Tom Fearon

Tom Fearon is a writer and editor who has lived in China since 2009. He worked in Chinese state media for many years, and previously as a print journalist in Cambodia and Australia. He now works in communications at an international school

Posts by Tom Fearon

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Ode to the Ill-Fated Banquet

A poem by Tom Fearon


He landed in Guangzhou one hot afternoon
to seal his ailing company's merger.
He'd wine and dine a Chinese tycoon
hoping to take their cooperation further.

He did his homework, or so he thought,
at Cantonese restaurants in Connecticut.
But little did he know, for he hadn't been taught
about China's complex dining etiquette.

READ ON...

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Signing Off (from State Media)

A poem by Tom Fearon

 

I walked up to the east gate
of CCTV in the summer of ’09,
when a soldier stretched his arm out
his white-gloved hand nearly touching mine.
‘Wow, he’s friendly,’ I thought, shaking his hand,
but he pulled it back and made a scowl,
“Please show your ID, young foreign man!”

I sat before my computer
its screen beckoned with a script,
a half-baked lede and awful stand up
in rich Chinglish did it drip.

READ ON...