This week looks a poem by Mao Zedong celebrating the communist defeat of a tiny parasite. "Shooing Away the God of Epidemics" was written in 1956 upon Mao hearing that a county in Jiangxi had eliminated all their blood flukes.
#1
China’s green waters and the blue mountains are so numerous
but even the great ancient Chinese medical theorist Hua Tou is unable to take care of this little worm,
The thousand villages are covered in vines and peppered with their leaking shit,
the ten thousand homes are abandoned, only ghosts sing inside them.
He sits on the Earth everyday and walks 80,000 miles,
He roams through the heavens and looks out the distance at the thousand rivers.
China’s Orion constellation desires to ask the God of Epidemics about it,
happiness and hopelessness are all the same as time goes by.
其一
绿水青山枉自11多，华佗2无奈小虫何！
千村薜荔3人遗矢12，万户萧疏13鬼唱歌。
坐地日行八万里，巡天14遥看一千河。
牛郎4欲问瘟神事，一样悲欢15逐逝波5。
#2
A spring wind blows through a billion poplar and willow branches,
the 600 million Chinese of today live like the sage kings of old, Yao and Shun.
Showers of red petals, and our fulfilled hearts have been translated into waves,
the green mountain has been carefully transformed into bridges.
High up, the people are using their silvery hoes to dig canals,
down low, they are using their iron biceps to shake China’s three great rivers.
May I ask, Old Man epidemic, where will you go, now [that communism has solved all problems]
maybe you can use the light from the superstitious paper money the people used to burn to light your way out of here.
其二
春风杨柳万千条22，六亿神州尽舜尧6。
红雨7随心16翻作17浪，青山着意18化为桥。
天连五岭银锄18落，地动三河8铁臂20摇。
借问21瘟君欲何往，纸船明烛9照天烧。
This week, we are looking at a poem in the news. We are airing on Saturday, October 15th, 2022. On Thursday October 13th, 2022, just three days before Chairman Xi Jinping is supposed to be anointed for his third term, someone mounted the Sitong Bridge in Beijing and unfurled two banners. One had a poem which read:
We don’t want nucleic acid [tests], we want to eat
We don’t want the Cultural Revolution, we want reform
We don’t want lockdowns, we want freedom
We don’t want a leader, we want voting
We don’t want lies, we want respect
We don’t want to be slaves, we want to be citizens
不要核酸1要吃饭3，不要文革要改革
不要封城要自由，不要领袖4要选票
不要谎言要尊严，不做奴才2做公民
Today's podcast is Rob-less, and it looks at the 1052 poem by Wang Anshi, China's controversial economic thinker. This poem (probably) has little to do with Wang's economic policies, but is rather all about his love for his father and elder brothers and his meditation on his own mortality.