“Stubborn Weeds”
Not many poems in 1979-80 attracted national attention and controversy in China. The most famous example of one that did was Ye Wenfu’s “General, You Can’t Do This!”, which was published in the August 1979 issue of Poetry (Shikan)and expressed outrage and a sense of betrayal about a report that a high-ranking military official had diverted several hundred thousand dollars from construction of a nursery school to construction of his mansion. But in general, poetry was not the favorite genre in the excitement over truth-telling literature in 1979-80, among either readers or critics. In the Ministry of Culture an internal report summarizing the achievements of 1979 found that drama had been most successful and that short stories had been second. Poetry was near the bottom of this list, on which music ranked lowest. Such broad-scale rankings might seem absurd if it were not true that readers also were remarkably consistent in expressing the same basic preferences.
But when the dust settles from the politically and socially based controversies that surrounded many stories and plays of 1979-80, it will certainly emerge that the poetry of these years was not as ordinary as many had supposed. Even measured in terms of political boldness alone, few literary journals exceeded Poetry. More important, some young poets were experimenting with artistic language in ways that will likely prove more significant to the development of Chinese literature than all the reports of social ills in the fiction and drama of the time. Accordingly we brave the inherent difficulties of translating Chinese poems into English in order to provide a modest sampling that includes elements of both social protest and literary experiment.
Gong Liu (Liu Renyong, b. 1927), while belonging to the “older” generation of poets, commands special respect among youth. His poem here speaks of a “petitioner,” a term that had a specific sense in 1979-80. It meant someone who had suffered for years as a “rightist,” a “counterrevolutionary,” or the like, and who by rights should have had his oppressive label removed after the Gang of Four fell; but local officials were often slow to expedite these changes of status (some had gained their positions precisely by putting the labels on), and victims had no alternative but to “petition” higher authorities. This sometimes meant walking miles to capital cities and living on the streets until one’s case could be heard.
Other than Gong Liu and Huang Yongyu (b. 1924), who is renowned as both a painter and a poet, the poets represented here are young and have young reputations. Luo Gengye (b. 1951), whose poem challenges the conservative view that discontent is akin to subversion, was a dancer with an arts troupe in Sichuan from 1976 to 1980, and in 1981 went to Beijing to study song writing and music at the Chinese Institute of Music. Qiu Xiaolong (b. 1953) is an Assistant Research Fellow at the Academy of Social Sciences in Shanghai and is writing a thesis on T. S. Eliot.
Gu Cheng (b. 1956) and to a certain extent Shu Ting (b. 1952) have become controversial as practitioners of so-called “obscure poetry,” i.e., lines with imagistic or oblique messages that some critics feel to be insufficiently pellucid for a socialist society. Gu Cheng, who is son of the elder poet Gu Gong and started writing poetry at age twelve, lived in Beijing in 1981. Shu Ting worked in a bulb factory in Xiamen, Fujian Province.
For heaven’s sake don’t curse me. I’m not a troublemaker.
A starving man isn’t interested in fooling around.
THE PETITIONER SPEAKS:
I am the blood oozing from extensive burns,
I am igneous rock. My home is Purgatory.
Look. All around is jagged granite;
Here there is no amethyst or jade.
As the tides of life surge past,
Holding God’s special files of steel,
They wear me away for all they’re worth,
Each with less mercy than the one before.
I was thrown into the yard of the local Party office.
“Where are you from, you clod?
You’re an eyesore and a pain in the neck. Get lost!”
With curses the security squad sent me on my way.
I was swept into the reception room of the district Party
committee.
“He’s got lice,” shrieked a female official,
Getting rid of me and then going to wash her hands
As if she had just got rid of toilet paper.
In the provincial capital the leaders were busier still,
Building paradise for the people.
Being an ill-mannered lout I wrote my address as Purgatory.
“Nonsense! There’s no such place in China.”
The tide of anger swept the land once more,
Carrying me to Beijing’s Xinhua Gate.
Take a look at that dried-up, shriveled crowd—
They could be made into a mat of human straw.
Chang’an Boulevard, accept my apologies:
Ugliness has sullied your beauty—
These fingers like sticks of charcoal,
These rags that barely cover our bodies.
But injustice is even more unbearable than shame.
I remember once two iron-trees grew here.
Are they both dead by now?
I dreamed that they had a second flowering.
Comrade, I don’t complain, let alone curse.
Don’t, I beg you, refer my case back home.
If you could grant me just half an hour,
You’d save me half a lifetime’s suffering.
