this hokkien song made me cry...

(courtesy of toni lie on youtube)

yes.. this hokkien song brought tears to my eyes.
the melody is lovely, but it's actually the lyrics that really tugged at my heart strings... such a sweet song... (lyrics - simplified chinese translation here)i often forget how beautifully touching some of these hokkien songs can be, especially the super sad crooning ones :) i really love this one, especially those last two lines that go something like..

(1st verse) "when the time comes for us to go back (die), i will let you go first, because i can't bear to leave you behind to cry for me.."
(2nd verse) "when the time comes for us to go back, you will have to let me go first, because i can't bear to watch you cry for me."

so "awww", so poetic, isn't it?

many people (especially within Singapore) tend to find the hokkien dialect kinda crude or vulgar - no offence to my hokkien friends please. i guess it's not so much the dialect (or language) itself, but perhaps because it's the dialect more commonly spoken here by the less educated, older generation, hooligans, gangsters etc... hence when one speaks hokkien here, the tone somehow ends up sounding very "beng" or "lian", quite unlike the more refined manner it's spoken in taiwan.

i don't speak much hokkien myself (my dad's a teochew, mum's a hockchew) but having grown up in an old neighbourhood, spending much of my childhood years hanging around a traditional hawker centre, interacting with heartland kids, old aunties and uncles... i wouldn't say it's a totally foreign dialect to me either.

earlier tonight, my colleagues and i went to watch the opening show of Broadway Beng - Jiak Liu Lian (Dream Academy production; written and performed by Sebastian Tan; directed by Roystan Tan). the entire perfomance was about 70% hokkien, 30% english (or rather, singlish), so if you didn't understand hokkien, you'd probably miss out the essence of the show. Sebastian Tan, as usual, is a real star. performing alongside 8 supporting "chio bus" (pretty babes), he literally one-man hosted, joked, sang, danced, discoed and glitzed through the 1.5-hour show, very entertaining, dramatic and hilarious (though i still find his performance as The Queen in Wild Rice's Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs more outstanding). Broadway Beng is like an "atas" (high-class) getai, a little bit of broadway, a little bit of suburban housing estate flair :)

one of my favourite performance tonight was when Sebastian Tan did a very soulful and heart-wrenching rendition of the above hokkien song 《家后》 ("wife") . he sang it really well, so moving, literally brought me to tears - fortunately the lights were dim enough for me to secretly rub away those tears before anyone noticed *smile*.. yea, i'm a softie, i cry at movies, perfomances, concerts etc.

just wanted to share...
couldn't find the version performed by Sebastian Tan himself, so i showed the version by taiwanese singer Jiang Hui instead. enjoy this if you understand hokkien :)