can you speak hokkien?
i asked the middle age
Singaporean woman
manning a sundry shop
with her husband late evening
opposite my hotel The Link
i had intended to buy
some fruits but ended up
having an interesting little
tete a tete with the woman
who seemed to be game for talk
she said yes and I said
'Oh, in Singapore people
prefer to speak Mandarin.'
the woman suddenly blurted out
almost in a reflex manner
'yes, yes but in singapore
people are more interested
in speaking about jua ji.'
Jua Ji are the hokkien words for
'paper notes' or money.
*Hokkien is a dialectic group
from Southern China.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem