THE KING OF CHINA

Not long after I got here
I took a train ride with a friend;
People were cracking dragon eyes
And throwing the husks out the window,
A process I still found baffling
Because the stones were
So much bigger than the meat;
My companion was a teacher
Who was eager to do research
At some college in America,
And the radio was playing
The slow painful lament
Of a woman who has lost
Her lover, her dignity, and her life,
To someone named " Chin Shih Huang . . .
Chin . . . Shih . . . Huang . . . "
So who was Chin Shih Huang?

My colleague was as excited
As if I had asked a Texan
About 'This Davey Crockett';
" Everybody knows that! " my friend said,
" Every farmer, every
Person in the village or the city
Knows about this story! "
It started, like so many stories,
With a grudge; a tailor
Had fired a thief,
And thirty years later
The thief found a chance
To finger the tailor's son
On political charges;
So pretty soon the police
Came to draft the boy
To work on the Great Wall,
Still under construction;
The boy fled in a panic
Through alleys and forests
Until he hopped a gate
Into a garden where
A young girl was picking flowers;
She started to shout, so
He grabbed her mouth and
Tried to calm her
While her guards just ran;
" And then her family catch him!
So they ask the young man
'Did you rape the young girl?'
And they ask the young lady
'What did you do
That you shouldn't do?' "
Did they believe the answers?
It hardly matters,
Because the guards had already seen,
And as my friends put it
" In China rumors can kill -- "

As befits a Confucian hero
The young man went along
With a rapid marriage
And then the police came
And sent him to work on The Wall;
" All the people at The Wall
Are sure to die, so
The young lady could
Soon get married again;
But she not wait for that ";
Instead, she camped at the site,
Sneaking food to her husband
And trying to bribe him free;
" All of China sorry
And say she a very good girl;
So finally the King hear "
And the King was Chin Shih Huang
" So Chin Shih Huang want her "
As just another cupcake
In his gigantic pantry;
But his lust became public
And her relatives hid the girl
With the help of good people everywhere;
Ha -- the King was hardly balked;
" Then Chin Shih Huang say
She is an excellent woman
And I just want to reward her ";
Reward? Deceit was central
To the Legalist philosophy
Which anticipated Nietzche
By two thousand years.
And Chin was a Legalist;
Most of his people, however,
Had outdated ideology
And some noble-minded guard
Believed Chin's proclamation
Because he expected it
From a Confucian ruler;
" The police soon have the girl,
But she no like the King "
Which meant no fun for Chin
Without a whip and a chain;
But Chin Shih Huang never quit,
So the King took his captive
To a high point on the Great Wall
And parted the stones to show her
The dead body of her husband
Packed with thousands in the fill;
Chin calculated that
Would cool her passion,
And she did let something go;
She dropped from the tower
Like an old man's judgement
And took the stones like a lover --



After I stayed here two years
I could see the resonances,
In revenge that incubates
For more than a generation,
In rumors that fly
Like an epidemic
And in a loyalty
Stronger than greed,
Stronger than Kings --
But here on the train
I could only say " That
Was a good story "
But it's two thousand years old;
Why then, I wondered,
Do they still sing about it?

" Because " my friend explained,
" Chin Shih Huang was just the same
As our great leader, Mao Tse-Tung!
Chin did not like books
Because writers always criticize him;
So Chin burn all the books
And bury the writers alive -- "
Mao, he felt, did the same thing
During the Cultural Revolution
When he sent millions of teenagers
To torch old novels, temples, and people;
But why, I asked, did
The Chinese love them so much?
" Because they unite our country
And they make our China strong! "
And anyway, he insists,
The rough stuff is all over;
But somehow the Chinese
Still savor the memory
Like a rotten tooth --



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