Florida State University PRESENTS THE CHINESE EXILE POET Bei Dao

          Bei Dao (literally "north island," pseudonym of Zhao Zhenkai), China’s foremost contemporary poet, was born in 1949 in Beijing. The eldest son of an administrator (father) and a medical doctor (mother), Bei Dao went to one of the best schools in Beijing. Like many of his generation who were born "under the red flag," Bei Dao was brought up with a sincere belief in the bright future of Communist China. His formal education, together with the Communist visions it had imbued into his young mind, was disrupted by the Cultural Revolution. After joining the Red Guards for a short time, Bei Dao was sent to the countryside to receive "re-education," and later became a construction worker several hundred kilometers away from Beijing.
          Looking for a "private space" to shelter his soul from the horror of the Cultural Revolution, a space where he could calmly rethink the meaning of the self and the nation, Bei Dao started to write poetry and short stories in the early 1970s. In 1976 Bei Dao gained recognition as a powerful poet, especially during the April Fifth Democracy Movement in Beijing. "The Answer", one of his best-known poems then, voiced the disillusionment of many Chinese youths and their protest against the oppressive authority:

Debasement is the password of the base,  Nobility the epitaph of the noble.  See how the gilded sky is covered  With the drifting twisted shadows of the dead.  . . . . . .  Let me tell you, world,  I-do-not-believe!

          In 1978, Bei Dao co-founded the unofficial literary magazines Jintian (Today). The magazine was a major contributor to the "Democracy Wall" in Beijing and gathered around it a group of young dissident writers until it was banned by the government in 1980. Bei Dao’s poetry was seen as the representative of menglong shi (misty poetry), the most influential school of poetry in China in the early 1980s, which is characterized by striking imagery, elusive symbolism, condensed diction, and ungrammatical syntax. Throughout the 1980s, even though Bei Dao’s work was able to go into publication, it met with constant attack in press not only because of its departure from the officially-endorsed literary norm but also because of its unorthodox ideas.
          Bei Dao was forced into exile after the 1989 Tiananmen Square tragedy, due to his association with leading dissident intellectuals and his alleged influence on the student movement. He has since lived in Scandinavia, England, and the United State. In 1990, Bei Dao helped to re-launch Jintian in Stockholm, which has become the most important forum for Chinese exile writers and artists (http://www.jintian.net/). Exile life adds new dimensions and depth to Bei Dao’s verse, rendering it more poignantly lyrical and profound. The several collections he published in exile have drawn increasing acclaim. In the last several years, Bei Dao was reportedly on the short list for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
          Ironically, Bei Dao does not think that poetry is socially useful. However, like all great poets before him, Bei Dao believes that poetry gives us an emotional experience that otherwise could not be obtained, an experience that sustains our love for life and humanity. As he puts it in "Landscape over Zero":

it’s a pen blossoming in lost hope  it’s a blossom resisting the inevitable route  it’s love’s gleam waking to  light up landscape over zero.

 

PUBLICATIONS IN CHINESE BY BEI DAO
1999   Unlock, Taipei: Jiuge
1998   Blue House, Taipei: Jiuge
1996   Landscape over Zero, Taipei: Jiuge
1995   Midnight Singer, Taipei: Jiuge
1993   At the Sky’s Edge, Hong Kong: Oxford University Press
1987   The Homecoming Stranger, Guangzhou: Huacheng
1985   Selected poems of Bei Dao, Guangzhou: New Century
1985   Waves, Hong Kong: Chinese University Press

PUBLICATIONS IN ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY BEI DAO
1998   Landscape over Zero, London: Anvil
1996   Landscape over Zero, New York: New Directions
1994   Forms of Distance, London: Anvil; New York: New Directions
1991   Old Snow, London: Anvil; New York: New Directions
1990   Waves, New York: New Directions
1990   The August Sleepwalker, New York, New Directions
1990   Waves, New York: New Directions
1990   The August Sleepwalker, New York, New Directions
1988   The August Sleepwalker, London: Anvil
1987   Waves, London: Heinemans
1983   Notes from the City of Sun, Cornell University Press

HONORS AND AWARDS
1999   Stanford Presidential Lectures and Symposia in the Humanities and Arts
1998   Guggenheim Fellow
1998   Honorary Member of the House of Poetry in Morocco
1996   Honorary Member of American Academy of Arts and Letters
1995   PEN Center USA West FreedomtoWrite Award
1994   Honorary Fellow (in East Asian Studies), University of Durham
1990   PEN American Center FreedomtoWrite Award
1990   Tucholsky Prize from Swedish PEN
1989   Honorary Member of Swedish PEN
1988   National Award for Best Poetry Collection, China
1987   May Fourth Literary Prize from Beijing
 

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