Contemporary Poets of
China
Introduction
3-5
Bei Dao
6
*Requiem
7
*An Ancient Temple
8
Gu Cheng
9
*This Generation
10
*Summer Outside The Pane 11
Duo Duo
12
*The Patient
13
*I’m Reading
14
Shu Ting
15
*The Wall
16
*The Cry Of a Generation
17
Yang Lian
18
*Hospital
19
*City of Dead Poets
20
Bilblography
21-24
From 1966 until 1976 the People’s Republic of China was experiencing a
terrible event known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The chairman of
the Communist Party in China was Mao Zedong and his goal was to enforce socialism
in China by removing traces of capitalism, traditionalism, and even cultural elements
to fit his new image of how China should be. Millions of people were persecuted for
defending their country’s old customs including the following poets known as the
misty poets. The misty poets had the first poems to come out of China after the fall
of Mao. The following paragraphs will discuss the poets along with the styles and
techniques used by the following five contemporary Chinese poets: Bei Dao, Gu
Cheng, Duo Duo, Shu Ting, and Yang Lian. They are five of the most famous poets
from China for a reason, because they took a stand and were willing to write poems
and essays about what others were afraid to even speak of.
To start off with, misty poets are associated with China’s democracy
movement because they emerged into society in the 1980’s and the beginning of the
1990’s. They wrote about social realities incorporating mythical and historical
narratives of themselves and the nation into the poems. It took a while for the poets
to become recognized in the new society because China was under such strict
control when Mao was in power, so work like poetry was looked down upon and not
tolerated. The new poetry which came forth was sloppy and unsophisticated. One of
the poets discussed, Bei Dao actually was in charge of the Jintian (Today) and he
published the work of the misty poets. It was said that all the significant poems from
China in the past fifteen years has derived from the work of the misty poets. The
voice they found is sometimes like one who is morning (Yeh 405). It basically seems
like China is now just getting familiar with poetry in the 21st century.
The misty poets wrote about everything, from
ordinary happenings to extraordinary events such as China
being free from its past ruler. The poets mentioned for
being known in this group were all (except for one) exiled
at a young age and forced to move to rural cities in China.
Their parents were outcast because they dared to defy
Mao; so the children would write about their anger and
loneliness and hope. Cheng was the poet known for
experimenting with his language and speech in his poems.
He liked to make the reader solve a puzzle and that is why
he would insert word-puzzles into his poem. Ting was the
most “human” in her poetry because she expressed the
most emotions and love. The poets all brought something
to the table and that is why they are recognized as being so
great.
There were a few poems which talked about
artifacts being destroyed and tradition being violated. That
is because during the civil war, Mao had historical relics and
artifacts destroyed. Temples were ruined and the typical
life of China became upside-down. The individuals were
harassed and property was taken. The country was so dark
and such a light came from the poetry of the misty poets.
Gu Cheng said that an authors work is lost in translation
and he hoped his idea came across still to his
readers.(Cheng xviii).
To conclude, China went through a total destruction in order to be
made new. The poets took this destruction and terrible events and were able to
make beauty out of the awful deeds done to the people of China and even their
lack of poetry and education of it. It is so amazing that five poets could just start
from scratch and impress China and the world with their work. Contemporary
poetry in China still seems so new and fresh and hopefully in a few years we will
all be familiar with the wonderful works of Bei Dao, Gu Cheng, Duo Duo, Shu
Tung, and Yang Lian.
Gu Cheng
Bei Dao once said that “A poet must establish his world through his
poems-a sincere and unique world, a world of justice and humanity.”
He was born on August 2nd 1949 in Beijing. Bei Dao is not his real name,
but a pseudonym chosen due to the fact he is from the north meaning
Bei and Dao means island. The name was invented by his best friend and
poet Mang Ke. Not only is he an amazing poet, but this man is also
known for a few of his short stories and essays. Many of his poems focus
on civil rights and independence. He is known for writing about the
cultural revolution. (Bei Dao) His works include The August Sleepwalker
Trans. by Bonnie S. McDougall, Old Snow: Poems. Trans. by Bonnie S.
McDougall and Chen Maiping, and Forms of Distance. Trans. by David
Hinton.
