However we would whistle to dogs or make human statements like ‘come here, boy’ (even to bitches). Maybe that’s why we whistle also at life’s real bitches, the ones who wear 4-inch high heels wakakaka.
But one of life’s greatest mysteries, at least from a Chinese Penangite's perspective, is the different sounds we make when calling out to fowls, for example, chicken and ducks.
We would say ‘koo koo koo …’ to the former but instead utter ‘lee lee lee …’ to ducks.
Why?
Could it be that in some distant past, perhaps back during China’s mythical era, that an ancient Chinese in Fujian or Chaozhou region (then not yet an official state province) was told by the gods to do so as specific calls appealed to different species of the fowl kingdom.
Considering that the stories in the ‘Creation of the Gods’, a Chinese book authored by Xu Zhonglin (Chinese title is Fengshan Bang or sometimes Fengshen Yanyi), we are told of the existence of demon-spirits of pheasants, peacocks, chicken, trees and even inanimate items such as a pipa or an oil lamp, and of course ...
... vixens, the No 1 favourite female animal-spirit for Chinese, Koreans, Vietnamese and Japanese - oh, those hot sexy foxy (excuse the deliberate pun) demons.
There was a TV series based on the stories in ‘Creation of the Gods’, called The legend and the hero. In the first season, Empress Daji, the main foxy villain, a beautiful vixen demon ordered by an angry goddess to seduce and ruin a lustful disrespectful Emperor Zhou, so that he became the last of his Shang Dynastic line, was played by scrumptious succulent sweetie Fan Bing Bing.
Fan Bing Bing
Alas for me, Fan Bing Bing is an exquisite sweet doll who looked so very much like someone I once knew in Penang, sob sob sob.
Cute and so yummy Eva Huang played Madam White Snake in the recent film release of The Sorcerer & the White Snake, ...
... while some 10 years ago, sexy Maggie Cheung played the green snake in Tsui Hark's Green Snake, ...
... which was adapted from Lilian Lee's* book of same title, a tale told from the junior demon's perspective. In that movie, utterly gorgeous Joey Wong played the role of Madam White Snake.
Joey Wong
* Lilian Lee is the famous author of such books as 'Farewell my concubine', 'Rouge' (adapted into a film of same title, starring the late Anita Mui), 'Temptations of a monk', etc.
Thus, it would not be too difficult to imagine there was once a secret language for communication with these animals which, according to Chinese myths, could develop into demon-spirits after thousands of years of meditative spiritual cultivation.
Even from Sumatra, we receive tales of their legendary tiger people or were-tigers. It was said that these ‘beings’ could be recognised by the absence of their philtrum (sometimes called uurrrrrgh the infranasal depression). Apparently it has no function … though perhaps to indicate the person is a were-tiger wakakaka.
However, Wikipedia tells us that “A flattened or smooth philtrum can be a symptom of Fetal alcohol syndrome or Prader-Willi syndrome”.
Bloody spoilsport – should have left the flattened philtrum as more interestingly a romantic-mythical symbol of a person being a were-tiger wakakaka.
Anyway, back to the ‘koo koo koo …’ for chooks and ‘lee lee lee …’ for ducks, can anyone tell me why there is such a marked difference in audio calls for these two domesticated fowls?
Mind you, there are varying calls for other bird species. For example, as a young village lad, I used to make gobbling sounds to trigger off guaranteed angry responses from my neighbour’s male (tom) turkeys as I walked by her house. This would bring a sarong-ed Auntie Lai with rollers still in her hair rushing out to admonish me, and sometimes even threatening angrily to inform my mum that I deliberately upset her fowls wakakaka.
Hmmmm, I wonder what would be the sound to attract geese?
My maternal Granddad, being the Teochew (Chaozhou) nang he was, loved rearing ducks. He was the one who would call out ‘lee lee lee …’ regularly to his fowls.
Since domesticated ducks are descended from mallards I wonder whether we ought to call a flock of ducks a ‘sord’, as we would for mallards?
OK, 'sord' shall it be then - my Granddad kept a sord of ducks. Each morning, before I rushed off to school, my job was to feed those ducks, open the backyard gate, and allow them to troop off by themselves, single file, to a nearby stream where they would folic for the whole day. Strangely, though I didn’t question it in those days, the leader of the single-filed waddling to the stream was a brown duck and not the sole colourful drake we had. Wimp!
By evening, smart as dogs, the sord would return home, again in single file led by the lady, but when they found I hadn’t opened the backyard gate, would make mucho quacking. My Granddad would then be very annoyed that my forgetfulness prevented his precious ducks from entering our backyard – that usually earned me a rebuke though he was very forgiving, especially to me the apple of his eye ;-).
Despite the freedom we permitted them, to wander by themselves to the stream (about 200 metres away through several dozen neighbouring yards) we never lost one. They were wonderful birds though today I would consider ducks too yucky to keep in my garden.
The ducks were very productive. For a sord of 6 including that wimp of a drake, we received at least 4 eggs daily. I used those huge duck eggs in fried rice or onion-omelettes that I fried myself when Granddad allowed me to, and sometimes in the char koay teow my hawker matey Tan did for me.
Of course half boiled duck eggs were unheard of, presumably because their taste and odour were too ‘strong’. But hard boiled eggs were great. Once I went to KL by (bloody slow) train, I had only two hard boiled duck eggs and a bottle of ‘JKR gin’ (water) as my meal for the entire journey.
But it needs to be pointed out that until I left my village for the city to work, I had never taken chook eggs (free range of course, the only type in ulu kampungs) as those were then far too expensive for my family. Today it’s the other way around where chook eggs (by battery hens) are cheap while duck eggs have become a rarer commodity and thus far more expensive.
I wonder whether today, Penangites still call out ‘lee lee lee ...’ to their ducks ;-)
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