The House Of The Scarlet Moon Poem by David Lewis Paget

I fell in love with a Chinese girl
Her name was Chen Xiao Fei,
We worked together in Middle School
In the Province of Anhui,
She'd join me in my apartment when
The working day was done,
But never would take me to home to meet
Her mother, Chen Shaojun.

Xiao Fei was going on thirty, which
Had meant, in Chinese terms,
That she was a spinster, on the shelf,
She had no marriage plans,
I asked her once if she'd marry me
But she laughed and said, 'No way!
My mother would jump from the balcony
If I married an old Yang Wei.'

I called in once to the family home
To win her mother round,
She glared at me as I paced the floor,
Her father sat and frowned,
She wouldn't sit at the table while
I stayed there, under her roof,
But screeched at her daughter, in Chinese,
Some slang that was quite uncouth.

She came one day to say, Xiao Fei,
The wedding date was set,
I asked her who was the lucky man -
But she'd not even met him yet!
Her mother had schemed and arranged it all
To thwart what plans we had,
She cried a bucket of silent tears
But would do as her mother said.

She stayed away for a month or two
To let things settle down,
Then married the man that her mother chose
From a village, out of town.
When a month had passed, I was feeling lost
'Til there came a knock at my door,
It was Chen Xiao Fei in some deep dismay
So I sat with her, down on the floor.

She clung on tight to my shoulder, sobbed,
And cried, wouldn't let me go,
The man she'd married was such a brute
As the marks and the bruises showed,
But worse than that, she looked at me
As her eyes had begun to mist,
'I'm having a child, and I don't quite know
If the baby's yours, or his! '

I sat quite shocked in the evening gloom,
And I felt a sudden chill,
'You'll know as soon as the baby's born, '
I said, but my heart stood still.
If she should deliver a foreign child
She'd be left in a deep disgrace,
And her family then would turn their backs
From the horror of 'losing face'.

Our fears were proven a few months on,
The child was a baby boy,
At first the father and parents danced,
They couldn't conceal their joy,
In China, there is the one child rule,
One chance is all that you get,
So girls go missing there all the time
If the father's mind is set.

For sons are valued as girls are not,
A boy can work on the farm,
A girl will grow to be someone's wife,
Will travel away from home.
So often, just when the child is born
The father will wait outside,
The judge and the executioner,
It's often a question of pride.

A boy is swept up in loving arms,
A girl will wait on the thumb,
If the thumb goes down then the baby drowns
Or is dumped in the cinder drum.
If a boy is born with a fatal flaw,
His fate is the same as hers,
Or he may be sold to a heartless soul,
They call it the Chinese Curse.

The boy was fine 'til he opened his eyes
And they saw that his eyes were blue,
His skin was yellow, his hair was black
But the eyes... the eyes... They knew!
Not even a day had passed before
The baby had paid for our sin,
He was sold to a beggar for ten yuan,
A beggar named Sun Lang Lin.

The birth, already forgotten there
Was marked - 'delivered but dead! '
The Doctor was paid a forgetting fee,
As Xiao Fei cried in her bed,
She told me, when she returned to work,
What they'd done with our beautiful son,
She looked aside, avoided my eyes,
Pretended they'd done nothing wrong.

It took me a month to discover the name
Of the beggar, Sun Lang Lin,
I haunted the areas beggars haunt,
But could find no sign of him,
Then just by chance, a crippled child
Who begged by a streetside bin,
Cowered away when I asked her the way
To the beggar called Sun Lang Lin.

She raised a hand to protect herself
At the sound of his hated name,
She said that he'd kicked and he'd beaten her
Had crippled and brought her to shame,
This child was one of a dozen he had
Who begged for him, night to noon,
She whispered his place of ill-fame in my ear,
'The House of the Scarlet Moon'.

I couldn't find anyone willing to talk about
Where this old Tavern was,
I knew it was out in the countryside,
Beside a deserted Mosque.
I travelled by day and I slept rough at night
As I searched in the dusk and the gloom,
Then finally, there in the distance I spied
The House of the Scarlet Moon.

Sun Lang Lin lay in his dirty rags
On a bed on the floor at the back,
I waited 'til midnight, picked up a rock
And I worked out my plan of attack,
Children were crying in fitful sleep
In a room in that dark old den,
I crept through the dark to the crying there
To look for my blue-eyed son.

Around the walls were earthenware jars
And each with a child within,
He'd jammed them in tight, where nothing could grow,
Their legs would be twisted and thin,
This house of horrors and nightmares kept
Its secrets all wrapped in gloom,
My son lay there on a coverlet,
In the House of the Scarlet Moon.

I seized my son, I smashed the jars,
The children fell to the floor,
They each were maimed and deformed, I knew,
They'd never be able to walk,
They'd spend their lives in the gutters for him,
Set up with a begging bowl,
I wondered how people like Sun Lang Lin
Could open the doors to the soul.

He woke, came running right into the room,
And he pulled out a long, sharp knife,
I laid my son on the coverlet
And prepared to fight for my life,
He lunged just once, I stepped aside,
I hit him just once with the rock,
He fell and he didn't get up again
So I picked up my son, and took off.

Once well away in the undergrowth
I stopped and I turned, to see,
A flame was flickering through the roof
Of the Tavern that used to be.
It all went up with a mighty roar
As I hugged my son in the gloom,
There's no more babies, or cripples made
At the House of the Scarlet Moon.

2 December 2008