The Poetry of Han Dong
韩东
Selections: 1982-1995
Han Dong was born in Nanjing in 1961. After graduation from Shandong University in 1982, he began work in Xi’an, where he edited his own small unofficial poetry journal (Old Home老家) and contributed to the then more influential Same Generation 同代 out of Lanzhou in Gansu province. Upon returning to Nanjing in 1984, Han contacted old contributors to Old Home and poets he had met via correspondence through Same Generation (such as Yu Jian and Wang Yin), and began to edit a new journal, Them 他们. The first issue appeared in early 1985 and was followed by four more editions until 1989. Over the next four years, Han devoted much of his energy to learning to write fiction (two examples of which can be found here). Them reappeared in 1993, with a further four editions until 1995. In 1998 this was followed by an officially published anthology of Them poetry. Today Han continues to write both poetry and fiction, and contributes to the Them website at www.tamen.net where new issues of the Them webzine have been appearing since summer 2002.
1) The Mountain People [山民]
2) About The Wild Goose Pagoda [有关大雁塔]
3) You've Seen the Sea [你见过大海]
4) The Gentle Side [温柔的部分]
5) Everything is as it Should Be [一切安排就绪]
6) This Gust of Wind [这阵风]
7) Your Hand [你的手]
8) The Sleep of Women [女人的睡眠]
9) A Woman I Don' t Know [我不认识的女人]
10) For the Dusk or For Sorrow [致黄昏或悲哀]
11) I Hear Cups [我听见杯子]
12) A Paean to a Horse and the Sunlight [马和日光的赞歌]
13) Only a Stone and the Sky [只有石头和天空]
14) Festival Days [节日]
15) Despair [绝望]
16) The Nanny [保姆]
17) Between These Two [两项以内]
18) Today [今天]
19) A Metaphor
20) Time [时间]
21) War Story
22) Bird Cages
23) Closed Eyes [没睁眼睛]
24) The Bird Hunter [大鸟的人]
25) Woodworkers [木工]
26) The Silent One [沉默者]
27) The Lakeshore During a Holiday [假日湖滨]
28) For Ding Dang [致丁当]
29) The Mourning of a Cat [猫的追悼]
30) A Drawn Prophet [鸭先知]
31) Coming Back Home [归来]
34) Han Dong: A Chinese Poet (essay by MD, 1994)
The Mountain People [山民] (April, 1982)
As a child, he asked his father
"What's beyond the mountain"
Father says "Mountains"
"Beyond that”
"Mountains, more mountains"
He says nothing, looks into the distance
This is the first time the mountains have wearied him so
He thinks, I'll never be able to walk out of these mountains in this lifetime
There's a sea, but so far off
He'll only live a few dozen years
So before he'll be able to get there
He'll die on the road out
Die in the mountains
He feels he should take his wife with him
The wife will be able to bear him a son
When he dies
His son will be full-grown
The son will also have a wife
The son will also have a son
The son’s son will have a wife too
He stops thinking about it
Sons also tire him
He only regrets
That his ancestors never thought as he
If they had, he'd be the one to see the sea
About The Wild Goose Pagoda [有关大雁塔] (1982)
What more can we know
about the Wild Goose Pagoda
Many people hasten from afar
to climb it
to be a one-time hero
Some still come to do it two
or more times
The dissatisfied
the stout
all climb up
to play the hero
then come down
and walk into the street below
gone in a wink
Some with real guts jump down
leave a red bloom on the steps
That's really being the hero
a modern-day hero
What more can we learn
about the Wild Goose Pagoda
We climb up
look around at the scenery
then come down again
You've Seen the Sea [你见过大海] 1984
You have seen the sea
you have imagined
the sea
you've imagined the sea
then seen it
just like this
you saw the sea
and imagined it
but you are not
a sailor
you imagined the sea
you saw the sea
possibly you also liked the sea
at most it was like this
you saw the sea
you also imagined the sea
you do not wish
to be drowned by seawater
just like this
people are all like this
The Gentle Side [温柔的部分] (March, 1985)
I've experienced the lonely life in the countryside
It has shaped the gentle side of my nature
Whenever feelings of weariness come
there'll be a gust of wind which frees me
At least I'm not that unaware
I understand where food comes from
See how I spend my days impoverished till the finish
and am able to sense joy in it
And picking up the old habit of late to bed and early to rise
is still as familiar as a hoe to my hands
It's just that I won't be harvesting anything anymore
can't repeat each of those detailed movements
Here forever lies a true kind of sorrow
Like a farmer who weeps over his crops
Everything is as it Should Be [一切安排就绪] (November 7, 1985)
Everything is as it should be
I can sit down and admire it all
