Bei Dao

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Bei Dao in Tallinn, 2010
Bei Dao ("Northern Island") is another name for Zhifu Island.

Bei Dao (simplified Chinese: 北岛; traditional Chinese: 北島; pinyin: Běi Dǎo; literally "Northern Island", born August 2, 1949) is the pen name of Chinese poet Zhao Zhenkai (S: 赵振开, T: 趙振開, P: Zhào Zhènkāi). He was born in Beijing. He chose the pen name because he came from the north and because of his preference for solitude.[1] Bei Dao is the most notable representative of the Misty Poets, a group of Chinese poets who reacted against the restrictions of the Cultural Revolution.[2][3][4]

Life

As a teenager, Bei Dao was a member of the Red Guards, the enthusiastic followers of Mao Zedong who enforced the dictates of the Cultural Revolution, often through violent means. He had misgivings about the Revolution and was "re-educated" as a construction worker, from 1969 to 1980.[5] Bei Dao and Mang Ke founded the magazine Jintian[6] (Today), the central publication of the Misty Poets, which was published from 1978 until 1980, when it was banned. The work of the Misty Poets and Bei Dao in particular were an inspiration to pro-democracy movements in China. Most notable was his poem "Huida" (回答, "The Answer") which was written during the 1976 Tiananmen demonstrations in which he participated. The poem was taken up as a defiant anthem of the pro-democracy movement and appeared on posters during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. During the 1989 protests and subsequent shootings, Bei Dao was at a literary conference in Berlin and was not allowed to return to China until 2006. (Three other leading Misty Poets — Gu Cheng, Duo Duo, and Yang Lian — were also exiled.) His then wife, Shao Fei, and their daughter were not allowed to leave China to join him for another six years.

Since 1987, Bei Dao has lived and taught in England, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, and the United States. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages, including five poetry volumes in English[7] along with the story collection Waves (1990) and the essay collections Blue House (2000) and Midnight's Gate (2005). Bei Dao continued his work in exile. His work has been included in anthologies such as The Red Azalea: Chinese Poetry Since the Cultural Revolution (1990)[8] and Out of the Howling Storm: The New Chinese poetry.[9]

Bei Dao has won numerous awards, including the Tucholsky Prize from Swedish PEN, International Poetry Argana Award from the House of Poetry in Morocco and the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. He is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Jintian was resurrected in Stockholm in 1990 as a forum for expatriate Chinese writers. He has taught and lectured at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Beloit College, Wisconsin, and is Professor of Humanities in the Center for East Asian Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has been repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.[10][11]

Works

Poetry collections

  • 《八月的梦游者》 The August Sleepwalker (1990)
  • 《旧雪》 Old Snow (1991)
  • 《距离的形式》 Forms of Distance (1994)
  • 《零度以上的风景线》 Landscape Over Zero (1996)
  • 《开锁》 Unlock (2000)
  • 《在天涯》 At the Sky's Edge: Poems 1991-1996 (2001) (completely collects Forms of Distance and Landscape Over Zero)
  • 《时间的玫瑰》The Rose of Time: New and Selected Poems (2010)

Short story collections

  • Waves. Translators Bonnie S. McDougall & Susette Ternent Cooke. New Directions Publishing. 1990. ISBN 978-0-8112-1134-5. 

Essay collections

  • Christopher Mattison, ed. (2005). Midnight's gate. Translator Matthew Fryslie. New Directions Publishing. ISBN 978-0-8112-1584-8. 

Further reading

  • Chinese Writers on Writing featuring Bei Dao. Ed. Arthur Sze. (Trinity University Press, 2010).
  • Blue House translated by Ted Huters & Feng-ying Ming. (Zephyr Press,2000).

Notes

  1. ↑ Books and Writers: Bei Dao. Amazon.com. 13 May 2008 <http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/beidao.htm>.
  2. ↑ poets.org: Bei Dao. Academy of American Poets. 13 May 2008.
  3. ↑ Stanford profile
  4. ↑ A Brief Guide to Misty Poets
  5. ↑ http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/beidao.htm
  6. ↑ Jintian
  7. ↑ Unlock (2000), Landscape Over Zero (1996), Forms of Distance (1994), Old Snow (1992), The August Sleepwalker (1990)
  8. ↑ Edward Morin, Fang Dai, ed. (1990). "Bei Dao". The Red Azalea: Chinese Poetry Since the Cultural Revolution. Edward Morin, Fang Dai, Dennis Ding. University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-1320-8. 
  9. ↑ Tony Barnstone, ed. (1993). Out of the Howling Storm: The New Chinese Poetry: Poems by Bei Dao. Wesleyan University Press. ISBN 978-0-8195-1210-9. 
  10. ↑ Stanford lectures}
  11. ↑ [http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/774. Poets.org Nobel info]

External links

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