China Blue Poem by David Lewis Paget

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!

14 June 2012

(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)