Kóng-kó: bedtime storytelling

After relocating to P, I was given a new job for Taikun, storytelling at bed time.

A story I was asked by Taikun often to tell is hó-ko-pô (Tiger Aunt), a Taiwanese story about how a pair of brave sisters defeated a wicked intruder to their house using wits and tricks. Like a lot of Asian children stories, this story has a flavor of intimidation which was intended for the discipline of the child. Honestly sometimes I wonder if it is suitable for Taikun who is actually only 2 years 9 months old now. Just he requested it I tell him it---although often times he had fallen asleep before I had chance to finish it.

  

A traditional way of storytelling is have the child aside opening a book and read it. This is somehow difficult since I don’t have a book written in Taiwanese now. Also, the purpose of storytelling is to encourage Taikun to sleep smoothly right afterwards (or better, “during” storytelling) so the best  strategy is to do it in the dark without any light on.

Under these considerations, my storytelling is entire verbal, however, with a lot of shifts in persons in the narration in order to add needed interactions via question-and-answering. Also I made a lot intended departures from the original story by adding a lot not-so-related questions, with a purpose of training his Taiwanese conversation capability.

For hó-ko-pô, e.g., the interaction is made by such side questions as “how far do the sister live away? Ten minutes or 1 hour or ten hours?” Then, Taikun would “mmmm----mmmmmm------ goa siūⁿ  khòaⁿ mai” (mmmm—mmm—let me think). But often followed by “ goa m̄-chai-iáⁿ.” (I don’t know.) Then, it’d be perfect to bring in more vocabularies and expressions regarding where [the sisters] live, like “live very far in the mountains”, which in this case  tòa-tī   chiok  hn̄g e soaⁿ lāi-té in Taiwanese.

Sometimes this brings in unexpected chance helping Taikun to compare similarly pronounced words. For instance, he uttered “sand” after I mentioned “soaⁿ”. All of a sudden I realized he confused two Taiwanese words. Then I clarified, sand is “soa”, and “soaⁿ” is actually mountain in English. And I emphasized that “soa” ga “soaⁿ” bô-kāng-khóan (mountain and sand are different). Of course, as always, he enjoys this contrast, and would repeat after me, “soa ga soaⁿ bô-kāng-khóan”, following “A ga B bô-kāng-khóan” (A and B are different).

It’d mundane to tell hó-ko-pô every time. Though Taikun appears to be fine in repeating, I felt bored. So I managed to be creative. Another story I share with him was Papa ê sè-hàn sî-chūn  (papa’s childhood) regarding an adventure of shopping for a bottle of soy sauce based on a real personal story.  It happened when I was boy, about losing the money given for picking up some food in a nearby grocery (kám-á-tiàm) in Taiwan. My parents gave a big money (say $NT100) but when arriving at the grocery the money was missing from my pocket. Later on as I could recollect, the result was unpleasant.

Though this is based on a real personal story, I staged it a bit differently: it happened to me when I was san hòe (3-year-old), just as Taikun’s age now. Also I added a lot spices into it, like the things I saw on the way to the grocery, and different things I saw on the shelves in the grocery. Finally I didn’t focus on how angry grandparents were—simply focusing on it is not good to lose money. So far, this money-losing story has been repeated many times, and Taikun seemed to be satisfied with this episode.

However, my story bank depleted soon. So this time I asked Taikun do something reversely—tell papa a story! Then he said “ho” (Yes), and then coming up a story regarding the pineapple lion (a character in  má-lêng-chî  káu (Jagainukun—potatodog—another blog article needed) and  thò-á (a pink “rabbit” he cherished since a baby, an all-time must-have stuff animal). They played together a vacuum cleaner—not the old big one (out of order so was sent out for repair), but the small one. Just a few sentences--I was already content about his imagination.

Very interesting. I can imagine this is the best he can come up with now, based on major characters he has experienced in life. He manages to use two closest characters---má-lêng-chî  káu  (potatodog) and  thò-á (the pink stuffed rabbit), and combined them using his favorite activity, playing with the vacuum cleaner. Though not elaborated, his major points of narration got crossed to me well. His imagination well combined with actual experiences, wrapped in several sentences expressed in Taiwanese. 

I feel proud of you, Taikun.