HIS DAUGHTER TALKS IN HER SLEEP:
I am the petitioner’s daughter,
I am wild by profession.
I go around counting telegraph poles;
Everywhere are the beds where I’ve been sold.
I sell myself off cheap, a bit at a time,
For food and drink and a yard or two of cotton.
Mother knows what I’m doing,
But still calls me a good girl, with a sob in her throat.
A good girl, indeed!
One dark night, twelve years ago,
They took my father away,
Putting out the stove and hope.
The lost world of beauty,
The lost innocence, schoolbag, and songs
Were left in a place far, far away,
Shrouded in mist, where I’ll never return.
Here there is degradation,
Here there is grief.
Only my young brother’s innocent shouts
Remain to link the present and the past.
I am the petitioner’s daughter.
People mock me and jab me in the back.
Of course, I wasn’t qualified to join the political brothel—
I didn’t know the Gang of Four.
I’m only good enough to be their target.
I’m not allowed to talk so fine, even if I could,
Or plant chaste blossoms to hide debauchery,
Or set up my memorial in the shrine of filth.
I’m too weak now, like a broken spring.
I’d fly away, but have no wings of my own.
The police have warned me: “Classification unchanged.
Besides, your father has disappeared again.”
HIS WIFE ARGUES:
People take me for a widow.
In fact I have a husband.
But he’s hitched a ride on a train to Beijing;
I dare not think how all this will end.
I spend my days with rubbish,
Digging out tins, plastic, paper, and rags.
My conscience is clean:
Tears wash away the dirt from everything.
Sorting through rubbish doesn’t make you rubbish.
Don’t you believe me? Dirt sometimes hides jewels.
All the red-scarfed youngsters used to salute me.
By what right did I lose my textbooks, chalk, and dais?
Now I silently roam the streets:
I know where the filthiest places are.
But I am the outcaste, the untouchable,
As if this were not China but India.
“Clear off! Out of the way!”
Shouts a loathsome student I once taught.
He treats the whole town as his rubbish bin—
He has the right father and the right father-in-law.
But still I take home the old newspapers I pick up,
To read and reread, not knowing what to believe.
Then my poor crippled boy starts crying:
“Mum, why did you ever learn to read, you fool?”
THE SICK BOY’S INVOCATION:
I hate my father,
I hate my family,
I hate this bloody polio,
I hate doctors and their long white coats.
I hate this damp basement
That drags me down with it.
I hate the murky skylight;
It’s half-blind and so am I.
I hate those busy men and women
Whose heels are always drumming at my head.
I hate their busyness.
Why does no one think of me or give me something to do?
That wild plant growing in the dirt by the window
Is the only thing I like. I love it. It’s watered
With my tears. Perhaps the sun one morning
Will notice it. There could even be a flower.
Originally published in Qingming (Hefei), No. 1, 1980.
Translated by W. J. F. Jenner.
The train was tired
The delegates climbed out
Still wearing their best clothes
Under the eaves of the signal box
A girl
Mechanically crushed stones
She never looked up
Originally published in Jintian (Beijing, unofficial press), No. 8 (1980).
Translated by W. J. F. Jenner.
The black night has given me black eyes,
Yet I use them to search for light.
Originally published in Xingxing (Chengdu),
March 1980.
Translated by William Tay.
A bird in the gusty wind
Deftly changes direction
A boy tries to pick up
A penny
The grapevine in fantasy
Stretches its tentacle
The wave in retreat
Arches its back
Originally published in Shikan (Beijing), No. 10, 1980.
Translated by William Tay.
The sky is gray
The road is gray
The building is gray
The rain is gray
In this blanket of dead gray
Two children walk by,
One bright red
One pale green.
Originally published in Shikan (Beijing), No. 10, 1980.
Translated by William Tay.
Clouds that are gray
Can no longer be washed clean.
So we open the umbrella
And simply paint the sky black.
In the slowly floating night,
Two pairs of twin stars
Move with no trajectory,
Now distant, now near—
Originally published in Shikan (Beijing), No. 10, 1980.
Translated by William Tay.
Then it’s true
You’ll wait for me
Wait till all the seeds in my basket have been sown
Wait till I’ve taken the lost bees home
Wait till the oil lamps and torches have been lit
under boat awnings, in cottages, in workers’ shacks
Wait till I’ve read all the windows bright or dark
and talked to all the bright and dark souls
Wait until the highways become songs
Wait until love can walk in the sun
When the vast Milky Way forces itself between us
You will still await me patiently
And make a faithful little raft
Then it’s true
You’ll never break your word
Even when my soft hands crack
and the bloom fades from my cheeks
Even when my flute gives out blood
and still won’t melt the ice and snow
Even with the lash behind and the precipice ahead
Even if the darkness catches me before the dawn
and I sink with the earth
Before I can release a lovebird
Your waiting and faithfulness
Will be
The reward for my sacrifice
Now let them
Shoot at me
I shall walk calmly across the land
Towards you, towards you
My long hair blowing in the wind
I am your wild lily in the storm
Originally published in Shanghai wenxue, No. 9, 1981.
