["Mending Years" 縫補歲月, 2023.06.28-07.12, group show, Gallery L0, JCCAC] FP writer Wai-leung Lai strolled through the Mending Years as sounds from the past collaged to invoke contradicting thoughts about the 1960s and 1970s, resisting a singular reading. He begins with Linda Lai's Domestic Moonlighting, and his associating thoughts on Wong Kar-wai's films and more. 「據點」作者黎偉亮徐步於「縫補歲月」的五人展場中，聲頻片段拼貼湊合的氛圍喚起的是矛盾不一的記憶與論述。到底上世紀六七十年代的香港是怎樣的？真能客觀定斷嗎？先由黎肖嫻的《家居副業》和王家衛等電影說起。
**feature image: courtesy of artist Linda Lai. All other images are from the artist's family album.
看「縫補歲月」，聽歲月留聲
斗室中，一個年輕的婦人正以針線把一條長方形的浴巾縫成布袋。她在製作一個包裹，內裡的東西都是尋常之物：粗糧、雜食、片糖、盤尼西林、保健藥物……她把布袋塞得鼓脹，小心的用布帶把袋口綑起來。她心急如焚，一待天亮，就要把包裹送到郵局，寄給內地那些瀕死的親人。她幼小的女兒也沒閒著，正把破白布剪成方塊，用毛筆小心翼翼的寫上郵寄地址，給媽媽縫在包裹上，這可是不容有失的任務。
媽媽是幸運兒，五十年代後期來到香港這個南隅小島。那個香港，到底是怎樣的呢？
從社政大論述而言，她的宗主國經歷了二次大戰，國力大不如前，亞洲地區的殖民地紛紛爭取獨立，斯時世界一片紛亂，東西方兩大陣營劍拔弩張。經歷日佔的香港也是百廢待興，滿是最低下階層的勞動人口，然而殖民政府並不作為，對紀律部隊的集體貪腐視若無睹，對國民黨與新中國共產黨的勢力對立一籌莫展，任由同一族群互鬥不休，社會是一片烏煙瘴氣，充斥著不安和憤怒。這些印象，在港產片中屢見不鮮。
新移民的媽媽生活當然不好過，但她還是在這相對自由的地方找到了片瓦之地，安身立命。家無餘糧不要緊，她還是拼盡所能地救助內地的摯親，因為他們正承受著沒頂的災難，絕對的無妄災難：人治國家，政治鬥爭不斷，不事生產，一個人的妄自尊大導致政策失誤，令國家陷入絕境，受苦的卻祇是黎民百姓。媽媽寄出的郵包，何止親友間溫情餽贈這麼簡單？
真是遙遠的歲月，一甲子了。親人告訴我的，自身經歷的，書本讀過的，今天想來還是無盡唏噓。這就是我看了「縫補歲月」這個重現六、七十年代香港狀況的展覽後的一些感思。
那些影像，那些裝置，令我想起了那年代的黑白粵語片，也令我想起王家衛，他明顯是一個極度眷戀著六十年代香港的人。特殊的歷史背景衍生了特殊的社會群體結構，由英女皇委任的港督以降，輔以一群越洋官員，緊隨其後是「怡和」、「太古」等殖民地買辦及「匯豐」大班，他們同處於社會頂層，過著優越的生活；至於那些避秦而來的內地商人、飽讀詩書的知識份子，本來允屬中產階級，因時移世遷，優勢不再，祗能在社會下流與最底層的勞動人口共同浮沉。西方的統治手法及教育制度匯聚了中國傳統，亦催生了獨特的生活形態和物質文化。王家衛的電影中，年青一輩愛西洋舞蹈，以收聽歐西流行曲為時尚；女的會穿上旗袍拿著鋅製的保暖壼到街上買雲吞麵；男的縱使工作並不高尚，也會穿戴整齊頭髮蠟得水亮才上班；薪水不多的小市民，也會在「糧頭」手頭較鬆動時放縱一下生活（見《阿飛正傳》的旭仔、《花樣年華》和《2046》的蘇麗珍和周慕雲）…..他描述的是「縫補歲月」創作者們描繪的同一個時間空間，另一個平行世界，既陌生又接近。浮生若夢，亂世中，人的情感世界在王家衛腦海裡是另一番光景；物質貧乏，生活仍不失精緻，人與人的關係依舊複雜，感情同樣細膩，份外惹人遐思。
生於上世紀六十年代一個清貧家庭的我，今天腦海中，仍留存著電影院中坐在爸爸膝蓋上觀看《唐山大兄》（1971，李小龍主演）和《馬永貞》（1972，張徹導演，陳觀泰主演）的記憶。不論年代，不論環境，苦中作樂都是任何一個人掙扎求存的常態，也是暫忘煩憂的唯一方法，身不由己莫可奈何。
《家居副業的生產力》勾起了記憶與聯想：島上的貧民拼命救助內地親人，是出於純粹的「血濃於水」？還是因為內心深處殘留著「倖存者」的罪疚感？這種陰暗的想法常令我暗暗自責。粵語殘片中主角灌輸的都是「正面意識」；王家衛的戲中著重男女感情，也並不讓我們對過去的香港看出甚麼端倪；我更沒膽量向親人求証，這問題的答案是無法查究的了。
時間會過去、歷史會被湮滅，但記憶不會，除非擁有記憶的人全部死去。黎肖嫻等五位藝術家以記憶為「針」，創作為「線」，留下紀錄，縫補歲月，歷史毋忘。
[完]
(English translation by Linda Lai)
Mending Years, fleeting sounds
In a small room, a young woman is sewing a rectangular bath towel into a cloth bag with a needle and thread. She is making a package, and the contents are all common things: coarse grains, omnivorous foods, tablet sugar, penicillin, health medicine... She stuffs the bag until it is bloated, and she carefully ties up the mouth of the bag with a cloth string. Sending the package to the post office first thing in the morning – extreme urgency! The package will ease the dire situation of her relatives in the mainland. Her young daughter is not idle either. She is cutting white-colour rags into squares, carefully writing the mailing address in Chinese ink with a brush – so that her mother could sew onto the package. This is a task too important to go wrong.
