"Carrie Ku Mei, I have found you!"

After 20 some odd years, I finally found "But Liu Ching" [or "Bu Liao Qing" in Mandarin] and other songs from the 1960s Shaw Brothers' Hong Kong film "The Lark." They, along with the single for "Kung Fu Fighting," The Carpenters' "brown album," The Chopstick Sisters' LP, and a Jackson Five LP, were the soundtrack of my childhood as an only spoiled child with my own turntable and a microphone (Sanyo suitcase model, silver and black).

When Matt and I lived in Hong Kong, I used to search out cd shops in Kowloon with the name of the song scribbled on a piece of paper (I got my coworker William to write it down in Chinese). Shop keepers used to laugh because the song, as popular as it was, was very old fashioned and not available on cd. There was the brief stint backpacking in Melacca, Malaysia, where I found the song on cassette, but lost it in the hostel when the thieving Algerians made off with Matty's pack and passport.

I have been going through an Asian "Roots" thing ever since I found out about The Phoenix Foundation in the last issue of "Giant Robot." GR is a very neat publication and store celebrating culture and Asian American culture. I've been thinking about what it means to be born Chinese Californian and to be livin' in a little redneck town, what that expat stint in Hong Kong was all about (Thanks Kay, who was here last week, for helping me remember a lot of the details), and why a song in a language I don't understand should mean so much to me?

Postscript: Patrick and Doreen just sent me an MP3 of "But Liu Ching" also known as "Love Without End" in English. It is on Shanghai Divas Vol. 2. I have Shanghai Divas Vol. 1 and wasn't so impressed with the remixes, so never bothered to look further into them. Silly me. When it rains, it pours.