I am your shabby old waterwheel by the river, spinning tired songs for hundreds of years. I am a miner's lamp with a black forehead, and you are groping in the tunnel of history. I am a withered ear of rice, a dilapidated roadbed, a barge on a muddy beach, pulling the rope deep into your shoulder. -Motherland! I am poor, I am sad, I am the painful hope of your ancestors, and I am the flower that has never landed between the sleeves of "flying"-the motherland! I am your brand-new ideal, just breaking away from the spider web of myth; I am the germ of your ancient lotus under the snow; I am your laughing nest with tears hanging; I am the newly painted white starting line; It is the crimson dawn spreading,-the motherland! I am one billionth of you, the sum of your 9.6 million square meters; You fed me with scarred breasts, confused me, considerate me and boiled me; Then get your wealth, your glory and your freedom from my flesh and blood; -Motherland, my dear motherland.