Translated by W. J. F. Jenner.
Perhaps our cares
will never have readers
Perhaps the journey that was wrong from the start
will be wrong at the end
Perhaps every single lamp we have lit
will be blown out by the gale
Perhaps when we have burned out our lives to lighten the darkness
there will be no warming fire at our sides.
Perhaps when all the tears have flowed
the soil will be richer
Perhaps when we sing of the sun
the sun will sing of us
Perhaps as the weight on our shoulders grows heavier
our faith will be more lofty
Perhaps we should shout about suffering as a whole
but keep silent over personal grief.
Perhaps
Because of an irresistible call
We have no other choice.
Originally published in Jintian (Beijing, unofficial press), No. 8 (1980).
Translated by W. J. F. Jenner.
Bureau head, factory manager, Party secretary,
When you meet the
Withered, begging hands
Of an old man, a woman, or a child.
Please don’t bring out
Two cents.
That won’t quiet your conscience.
For in your hands
Is the power
They gave you.
Originally published in Shikan (Beijing), No. 12, 1979.
Translated by W. J. F. Jenner.
If he has no friends
An informer starves.
The better his friends,
The fatter he grows.
The ghosts of his victims
Follow him through the streets.
He has to be a perfect actor.
If you feel good
He is happy for you;
If you are down
He shares your grief.
Once set in his sights
An honest comrade is defenseless.
When you’re confused, he’ll counsel you.
If you forget, he’ll jog your memory.
Gently, patiently, he leads you
Across the bridge of no return
To the place of execution.
Originally published in Shikan (Beijing), No. 9, 1979.
A final group of lines that refer to Jiang Qing and her associates has been omitted.
Translated by W. J. F. Jenner.
PATHS
I’ve walked no end of roads—busy ones, dull ones, grim ones, pale ones.
I’ve had enough of roads.
In the deathly desert I could make out a faint path, a whitish line disappearing over the horizon—
Like a child falling down a well who grabs at the thin bucketrope, I have followed that path with fear and joy.
I know that at the end of the path lies an oasis of life.
THE WHITE CLOUD
In the vast desert the sunlight scorches and blinds. I dare not look up.
A white cloud drifts across the sun, obscuring it. At last I can raise my head. The cloud is an even purer white, like a gentle smile. Even the sunlight is softened, like a tender caress.
The white cloud drifts on, and the desert world is filled again with scorching, blinding sunlight. I have to bow my head; a tear falls into the hot sand at my feet.
I don’t know whether the tear came because of the scorching sun or because the white cloud has drifted away.
THE DRY WELL
In the searing desert noon I am thirsty. My throat is on fire.
As I stagger forward I notice a little well nearby.
In ecstasy I run toward it. But it is only a dry well, with no trace of moisture in the cracked mud at the bottom.
Am I angry at it?
No, I thank the well.
Think of all the people who have sucked its sweet liquid. They have survived, while the well died because it saved not one drop for itself.
Survivor, as you sip your iced soda and champagne, do you still remember this dry well in the desert?
Originally published in Shikan (Beijing), No. 10, 1979.
Translated by W. J. F. Jenner and Perry Link.
From any fruition of success....
shall come forth something
to make a greater struggle necessary.
—Walt Whitman, “Song of the Open Road”
Like flowers longing for sweet fruit,
Like cinders nursing a wish to burn,
My heart is pregnant with a “terrible” thought,
I want to proclaim to the present situation:
—“I am discontent!”
Who says discontent is heresy?
Who says discontent is revolt?
Can a swelling wave be confined in a mountain gulley?
Can a hawk chick rest in the darkness within the egg?
Discontent stimulates fascination with the seas!
Discontent revives thirst for the skies!
The creation of life is so anguished and mighty,
Please grant mothers the favor of sweet content;
“No! Wish that your child will grow with all speed,”
The infant entering the world implores its mother’s discontent.
Oh, who can say that discontent is not love?
Oh, who dares say that discontent is plaint?