Requiem (for victims of June Fourth)
Not the living but the dead
under the doomsday-purple sky
go in groups
suffering guides forward suffering
at the end of hatred is hatred
the spring has run dry, the conflagration stretches unbroken
the road back is even further away
Not gods but the children
amid the clashing of helmets
say their prayers
mothers breed light
darkness breathes mothers
the stone rolls, the clock runs backwards
the eclipse of the sun has already taken place
Not your bodies but your souls
shall share a common birthday every year
you are all the same age
love has founded for the dead
an everlasting alliance
you embrace each other closely
in the massive register of deaths
Trs. Bonnie McDougall and Chen Maiping. 1991
An Ancient Temple
The long ago songs of a bell
weaved this spider web; in the column's crevices,
grown outward, one sees annual rings there for the counting.
No memories are here; stones
that merely scattered the echoes in this mountain valley,
have no memories.
That little path, even, by-passed it;
its dragons and strange birds are gone.
They took with them the silent bells that hung from the eaves.
They took the unrecorded legends of the place, too.
The words on the walls are all worn clean and torn.
Maybe if it caught on fire
one could read the words on the inside.
See the annual growths of the wild grasses,
so indifferent.
They don't care if they submit to any master,
to the shoes of the old monks,
or to the winds, either.
Out front the sky is held up by a broken stone tablet.
Still, led by the gaze of some living person,
the tortoise may revive and
come out carrying his heavy secret,
crawl right out there on the temple's threshold.
translated by Gordon T. Osing and De-An Wu Swihart
Gu Cheng was born in 1956 and he unfortunately died in 1993. Apparently
he killed his wife and then hanged himself in a terrible murder-suicide. His
parents were exiled from China (as were almost all of the misty poets) when
he was twelve years old. His family then began to bred pigs and wait for the
cultural revolution to end. Cheng was known for his poems mainly. There
was something very special about the way this man wrote because he was
known for experimenting with language and world-puzzles. (Gu Chen)
This Generation
The dark nights gave me my dark eyes;
I, however, use them to look for light.
translated by Gordon T. Osing and De-An
Wu Swihart
Summer Outside The Pane
the crying lasted long through the night
when the sun rose
the raindrops glittered
before steaming away
I didn't wipe the glass
I knew that the sky was blue
and the trees were out there, comparing their hair
clacking their castanets
pretending to be huge predatory insects
it all is so distant
once we were weak as morning cicadas
with wet wings
the leaves were thick, we were young
knowing nothing, not wanting to know
knowing only that dreams could drift
and lead us to the day
clouds could walk in the wind
lakewater could gather light
into a glinting mirror
we looked at the green green leaves
I still don't want to know
haven't wiped the glass
ink-green waves of summer rise and fall
oars knock
fish split the shining current
a red-swimsuit laughter keeps fading
it all is so distant
that summer still lingers
the crying has stopped
Translated by Aaron Crippen
Duo Duo was born in 1951. He started to write in 1972 and his poetry was
actually published a few years later in 1985. It was interesting to discover
that the first anthology of “Misty “ poetry did not include his work. The May
Fourth Literary society at Perking University interviewed the young poets of
China and they also neglected to write about him. Some say that he is the
one who claimed he was among the great ‘Misty “ poets to gain attention.
Anyways, he is now famous in China because in 1988 he wrote the essay
“The Buried Chinese Poets.” He was exiled like the others and resorted to
underground poetry in his fishing village. His real name is Li Shizheng
because he felt safe in China with a pen name for his work. His main claim
to fame is The Boy Who Catches Wasps: Selected Poems translated by
Gregory B. Lee.
The Patient
Three years ago the music stopped
Freed fingers drew circles on a glass surface
A small patch of sky
Cut out by the window
Talked
But no longer emitted sound
Words dispersed outside the window
Looking at them they turned into apples
Sounds slowly penetrated fruit
translated from the Chinese by Gregory B. Lee
I'm Reading
in November wheatfields I'm reading my father
I'm reading his hair
the color of his tie, the crease in his pants
and his hoofs, caught in his shoelaces
how he skated and played the violin too
his scrotum shrank, his neck stretched to the sky for undue understanding
I read how my father was a big-eyed horse
I read how my father once briefly left the other horses
his coat hung on a small tree
and his socks, and hidden among the other horses
those pale buttocks, like in an oyster stripped
of its flesh the soap that women use to wash
I read the smell of my father's pomade
the smell of tobacco on his body
and his tuberculosis, lighting up the left lung of a horse
I read how the doubts of a boy
rose from a golden cornfield
I read how for me at the age of understanding
it began to rain on the red roof where the grain was put to dry
how in the sowing season the plow drew four legs of a dead horse
the horse-skin like a parasol, and horse-teeth scattered all around
I read faces taken away by time, one after the other
I read how my father's history quietly rots underground
how the locust on my father's body goes on existing by itself
like a white-haired barber embracing a senile persimmon tree
I read how my father puts me back once more into the belly of a horse
when I am about to become a stone bench in the London mist
when my gaze passes over men strolling down the street lined with banks . . .
