OOPS! I hit the process button before my final edit: here is the final version... For 276 years, from the early 14th to the mid 17th centuries, the Mings ruled their dynasty with an iron-- vase? Hongwu, the first of `em, ruler exemplar Killed off the Yuans--man, caveat Emperor! Then came son Jiwen, that heir-raising king He spawned the next my favorite Mings! Yongle, then Hongxi, then Xuandi then Zhentong Jingtai, then Chengua then Hongzhi--now long gone Jaijing got strangled--a concubine's sting Them is the breaks when you're players named Ming PAINTED LADIES! FIRST M-80'S! BUILT THOSE WALLS SO GREAT THEIR MILLION MAN ARMIES SWORE OATHS UP THE YANG TO SIXTEEN MING STUDS-OF-STATE Wanli was thirteenth, and longest dictator Taichang, his son died of clap a month later Tinqu ascended the throne at fifteen Eunuchs usurped him--the first Chinese queens! Fragmenting courts with their courtiers vying Uncles and cousins all scheming and dying Movable type, and such wonders â€" adieu! Ming’s but a vase now on gallery view! ~ sanxian and bamboo pipe musical interlude ~ Thus we have come to the thrust of our story Dynastic rulers get in-bred and hoary Three hundred years with one family's bad Look at our first ten with Bush and his Dad! NEPOTISM! PALACE SCHISMS! BADA BOOM, NADA MING! BUT FROM 1330 TO MID 1640 'DEM MINGS WERE KA CHING OF KINGS!

Must've taken a lot of research here, unless your just naturally an expert on Ming dynasties...At any rate, very well done, and quite funny and also, educational..

I'm with AFW

Whoa good stuff, that would need LOADS of research, very good, 5-5-5

Being a Middle Ages freak, I just loved that song. Ming, along with Tang, are the greatest Chinese dynasties, and Ming China was the most dynamic, advanced and developed states of the world. It was by no mean a similar ossified and mummified "land-lobster" as the Manchu dynasty China, but the period superpower.

some beautiful rhymes and pacing in this, TJC - and very scholarly - and as AFW said, you must have researched well if you were just honouring the "Mings" sub for "things" idea - or did you just know all this stuff? - big 555 (although I think you may have omitted a verse before the first chorus)

AFW, PMS, Susana, Charnstar and Stewart... thanks so much for you comments! Charnstar, AFW & Stewart... yes, definitely a bit of research on my part... medicine is my trade. I love all your guys stuff! Susana... you are the true history buff here and incredibly prolific as well... was it four parodies today? How do you do it... some sort of Gertrude Stein stream of comedy consciousness?

This fell under my radar the other day...coupled with your What Happend To My Favorite Things, it was like a hidden track on a CD...either version works. Very nicely done! 555 here (and 555 there, too).