America and China

[mahuairong]

The West is day.
The East is night.
The West is America.
The East is China.
Rather twins than brothers
They were born companions.
They were born adversaries.
They were born conspirators.
They were born deadly enemies.

Struggle is their constitution.
Smartness is their character.
Necessity makes them meet.
Contingency lets them mate.
With opposite declarations,
With same ambitions,
Of different words,
Of identical intentions,
In sharp comparisons,
In clear contradictions,
They are of equal quantities and qualities.

They are distinctly different.
They are absolutely equivalent.
America tends to speak first.
China used to speak last.
Sometimes America talks big without doing.
Sometimes China acts without letting out.
For one of them,
To say is one thing.
To do is another.
For the other,
To do is one thing.
To say is another.
If they have any other general character,
they see above all ideology and politics.

To prove my new discovery,
I shall tell you an amusing story.
There were once two supermen
among the country folks of my village.
One is called Long River,
The other Double Flag.

Long River dwelled in the east,
In the west resided Double Flag.
Both are insane and mental.
Whenever they met in the street,
in a crowd or a public occasion,
they eyed, nosed and mouthed each other.
However neither could be madder.

With the evil intentions of some villagers,
Each of them was regarded as a joke
as taking thirteen for midday.
as being wanting a leaf in his livers.
Good terms they kept with their neighbors,
Except that they saw each other.

The instant that some abettors incited,
Long River, my old chap,
The Village Committee Election is to start.
Don’t you know who is not for you?
Yip, yip, yippee!
Ah…, ah…, aha!
None other than Double Flag!
Ah…, ah…, aha!
Yip, yip, yippee!

In a twinkling of an eye,
The playground became a Roman arena.
The eastern hemisphere crashed into the western hemisphere.
Throwing down their gloves,
The two turned into a pair of wrestlers.

(by Ma Huairong)
_________________
You see me, you lose me