Ah Moy Moy

It's hard to hang onto our Hakka heritage these days.  Katy loves it that she's Hakka and Chinese, and German, and Australian and American.  She knows how to say "chit kah ngin" in Hakka, which is what you say when you meet another Hakka.  It means "our own people".

I'll have to teach her the only Hakka song I know, which a Hakka Malaysian friend taught me on a drive from Sydney to Canberra for a legal conference:

"Ah Moy Moy, ship bat soy
oi ka ngai, ngai mm oy
ngai oy sit
chu ngiuk chow ham choy."

"Little Lass, just eighteen,
wants to marry, but I don't.
I'd rather eat
pork and salted vegetable."

It's actually a slightly derogatory rhyme making fun of Hakka people's love of eating the typical Hakka dish of pork and salted vegetable!

Well, we had it the other day.  Yum.  I haven't had it in ages.  We had it with tripe instead of pork, but it was delicious anyways, and reminded me of the Hakka song.