Confessions of a Cat-holic (24)

Claire wanted to use her wit in breaking apart my acquaintanceship with my only Hong Kong friend, Serena Ho, at LPCUWC. Er...Okay, so she succeeded. Serena hated me a lot and asked a slumdog millionaire Edmond to go out with me so that I would break up with my then boyfriend, a resident at the peak. Claire liked drama. But you know what, I loved drama even more so than her. So I gave her what she deserved. I always gave back and took my revenge, and when I fought back, I made sure I fought hard.

It was at our music night show at LPCUWC when I performed Guzheng on stage. Talking about Guzheng, I needed to give my gratitude to Vivienne Chu for inspiring me to pick up this Chinese musical instrument. As I said earlier, I was tone deaf. I never received any formal training in music, therefore I could not read any musical stuff. The best I could do was translating the notes into ABCDEFG and then pressed piano keys according to the written alphabet on my fingers. That was how I coped with my private piano lessons with instructor Miss Ada when I was in grade 1. Because my family could not afford to have a piano at home, I was just attending subsidized lessons after school at the Hong Kong Boys and Girls Club Association, once every two weeks for about a quarter. The only song I could play and recite was Silent Night.

I didn't expect that not knowing anything about singing would be a missed opportunity to excel until I transferred to SPCC. I reckoned that there were some solid needs to pick up an instrument but then I was too late to learn piano all over again. I also acknowledged the fact that I was rather weak in the world of classical music, a realm which I barely needed to touch during my times at St Francis.

My mother told me that Vivienne Chu picked up Guzheng as her extra-curricular activities for the sake of college applications because it was a relatively inexpensive and quick way to show off her not-so-hard-core musical talents. I never won any awards inside or outside of school so I figured I should at least try a new musical instrument, just to appear that I had a life outside of school. I couldn't say my favorite activities were chit-chatting with friends and sleeping at home, right? So I signed up for Chinese Guzheng lessons in the summer after I finished my HKCEE exam. I had a lot of free time, so I thought why not gave it a try?

To my surprise, I found Guzheng amazingly enjoyable, given that I had almost no knowledge and formal training in western music. The notes were represented in numerical notations for Guzheng players, which just worked perfectly for me. Guzheng was an instrument that was hard to specialize but relatively inviting for beginners. I already learned to play a Chinese folk song in my first lesson. I was quite happy with my progress and I made sure I practiced often enough to destress myself in the times of IB revisions and other external examinations.

So I was performing Guzheng on stage. I chose to play the song, "cang hai yi sheng xiao" taken from the movie of "xiao ao jiang hu", for special reasons. It would be hard for me to translate the exact meaning it conveyed, but I would say any Hong Konger would immediately know the song and its connotations. It was supposed to describe the conflicts in the wulin, the clans or kung fu circle of Hong Kong. The word "jianghu" didn't have an appropriate equivalence in English but native locals would know that it was meant to describe the underworlds of Hong Kong, like the triads and dark side of the city. All in all, it was a song that meant to remind people to take heed of the potential dangers ahead and that it would be too arrogant or unwise to laugh off the sea of talents in Hong Kong, a place where crouching tigers met hidden dragons.

The phrase "cang hai" could mean a lot of things, just like the word Estee Lauder. Its pronounciation could mean a hole with a sore or a boil. It could mean literally by the sea. It could mean the blue ocean. It could mean mother nature. It could mean a lot of things, but I especially wanted to play the song in response to the speculations that I was infected with STDs because I dated a gangster. I was still a virgin. Should I worry about my pussy's wellbeing?