Ladies and gentlemen, my dear friend Liz Franzac would like to read a poem that she's written for the occasion.

Liz, if you would?

According to the PRC's unwritten protocol, to be Chinese these days, it seems you can't be

Folland Gong.

Your race or where you're born no longer matter much at all. You have to be an atheist in order to belong.

Good citizen or not unless you bow to Jijin Ping. You'll find yourself condemned as one of China's enemies, no longer viewed

as human by the party but a thing whose life and body parts the government is free to seize.

To have faith in God or something greater than the state will mark you as a traitor or

could lead to your arrest with prison or labor camp your destiny and fate

as many who have suffered through such trials will attest.

How strange that only communists can call themselves Chinese?

That's right.

Well, Uyghurs, excuse me,

while weagers Jews and Christians are held worthy to condemn but Chinese

on Formosa who declare their Taiwanese are part of what the PRC declares belongs to them.

I don't know about the verse here, I'm just going to say right off of that, I just

it's a little awkward.

It's a little tough.

How sad that people are condemned for being who they are.

So true.

Unless they publicly abandon all that they believe

or bow and scrape before some petty party commissar.

...