or pace back and forth
in the rooms
This is my home
From now on I'll feel this way
In the bedroom
my wife's boats flit in and out
The four walls are promptly brightened
by van Gogh's ripe sunflowers
The names of four good friends should be written
on four chairs
for their sole use
They come
to play cards until sunrise and cock crow
Sometimes it's quiet
As at dusk
All doors and windows open
Another room can be seen
from this room
a beautiful table cloth
a book
All bring joy to my soul
yet I always suspect they are not for me to use
This Gust of Wind [这阵风] 1986
A wind blows into my room
like a small hand
it strokes me
and reaches beneath my shirt
like another cheek it's
pressed tight to mine
Blowing over my room
it comes from outside the window
a direction identical to that of clouds
but even farther
It comes to comfort me
from the farthest place
coming to console my lonely solitary life
pressing tight up to my face
it tells me
it fell from the sky
as if it were long long ago
for a time my whiskers flutter
my long hair flies
and my soul exits via its apertures
Thank this wind
No matter if I am lying flat
or soundly sleeping
it's all like a small stretch of open country
Ah, thank this wind
for softly breezing by
Your Hand [你的手] 1986
Your hand placed on my body
you go to sleep at peace
and because of this I cannot sleep
its slight weight
gradually grows into lead
the night is very long
your position does not change a bit
this hand ought to signify love
possibly it has yet another deep meaning
I dare not push it away
or startle you awake
when I grow used to it and like it too
in dreams suddenly you take back the hand
and are oblivious to all this
The Sleep of Women [女人的睡眠] 1986
Sleep has the function of beautifying
In accordance with this principle she
lies down now on the bed
at my angle I can only see
a white eardrum amid the black hair
A woman asleep is surely lovely
unlike when she has eaten her fill
or she's hungry
on your bed wrapped in a quilt
using it to calm your fragile life
They're always leading your thoughts on like this
more real than tears
they certainly don't dream of you
but may answer your call at any time
and afterwards continue to sleep soundly in another position
It's more important than displaying flesh
don't worry they'll fatten
perhaps the facts were always so
So much fat
then so much love
A Woman I Don' t Know [我不认识的女人] 1986
A woman I don't know
is my old lady today
without a sound she passes with me through the city
bears a mute son for me
the mountain she walked out of
I know nothing about
She's my old lady
surely one day she'll open her mouth
tell me of matters in the mountains
but possibly I'll die whenever that happens
she'll swallow the words she's not finished saying
and set off back to the hills
It looks like I must live very long
live until even that mountain dies
dead without a trace or shadow
and the woman who walked out of the mountain
won't age
For the Dusk or For Sorrow [致黄昏或悲哀] March 22, 1986
Again the dusk arrives like this
it sticks to the glass
its appearance already not as lovely as the last
I watch it earnestly
of the things that move me only you remain
but I cannot leave the window to let you in
the sad face is outside the window
but I can't let it come in
I want to let it stay in silence
its eyes still keep their sorrow
I'm so familiar with this end of sadness
like the dog-ears in a book
in the places where my hand folded the corners
are passages I've read
today I'm unwilling to open it
don't welcome it in
so that you won't be with no place to hide
among the sound of my curses
I Hear Cups [我听见杯子] (1988)
At this moment, I hear cups
A series of exquisite sounds
monotonous, detached
At their clearest
formidable or faint
The city, at its brilliant core
needs some of this luster
Placed on a table
some shadows are needed
to heal their wounds
The undulation of water, the dispersal of smoke
They're used to the postures of night
Purity and charm
are still their estate
they still have a one percent hope
to lead a pure life
In the distance true darkness howls
but the cup still chimes
clearly, intensely
Held in a hand
A Paean to a Horse and the Sunlight [马和日光的赞歌] 1988-1989
White sunlit sand and stone
on the main road, shows everything already prepared
people, animals, livestock all emerge out of a black dot
grow hands and feet, bodies and wheels
beneath the sun a horse hurries along
its mouth can’t reach the green grass at its side
its tongue does not crop leaves in the dust
