Grandpa Kai
When I was a child in Maaubou, I caught shrimps from the village pond and carried home fish when it was drained for harvest.
When I returned to my village, I strolled by the pond and sought the space in front of the Chan Ancestral Hall where I had played as a child. By the benches there under the banyan tree I saw a gathering of elderly residents. As I made my way to them, I was warmly greeted as they recognised me. We had a lively conversation in our Aawu dialect. One elder laughed and asked how a man who left at age four could still speak the dialect. Another asked whether my siblings and cousins in Canada still spoke it. To their amusement, I even got my wife to sing in the local dialect a childhood nursery rhyme that I taught her. All were pleasantly surprised that I proudly retained the dialect after almost fifty years. I explained that I spoke with my parents exclusively in dialect growing up.
However, their astonishment is not without merit. Over the years, standard Cantonese and then Mandarin have overtaken the area as the village urbanised and migrants from other parts of China descended to the Pearl River Delta. Few young people seem to speak dialect anymore. I fear that my generation may be the last speakers of the Aawu dialect.
On a farewell dinner with family, we gathered at a local restaurant. A young boy, about the same age I had been when I left China, joined us. He approached me and addressed me as “Grandpa Kai” in the language of my childhood.
Perhaps the Aawu dialect still has a future.
