5.往昔吉澳客家女人日常生活
Daily Life of Hakka Women in Kat O
有句話在客家人中廣泛流傳：「客家男人閒到死，女人就做到死」，這是講以前。我媽那一代女人，每天清晨起牀，擔水、淋菜、洗衣，掃地，煮早飯。吃完早飯便要去輋裏做事（“事“客家讀“細“），直至黃昏回來准備晚飯。
吉澳的輋地（梯田）一年有两造作物，主要是花生和番薯。花生春天下種，夏天收成。我們這時候放暑假，很多時要幫手摘花生。客家人以前環保兼不浪費，摘掉花生的莖會晒乾用作燃料燒，或埋入番薯籠內當肥料。種花生時，地是平的，但種番薯就要將泥土堆高疏水，鋤泥搭起一籠一籠的「番薯籠」，然後將番薯田割回來的番薯苗，插入番薯籠種植，而不是用番薯直接種。
八月十五前後，吃過月餅便開始上山割草斬柴。山上的草晒乾後，用芒帶綑成草把，拿「槍錐」（两頭包尖鐵的擔桿）挑回家。前面説過客家人極環保，綁草用的繩「芒帶」也是就地取材，用輋壆頭扯回來的「絲莠」（客家讀“收有“）扭成。扭芒帶要两個人，大多數小孩都要幫手。「絲莠」本地人叫茅草，凉茶「茅根竹蔗水」的茅根就是絲莠根。草把積到一定數量便要找人幫忙堆起一個個的草堆。因為煮食燒水全部燒柴燒草，一年到晚需要大量柴草，所以每家人都要完成两三個草堆過年。吉澳人一般燒松柴，由山上斬松樹搬回家鋸成一截截，然後用斧頭劈成細條，晒乾成柴。婦女由八月到年尾，除了下雨天和鋤番薯期間都會上山割草鋸樹。
婦女除了做事，還要兼顧副業，養豬、養雞鴨、菜園種菜，初一十五水退，下海打蠔仔、耙蜆仔之類。過年過節不用割草落田，非但家務一大堆，還要踏粉做茶粿，劏雞殺鴨奉神。
吉澳婦女的生活極之豐富，一年到晚無時閒，確實頂起半邊天，值得致敬！
There is a saying widely spread among Hakka people: "Hakka men are idle until they die, and Hakka women do everything until they die". In my mother's generation, women got up early in the morning, carried water, poured vegetables, washed clothes, swept the floor and cooked breakfast. After breakfast, they had to go to the fields to do some work until they came back in the evening to prepare for dinner.
There are two types of crops grown on the terraced land of Ji'ao each year, mainly peanuts and sweet potatoes. Peanuts are planted in spring and harvested in summer. During our summer holidays, we often had to help pick peanuts. In the past, Hakka people were environmentally friendly and did not waste peanuts. The stems of peanuts would be dried in the sun and used as fuel, or buried in sweet potato cages as fertiliser. When planting peanuts, the ground was flat, but to plant sweet potatoes, they had to pile up the soil and hoe it to build "sweet potato cages", and then insert the sweet potato seedlings cut from the sweet potato fields into the cages for planting, instead of planting them directly from the sweet potatoes.
Around the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, after eating moon cakes, the people would go to the mountains to cut grass and firewood. After drying the grass in the sun, the grass is bundled into straws and carried home on a "spear cone" (a stretcher with iron tips at both ends). As mentioned earlier, the Hakka people are very environmentally friendly, and the rope used to tie the grass is also made from locally sourced materials, twisted from the "siyra" (Hakka pronunciation: "to collect") that is pulled from the head of the Che Pok. It takes two people to twist the sash, and most children have to help. The local name for "atrazine" is thatched grass, and the root used in the herbal tea "Thatched Root and Bamboo Sugar Cane Water" is atrazine root. When a certain amount of grass has accumulated, it is necessary to ask for help to build up a pile of grass. Because all the cooking is done by burning firewood and grass, a large amount of firewood is needed throughout the year, so every family has to complete two or three piles of grass for the New Year. The people of Kio usually burn pine wood, which is cut from the pine trees in the mountains, sawed into pieces, and then chopped into thin strips with an axe, and then dried in the sun to be made into firewood. From August to the end of the year, women go to the mountains to cut grass and saw trees, except on rainy days and when they are hoeing sweet potatoes.
In addition to working, women also have to take care of sideline businesses, such as raising pigs, chickens and ducks, planting vegetables in vegetable gardens, and going to the sea to hunt oysters and rake clams on the first and fifteenth days of the year when the water recedes. During the Chinese New Year and festivals, they do not have to mow the fields, but they have to do a lot of household chores, such as making tea kuey teow and slaughtering chickens and ducks to serve the gods.
The life of the women of Kat O was extremely rich, and they had no time to spare all year round. They were indeed responsible for half of the sky, and deserve to be honoured!
