MCLC: Have they run out of provinces yet?

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Have they run out of provinces yet?
Apparently, this poem, published in the most recent issue of The New Yorker, has stirred up some controversy. For a critique of the poem, see Timothy Yu's piece in The New Republic here
https://newrepublic.com/article/132537/white-poets-want-chinese-culture-without-chinese-people
--Kirk
Source: The New Yorker (APRIL 4, 2016)
Have They Run Out of Provinces Yet?
BY CALVIN TRILLIN
Have they run out of provinces yet?
If they haven’t, we’ve reason to fret.
Long ago, there was just Cantonese.
(Long ago, we were easy to please.)
But then food from Szechuan came our way,
Making Cantonese strictly passé.
Szechuanese was the song that we sung,
Though the ma po could burn through your tongue.
Then when Shanghainese got in the loop
We slurped dumplings whose insides were soup.
Then Hunan, the birth province of Mao,
Came along with its own style of chow.
So we thought we were finished, and then
A new province arrived: Fukien.
Then respect was a fraction of meagre
For those eaters who’d not eaten Uighur.
And then Xi’an from Shaanxi gained fame,
Plus some others—too many to name.
Now, as each brand-new province appears,
It brings tension, increasing our fears:
Could a place we extolled as a find
Be revealed as one province behind?
So we sometimes do miss, I confess,
Simple days of chow mein but no stress,
When we never were faced with the threat
Of more provinces we hadn’t met.
Is there one tucked away near Tibet?
Have they run out of provinces yet?
by denton.2 at osu.edu on April 11, 2016
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