I've been watching

In Tiananmen Square

Lost my baby there

My yellow rose

In her bloodstained clothes

She was a short order pastry chef

In a Dim Sum dive on the Yangtze tideway

She had shiny hair

She was the daughter of an engineer

Won't you shed a tear

For my yellow rose

My yellow rose

In her bloodstained clothes

She had perfect breasts

She had high hopes

She had almond eyes

She had yellow thighs

She was a student of philosophy

Won't you grieve with me

For my yellow rose

Shed a tear

For her bloodstained clothes

She had shiny hair

She had perfect breasts

She had high hopes

She had almond eyes

She had yellow thighs

She was the daughter of an engineer

So get out your pistols

Get out your stones

Get out your knives

Cut them to the bone

They are the lackeys of the grocer's machine

They built the dark satanic mills

That manufacture hell on earth

They bought the front row seats on Calvary

They are irrelevant to me

But I grieve for my sister

People of China

Do not forget do not forget

The children who died for you

Long live the Republic

Did we do anything after this

I've a feeling we did

We were watching TV

Watching TV

We were watching TV

Watching TV

She wore a white bandanna that said

Freedom now

She thought the Great Wall of China

Would come tumbling down

She was a student

Her father was an engineer

Won't you shed a tear

For my yellow rose

My yellow rose

In her bloodstained clothes

Her grandpa fought old Chiang Kai-shek

That no-good low-down dirty rat

Who used to order his troops

To fire on the women and children

Imagine that imagine that

And in the spring of '48

Mao Tse-tung got quite irate

And he kicked that old dictator Chiang

Out of the state of China

Chiang Kai-shek came down in Formosa

And they armed the island of Quemoy

And the shells were flying across the China Sea

And they turned Formosa into a shoe factory

Called Taiwan

And she is different from Cro-Magnon man

She's different from Anne Boleyn

She is different from the Rosenbergs

And from the unknown Jew

She is different from the unknown Nicaraguan

Half superstar half victim

She's a victor star conceptually new

And she is different from the Dodo

And from the Kankanbono

She is different from the Aztec

And from the Cherokee

She's everybody's sister

She's symbolic of our failure

She's the one in fifty million

Who can help us to be free

Because she died on TV

And I grieve for my sister