Discontent with the old printed charts of the seas,
Columbus found the ocean’s farther shore;
Discontent with the Holy Bible’s writ,
Copernicus revealed the marvels of the universe;
Discontent with the doctrine of heliocentricism,
Kepler discovered the truth;
Discontent with Plato, Aristotle surpassed his own teacher.
Oh, who says discontent is the abandonment of the great men of the
past?
Oh, who says discontent is a desecration of the noble and the wise?
Discontent: turned ape-men away from raw flesh and blood to the
kindling of fire;
Discontent: led our footsore nomadic ancestors to fumble at tilling
the land;
Discontent: substituted magnificent bridges for rude wooden planks;
Discontent: made artful stone axes give way to casting in bronze;
Discontent: produced Hua Tuo,1 whose miraculous cures could
restore the dead;
Discontent: trained Lu Ban,2 whose brilliant craft put nature to
shame.
Oh, discontent is a hope for change;
Oh, discontent is the beginning of creation.
I am electric current, I am discontent with rivers’ waste,
What you idly let flow by is the milk of my subsistence;
I am a blast furnace, I am discontent with the earth’s miserliness,
What you hoard deep within you is my life’s flame;
I am crops, I fear the wantonness of Mother Nature,
Whose unpredictable winds and rains disturb and shake me;
I am markets, I yearn for dazzling displays of riches and beauty,
Drab shopwindows make my head bow in shame;
I am ancient cities, my finery old and faded,
Please deck me with ribbons of expressways
And crown me with a coronet of skyscrapers;
I am a reserved life-style, disturbed by decadent habits,
Please don’t be too critical of clothing and dancing,
Please don’t meddle too much in young love;
I am low-yield land, I am discontent with hobbled oxen;
I am bruised shoulders, I am discontent with two ropes;
I am discontent with rifles, with waterwheels, with sailboats;
I am discontent with mud, with noise, with pollution.
Discontent is like the whistle blast of a fleet leaving harbor,
Discontent is like the cock crowing to the dawn.
I am plans, locked up tightly in a safe,
I want to step down from the blueprint and join the construction
site;
I am reform, ashamed to rest on my laurels,
I want to seek new ways, scale record heights;
I am policy, I am discontent with Bo Les3 who hesitate,
Why not put into immediate effect legacies public and private?
I am creation, I am discontent with Yelang’s4 provincial conceit,
Quickly destroy the barriers that cut me off from the world;
I protest marathon meetings, in the name of time,
That willfully fritter away the days of my life;
I denounce religious-style inquisitions that inhibit the search for
truth;
I am flowers, I want to grow, I want to contribute my honey,
I beg the help of the gardener’s solicitous shears.
Oh, discontent is like the stirrings of the fetus in its mother’s womb,
discontent is like a mother’s anguished and mighty parturition!
I am discontent with bureaucracy,
Lightly brushing aside our martyrs’ heritage;
I am discontent with our cultural level,
Too shallow to support today’s Four Modernizations boat;
I am discontent with the weak legal system,
The ground before the Heroes’ Monument is stained with the blood
and tears of democracy;
I am discontent with boasting and fantasy,
Painting vague tomorrows in their castles in the sea;
I am discontent with grudges and resentment,
Lurking behind the embankment of the age, finding fault with the
rushing waves—
Oh, discontent is an excellent daily agenda,
discontent is a fine new proposal for action;
Discontent has already hastened the birth of a great shift in strategy!
Discontent has already hastened the hoisting of war banners for a
New Long March!
Ah, the riverbed in discontent straightens out its course,
oil in discontent wells up from the sea surface;
science in discontent breaches forbidden zones,
production in discontent overtakes rockets;
thought in discontent develops keen insights,
truth in discontent extends the line further;
poverty in discontent presses on the heels of wealth,
the present situation in discontent is swiftly rising!
Oh, discontent is like a bridge spanning two contradictions,
discontent is like fission produced in an atom;
discontent is the force that discovers, creates, advances,
discontent is the way to prosperity, happiness, perfection!
Like flowers longing for sweet fruit,
Like cinders nursing a wish to burn,
My heart brims with a deep and earnest love,
I want to proclaim to the present situation:
—“I am discontent”!
Originally published in Shikan (Beijing), No. 5, 1979.
Translated by Bonnie S. McDougall.
________________
1. Hua Tuo (?–208 A.D.) was a master of medicine, and a cultural hero roughly equivalent to Hippocrates in the West.
2. Lu Ban was a renowned craftsman of the Spring and Autumn period (770–476 B.C.).
3. Bo Le was a skilled judge of horses in the Spring and Autumn period. According to legend he once alighted from his carriage to weep over a thoroughbred that had been crushed under a salt cart. The horse’s groans reached to the heavens, but Bo Le was unable to relieve its agony.