with the shadow of a branch the locust tree is on its back
the four wheels behind it all run away
in its original spot dust billowing as big as a house
the horse head stretches out through a window with no frame
Is a horse of another time the same horse
The same open country, same road
no branches of any kind or identifiable white clouds
the main road lies clear at a glance, the horse motionless in its original place
four legs like four match sticks standing straight
I see this scene from the face of the moon
at the same time it also remembers me in the large icehouse
at a certain time, on earth it is a quiet noon
and the motionless summer makes a burnt offering of a plough horse
on a crackling tobacco leaf
Only a Stone and the Sky [只有石头和天空] 1988-89
Only a stone and the sky
a brown stone the sky
of course is blue
light is behind the painting's surface
the part in shadow demonstrates
the artist's greatest skill
a beautiful shadow between the thighs
on a huge stone
I think behind should be the sea
also something more
The artist ardent for stones and sky
only paints stones and sky
I think there is nothing
simpler
nothing makes people happier
Festival Days [节日] 1988-89
Two fish being dried in the wind
a minor ordinary event in the night
before the festival
but morbid thoughts make me
depict the details
two fish drying in the wind
First I pick up the knife before this
I killed ten thousand fish
I want to speak the day of the festival I see through fish eyes
a string run through their mouths
I hear the hitherto unheard of
shouts of fish
fish that have lost their scales
on hooks side by side
Winter sanitizes the bodies
on the glass door their black forms
one large one small
swaying on the back sundeck
Two fish dried in the wind
I know this food makes me vomit
during festival days everybody's allowed to do
the same
Despair [绝望] 1988-89
Now we can't see her face
we won't see it later either
several reasons could make her despair
she could pick one out easily
use it to prop up her body
In this world what is produced more than anything
certainly not a moment in a day
afternoon six o'clock, she goes to sleep on my bed
outside the window a child released from school uses her name
to call another child
like sesame sprinkled over baked bread, they will seize the world
car horns urge on this sort of pungent sleep
on the street wheels come and go unfeelingly
in an untidy room her body turns
her hand rests on the edge of the bed
one childish hand searching for another
that last untamed line finally disappears
I say, street children should go back onto the street
The Nanny [保姆] 1988-89
The nanny is also a child
they stand side by side
that stretch of childhood sunlight too
I hear the wind howl
because of my bursting in
an adult is rudely leaving
a child turns to look at the tops of his shoes
work places, automobiles, the inconceivable world
that day the shadow of a giant
writhed on the ground
the children refused to walk on
standing as straight as the sunlight
squinting, they don't speak again
don't search for parents
they will inherit this world
the nanny is its manager
when the other child grows up
it gets a job in her factory
Between These Two [两项以内] (May 7, 1989)
I must accept the day which follows sleep
After getting used to it I must return to the night
Between these two I must choose successively
The pendulum resounds within the cramped interior of the clock
Whether more or less, matchsticks are aimed at the side of the box
Clothing styles change, but there won't be another size
Wine is poured from a bottle into a cup and then set on a flat surface
Because blue ink disgusts me, a pen has sucked its fill of blue ink
And the blood that flows out is seen as purple and red
Inside darkness I have entered into a smaller darkness
I compare the length and breadth of the earth
Vehicles always drive on the right, and return on the same road
The sky's height and the ocean's depth
A sage said: The flying bird's shadow on water is simultaneously a fish
I persist in splitting hairs at the tip
It's still the hair that comes to life on the scalp
Today [今天] (June 8, 1989)
Today and in similar situations
A person uses his legs to stand between a table and a chair
Within the preordained order I run into myself
The mirror is so bleak, without depth
surmounting the smooth, clear boundaries
Everything embodying emotions has yielded already
There's a mechanism in the brain narrating all the incident's details
precisely and calmly, like scrapping the enamel off an incisor
. . . . . . . . . .
