Monday, July 30, 2018

Quick - What's the First Line of the Chinese National Anthem? - column

Lawrence Hall
Mhall46184@aol.com

Quick – What’s the First Line of the Chinese National Anthem?

In Grand Prairie a minor league baseball team known as the Texas Airhogs (Airhogs - I don’t get it either) rotates through its roster a number of China’s Shougang Eagles. https://www.star-telegram.com/news/nation-world/national/article215482305.html

Maybe baseball is the international language of peace and love and, like, stuff.

Does everyone stand for the Chinese national anthem?

In China, where due process is according to Legal Code 7.62 and where murdering prisoners is a national spectator sport, people probably do stand for their anthem. Or else. They probably also chant something like, “Hail, Faceless Committee Who Rule Us with an Iron Rod of Love and Progress!”

The chant doesn’t mention the Faceless Committee’s Rolex watches, yachts, Swiss bank accounts, Italian luxury cars, and personal airplanes. Everything for The People, bless them.

In the U.S.A. one is free not to stand for the national anthem, which is the best reason of all for choosing to stand.

In the bleachers at a Chinese baseball game a hot dog really is a dog, maybe a beagle, raised to farm-fresh ripeness and then slaughtered for a good ol’ down-home taste treat. “Hot dogs! Get yer hot dogs! This one was named Rover!”

“Buy me some dog bits and kitty snacks / I don’t care if I never get back…”

When Saddamn Hussein’s soccer team lost the players were beaten, as in beaten up, by Beloved Leader’s security services. One wonders if that’s also true in China.

Outside the U.S. embassy in Beiping / Peking / Pekin / Beijing last week a fellow set off a bomb but wasn’t able to get away from it – that was a swing and a miss.

A schoolmate’s father, Douglas Dove, of happy memory, loved to attend his grandsons’ high school baseball games. Mr. Dove, like Katie Casey in the song about Cracker Jacks, was occasionally displeased with the rulings on the field, and offered his spectacles to the officials with a good and loud “You want my glasses, ump!?”

That’s the American way. God bless Mr. Dove and the great game of baseball.

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