China BlueA Poem by David Lewis Paget(see the glossary at the end of the poem).I
had seen him in the market, I
had glimpsed him in the rain, I
had tried to pick his trail up On
the Wenzhou-Hangzhou train, Then
he’d seen me drinking Kafei In
a little Shanghai Ba, And
had run the length of Nanjing Road And
fled in a jiao che. He
was Sun Peng Fei, her brother, She
was Sun Ye Ling, I knew, But
I’d always caught her smiling When
I called her China Blue, She
was sweet, and very pretty, And
I’d fallen for her, hard, In
the village school at Ping Yang When
I saw her in the yard. We
had taken to each other And
I’d tried to learn Chinese, But
she warned me of her brother, He
was grim, and hard to please, And
her parents had been angry When
they heard of me one day, They
had told her older brother ‘She’ll
not marry a yang wei!’ At
the end of the semester China
Blue had disappeared, And
I asked the Zhongwen lao shi If
it was as I had feared, She’d
been taken by her parents And
her brother to Shanghai, Thinking
I could never find her, But
I knew I’d have to try. A
needle in a haystack Would
be easier than this, There
are twenty million people In
this huge metropolis, But
I knew that I would see them If
I watched the Nanjing Road, In
that swarm of Christmas shoppers I
stayed put, and watched the crowd, A
week before that Christmas I
could see them, in a queue, Lining
up for western presents, Mother,
father, China Blue, Then
I tapped her on the shoulder And
she turned and smiled at me, So
I took her by the hand And
then I whispered ‘Wo ai ni!’ ‘Wo
ai ni,’ she answered gladly Flung
her arms around my neck, While
the mother screeched at father, And
the father shook his head, But
they came with me together And
we sat in Mei Don Lao, Where
I slipped rings on her finger And
I made a solemn vow. Then
the mother, I won over, And
the father gave a grunt, They
agreed we should be married If
that’s what we really want, And
the brother, he’s no trouble We
go drinking, bowling too, And
I’m soon to be a father With
my love, my China Blue! David
Lewis Paget (Glossary: Kafei
- (Karfay) - coffee Ba
- (Bar) - Bar Jiao
che - (Jow Tcher) - Taxi Peng
Fei - (Peng Fay) - male name Ye
Ling - (Yer Ling) - female name Yang
wei - (yang way) - Foreign devil Zhongwen
Lao shi - (Jongwen Lao Sher) - Chinese teacher Wo
ai ni - (war I nee) - I love you Mei
Don Lao - (May Don Lao) - MacDonalds) © 2012 David Lewis PagetFeatured Review
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