Your Father Says Nothing, and Every Father's Day Gift Is Wrong

He isn't a man with nothing to say. He is a man nobody ever asked.

The week before Father's Day, every son and daughter in Hong Kong is asking the same question. What do I get for Dad?

He doesn't drink, doesn't wear a watch, has enough shirts, and says he doesn't need anything. Whatever you buy gets an acknowledging grunt, gets put away, and is not seen again for three years.

This kind of father is not difficult. He is simply the most common kind Hong Kong made: a man with no habit of talking about himself.

Silence is not the same as having nothing to say

A great many Hong Kong fathers have never once been asked how they felt about anything, and would not raise it themselves. Their generation talked about work, the mortgage, and getting you raised. Not about feelings.

So don't ask about feelings. Ask about facts. What was your first job? How did you end up in that trade? Where did you and Mum first meet?

He can answer facts. And once the facts are out, the feeling comes along behind them without him noticing.

"I like fixing things more than I like talking."

That sentence is itself the answer. A man who is not fluent in talking is not a man without anything to say. He needs a way to do it that isn't face to face.

Why recording works so well for them

Sit a Hong Kong father down and ask him what he was like back then, and most will shut immediately. It feels like an interview, like being asked to perform an emotion.

But alone at home, in exactly the way he already sends you voice notes, answering one very specific question, the same man will talk for ten minutes. Nobody is watching him. He does not have to perform.

That is why the whole thing is built the way it is. No meeting, no writing, no new app to learn. He records when he feels like it and does not when he doesn't.

A gift he won't hand back

A book made out of his own words sits on a different level from anything bought. He had a hand in making it, and he is the subject of it.

Most fathers will not thank you when they get it. They will turn the pages, say nothing, and leave it on the table in the living room. That is the thank you.

This year, don't rush to the shops. Ask him one question and record the answer. That is the gift, already started.