Translated by
Maghiel van Crevel
(1991)
Ting was born in 1952. She was sent to the countryside
because her father was accused of ideological
nonconformity until 1973. She began to write her
poetry in 1969 and much of it was published. She wrote
often about freedom and her home country.
She was an outstanding member of the “Misty Poets”
and her style was impressive in China due to the fact
that it was so accessible and easy for the readers to
understand. She was quoted as saying that she likes to
express humanity through her poetry. (Shu Ting)
The Wall
I was unable to rebel against this wall;
I only wished to do so.
Who am I?
What is it? It is very possibly
merely my own skin gradually aging.
It feels no rain or cold or wind or frost;
it doesn't acknowledge the fragrance of orchids.
It is also possible
that I am merely an Asiatic plantain of some kind,
a parasite decorating the bed of some muddy creek.
If I am accidental, it is also inevitable.
Still, in the evening, the wall begins to move,
stretching forth its soft pseudopod,
squeezing me, forcing me
to take all kinds of other shapes.
I panic and escape into the street;
I find the same nightmare I know
hanging at everyone's heels.
One after another come the flinching eyes,
one after another the cold walls.
Ah, I see now,
I must first reject
my own bargains with that wall
to battle my fears out in the world.
translated by Gordon T. Osing and De-An Wu Swihart
The Cry of a Generation
February 1980
Translated by Richard King
I do not complain
about my misfortune
The loss of my youth,
The deforming of my soul.
Sleepless nights without number
my tragedy alone
Perhaps I might already have forgiven
Perhaps my grieving and my anger
Shu Ting
b. 1952
have left me with bitter memories.
I have rejected all received truths,
I have broken free of all shackles,
And all that remains of my heart
is in ruins, as far as the eye can see . . .
But still, I have stood up!
I stand on the expanse of the horizon.
Never again will anyone, by any means,
be able to push me down.
If it were me, lying in a martyr's grave,
green moss eating away the characters on my headstone;
If it were me, savouring the taste of life bars,
debating points of law with my chains;
If it were me, my face haggard and pale,
atoning for my crimes with an eternity of labour;
If it were me, it would be
might already be at rest.
But,
For the sake of the fathers of the children,
For the sake of the children of the fathers,
So that we no longer need to tremble
at the unspoken reproaches
from beneath the gravestones everywhere;
So that we may no longer be faced
wherever we turn
by the spectre of the homeless;
So that innocent children
a hundred years from now
nbehind eed not guess at the history we leave behind.
For this blank in our nation's memory,
For the arduous path our race must travel,
For the purity of the skies
and the straightness of the road ahead
I Demand The Truth!
He was actually born in Switzerland in 1955 but raised in Beijing having reeducation through labor. His main work was digging graves and doing
manual labor. His work was very famous and he is known as a great
contemporary poet of China. He did not like being forced to move and
writes a lot about China being free from Mao Zedong.
Yang Lian was awarded the Flaiano International Poetry Prize (Italy, 1999)
and his Where the Sea Stands Still: New Poems was Poetry Books Society
Recommended Translation (UK, 1999). (Yang Lian)
HOSPITAL
the lid closes whether or not your face is hammered full of nails
spittle, as much as in a lifetime of humiliation,
long since bleached out this light, easy death
a hand can’t reach its own pain
the darkness of this night stands altogether outside events
you rent four flimsy walls
listen to the river flowing inside a paper carton
between bones left blank listen to the storm
wait for the next patient
as another tear flies into your eye
a shrill shout collides with the shining glass
becomes a cheer you’re ruthlessly driving the nails in
Brian Holton
CITY OF DEAD POETS
by no means only those who have lived deserve to die
hose names buried lifelong beneath silence
have signed the silence this city you split with your own hand
a deserted street pretending to be a funeral procession
and moonlight hard as iron
bones clang in galvanised palms
outside long-forgotten windows snare drums rattle
every word you deleted in your life comes back to delete you
unstintingly deletes wolfishly deletes the world deleted the face
among the specimens is closer, clearer
delete the eyes vision will sharpen the glass along the way
with delicate lines engrave a bird
like one that was shattered as you watched
crumpled discarded on a manuscript rotting in a corner
your final death is intimately familiar with
an old room from which the wreckage of death waits to be removed
Brian Holton
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