Watching TV


We were watching TV....

In Tiananmen Square
Lost my baby there
My yellow rose
In her bloodstained clothes.

She was a short order pastry chef
In a Dim Sum dive on the Yangtze tideway
She had shiny hair
She was the daughter of an engineer . . .
Won’t you shed a tear

For my yellow rose
My yellow rose
In her bloodstained clothes.

She had perfect breasts
She had high hopes
She had almond eyes
She had yellow thighs
She was a student of philosophy . . . .
Won’t you grieve with me

For my yellow rose

Shed a tear

For her bloodstained clothes.

She had shiny hair
She had perfect breasts
She had high hopes
She had almond eyes
She had yellow thighs
She was the daughter of an engineer.

So get out your pistols
Get out your stones
Get out your knives,
Cut them to the bone.
They are the lackies of the grocer’s machine.

They built the dark satanic mills
That manufacture hell on earth
They bought the front row seats on Calvary
They are irrelevent to me.

And I grieve for my sister . . . . . . . .

[People of China
Do not forget do not forget
The children who died for you
Long live the Republic]

We were watching TV
Watching TV
We were watching TV
Watching TV

She wore a white bandanna that said freedom now
She thought the Great Wall of China would come tumbling down
She was a student
Her father was an engineer . . .
Won’t you shed a tear

For my yellow rose
My yellow rose
In her bloodstained clothes.

Her grandpa fought old Chiang Kai-shek
That no-good low-down dirty rat
Who used to order his troops to fire on the women and children.
Imagine that.

Imagine that.

And in the spring of '48
Mao Tse Tung got quite irate
And he kicked that old dictator Chiang
Out of the state
Of China.

Chiang Kai-shek came down to Formosa
And they armed the island of Quemoy
And the shells were flyin across the China Sea
And they turned Formosa into a shoe factory called Taiwan.

And she is different from Cro-Magnon Man
She’s different from Anne Boleyn
She’s different from the Rosenbergs
And from the unknown Jew

She is different from the unknown Nicaraguan
Half superstar half victim
She’s a victor star, conceptually new.

And she is different from the Dodo
And from the Kankabono
She is different from the Aztec
And from the Cherokee

She’s everybody’s sister
She’s symbolic of our failure
She’s the one in fifty million
Who can help us to be free.


Because she died on TV.

And I grieve for my sister . . . . . . . .


- Roger Waters