Today was her birthday. The family gathered in the stuffy living room, a store-bought cake with too much cream sitting on the plastic tablecloth. Jun Wei’s father cleared his throat. “Okay, let’s sing.”
Tears rolled down her wrinkled cheeks, but she was smiling—a real smile, not the polite one from before. She started to sing along, her ancient voice cracking but true. “Leh jit gao si, huai sim si…” Jun Wei didn’t know the words. But he knew the tune. He hummed along, off-key, holding her hand. His father, a stoic man who never cried, wiped his eyes with a napkin. happy birthday song in teochew
A scratchy, tinny melody filled the room. It was a woman’s voice, young and strong, singing not in English, but in the rough, guttural tones of old Teochew. Today was her birthday
It wasn't flowery. It wasn't global. It was the sound of a fishing village, of hardworking people who said “I love you” by asking if you’d eaten. “Okay, let’s sing
Ah Ma’s chin trembled. She looked at the little speaker, then at Jun Wei. “That’s… that’s my Aunty Siang’s voice,” she whispered in Teochew. “She sang that at my sweet sixteen .”
Old Mrs. Lim, or Ah Ma as everyone called her, was the last person in her Singapore housing block who still dreamed in Teochew. At eighty-four, her world had shrunk to the size of her two-room flat, but her voice, when she spoke, still carried the rising and falling tides of the Swatow river from a century ago.