What’s new in China?

May 22, 2013 After three thousand years of classical poetry in various rhyming schemes, New Poetry came along in 1917 in China when the first Western style free verse was published that year in the homemade ‘vernacular language’ (plain speech). Western literature flourished in China in the early years of New Poetry and again in the 1970s and 1980s. Bei Dao and the ‘Misty’ poets rose in mid 70s against the establishment and the government’s ‘official’ poetry during and after Mao’s Cultural Revolution (1966-76), and the post-Misty generation emerged in the mid-80s against the lofty tone and romantic flavor of the Misty poetry. Following a brief silence after the 1989 student movement, a new generation of poets, who are the primary voices today, emerged quietly in the 1990s.      
     
A thirty-volume anthology entitled One Hundred Year Canon of Chinese New Poetry came out earlier this year with 300 poets selected by 30 editors to celebrate the one hundred years of New Poetry (people can’t wait till 2017). Outside China, Jade Ladder: Contemporary Chinese Poetry was published in UK last year and New Cathay: Contemporary Chinese Poetry 1990-2012 is coming out in USA this year.

What else is new? Poetry blooms on the Chinese Facebook ‘Sina’. In the city of Wuhan, poems are posted on public subways and bus stops for the first time in the country. And almost every month there is a poetry festival in China (which might be nothing considering the size of the country). Poetry awards are booming – the famous become more famous and the sheltered more sheltered. Censorship still prevails but there are many ‘unofficial’ publications in the form of independent journals and poetry books without ISBNs. But this is a very unusual time in China right now, meaning you can’t judge good or bad based on the ‘official’ status as in the old days. The best way to tell is to read the work.
     
The Poetry International Festival in Rotterdam is the best-known international poetry festival in China. What has happened to the poets who were invited to Rotterdam before? Well, Bei Dao (PI poet in 1986) teaches in Hong Kong and continues to publish the independent journal ‘Today’. Shu Ting (1986) lives in southern China, no longer writing poetry. Ma Gaoming (1986) is an editor for a cultural newspaper in Beijing. His translation of Modern Dutch Poetry was published in 1988, and its 2^nd edition came out in 2007. Duo Duo (1989) teaches at Hainan University in the South Sea Island of China (since 2004) and spends time in Beijing too.

Mang Ke (1992) lives in Beijing as an artist. Luo Fu (1992) lives in Canada, still writing poetry. Xi Chuan (1995) teaches in Beijing and remains productive. Luo Ching (1996) divides his time between Taiwan and Shanghai as a poet-artist, Yu Jian (1997) lives in Kunming as a poet-essayist-editor. Sun Wenbo (1998) moves around in China and is now editing ‘Contemporary Poetry’ (an independent journal published officially with ISBN through private funding). Chen Li (1999) is busy with poetry translation in Taiwan. Yi Sha (2007) lives in the ancient capital Xi-An, a prolific writer currently engaged in poetry translation.

Yan Jun (2011) is nowhere to be seen – not in poet gatherings or poetry anthologies, except for the newly published thirty volume One Hundred Year Canon of Chinese New Poetry. I’ve never met Yan Jun, but his hermit style I admire. And there are many interesting poets like him in China who deserve more attention.  
Mindy Zhang is a guest editor at this year’s festival. Loss and dislocation are major themes in her six collections of poetry in Chinese with experiment in language and forms. Her work has been translated into English (River Merchant’s Wife, 2012) and other languages. She edits Poetry East West, a new influential bilingual journal published in Los Angeles and Beijing where she divides her time now. She has also edited and co-translated New Cathay: Contemporary Chinese Poetry 1990-2012.