Welcome to Chinese poetry - December 2003

January 18, 2006 For this reason, contemporary Chinese poetry is dominated by those born in the 1950s and afterwards. I recently asked my co-editor, the Chinese poet Yu Jian, about this phenomenon. Were there any poets, I wanted to know, from the 1930s and 1940s who were still active as poets and producing exciting and innovative work? No! was the short answer. Apart from Bei Dao (b. 1949), former editor of Today! and a celebrated Chinese poet-in-exile, the majority of poets from pre-1949 were, according to Yu Jian, too zhengzhihua, too politicized. And so, it’s difficult to find anyone with a creative history comparable to poets currently featured on other domains, such as Nicolás Suescún (Colombia), Michelle Grangaud (France), Volker Braun (Germany) or Herberto Helder (Portugal). A paradox, isn’t it—an ancient nation with such a youthful modern poetic culture!

Our latest poet of the quarter—Shijing Zhulian—represents the newest of the new in terms of the Chinese poetic scene. Born in 1981, Shuijing Zhulian (her pen-name means “Crystal Chain”) first came to prominence on the internet, a burgeoning development in the People’s Republic just as it is in many other parts of the world. Her poetry is raw and fresh and “somewhat slightly dazed” by the possibilities of experience; it pits realism of the readiest kind against any vestiges of idealism, a tendency often associated in China with the worst excesses of Mao Zedong’s utopic policies. Shuijing herself (with rare and touching modesty) acknowledges her occasional frivolity and impulsiveness, but she is clear about what she wants, creatively: not the mastery of “technique” but the “ability to handle something”, to come to terms, in other words, with the implications of experience and its imagination in writing.

We suggest you read her work in this light, mindful of the fact that perhaps Shuijing’s poetry is the epitome of the internet itself, dizzy with its immediacy, with its vivacious screen aesthetics and its publish-as-you-feel accessibility. Then compare it with other poetry featured on the site, poetry born often of very differing speeds: the differences are as instructive as they are fascinating.