Childhood is the Remote Hometown of the Inner Human Being(童心是人類內心遙遠的故鄉)

[李秀]

----For English version of children’s poems---
I used to only write essays and novels for adults. I never thought about writing children’s poetry. However, that changed when Yu-Di Huang, who is a famous musician, composer and writer from Hong Kong, came to Taiwan to offer his time and expertise to help choir groups. At that time he always encouraged me in both my literary and musical interests as I diligently presided over my telephone company’s choir. One warm evening, he discouraged me from singing foreign nursery rhymes with my two children at the Kaohsiung Cultural Center. He said to me, “You are a writer. You have a responsibility to write children’s poems for our children to sing in our native language. Don’t force them to learn only foreign songs. Write the poems! I will be glad to compose music for them.”

I listened to my honored teacher and made a sincere attempt to write children’s poetry. Then I became not only involved with the creation of children’s poems, but I also discovered my long lost child self and really enjoyed experiencing my innocent side again. “Childhood is the remote hometown of the inner human being” describes the process of my children’s poetry writing. Even though adult literature expresses the writer’s ideas and emotions, writing for children can lead the writer back to childlike innocence and treasured memories of childhood. Thus, elements of nature such as clouds, flowers and raindrops are the embodiment of a child’s vision; furthermore, observing my two children learning to play the piano and the violin also gave me a lot of inspiration write children’s poetry.

A child’s development is the first stage of life. It is rich in fantasy, curiosity, sympathy and imagination. Children often live in their own world. In fact, the child is a literary masterpiece.

For example, there is a strong curiosity about what they can see or touch during early childhood. This kind of attitude is the reason why they will not consider things like typhoons as disasters. When the typhoon is coming, they are just excited that they don’t need to go to school; father and mother don’t have to go to work as well. Moreover, experiencing the wild effects of the typhoon stimulates their interest in such a positive way that they dance with joy.

In their sight, all things under the sun are one. A child looks at the still stars in the sky and has an image of the stars being punished by being forced to stand by Moon Teacher because they are a group of disobedient children. Children hear the sound of thunder and the thunder is personified as Thunder Father; maybe Thunder Brothers have provoked his father to anger. Looking at small raindrops, children may say that some raindrops play a warrior’s game on the roof whipping each other with their crystal bead bodies, and some raindrops jump into the river to go swimming, but as they all swim together, they are unable to know who is who. These kinds of naive images arise from the most wonderful period of life.

When children reach pre-adolescence (between the ages of 11 and 13), they experience big changes in their physicality and spirituality, such as an increase in intellectual curiosity, more independence, a sense of justice, etc. The poems, “Today”, “Air”, “Learning the Music of Us” and so on are expressions of these new interests.

Observing childhood changes and writing them down is a fantastic experience. I wrote these children’s poems in Chinese over a decade ago. Now I have translated them into English so that more children can enjoy them. It is my great hope that my poetry in some way reflects the nature of childhood.

Among these Chinese poems there are twelve that have music composed for them by Yu-Di Huang. Getting children to sing merrily is his greatest desire. Actually these melodies were performed by children when I was awarded a Children’s Poetry Prize for this book at the Kaohsiung Cultural Center.

On the other hand, even though I am a Taiwanese writer, I never think about translating the poems into Taiwanese. I always have this idea that translating into English is easier than translating Taiwanese. Shame on me! I am really a Taiwanese writer. How dare I get this idea!

Recently, I was in touch with Tiong-Siong Oo, who is a Taiwanese novelist, whose articles are written in Taiwanese. He said that if I go to the world of Taiwanese language, I will find a remarkable vision. Of course, I admire this wonderful state and want to be in my mother language world. Additionally, another famous Taiwanese writer, Ze-Lai Song, also said to me, “Writing mother language is a good way to solve homesickness in a foreign country.”
It is true that their encouragement is involving me in the marvelous world of Taiwanese language.

Now that I have translated these children’s poems from Chinese into Taiwanese, I feel like a joyful breeze is playing upon my heart the musical ripples of my mother tongue.