Where an arm has been severed I become conscious of a severed arm
The real hand knocks against the form of a cup, only the form
Liquid has streamed through the interiors of plants or flower stems
The blank space is as large as fifty football fields
But can also shrink to become a cavity
Darkness is merely a negligent net
altogether without an objective to catch hold of
its only purpose to leak
I am isolated from appearances of all mutually imposed outcomes
A multitude of feet slide on glass
An enormous, sober sheet of glass and the sounds of sliding, falling
A Metaphor (June 11, 1989)
It's happened, beyond your expectations
The barb caste out by the bush has sunk into my flesh
And pulls at me with all its strength. In the flower's name I bleed
Under circumstances completely unknown to you I leap above the surface
Of the water very courageously. Having left the reality of water
I will die separately on the beach after the fisher has left
Ten thousand people search the deep, for you alone I uncover a pearl
The heavyhearted child by boatside should be given this lifelong gift
But she's already turned away and her glance sweeps the plain, leaving the moon to spread
Her shadow toward me. The second line of waves will carry off the shell
I'm not able to alleviate your sorrow with my death
I see you searching with your back to me. Let me tell you --
You, child who believes in that direction, imagine the planet to be round and the distance from it
Ever increasing. Ever since the beginning I've pointed to me
But no matter where you go
I continue to sink into the mire
Time [时间] (August 29, 1989)
Time has been passing for ages
For so long that a deep pit is left in the earth's surface
It's impossible, but it fills up again and then levels out
On the sand time piles up into a mountain
and slides toward the sea
Everything is foretold
And now becomes a flat fact
So much so that even the facts have slipped back
becoming the history of one kind of genesis
Time has been passing for ages
Ten thousand years, a million years or a few days
Either longer or shorter
"A very long time" or precisely
as long as this sigh
A germ says as much to a ray of light
A stone to a new edition of a textbook
A wan planet to a passing meteor
Between universes, nothing is said
Time has been passing for ages
When I speak to you of this three-second experience
As I use ten seconds to write this sentence
The clock has again returned to its starting point
It rotates imperceptibly, but rapidly
Time has been passing for ages
War Story (October 18, 1990)
A kiss under a streetlight
And so I get shot at by her mother from the building across the way
Her father blows on a whistle shaped out of a bullet casing
The elder brother, her only older brother, wraps himself tight in a bandage
And so I get my tongue bitten off by her
A multitude of anniversaries follow
I see sixty sunny days on the square
Sixty times as many pigeons
Sixty times as much bird shit
Bird Cages (March 25, 1992)
Birdcages hang from tree branches by the side of the road
The New Village old men are nearby
Pecking away at the checks on the chessboards
A hunched old man equals one bird
A triumphant old man two birds
Three birds is a newly married old man
His duck of a wife can be considered a bird too
In China, housewives like cats
Men raise dogs
Old men lift birdcages every day
Children are wild beasts to start with
Birds of prey likewise perch outside the birdcage
And under the parasol trees those bird fanciers and imitators
Put up with piss and shit as if they were snowflakes
Closed Eyes [没睁眼睛] (July 12, 1992)
Mother signifies an abundance of food
drinking traditional meat soup as the snow falls
A blizzard signifies horses racing wildly
elder sister being boiled in oil over the fire
Danger bursting through the door signifies father
staid little brother moves his line of sight
from the window
Already at the dinner table
To not exist means not to have opened his eyes
The Bird Hunter [大鸟的人] (December 19, 1992)
