WEBVTT

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Thank you.

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"Barbarian Suite."

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I call these mock
Chinese lyrics.

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They're going to sound end
stopped, epigrammatical.

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And I was trying to mimic
the hep--, the sounds

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of the heptasyllabic
Chinese lyric.

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"Barbarian Suite."

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The Ming will be over to
make way for the Ch'ing.

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The Ch'ing will be over
to make way for eternity.

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The east is red and
the sun is rising.

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All bleeds into the ocean
in the Calafia west.

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My loss is your loss.

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A dialect here, a memory there.

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If my left hand is dying,
will my right hand cut it off?

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We shall all be vestigial
organs, the gift of democracy.

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The pale faces,
the wan conformity.

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The price we pay for comfort
is our mother tongue.

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China is an ocean away.

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Our grandmother beaconing
with too many children, too

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many mouths to feed.

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We can no longer dress her
and improve her accent.

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We can no longer toil in her
restaurant "Double Happiness,"

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oiling woks, peeling shrimp.

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She is the bridge.

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And we've broken her
back with our weight.

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We studied Western philosophy
and explore our raison d'être.

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All is well in the suburbs when
we are in love with poetry.

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What did you think, the emperor
will come to your grave?

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To tell you all is groovy
in the hinterlands?

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What did you think?

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Life's that hunky dory?

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What did you expect,
old peasant, old fool,

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one day out of the
woods, and the dirt

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will eject from your nostrils?

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Even dung heaps
will turn fragrant

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with a thorough cleansing?

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Orchids doth not bloom, baby.

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They cry.

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They explode.

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Meanwhile, our anger gets
muted in their fatal beauty.

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AmerAsia is so harmonious
under a canopy of stars.

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The pram of a new nation.

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The winds rock it gently.

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Truth has no face,
we make it wear ours.

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You walk on the beach with
your beautiful son Julian.

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We dare to eat peaches
and discuss the classics.

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One day, they came to
me, my dead ancestors.

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They whispered
"sse-sse-sse-sse,"

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homophonous with death.

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I was under the covers
with my barbarian boyfriend

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blowing smoke
rings, talking jazz.

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Posterity is yet another
compromising position,

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addenda to the Kama Sutra.

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I was playing goddess/
dominatress and kept a piece

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of his ear as offering.

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Caldron full.

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Caldron empty.

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The duck dangling in the
window is the last vestige

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of our sizzling suzerainty.

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They believed in order, which
meant victory over oblivion.

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They believed in the restaurant
called "Double Happiness,"

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where all the partners
were brothers,

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all the sisters wore brocade.

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The cash register rang
his daily prayer wheels

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for the dying and the saved.

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