Saturday the 3nd of April. Light drizzle.
Felt a bit anxcious because the translation is taking a lot more time than I thought. Texted Kang early in the morning for help. He’s been very busy as well.
The wife was preparing to go down the field, leaving the three little ones home with Ah-Che. They saved some hard boiled eggs for me for breakfast.
I kind of felt tired, not having enough sleep, the city was always too noisy at night. Ah-Che was going to finish the rest of the crossbow. He couldn’t wait for me to do the frames, so just the triggering piece made out of ox-bone. The bow section, if starting from freshly cut wood, takes two, three months to dry above the firepit. To me, the all organic, manual process and materials are just amazing. The cutting, the fitting, and the all simple but effective triggering mechanism is so pure. Ah-Che said he shot two little birds in the morning for the kids, unfortunately I wasn’t in early enough to see that. I don’t think these native people have a strong enough sense of “environmental protection”, feeding the family takes much higher priority, though the simple observation of more people, less birds does trouble them.
After crossbow, we reviewed the music we recorded the other day and give them proper corresponding tune names. If nothing else from the trip, at least, I have a big collection of original Qibon music that once Ah-Che is gone will be gone for good. Even though the instrument is still played at festivals at places by young people, a lot of the essense, the originality have been replaced with commerical mimicry with the form, but lacking the spirit behind.
Just after dinner, the wife called the little boy to bring some corns to feed the chicken at the ground floor of their shed. The boy poured a bow of corn down through a hole on the floor, then started calling: “Lay more eggs! Lay more eggs” – Incredibly cute.