Ten thousand small birds perch in the bamboo grove
The bird hunter only shoots the outermost
The sleepy bird hunter is never awoken by his gun's report
Dream shadows gather up the earth's lingering warmth
The plastic bag by his foot is stuffed with prey till it glows
Full like an external stomach
The hatred which the one-eyed man lines up behind the sight
is the other eye pecked out by a hawk
He comes everyday, harvesting at a fixed time
as if sparrows originally grew from bamboo shoots
Enough are dropped by lead pellets and his rifle barrel
At the same time downing bamboo, leaf after leaf
In the gloom of the grove no form of wicked wolf appears
The joy of hunting holds no danger
After the vented wrath there's the sadness of a wintry scene
Drifting snowflakes, like birds, their tiniest feathers
Enter the grove, he also has a long walk
to return home, a return to
the dinner of sparrow soup, a night of crow
Woodworkers [木工] March 8, 1993
Lying amidst wood-shavings in the woodshop the workers work
no doors, no windows, no walls too
only a golden three-sided work-shed of reed matting
only sunlight, shavings and timber and
the handles of farm tools already carved into shape
no door, no window, no table stool or threshold
no bed. Woodworkers eliminating woodworkers
shavings covering the muddy earth
The Silent One [沉默者] March 27, 1993
In a dreary life I do not speak
In a joyful life I do not speak
I have a silent upper palate and a giant lower palate
like a primeval stone crevice on a highland waste
even during family holidays, between lips and teeth
not even a green leafy word is exposed
a stubborn stone lock on my mouth, a black-green light suffusing the round stone
perhaps it's the mutual wearing down between two millstones
as if brought by a ruminating animal over there from the mother
I munch silence like the stone statue of a horse
the shadows of white walls are a fodder my loneliness finds hard to swallow
the sobbing woman who has covered her face is an aged mother to the silent one --
she bore him out of garrulous chatter -- conscious of being injured
OK, so let the room be flooded by my whistling sound as I sup soup
The Lakeshore During a Ho1iday [假日湖滨] December 13, 1993
Another holiday at the lakeshore
an amusement park for oldsters and children
behind hedges and trees, they move toward each other
a full circle, finding itself
I walk up to the circle the children and oldsters compose
they skirt the lakeshore. Perhaps I am
that thing juxtaposed to the man-made hill in the green waves
when I begin to move, so like a shrimp holding on to a rock underwater,
up onto a clean porcelain plate with one leap
In this way a multitude of sister organisms
don't merely meet on the picnic table
the children and oldsters encircle
the circumference that the little lake suggests, tightly
Before the birth of the delicious dishes I know
several types of anonymous protein flew across the sky
but fish have never been any aspect of it
-- like later in the frying pan, that way
it is more like the original shape of an exclamation mark: “!”
duckweed is reckoned to be without nutrition also not a vegetable
On that joyful lakeside, the sun is also present
a shuttlecock's flight interferes with the course of a planet
on the lawn an old man suddenly slips to the ground
blocked by the father, a child has no hope of reaching the grandfather
so he inclines toward an even more helpless puppy
For Ding Dang [致丁当] December 14, 1993
Many years ago, my friend went to the South
See how well this southern northerner
adapts to life. The airplane flew-over the snow in the sky
a second time my friend flew over
the rooves of newly-marrieds on the earth
"If you smack into a family's chimney
simply take it with you as you fly"
-- immortal words of his life experience in the South
My friend phoned me from Foshan –-
out of a hatred for speed
"Either use the most endless of lives, and walk, like you
or the quickest, from point A to point B as if
I were at point B originally."
