Ruth S. Baker

“China’s noisy ‘dancing grannies’ silenced by device that disables speakers
Many people are too scared to confront the groups of middle-aged and older women who take
over public parks and sports grounds to exercise along to music
Viral videos and reports have shown the groups arguing and fighting with basketball players
to take over their court, or, in one case, breaking into a football field and stopping the game
to dance in the space, prompting a police response and arrests.”
—The Guardian

Beware the dancing grannies
Who rule the public parks:
Who shake their aged fannies,
And greet aggrieved remarks

With disco blasts, unfitting
Their venerable age!
Instead of mutely knitting,
Behold them, centre stage,

Gyrating and stampeding
On sacred fields and courts,
Not making tea or reading
The gardening reports.

In vain you hush their speakers
Or summon the police;
These old excitement-seekers
Rave on and will not cease,

A case which quite reverses
This long-established truth:
To be a social curse is
A task reserved to youth.