"Watching TV" by Roger Waters - Tiananmen Square 20th anniversary *GRAPHIC*

[Dukkha]

Run time: 06:08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpz102bDzH4   Posted on YouTube: August 12, 2006 By YouTube Member: Views on YouTube: 0   Posted on DU: June 03, 2009 By DU Member: Dukkha Views on DU: 1124

 
We were watching TV
Watching TV
We were watching TV
Watching TV

In Tienanmen Square
Lost my baby there
My yellow rose
In her bloodstained clothes
She was a short order pastry chef
In a Dim Sum dive on the
Yangtze tideway
She had shiny hair
She was the daughter of an engineer
Won't you shed a tear
For my yellow rose
My yellow rose
In her bloodstained clothes
She had perfect breasts
She had high hopes
She had almond eyes
She had yellow thighs
She was a student of philosophy
Won't you grieve with me
For my yellow rose
Shed a tear
For her bloodstained clothes
She had shiny hair
She had perfect breasts
She had high hopes
She had almond eyes
She had yellow thighs
She was the daughter of an engineer
So get out your pistols
Get out your stones
Get out your knives
Cut them to the bone
They are the lackeys of
the grocer's machine
They built the dark satanic mills
That manufacture hell on earth
They bought the front row
seats on Calvary
They are irrelevant to me
And I grieve for my sister.

(Girl in chinese)
"People of China,
Do not forget, do not forget
The children who died for you
Long live the Republic."

Did we do anything after this?
I've a feeling we did.

We were watching TV
Watching TV
We were watching TV
Watching TV

She wore a white bandanna that said
Freedom now
She thought the Great Wall of China
Would come tumbling down
She was a student
Her father was an engineer
Won't you shed a tear
For my yellow rose
My yellow rose
In her bloodstained clothes
Her grandpa fought old Chiang Kai-shek
That no-good, low-down dirty rat
Who used to order his troops
To fire on the women and children
Imagine that; imagine that
And in the spring of '48
Mao Tse-tung got quite irate
And he kicked that old dictator Chiang
Out of the state of China
Chiang Kai-shek came down in Formosa
And they armed the island of Quemoy
And the shells were flying
across the China Sea
And they turned Formosa
into a shoe factory
Called Taiwan

And she is different
from Cro-Magnon man
She's different from Anne Boleyn
She is different from the Rosenbergs
And from the unknown Jew
She's different from the
unknown Nicaraguan
Half superstar, half victim
She's a victor star, conceptually new
And she is different from the Dodo
And from the Kankanbono
She's different from the Aztec
And from the Cherokee
She's everybody's sister
She's symbolic of our failure
She's the one in fifty million
Who can help us to be free
Because she died on TV

And I grieve for my sister

[coffeenap]

1. Thank you.

[NewJeffCT]

2. Thanks - I'm sure China's internet is in virtual lockdown

with the 20th anniversary starting...

[Fovea]

3. After watching that,

I had to apply direct pressure to my soul.

Breathtaking understanding of the modern Chinese dilemma.
Excoriating critique of western civ.

And a very human level understanding of the critical macro non event of the late 20th C.

Had Russia the will to squeeze the PRC forces in the far north, and the rest of Korea liberated by Japan/SK/and American troop, China would have fallen in a day.
There would have been no column of tanks. Beijing would have burned. If Formosa had attacked at the same time, while suicidal, the rest of China would be pursuing
their own governance in freedom. And the Asian economic engine would not run on misery and filth.

So I look at the massive fail, and the American triumphalism that occurred at the same time, and the disconnect causes me physical nausea.