I have an old Chinese friend of mine who sometimes

Thinks of himself as a pig when he dwells in the East

And as a dog when he used to stay in the West.

Thus, the dog worries the pig, but the pig only grunts,

And it may even be a grunt of satisfaction, I guess.

What else? According to an old cosmological diagram,

Dog correlates with the element for Metal while pig

With that of Water; since Metal gives rise to Water,

This is the reason why he usually wants to be a pig,

A real pig, for it is really so comfortable and pleasurable,

And he does not envy himself as the dog for white-collar

And for efficiency and for bitch-goddess and

For the trading dividends. All he wants is that the dog

Leaves him alone on his hometown soil, as far as

The element Earth gives birth to Metal and wins Water

To have the upper hand and sort out the whole situation.

That is how it is with my Chinese friend as he surveys

His native culture from scratch. “This is the only way

In which the eastern culture can be surveyed

And understood, my dear friend,” he used to say to me.

And this is very much OK by me.

For he has his Chinese parents, and every time he talks

Of his motherland and its time-proved ethics and morals,

He thinks of his father and his mother

Or of the memories of them. It was a life, their lives,

So full of courage and patience and many sufferings

And happiness and fortitude—lives untouched

By the modern influence, but lives no less grand, noble,

Humble and sincere than those of the great kings

And empresses of great antiquity.

As for my Chinese friend himself, he can be regarded

As an analogy of the family treasure—

The unconscious national heritage, which is within him

And which is an integral part of his good self and thus

Cannot be oppressed or subordinated to the needs

Of the modern western style and its total exploitation.