My mother was the lucky one who came to Hong Kong, a small island in the southern part of China, in the late 1950s. So what state of Hong Kong did she find?
As the established social and political discourses go, her home country had survived the Second World War, and was still heaving in reduced strength. The colonies in Asia were fighting for independence. Hong Kong, through with the Japanese occupation, was still in ruins, its population expanding with the new working class population as a result of the influx of refugees from the mainland. The colonial government turned a blind eye to the collective corruption of the disciplinary forces, and was caught up in the endless confrontation between the Kuomintang and the New Chinese Communist Party. Society was a miasma of anxiety and anger. These impressions are not uncommon in Hong Kong films.
Of course, the new immigrant mother's life was tough, but she still found a place with a roof, relatively free, where she would settle down. It didn't matter to her that ends barely met in the household; she would do everything extra she could to help her dear relatives back home in the mainland, knowing that they were suffering from a disaster that was borne by irrationality: a country under the rule and will of one, marred by endless political struggles, where production collapsed, and no policy surpassed one person's arrogance. Continuous mistakes put the country in total desperation, but it was only the common people who knew the suffering. The postal packages sent by my mother were no cosy expression or casual gifts to relatives and friends; they were life-savers.
It's really a long time ago, it's been sixty years. What my relatives told me, what I have experienced, and what I have read in books, I simply sigh when I think about it. And these are some of my thoughts after seeing the show “Mending Years,” an exhibition that reproduces one kind of situation in Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970s.
The images and installations in “Mending Years” remind me of the black and white Cantonese films of that era, and also of Wong Kar-wai, who is obviously someone extremely attached to Hong Kong in the 1960s. The special historical circumstances gave birth to a unique social community structure, starting from the Governor of Hong Kong appointed by the Queen of Britain, supplemented by a group of expatriate officials, followed by colonial compradors such as Jardine Matheson and Swire, and the HSBC. They occupied the top tier of society and led a superior life; as for those businessmen and intellectuals fleeing China, they arrived knowing that they would not be hanging on to their middle class origin, and integrated with the bottom tier of the labor force in the population. Western governance methods and education systems integrated with Chinese elements, giving birth to a unique way of life and material culture. And we have glimpses of that in Wong Kar-wai's movies: the younger generation fashionably loves Western dances and listens to Western pop music; women will take a zinc box to buy wonton noodles from the street in their cheongsams; they will dress neatly and their hair properly waxed before going to work; ordinary citizens with low salaries will also indulge in a bit of extravagance when they receive their wages in the beginning of a month. One finds these elements with Yuk (played by Leslie Cheung) in Days of Being Wild, So Lai-chun (played by Maggie Cheung) in In the Mood for Love, and Chow Mo-wan (Tony Leung/Leung Chiu-wai) in 2046... What Wong portrays is the same time and space explored by the artists of "Mending Years" like a parallel world, so strange, so close. Life is like a dream. In a chaotic time, people's world of emotions, as Wong Kar-wai sees it, gives us a different glimpse of the milieu. Material life could be poor, life could still be exquisite. Complex human relationships and delicate emotions – that is, to him, extraordinarily provocative.
I was born in a poor family in the 1960s. Today, I still remember sitting on my father's lap in the cinema watching The Big Boss [Brother Tangshan] (1971, starring Bruce Lee) and Boxer from Shantung [Ma Wing Ching] (1972, directed by Chang Cheh, starring Chen Guantai). Regardless of which period, regardless of the environment, having fun in hard times is the normal thing for all struggling survivors, and it was, and is, also the only way to temporarily forget our burdens.
Linda Lai's Domestic Moonlighting [literally, the productivity of the household sideline] brings back memories and associations: did Hong Kong's struggling working class seek to help their desperate relatives in the mainland purely out of the so-called "blood is thicker than water" sentiment? Or wasn't it also out of a guilty sense as "survivors" abandoning home? Such dark thoughts often returns to me. The protagonists in Cantonese oldies [from the 1950s-60s] are all instilled with “positive consciousness” whereas Wong Kar-wai's drama focuses on relations and affective dimensions between men and women, but does not help giving us more clues about the actual Hong Kong in the past. And I have no courage to ask my relatives for proof. I suppose there will never be a perfect answer to the question of what was Hong Kong really like.
Time will pass and historical accounts could be annihilated, but memories will not, unless all those who have memories die. Linda Lai and the other four artists use memory as a "needle" and their artistic creation as “threads,” weaving records, mending the years, so that the past will never be evaded. (END)
