unstable way of living, they were named ‘sea gypsy’ by Western anthropology and missionary. Fishermen’s songs were once a popular culture among the Tanka ethnic group. The songs were sung in a form of ballads, narrating different aspects of fishermen’s life. The filming team interviewed 13 fishermen, who sang more than 30 fisherman’s ballads.

In addition to shooting a 98-minute documentary "Ballad on the shore", the project also published the book "Ballad on the shore", including two booklets and two discs. One booklet records the idea of the entire project and focuses on eight fishermen’s song singers, supplemented by a DVD, with a total of eight song videos. The second booklet is "fishermen’s song Collection", which contains 18 fishermen’s songs lyrics, supplemented by a fishermen’s songs CD.

The book [3] states that the fishermen's songs recorded in "Ballad on the Shore" have the following characteristics:
(1) Spread among fishermen in some fishing communities in Hong Kong, such as Tap Mun and Tai O;
(2) Mostly passed down by word of mouth, and without formal record;
(3) No instrumental accompaniment, only human voices, and the tone has no ups and downs;
(4) Except for some special occasions for singing sigh songs, they have no fixed lyrics;
(5) Most of the singers are illiterate, but they can sing fishermen’s songs fluently for several minutes, even two or three days and nights.

The types of fishermen’s songs sung by interviewees include:
(1) Sigh Songs
(2) Saltwater Songs
(3) Fish Songs
(4) ‘Ge Tang’ Songs (also known as 'the singing court' songs)
(5) Voyage Songs

(1.1) “Sighing the Birth Ceremony”-
Singing at weddings

"One of the unique and indispensable sections of the fishermen’s marriage is the "Sighing the Birth Ceremony". "Sigh" is a method of singing fisherman's songs, and "Birth Ceremony" means wedding ceremony. "Sighing the Birth Ceremony" is sung by the bride and her relatives and friends before the wedding ceremony. " --- "Ballad on the Shore" Book p.21

The songs of "Sighing the Birth Ceremony" include "Sighing Dad", "Sighing Mum", "Sighing Big Brother", "Sighing Sister-in-law", etc. The songs mainly express the bride is unwilling to leave her parents and she is thankful to her relatives for their kindness, some songs may include the details of the wedding ceremony.

"Sighing Mom"
Singer: Ho Sai Mui (Aberdeen), DVD Chapter 3, Duration: 11"52

The meaning of the lyrics:

Ho Sai Mui, the sigher, explained that in the first paragraph of the song, "two days are treated as three years", which means that the man's family goes to the woman's house to propose marriage, and the daughter asks her mother to postpone the big day: ‘delayed two days which treated like three years.” The song then mentions the wedding ceremonies, such as the things needed for the wedding, ‘candle, red lotus, longevity pillow, longevity bowl" and so on.

The second half of the lyrics mention the process of ten months of pregnancy, such as "Getting married in the first month, having a baby in the second month, baby establishing a body in the third month, having the head in the fourth month, having hands in the fifth month. Latest in the sixth month, the hands and feet start to grow. In the seventh month, the baby moves around in the mother’s belly. In the ninth month, the fertility gods arrive. Picking the date of birth in the tenth month at the latest.", the purpose of this part is to comfort the bride’s mother, showing that the bride understands how hard her mother is to raise her. At the end of the song, the bride hopes that her mother could use that longevity bowl and chopsticks to enjoy a meal, which wishes her happiness.

Only women can sigh, men sighing brings bad luck

Fishermen’s sigh songs are only sung by the bride's families. According to the book, "the bride and her family must sigh, otherwise, the groom and his family will be unhappy. For the groom's family, as the groom does not have to leave the family after getting married, and sighing is unlucky for those who live by the water in local tradition, so the groom's family does not need to sigh. Moreover, the bride's family can only sigh before becoming one of the man's family members, so the bride can no longer sigh after "passing the door" (after the wedding ceremony). "

The bride and her family can sigh to each other, and the bride has to sigh at least once to each of the relatives in her family, the sighing sequence depends on the order of seniority and closeness. The names of these sigh songs will also be named according to the titles of the relatives, such as when the bride sighs to her brother, the song name will be "Sighing Big Brother". As people who live on the water usually have a large family, it usually takes three days and nights to sigh.

