Post by dacui38 on May 20, 2012 14:07:13 GMT -5
Born in Beijing, China, the poet Zhao Zhenkai is considered one of China’s best contemporary writers. He adopted the pen name Bei Dao and embarked in a worldwide journey, teaching in Europe and the United States. His works have been translated into more than 30 languages and received awards from many countries.
Zhao Zhenkai into an upper-middle class family; his father was an administrative cadre and his mother a medical doctor. As a teen, he was part of the Red Guards, fervent followers of the Communist Party’s Mao Zedong. Zhenkai however was soon disillusioned with the organization and party, turned away by their use of violence and intolerance for the intellectual elite. He was later sent to work in the mountains outside Beijing as a construction worker for his dissent.
Isolated in the countryside, Zhao Zhenkai enjoyed solitude and thought, which was inspiration for his poetry. It is around this time that he adopted his pen name Bei Dao, which translates to the Northern Islands, inspired by his environment. But whatever efforts he made was deterred by the Chinese Communist Party with the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution brought about a censoring of media that did not adhere to the beliefs of the Communist Party. This prompted Bei Dao to write, “We are a flock of migrating birds who have flown into winter’s cage” in “Song of Migrating Birds” to represent the loss of freedom and speech and begin his anticommunism involvement.
Bei Dao joined a group of underground poets who opposed Communist China called the Misty Poets, becoming one of their most important members. His writing style can be attributed to the style of the Misty Poets, poets who employed a writing style that he himself describes “was nebulous and unclear but at the same time unrestrained by form”. He employed a free verse style of poetry characterized by oblique imagery. The linguistic style, which included subject, tense, and number, are unclear and oftentimes transition and proper punctuation is missing.
Bei Dao was a great inspiration for the Democratic movement in China. His poetry was a great source of motivation during the April Democracy Movement of 1976, a peaceful protest in Tiananmen Square. During the protest, lines from Bei Dao’s book The August Sleepwalker were hanged as banners that represented the movement. Because of this, the Chinese government banished Bei Dao from China around the time of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Bei Dao in”Requiem” says “love has founded for the dead an everlasting alliance”, to hail the protestors of Tiananmen Square as heroes.
While away from China, Bei Dao focused his poetry on the political and social aspects of China. Although he was banished from China, his wife and daughter were unable to leave with him. In a sense his heart was still in China, and his writings reflect great nationalism for China. He continued to criticize the Communist Party, after reflecting upon the governments of various countries around the world. He employs the use of nature during his time in the countryside of China for spiritual harmony and to demonstrate the natural freedoms of human beings. Now, Bei Dao teaches in the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His period of banishment has ended and he has visited China in 2011 for the Qinghai Lake Poetry Festival, where he was hailed as a hero by the Chinese people.
Thank you for your patience, ladies and gentlemen. Please join me in giving an even more warm welcome for Bei Dao tonight, as he tells the story of his life and poetry.
Word Count: 591
Zhao Zhenkai into an upper-middle class family; his father was an administrative cadre and his mother a medical doctor. As a teen, he was part of the Red Guards, fervent followers of the Communist Party’s Mao Zedong. Zhenkai however was soon disillusioned with the organization and party, turned away by their use of violence and intolerance for the intellectual elite. He was later sent to work in the mountains outside Beijing as a construction worker for his dissent.
Isolated in the countryside, Zhao Zhenkai enjoyed solitude and thought, which was inspiration for his poetry. It is around this time that he adopted his pen name Bei Dao, which translates to the Northern Islands, inspired by his environment. But whatever efforts he made was deterred by the Chinese Communist Party with the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution brought about a censoring of media that did not adhere to the beliefs of the Communist Party. This prompted Bei Dao to write, “We are a flock of migrating birds who have flown into winter’s cage” in “Song of Migrating Birds” to represent the loss of freedom and speech and begin his anticommunism involvement.
Bei Dao joined a group of underground poets who opposed Communist China called the Misty Poets, becoming one of their most important members. His writing style can be attributed to the style of the Misty Poets, poets who employed a writing style that he himself describes “was nebulous and unclear but at the same time unrestrained by form”. He employed a free verse style of poetry characterized by oblique imagery. The linguistic style, which included subject, tense, and number, are unclear and oftentimes transition and proper punctuation is missing.
Bei Dao was a great inspiration for the Democratic movement in China. His poetry was a great source of motivation during the April Democracy Movement of 1976, a peaceful protest in Tiananmen Square. During the protest, lines from Bei Dao’s book The August Sleepwalker were hanged as banners that represented the movement. Because of this, the Chinese government banished Bei Dao from China around the time of the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Bei Dao in”Requiem” says “love has founded for the dead an everlasting alliance”, to hail the protestors of Tiananmen Square as heroes.
While away from China, Bei Dao focused his poetry on the political and social aspects of China. Although he was banished from China, his wife and daughter were unable to leave with him. In a sense his heart was still in China, and his writings reflect great nationalism for China. He continued to criticize the Communist Party, after reflecting upon the governments of various countries around the world. He employs the use of nature during his time in the countryside of China for spiritual harmony and to demonstrate the natural freedoms of human beings. Now, Bei Dao teaches in the Chinese University of Hong Kong. His period of banishment has ended and he has visited China in 2011 for the Qinghai Lake Poetry Festival, where he was hailed as a hero by the Chinese people.
Thank you for your patience, ladies and gentlemen. Please join me in giving an even more warm welcome for Bei Dao tonight, as he tells the story of his life and poetry.
Word Count: 591