New Perspectives on Contemporary Chinese Poetry

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very fortunate! .隆改Zs
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name brand skirts WW地
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how very fortunate! º Õhijk来留mno的pq
From just the few hit tunes 的
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held in your tiny hand 
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Can ignite an inferno of a 申w
的 利
billion in CD sales
And that splendid dust-raising
stock market
The jockeys of humanity, how
very fortunate
Each erection can buy
innumerable climaxes
The evolution of humanity,
how very fortunate!
Cloning changed the
supply-demand system
of sperm and ovaries
Humanity comes and goes
Busy picking up goods from
inside desire
No more storehouses for falsity
of a woman’s gaze
The fortune of humanity belongs
to humanity!
Humanity can, after making a
huge mistake
Apply for a patent on fortune
(Yan 2004: 132)

From such a poem we see the ways in which incorporation starts with
a recognition that the human will finds a way of asserting itself,
naturally. In Yan’s work this assertion occurs even against the odds of
rapidly disappearing resources on the natural level and also in defiance

Yan Li in the Global City 159

9781403976079ts10.qxp:Layout 1 11/9/07 11:10 AM Page 159

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