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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=365951" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The House of the Scarlet Moon</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">I fell in love with a Chinese girl<br>Her name was Chen Xiao Fei, <br>We worked together in Middle School<br>In the Province of Anhui, <br>She'd join me in my apartment when <br>The working day was done, <br>But never would take me to home to meet<br>Her mother, Chen Shaojun.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Xiao Fei was going on thirty, which<br>Had meant, in Chinese terms, <br>That she was a spinster, on the shelf, <br>She had no marriage plans, <br>I asked her once if she'd marry me<br>But she laughed and said, 'No way! <br>My mother would jump from the balcony<br>If I married an old Yang Wei.'</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I called in once to the family home<br>To win her mother round, <br>She glared at me as I paced the floor, <br>Her father sat and frowned, <br>She wouldn't sit at the table while<br>I stayed there, under her roof, <br>But screeched at her daughter, in Chinese, <br>Some slang that was quite uncouth.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She came one day to say, Xiao Fei, <br>The wedding date was set, <br>I asked her who was the lucky man -<br>But she'd not even met him yet! <br>Her mother had schemed and arranged it all<br>To thwart what plans we had, <br>She cried a bucket of silent tears<br>But would do as her mother said.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She stayed away for a month or two<br>To let things settle down, <br>Then married the man that her mother chose<br>From a village, out of town.<br>When a month had passed, I was feeling lost<br>'Til there came a knock at my door, <br>It was Chen Xiao Fei in some deep dismay<br>So I sat with her, down on the floor.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She clung on tight to my shoulder, sobbed, <br>And cried, wouldn't let me go, <br>The man she'd married was such a brute<br>As the marks and the bruises showed, <br>But worse than that, she looked at me<br>As her eyes had begun to mist, <br>'I'm having a child, and I don't quite know<br>If the baby's yours, or his! '</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I sat quite shocked in the evening gloom, <br>And I felt a sudden chill, <br>'You'll know as soon as the baby's born, '<br>I said, but my heart stood still.<br>If she should deliver a foreign child<br>She'd be left in a deep disgrace, <br>And her family then would turn their backs<br>From the horror of 'losing face'.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Our fears were proven a few months on, <br>The child was a baby boy, <br>At first the father and parents danced, <br>They couldn't conceal their joy, <br>In China, there is the one child rule, <br>One chance is all that you get, <br>So girls go missing there all the time<br>If the father's mind is set.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">For sons are valued as girls are not, <br>A boy can work on the farm, <br>A girl will grow to be someone's wife, <br>Will travel away from home.<br>So often, just when the child is born<br>The father will wait outside, <br>The judge and the executioner, <br>It's often a question of pride.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A boy is swept up in loving arms, <br>A girl will wait on the thumb, <br>If the thumb goes down then the baby drowns<br>Or is dumped in the cinder drum.<br>If a boy is born with a fatal flaw, <br>His fate is the same as hers, <br>Or he may be sold to a heartless soul, <br>They call it the Chinese Curse.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The boy was fine 'til he opened his eyes<br>And they saw that his eyes were blue, <br>His skin was yellow, his hair was black<br>But the eyes... the eyes... They knew! <br>Not even a day had passed before<br>The baby had paid for our sin, <br>He was sold to a beggar for ten yuan, <br>A beggar named Sun Lang Lin.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The birth, already forgotten there<br>Was marked - 'delivered but dead! '<br>The Doctor was paid a forgetting fee, <br>As Xiao Fei cried in her bed, <br>She told me, when she returned to work, <br>What they'd done with our beautiful son, <br>She looked aside, avoided my eyes, <br>Pretended they'd done nothing wrong.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It took me a month to discover the name<br>Of the beggar, Sun Lang Lin, <br>I haunted the areas beggars haunt, <br>But could find no sign of him, <br>Then just by chance, a crippled child<br>Who begged by a streetside bin, <br>Cowered away when I asked her the way<br>To the beggar called Sun Lang Lin.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">She raised a hand to protect herself<br>At the sound of his hated name, <br>She said that he'd kicked and he'd beaten her<br>Had crippled and brought her to shame, <br>This child was one of a dozen he had<br>Who begged for him, night to noon, <br>She whispered his place of ill-fame in my ear, <br>'The House of the Scarlet Moon'.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I couldn't find anyone willing to talk about<br>Where this old Tavern was, <br>I knew it was out in the countryside, <br>Beside a deserted Mosque.<br>I travelled by day and I slept rough at night<br>As I searched in the dusk and the gloom, <br>Then finally, there in the distance I spied<br>The House of the Scarlet Moon.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Sun Lang Lin lay in his dirty rags<br>On a bed on the floor at the back, <br>I waited 'til midnight, picked up a rock<br>And I worked out my plan of attack, <br>Children were crying in fitful sleep<br>In a room in that dark old den, <br>I crept through the dark to the crying there<br>To look for my blue-eyed son.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Around the walls were earthenware jars<br>And each with a child within, <br>He'd jammed them in tight, where nothing could grow, <br>Their legs would be twisted and thin, <br>This house of horrors and nightmares kept<br>Its secrets all wrapped in gloom, <br>My son lay there on a coverlet, <br>In the House of the Scarlet Moon.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I seized my son, I smashed the jars, <br>The children fell to the floor, <br>They each were maimed and deformed, I knew, <br>They'd never be able to walk, <br>They'd spend their lives in the gutters for him, <br>Set up with a begging bowl, <br>I wondered how people like Sun Lang Lin<br>Could open the doors to the soul.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He woke, came running right into the room, <br>And he pulled out a long, sharp knife, <br>I laid my son on the coverlet<br>And prepared to fight for my life, <br>He lunged just once, I stepped aside, <br>I hit him just once with the rock, <br>He fell and he didn't get up again<br>So I picked up my son, and took off.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Once well away in the undergrowth<br>I stopped and I turned, to see, <br>A flame was flickering through the roof<br>Of the Tavern that used to be.<br>It all went up with a mighty roar<br>As I hugged my son in the gloom, <br>There's no more babies, or cripples made<br>At the House of the Scarlet Moon.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">2 December 2008</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=David+Lewis+Paget">David Lewis Paget</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=365951" data-title="The House of the Scarlet Moon de David Lewis Paget" data-description="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 ..."></div>
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