新詩：卡式錄音帶

假如口吃是一餅卡式錄音帶

靜止時，它

看起來一切正常

Side A

按下播放按鈕

卡帶機流暢地唱出你的首本名曲

按照眾人的期待

直至唱到某一個字

卡卡住了

你趕快按下倒播按鈕

像練琴彈錯音時總想重頭開始

要完整無誤彈好一遍的堅持

再一次 精準地 卡在那個字 並夾雜奇怪聲響

觀眾的困惑

那句歌詞在你腦海中不斷回放

你沒有霍金的說話機器

只好按下停止按鈕

把糾纏不清的磁帶拉……出

強行終結這場搏鬥

Side B

按下播放按鈕

5:59pm走進茶餐廳，侍應問道：

食咩？

我按下快播按鈕

卡帶機徐徐吐出：

沙沙沙 沙沙 沙律（唔該。）

English version:

Cassette Tape

If a stutter were a cassette tape

At rest, it

looks perfectly normal

Side A

Press the play button

The cassette player smoothly sings your favourite song

As everyone expects

Until it reaches a particular word

It gets stuck

You quickly press the rewind button

Like when you hit a wrong note while practicing piano and want to start over

The insistence on playing it flawlessly in one go

Again, precisely, gets stuck at the same word, accompanied by strange noises

The audience’s bewilderment

That lyrics line keeps replaying in your mind

You don’t have Hawking’s speech synthesizer

So you press the stop button

Pull…out the tangled tapeBrutally brings this struggle to an end

Side B

Press the play button

5:59 PM, walking into a Cha Chaan Teng, the waiter asks,

“sik6 me1 [What do you want to eat]?”

I press the fast-forward button

The cassette player slowly spits out:

Sa ssa saa, sssa, salad, (please.)

Relating to 2025 ISAD’s theme:

A cassette tape has two sides, much like how we can perceive our stutters from different perspectives. On one side, it causes difficulties in communication —making speech challenging and interfering with listeners.  On the other side, stuttering is one of the traits that differentiate us from the “normal” majority. I don’t take things for granted, as speaking fluently may be easy for some, but others might struggle greatly. In such moments, patience and compassion are what we need most.

In Chinese, the words for “question” and “problem” (問題) are the same. Once, I was stereotyped as a “problem kid” in a collectivist Asian society that emphasized obedience, for not fitting in and questioning almost everything. Now in the era of AI (artificial intelligence), being able to ask good questions has become a treasured strength. Similarly, in the pursuit of uniqueness in art and literature, my deep reflection as a person with stuttering (PWS)  serves as a source of inspiration. While authoritative medical discourse may depict stuttering as an issue that requires correction, members of the stuttering community can express our diverse experiences in creative ways that may challenge and change public perceptions.

As a nostalgic child born in the 1990s, cassette tape was a fond childhood memory of mine, and I am surprised to see them becoming popular again among Gen Z. In colloquial English, the lagging sounds on old cassette tapes are often referred to as “stuttering”. Although cassette tapes are inconvenient and sometimes unpredictable, I still treasure the “I’m-perfect” music listening experience they provided, which can be seen as a further analogy to our stutters.

More about the poem: 

Before the age of smartphones, cassette players and recorders were affordable devices for students. Back then, my Cantonese opera teacher and speech therapist assigned me to record and listen to my own singing and speech for practice. I enjoyed singing in falsetto (a high-pitched female voice) without stuttering. However, I hated listening to my own voice — until later I realised it could be a crucial step towards self-acceptance.

The frustration in piano practicing was my personal experience as well. I was irritated when my mom ordered me to say the same sentence until it was 100% fluent. In learning classical music, I doubted whether my failure in the diploma exam was due to a merely nervousness, lack of talent, skills, or perseverance. Similar to public speaking, there were occasions when I practiced extensively before going on stage, yet still failed to control my muscles. Methods and mentality matter — only then can our efforts truly pay off.

This poem is originally written in Chinese for a novice poetry class. The two illustrations used for the English and Chinese versions are generated by AI models DALL·E 3 and GPT-Image-1, respectively, which give different cultural touches to my text.  On Side B, the reference of Cha Chaan Teng may require explanations for foreign readers. It is a common type of restaurants in Hong Kong, known for its speedy service and fusion cuisine. Some Cha Chaan Tengs offer an afternoon tea menu from around 3pm to 6pm. During peak hours, some waiter or waitress may be rude to customers (including tourists) who cannot place their orders quickly. Fortunately or unfortunately, nowadays more and more of these local restaurants use QR code to replace verbal ordering to save labor cost. 

Published for the International Stuttering Awareness Day (ISAD) 2025