Dependent on a sheen and no-resistance won from the bodies of women
O, that precipice on the edge of the abyss brimming with the delights of cogon-grass and skin
Slow down, my friend
from North to South, like the migration birds might make
is perhaps the laborious emigration of several generations
The Mourning of a Cat [猫的追悼] December 15, 1993
We buried the cat. We
buried the cat's sisters
We empty the paper sack
We scatter dust
We carry iron shovels
walk up onto autumn's mountain
We move stones and
take pleasure in the sun
We take a trip
walk into the Peace Market
a step further to the salted and dried goods counter
in the buying and selling is a dead cat
In correspondence we tell you the news
We overstate death, but when we
reach this caliber of understanding
we have fully recovered already
A Drawn Prophet [鸭先知] December 18, 1993
An unprecedented seventeen degrees below zero
even in zero degree cold it continues to drop
seventeen points. He doesn't wish to go to the warm South
or up north, in search of the winter stoves
just because two of autumn's parasol trees still tower in front of the window
The only job, his only job
is to transform the thermometer that hangs like a gallbladder
his only job to keep the blood in the glass
from turning green. For this
he used up his heat too early on
Thoughts about the South Pole freeze over
the poet wonders aimlessly about leaves falling before his eyes
symptoms of frostbite appear on his inexplicable wound
his eyes are injured by white walls because of errors in recognition
the atmosphere thickens, cold zones come out in conversations
Ardently he says to himself: "Seventeen degrees below zero!"
then in a high fever he imitates the shiver of leaves on a tree
responding, parasol trees shed, the trunks remain
after a bonfire of added branches and leaves
charcoal on a broken wall draws in a prophet
Coming Back Home [归来] January 5, 1995
I've come back, from Shenzhen to Nanjing
the day has not yet finished
you can't say I don't understand time
you can't say that sort of childish thing
-- since I've prepared cottons
and wear them home
but, when night falls, the southern sun is within me
not yet dead
I go to beat on friend's doors
call them out onto the cold streets
I stupidly say: Just above zero, in Shenzhen
everything has only just begun!
No one argues with me, they
are used to silence
on the marriage bed prolonging married life
perhaps back to (baking) back, in search of common warmth
(Over the following month
my heart was full of treacherous desires
I joyfully shout -- "I've changed!"
But it's only the chaos of the biological clock
the time difference or changes in the schedule of work and rest
in the dark a mysterious hand
slowly adjusts)
More deeply I sink into the past
as if falling from the sky, I continue to
bore into the mud. Like a huge army winter comes deep in
lays siege. So cold it makes even metal draw back
but in the southland, the softest things blossom best
like flowers, and sex organs
wantonness relies on the sea and trade's smoky warm winds
I've returned to Nanjing
I live in the neighborhood of ice, snow and frost
like those sages of remote antiquity, in West Asia, the Pamirs
in the neighborhood of snowy peaks and glaciers
torrid zones cannot give birth to sages. I understand
Jesus certainly was not a black man
I've come back, returned to Nanjing continue a kind of mid-way life
between the sun and ice and snow, placed in
the cold dark shadow of a room
that warm cavern
far from eternity or moments of stimulation
I'm like all mediocre yet painful existence
just am
Han Dong: A Chinese Poet
INTRODUCTION
Han Dong was born on May 17, 1961, in the city of Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province, not far from Shanghai. As a child, his father, a well-known writer, was condemned as a “rightist" and he and his family were sent to the countryside to live with and learn from the farmers. Following Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution in the late 1970s, Han Dong was able to pass the university entrance examination and entered the philosophy department of the University of Shandong in eastern China. Upon graduation in 1982, after teaching for two years in Xi’an in northeastern China, Han found employment as a teacher of Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought at the Marxism-Leninism Institute in his hometown, Nanjing.
Han Dong's return to Nanjing coincided with the inception of what is now China's longest-lived “samizdat" [self-published] poetry journal, Them 他们. In 1993, the sixth issue of the journal was published after a hiatus of close to four years following its being banned (for the second time) in 1989. (The inaugural issue appeared in early 1985 and subsequent issues in late 1985, 1987, 1988 and 1989.)
In its first three issues, Them not only published poetry, but fiction and theoretical literary essays. In fact, such well-known Chinese writers as Su Tong and Ma Yuan got their starts in the journal.[1] A final issue appeared in 1995.
Through all nine issues of Them, however, poetry was the main focus. The three mainstays and co-founders of the journal were Han Dong, Yu Jian, a poet from Kunming in the southwestern province of Yunnan, and Ding Dang who initially resided in Xi'an but now has lived in Shenzhen, on Hong Kong's border, since 1990.
