Beneath the barred windows of a work-unit
XXXXXXXXin which the tenants were born and still live,
Parakeets screech and preen their bright feathers
XXXXXXXXfor a maiden flight they will never make,
Cats nap through the heat of the summer’s day
XXXXXXXXof the night in which they will never prowl,
Dogs devour discarded meat from their bowls
XXXXXXXXbefore the walk on which they’ll never be taken,
Rabbits, for their breeders, breed more rabbits
XXXXXXXXthat will never live in a hillside warren,
Gerbils leap madly on each other’s backs
XXXXXXXXto reach an outside that doesn’t exist,
Beetles burrow into the scattered earth
XXXXXXXXin which they’ll never make a beetle’s nest,
And hamsters run round and round on a wheel
XXXXXXXXthat turns quickly but takes them nowhere.
But the people of Kunming,
Who on their heads wear wreaths of flowers
XXXXXXXXwoven by women with children on their backs,
Have escaped the cage of their occupation
XXXXXXXXby the pet-shop owners from the West.
And now it’s somebody else’s turn
XXXXXXXXto live behind bars, be bought and sold,
In this City of Eternal Spring.
For the marketplace has no limits
And the cruelty of humans is without end.
— Kunming, June 2024
• • • • •
Chinese work units or danwei (单位), which combine communal living quarters with industrial estates, schools, hospitals or government departments, and in which 96 per cent of the urban population of the People’s Republic of China once lived, are distinguished from other housing by bars over their windows, not only at ground level — we were told for security — but also on the higher floors. The pet shop I saw in Kunming, one of many in the Jinxing Bird and Flower Market, was on the ground floor of a danwei.
A Communist in Hong Kong 