The New, Improved Beijing Light Opera Production

No sooner had the government of China announced that it would begin selling off many state-owned industries than the Beijing Light Opera Company began rehearsals of “Red Sales in the Sunset,” combining social re-education and cultural inspiration. Selected scenes:

Yang-Fe, corrupt boss: Come, workers, laborers, farmers and tractor mechanics--let us raise up the banner of centrally managed nonprofit inefficiency in the boiler-repair sector!

Do-Wop, steam-shovel girl: Pah! I call for raising this banner: Boiler Blowout Sale! No Reasonable Offer Refused!

Mah-Jong, wise elder: Do-Wop has the spirit of entrepreneurism and volume merchandising that I well remember from the Long March, when we sold dicer-slicers door-to-door! Yang-Fe is unmasked as an enemy of markup-ism, skulking in fear of free enterprise!

Chorus: Listen! comes the ad agency with its presentation

Telling tales of consumerism--’tis prestidigitation!

March! Into the new dawn of private gain

Exposing State-owned industries as a royal pain!

Yu-Tu, block captain: Gather around, all peasants and self-starting go-getters! If we all purchase 10 shares, we can own the sandbag collective, use its pension fund to buy up the Red Noodle Shop, spin off its take-out business and do a stock split--raising enough capital to pay ourselves huge salaries!

Wun-Sap, backsliding statism freak: Hup! Yu-Tu talks Harvard Business School slander! I’m telling the Sandbag Council on you!

Yee-Haw, burlap ironer: Tuh! Wun-Sap is rooted out as the anti-profit earthworm poisoning the mulch of Commerce! Has she not yet heard? The Sandbag Council is now SandBagCoInc.!

All Join in Singing:

State-Owned Industries--there’s a mighty laugh!

We have seen so clearly that they don’t know wheat from chaff!

Selling off these enterprises is the very latest thing--

Watch, comrades, watch as the cash registers ring!

Wun-Sap: What a fool have been I! From now on, count me in as a high-living capitalist-roader! Come one, come all to my Jacuzzi party!

Mergers & Acquisitions Battalion:

We are smashing the old ways and building up the new

We are buying up State companies and big collectives too

We will make them turn a profit, make them strong and mean and lean

We will turn all of China into a veritable money machine!

Sum-Dolt, complacent bureaucrat: And lose my tea breaks, my ping-pong lessons, my lifetime no-show do-nothing job and all the bribes that go with it? Set down your briefcases and cell phones and go back to shoveling gypsum!

Go-Fish, arbitrager: Get with the program, Sum Dolt! Now that our leaders have wisely announced The Great Flip-Flop, hop on the bandwagon!

Poo-Bah, investment banker: Go-Fish speaks correctly! Chairman Mao himself wrote, “Let a thousand dummy holding companies bloom!” He just forgot to put it in the Little Red Book!

All: From the locomotive works to the foundries to the mines

We are writing down the assets and collecting vintage wines

Buying industries galore for 10 cents on the dollar

In a capitalist spree that moves us one and all to holler--

No more crappy jobs and wages, not for you and not for me

And rest we won’t until the Dow at last hits nine-three!

Shoo-In, cadre leader: I am fired?

Hi-Fi, outplacement manager: Quite so, Shoo-In. The board of directors has voted to eliminate the middle-management layer of 10 Flags Dredge & Steam Shovel in a cost-cutting move. It’s that, or watch our stock price nose dive. You know how it is. It’s business.

Shoo-In: But . . . my 36 years of service!

Hi-Fi: You mean, your 36 years of complacent malingering and parasitism as a State lackey. It’s a whole new business world, Shoo-In. Dog-eat-dog.

Shoo-In: That’s just what I’ll be eating now that I’m out of work!

Hi-Fi: Come come! I hear RiceCo needs a stockboy!

Chorus: There’s a whole new China rising in the offices and shops

And the cry is bust your butt or the boss will bust your chops

So let’s buy up all the industries and make them money-spinners

For there’s no room now for losers, only fully vested winners!

Hip-hip-hooray!