In fact, the reason I know this can’t be any kind of “popular childhood song” is that all genuinely popular childhood songs have themes like “blow up the school,” “git rid of your mom and dad,” “skip school,” and kids’ dirty jokes. It’s the same all over China.

And we do talk about it often.

This “childhood song” example is completely out of step with China’s social reality, just as you can easily recognize at a glance “an old British poem” forged by an American.