4. Yelang was a tiny kingdom in south China during the great Han Dynasty (206 B.C.–220 A.D.). The king of Yelang, in his provincial ignorance, once asked whether the Han was as large as Yelang.
Every day when I awake
I open my curtains
To see what sort of prints the night has left
Upon the windowpane.
And just for this I love wintertime,
For such lovely scenes are never seen in spring, summer, fall.
Windowpanes are so many canvases
With crystal paintings redone day after day.
Breath inside the window, wind outside the pane,
On the boundary between warm and cold
The breath of man and the breath of winter clash,
And hot and cold breed crystals, uncountable, incredible.
No. I would rather use a fairy tale to explain this happening—
There must be a lovely spirit who comes to do these paintings every
night.
With translucent colors
She takes the painting into a realm of immaculate dreams.
Ah, I do believe
These frosted window blossoms are patterns from my own dreams,
For no two days have they ever been alike,
Just as I have never dreamed the same dream twice.
Originally published in Shanghai wenxue, No. 8, 1980.
Translated by Jan W. Walls.
Accustomed to stand
On a high-rising scaffold
His spirit exulted His heart grew bold
Though the scaffolding swayed
As rot spread and took hold.
Now he is back
His feet on the ground
Lost and bewildered
He feels his heart pound
Thrown into a panic
By gravity bound.
Original publication unclear.
Translated by Qiu Xiaolong and Bonnie S. McDougall.
One night I was reading Bian Zhilin’s “New Year’s Eve Reverie.” The mood and setting seemed to fit my own, so I wrote this poem after his:
I opened the curtain to gaze at the moon, but in the lamplight the
windowpane
Is a mirror; the solitary image in it is hard to bear,
But the even deeper emptiness in my heart
Is a mirror that reflects your troubled eyes.
“I can’t take you with me in my nightmare”—
I recall fragments of a broken watch.
I in the moonlight, the moon in your dreams,
Distance disappears only on television screens.
Originally published in Qinghaihu (Xining), May 1981.
Translated by Qiu Xiaolong and Bonnie S. McDougall.
Soft are the arms
That press me to your bosom:
“Stay—listen—here is your still haven,
Embrace me, and no harm can come to us.”
Sweet are the lips That pout to mine:
“Stay—look—a bud that blossoms for you,
Kiss me, and we’ll get drunk on joy.”
But when I lift my head, I hear
The speedboat churn the waves across the boundless ocean, I see
The white trail left by the jet that roars across the sky, and I feel That there are many things beyond my knowing, that I would
know.
Originally published in Xingxing (Chengdu), June 1981.
Translated by Qiu Xiaolong and Bonnie S. McDougall.
STUDYING THE NIGHT
The stopped clock complains in silence
Of its neglect—with a thirsty ink bottle,
The desire to sleep is as distant as camel bells in the desert,
While our land’s oases draw near beneath the pen.
BROWSING
Perhaps this small shell I find, and those two,
Are only other people’s discards, now abandoned,
And yet the inexhaustible bounty of the ocean spreads before me,
Only unending sublation can produce a collage of pearls.
IN THE LIBRARY
The water bottle that never had any water
Found a spring at last, only to
Leave it behind, to press forward
Into the desert, the mist, and know no bounds.
DAWN WATCH
Clasping her books she appears with the dew,
Her figure slender, her voice clear and sweet,
The dew rises and merges with the clouds in the sky,
To become tomorrow’s rain that will nourish the earth.
THE OLD PROFESSOR
Stooped back, shuffling steps,
But with a smile he spreads out his pile of papers;
The students listen, take notes, and recall
An old peasant bearing the harvest home in the setting sun.
Originally published in Xingxing (Chengdu), June 1981.
Translated by Qiu Xiaolong and Bonnie S. McDougall.
A red wall by the bus stop
A poster proclaiming “Advance to world heights!”
A ramshackle shoe mender’s stall
A fashionably dressed young woman
Sitting on a small rusty stool
Dangling a dainty white leg
Asking the shoe member to fit
High heels on her new leather shoes.
A few rusty nails
A number of idlers gazing at who knows what,
As if the rhythm of the shoe mender’s hammer
Were at the top of the pops this year.
Under the willows by the bus stop
Another solitary young girl
Draws out a page from a foreign language dictionary
To read in the headlights of an oncoming bus.
Original publication unclear.
Translated by Qiu Xiaolong and Bonnie S. McDougall.
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