Although men don't "sigh" at weddings, they still "sing" different wedding songs. Ma Chi Hang explained in an interview[2]: "Sigh songs are only sung by women, men would sing "Flower Songs" or "Candle Lighting Songs", which are sung in conjunction with different ceremonies of the weddings, the content of the songs is all about blessing families or teaching the couple how to get along."

Fishermen also sigh at funerals, which is called "Sighing the Death Ceremony". Fan Yim Ling (Ling Jie) from Tai O is good at ‘sighing’, and she is often hired to sing sigh songs at funerals. Ling Jie explained that the aim of "Sighing the Death Ceremony" is to say goodbye to the elderly, and according to different sections of the funerals, different sigh songs will be sung, but the content of each song must contain some blessings for descendants.

[List] Funeral sections/ Sigh Songs/ Meaning of lyrics

(1) The Wake (all-night vigils) / "Reputation" / In traditional Chinese culture, "Bamboo is thin and longevity, representing unyielding", this song uses bamboo as a metaphor for personality, to praise the reputation of the ancestor, and bless the descendants.
(2) Funeral procession / "Up the Mountain" / Let the ancestors "live in peace" and not be afraid of the lonely life on the mountain.
(3) The first seven days after death / "Drum" / Using the sound of drums to remind the ancestors that the time has come, and wish them a good journey.
(4) The first seven days after death / "Train" / Taking stations to symbolize a journey, the road to the nether world is like a trip: accompanied by companions, there are meat, vegetables, and refrigerators on the train, and the endpoint is in Hangzhou. This song wants to comfort the ancestors, and tell them not to worry about relatives.
(5) Three seven days, that is, the twenty-one days after death/ "Ying Hung" / The name of the song is homophonic with "hero" in Chinese. This song talks about the funeral being completed, the children and grandchildren have completed their mourning for the ancestors, and a red belt will be tied at the pillar, symbolizing the end of the funeral.

The characteristics of the sigh songs (regardless of sighing at weddings or funerals):
(1) They can be divided into sighing alone or sighing together with several companions;
(2) Sighing will repeatedly mention the title of relatives;
(3) According to different parts of the ceremonies, people would sing different sigh songs.

"A lot of saltwater songs are horny!" Ho Yung So (formerly Leung Ho), a female fisherman who grew up in Shau Kei Wan said in the book.

From the following saltwater song example demonstrated by Tap Mun’s fisherman Lai Lin Shau (Uncle Lai), we can see that the lyrics often contain sexual slang.

"The Big Boat Throws the Three Handed Anchors" (Salt Water Song)
Singer: Lai Lin Shau (Tap Mun), DVD Chapter 4, Duration: 4"15

Uncle Lai explained that the saltwater song is a fishermen’s song sung by fishermen to relieve their boredom. Therefore, the lyrics are simple, easy, and sometimes vulgar, and these songs could not be performed on a formal occasion.

"The mackerel is slippery from birth"
Singer: Lai Lin Shau (Tap Mun), DVD Chapter 7, length 3"38

Lai Lin Shau said in the book that people who live on the water get married and hold a banquet on the ‘Ge Tang boat’. After the meal, the singer would sing to have fun. The content of the songs is mostly related to moral norms, talk about marriage life, women's morality, fish names, and place names. He said the singers are so talented, and can impromptu perform and create new songs. However, the book does not provide examples of Ge Tang songs.

In the past, there was no global positioning system (GPS), how did fishermen identify the direction when they were fishing? One of the methods is to sing the "Voyage Songs". The book wrote, "When fishing and sailing in the sea, by comparing the mountains, small islands, and platoons, you can find out the correct position and the direction of the boat, so as not to get lost." Yiu Gor of Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter said: "The fishermen are not literate enough and have no chance to go to school. My father also recited place names like this, so I am so familiar with the location in the Victoria Harbour." I believe this song has educational functions in addition to leading the way." However, although some fishermen would say that the Voyage songs are used to identify the location of navigation, some fishermen said that they have been familiar with place names since childhood, because they pass through same places every day, and there is no need to sing fishermen’s songs at all.

