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Welcome to Chinese poetry - November 2002

January 18, 2006

Contemporary mainland Chinese poetry was born on 23 December 1978, the day on which members of the Today! [Jintian] editorial team pasted up copies of their unofficial literature magazine on various walls in Beijing. After ten bloody and chaotic years of "Cultural Revolution", the poetry that emerged in the pages of Today! sought to fuse elements of Chinese tradition with the experiments of Western modernism . . .

This revolution in Chinese poetic language has led to what the poet Shu Ting once referred to as "a spiritual information explosion" [xinling de xinxi baozha]. The explosion continues to this day, aided by the growth of the internet in China. Poets and poetry moments proliferate in dizzying numbers, much of it at the edges of 'official' culture. Needless to say, it also outstrips the speeds and energies of English-language translation.

On behalf of my Chinese co-editor, the poet Yu Jian, I'd like to take this opportunity to try and explain what we're doing on this site. Since it's really not possible to be representative or authoritative or even entirely up to date, the best we can do is to provide you with links and connections that give you ways into Chinese poetry. In the recent Harry Potter movie, the student wizard had to catch the key that flew the fastest in order to open the large locked door blocking his path. In our case, we're trying to come up with as many different keys as possible to help you make your own way into this fascinating domain. With the passage of time, we hope that the capacity for this site to produce imaginative and useful interchange will grow in leaps and bounds.

Welcome to Chinese poetry - November 2002

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