326 chapter nine
starts Shen’s tirade: about money, the hunt for a green card, the taint-
ed Tiananmen Square as a metonym for the poker face of China’s
autocratic rulers, faded lust, provincial officials on their junket to the
sinful big city, and of course uninvolved sex: you’ve got yours and i’ve got
mine just one more kiss and nothing else. The entire poem bespeaks social
concern—albeit of the rough-edged kind and alternated with shame-
less, hard-boiled cynicism—which is visible in lines such as migrant
workers on the run and that thing squatting by the road is a man not a dirty dog.
The image is part of Shen’s description of the gigantic construction site
that Beijing has been for years, covered by deafening machines and
blinding floodlights and kept running day and night by migrant work-
ers without much in the way of labor rights. The speaker himself ends
up like all the others who have no home to go to, that is: in the street
and dripping with rain—yet the poem exudes undaunted resilience
throughout.^28
«All Hail the Clap»
and the hippest bookstore has closed
and the hippest rock club has quit
and your old man’s smashed up that hard-earned bass guitar
and your childhood mates have learned to make money
and young artists have no home to go to
and they’re out on the street and they’re dripping with rain
drip drip drip drip drip drip drip-a-drip
dripping and dripping
now all hail the clap
and the world trade center’s collapsed
and the pentagon’s been bombed
and the statue of liberty’s been forgotten
and the yanks look at foreigners with green eyes
and green card holders have no home to go to
and they’re out on the street and they’re dripping with rain
drip drip drip drip drip drip drip-a-drip
dripping and dripping
now all hail the clap(^28) Shen Haobo 2001a: 155-159.