But after the filming of this documentary, Ma Chi Hang found that fishermen in different parts of Hong Kong sing different fishermen's songs, with different lyrics, content, routes, and singing styles. Therefore, fishermen's songs are songs that can closely reflect the lives of different people. "It can also reflect the city or landscape of Hong Kong before the reclamation. There is a song that sings about Kowloon Tong. I asked Uncle Lai, is it the "Kowloon Tong" in the current MTR station? He said no, the "Kowloon Tong" in the song is the current Kowloon Bay. So the name of that place had disappeared in the process of urbanization, but on the contrary, the original name of the original place can be seen in the song. ”

"Hong Kong Geography"
Singer: The book does not indicate

"The Big Boat Throws the tip of Tuo Ning"
Singer: Lai Lin Shau (Tap Mun), DVD Chapter 6, length 3"36

One of the essential elements of the fishermen’s song is impromptu and openness, singers can freely modify the lyrics according to their own experiences. The fishermen’s songs have gradually disappeared, Ma Chi Hang [2] said that the youngest singer of fishermen’s songs has been sixty years old. Since many singers are old fishermen who were born before the second world war, that’s why between the few shooting years of ‘Ballad on the shore’, the production team often received news that a fisherman had passed away.

Ma Chi Hang was moved that there are still some female fishermen who would sing hymns by using the tone of fishermen’s songs, making traditional fishermen’s songs across the era and cultural boundaries, "This kind of inheritance is not as simple as just recording the sound’. He wrote in the epilogue of the book: "The reason why traditional fishermen’s songs can be passed down, not only because of the fishermen singing the past life but also because the singers keep adding their experience and their understanding of the world into the songs."

“Blessed are the poor in spirit”
Singer: Chan Wai Yee (Tap Mun)

Most fishermen who depend on the sea for their livelihood believe in gods, hoping to bless the journey and return home safely. In the 1950s and 1960s, many fishermen changed their religion to Christianity, and Chan Wai Yee was one of them. Now she has formed a "sigh team" with the female church members in her church to sing hymns and other spiritual songs to serve and praise God.

"Wai Yee Jei did not forget her 'root', much less deny her past. Instead, she affirmed her identity as a fisherman by singing the spiritual song in a fishermen’s songs tone and used this identity to serve the Christ she believed in. The sighing ceremony includes the gratitude of the younger generation toward the elders, so the "water spiritual song" of the sighing variation is not only the believers thanking God's grace but also the fishermen's recognition of their own identity, transformation, and inheritance. "——"Ballad on the Shore" book p.63

Why film this documentary?

Ma Chi Hang first came up with the idea of filming "Ballad on Shore" because he met Lai Lin Shau, a fisherman from Tap Mun. “I can't quite get (understand) what he's talking about, but these songs are so interesting, some of the words I can understand, it is called fisherman's dialect or "Shui Lao dialect" (Water people dialect), but those are actually Cantonese. Some accents, pronunciation, or some maritime features, they would use different wordings to express. I think it is between understand and can’t understand, this is very interesting, and the feeling is very cordial as it is like talking about the old Hong Kong, it makes me curious."

How to shoot?

How do we record or inherit the fishermen’s songs? Ma Chi Heng said that when people try to preserve buildings and cultures, they always ignore the bearers of these cultures - people. In his eyes, such conservation seems to make the culture lose its soul. Therefore, when he made this documentary, he started by recording the stories of the fishermen, "discovering that their (fishermen's) lives and stories are closely related to the (fishermen's song) culture, and it cannot be separated from understanding and conserving the culture by ignoring the people. So the purpose of shooting this documentary is to keep the stories of these people, to move us, and to have empathy for them, so that we could feel the value of culture.”[4]

Difficulty of shooting

The documentary "Ballad on the Shore" took four years to shoot and produce. Ma Chi Hang recalled that one of the difficulties in the production was, "We don't know those fishermen’s songs at all, and no one has even done some systematic research. So we spent two years doing research on these songs, listening to them one by one, and asking the singers word by word, what are you singing about? Then we can sort out the whole world of fishermen’s songs. So that we could understand how fishermen’s songs are related to their lives, then tell the story to the audience.”[4]

Three Key Casts

Synopsis

The film follows the daily rituals of three old fishermen couples living in fish villages on Tap Mun and in Aberdeen. These elderlies are the last living links to the distant past of Tanka fishermen songs in the region. Recorded over four years, Ballad on the Shore is an engaging film documenting their arranged marriage, their backbreaking fishermen days, and their joy and sorrow singing these primitive oral songs of literature of an unknown water world, linked to the past yet immediately present.

