Her eyesight failing, Liu Kam-lan sits, hands clasped together, in San Uk Tsuen, a village in Hong Kong’s rural New Territories a few miles from the border with mainland China. Around her, other elderly women chat and laugh.
She is asked to sing. In a lilting voice, she begins a “bridal lament” in the disappearing dialect of the Weitou people, who settled in the area during the Song dynasty (960-1279).
The song is one of sadness, and tells a story dating back more than 60 years.
Like other young women in her village, Liu was married off to a man she had never met.
The Weitou women’s bridal laments are songs of anger for the matchmaker they felt betrayed them.
“In the darkness, by the wooden
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May 16, 2019