While the varied techniques and styles of the poetry published in Them does not allow one to call these poets a "school", there is a common tendency toward a focus on language and themes found in the daily lives of the poets themselves and the ordinary mass of men of whom they write. Han Dong's attitude toward classical poetic diction and that of the poetry promoted by the communist party after 1949 are summed up in a dialogue between himself and another Them poet Zhu Wen, published in the 1992 edition of the Beijing-based unofficial journal, Speech [发言] (pp. 1-6):
...Each writer gets his start from reading. Today, therefore, convincing and authoritative works are naturally translated works. We all feel deeply that there is no tradition to rely upon, the great Chinese classical literary tradition seems to have already become invalid. Actually this is in fact the case, with the exception of the ‘great classical spirit’, concrete works and the classics have already been cut off from us with regard to the written language. They are of no use to the writing of today. And the so-called spirit of the classics, if it has lost the immediacy of the written word, necessarily lapses into mystical interpretation and speculation. This point is not only obvious, but it is also gladly admitted to by all. In fact, we already have become orphans of literary tradition.
In search of solace, by coincidence everyone turned to the West. In order to strengthen oneself and also to ‘move towards the world’, how to graft oneself onto the Western literary tradition has become the direction of the efforts of very many poets today. Unfortunately, this effort can only be arrived at indirectly through translated works. In terms of written texts, we study translated works and afterwards write similar things imitatively. Later they must still be translated once again into English or other languages and promoted to the West in order to capture an ‘international market’ so as to remedy gaps in logic, poets have expounded an illusion: namely so-called 'cosmopolitanism'. They think of themselves as first being a member of the human
race, only afterwards are they born into a particular nationality and use a particular language in writing. In my opinion this is merely a kind of moral defense and incapable of changing the [fact of their] isolation from the [Chinese] written language...
Learning from translated works is the same as learning from classical literature. It can be one of our sources of inspiration. We may speculate about and imagine the spirit, the interpretations and all the possibilities which lie behind the concrete written words…
If one remembers the poetry of Central and Eastern Europe in the wake of World War II and the advent of Stalinism, one can locate quite similar attitudes and approaches to language. Words out of the mouth of the Czech poet Miroslav Holub could also be those of Chinese poets like Han Dong: "We felt [modernism] as a counter-cultural movement, as a protest against the generalizing, solemn, official poetry. Against the poetic celebrations, all types of poetic celebrations. And we called it - our group, that is – the “Poetry of Everyday Life”. But in more general terms - and not talking in terms of any literary group - there was the feeling that whatever you are doing represents the feeling
of the guys in the street…"[2]
In the case of China and Han Dong, the period of cultural holocaust could be said to extend from, at least, 1937 and the Japanese invasion of China proper until the death of Mao Zedong and the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976. Given this forty-year period, an attitude such as Han Dong's above can be more easily understood.
In 1988, Han began to turn his hand to fiction. Following the events of 1989, Han Dong was fired from his teaching position and was effectively forced to turn to fiction as a way to earn a living. (Han had indirectly encouraged his students to demonstrate on June 4, 1989, and took part in a small demonstration by Nanjing writers and poets the following day.)
Since 1991, Han has achieved something of a reputation and has seen many pieces of short fiction and several pieces of mid-length fiction published in numerous establishment literary journals in all parts of China. While several of his works are flawed because of his being ‘forced’ to write to live, several others, in particular his semi-auto-biographical pieces, exhibit great potential. Poetry, however, remains his main interest, although the improving quality of his most recent fiction may be an indication that he is approaching a balance between the two.
Addendum: In October 1994, Han Dong was one of eight fiction writers (out of 350 applicants) from all parts of China awarded a two-year position in the newly established Youth Literature Institute [青年文学院] in Guangzhou.
All applicants were 35 years of age or younger, and the winners will receive a monthly salary of RMB 1,200 Yuan (approximately twice the average monthly income of urbanites in China) for a two year period. The writers have only to meet the single condition that they spend at least two months of each year in Guangdong province.
Han plans to focus on writing longer fiction during this period -- novellas and perhaps a full-length novel. (Novellas are a popular form in China; a situation brought about by the penchant of several large establishment literary journals for this particular form.
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