The total length of the documentary is 98 minutes, and the director focuses on people. According to an article by Ming Pao[4], Ma Chi Hang said, " Wai Yee's story is about the soul, to solve her inner problems; it’s more on a social perspective: a classic water people’s story, with no social status, works as a low-class job, and even if the society progresses, her fate has not changed. When she was a female fisherman, she was very poor and worked very hard, and now she is still being exploited in cleaning the water; Uncle Lai’s story is from a historical perspective." On the hillside, Uncle Lai used Hakka dialect to recite the geography of Hong Kong he had studied in class decades ago, said, "hitting the Japanese guy", and said that the ship was starting to install an engine...

"Ma Chi Hang treats Uncle Lai as a 'spiritual mentor'. Mrs. Lai Ho Cheung Di, who had a presence in the film, also passed away during the filming. When his wife, who had been with him for more than 60 years, left, Uncle Lai only said, "There is a time for life, there is a time for death", peaceful and calm. In front of the old man, Ma Chi Hang couldn't tell what he was shooting, so he kept taking the footage back to let Uncle Lai have a look. Uncle Lai could see his wife in the film.

Ma Chi Hang also filmed the scene of Uncle Lai watching the film. When editing the film, inside and outside of the TV screen was in the same room. The mirror images of past and present reflected each other, the husband and wife seemed living together as if they had traveled through time and space. Ma Chi Hang felt very shocked.

So he found that the last and most important connection of the film is between the film world and the real world. He showed the first-cut version of the documentary in Aberdeen, and then put the scene of the audience watching the movie, into the final movie, so that the audience sitting in the theater realized that, they were like the audience in Aberdeen, they are real, and not completely cut off from the world in the movie. "
—— "Fishermen's Song, the song is still singing! ", Ming Pao, 26 May 2017

Production team
Producer: Fung Mei Wah, Yim Wai Ying
Executive Producer: Cheng Wai Sum
Co-producer: Cheung Tit Leung
Director: Ma Chi Hang
Cinematographer: Wong Wai Nap
Montage: Cheung Pak Ming
Music: Wong Chun Kok
Sound Designer: Tang Hok Lung, Ricky Yip
Subtitle translation: Lau Kai
Color grading: So Chun Hay
Image and Designer: Roger Ng

"Ballad on Shore" premiered on May 12, 2017. In addition to showing in cinemas, over 60 community screenings were accomplished from 2017 to 2018 and they visited various fishing villages in Hong Kong, such as Shau Kei Wan, Tai O, Cheung Chau, Aberdeen, etc., and even screened in Taiwan and Shenzhen.

Ma Chi Hang once said that the interest of so many groups was unexpected[6], but he also felt that the film had been "scattered in the community" and was considered over-completed. [7]

Screening Partner:
Autonomous Cinema
Youth Square, Chai Wan
Bio-Diversity Festival 2017, Fishery Department
Caritas Hong Kong (Cheung Chau, Sai Kung)
YMCA Youth, Kowloon
YWCA (Tai O)
History Department, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK)
Department of Cultural Management, CUHK
General Education, CUHK
Department of Humanities and creative writing, Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU)
Department of Social Science, Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK)
HKICC Lee Shau Kee School of Creativity
Macau independent film festival
Hong Kong Society for the Blind
St. James Settlement
Fringe Club, Central
putyourself.in
Yan Oi Tong (Tun Mun)
The Salvation Army (Tai Po)
Form Society
Art Together
Hulu Culture
Lantau Society
Spicy Fish Cultural Production
Casphalt
CIADFF (Chiayi International Art Doc Film Festival) (March 2018)

Ballad on the shore's Website: www.balladontheshore.com.hk/

facebook: https://www.facebook.com/balladontheshore