The Chinese Labour Corps Poem by Sheena Blackhall

In the Manchurian Province of Shandong,
Taoists, Buddhists farm by the yellow river
Mount Tai lies here, the Taoists sacred peak
Whilst south ofJinan, Buddhist temples stretch
Confucius was born here, inQufu
A Provinceofgreat spiritual awareness.

The Province of Jilin overflows with rice.
A monsoon region, with its Heavenly Lake
And monster legends, ginseng, fog and flowers
You'll hear the tongues of Mandarin spoken here,
Mongolian, Korean, melting pot of peoples

Recruited from 1916, remote farms
Yielded a crop of labourers to the war
Reaching Shanghai, its buildings, busy waters,
Many thought this was their destination, but..

Shipped across the Pacific.
Six days crossing to Canada
Sealed into trains, to avoid landing taxes
Shipped to Liverpool (where some, already dead, were buried quickly)
By train to Folkestone, on to France and Belgium

Exploited, paid one franc for a ten hour day
Six days per week, civilians under military rule
Dying of enemy fire, exhaustion and disease
Deployed for loading goods and ammunition
Dismantling rail lines, building needed roads
Lumberjacking, mining in collieries
Unloading ships, and at the great war's close
The perilous job of clearing up live minefields
The horrid job of clearing up the dead

Have you ever seen a corpse that's lain unburied,
Bloated, rotting, fly ridden, discoloured?
The Chinese labour force were undertakers
Lifting and shifting,disembowellingthe earth
Giving the soldiers back their lost identity
Cleaning the hateful charnel house of Europe
And after…refused the right to settle in Britain
And by the end of this, their strange adventure
Of 80,000, one in four was dead

An enormous canvas showing victorious France
Surrounded by friends, (Chinese workers too)
Was altered after America joined the war.

Lacking more canvas space, Chinese were painted over
By the American allies, as if their help and sacrifice was nothing
The Forgotten of the Forgotten, all ignored.