The
Chinese New Year is the biggest and most celebrated holiday in China
and Southeast Asia. Luckily, we, here in America, can
partake in the fun by visiting our quaint China Towns in New York City,
Philadelphia and our most prominent in San Francisco! One can watch a
thrilling parade, featuring the Nian beast, and stroll up and down the
cozy streets that are lined with brilliant, red decorations and Chinese
lanterns.
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In A Street Of Chinese Lanterns
Performed By Grant Raymond Barrett
By Harry Melcliffe, Jimmy Campbell & Reg Connelly (1927)
Somewhere down where the lights of town are gleaming,
somebody's dreaming out in old Frisco. His thoughts strayed to a
Chinese maid in Canton, 'neath Chinese lanterns' mysterious glow.
He says, "Back, once more, I want to make my way with little Okisay,
I'm longing to be!
In a street of Chinese lanterns by that blue celestial sea.
Almond eyes like diamond skies are watching and waiting for me!
Soon, I'll see that street of lanterns. With this western life,
I'm through! "Little Okisay, I'm on my way to little China Town and you!"
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Chop Suey
Performed By Grant Raymond Barrett
Music By Richard Rodgers, Lyrics By Oscar Hammerstein II (1958)
Chop Suey! Chop Suey! Living here is very
much like Chop Suey! Hoola-hoops and nuclear war, Dr. Salk and
Zsa-Zsa Gabor, Harry Truman, Truman Capote and Dewey, Chop Suey!
Stars
are drifting overhead. Birds and worms have gone to
bed. Some work late in laboratories. Others read detective
stories. Some are roaming round the country. Others sit beneath
just one tree. Tonight on TV's Late, Late Show, you can look at
Clara Bow!
Chop Suey! Chop Suey! Good and bad, intelligent, mad and
screwy! Violins and trumpets and drums. Take it all the way
that it comes. Sad and funny, sour and honey-dewy. Chop
Suey!
Ball-point pens and filter-tips, lipsticks and potato chips. In
the dampest kind of heat-wave, you can give your hair a
neat-wave. Hear that lovely La Paloma, lullaby by Perry Coma.
Dreaming in your Maiden-Form Bra. Dreamed you danced the
Cha-Cha-Cha!
Chop Suey! Chop Suey! Mixed with all the hokum and
bally-hooey. Something real and glowing and grand sheds a light
all over the land. Boston, Austin, Wichita and St. Louis.
Chop Suey! Chop Suey! Chop Suey!
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