{"id":3215,"date":"2015-06-15T09:30:04","date_gmt":"2015-06-15T01:30:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3215"},"modified":"2015-06-12T18:56:59","modified_gmt":"2015-06-12T10:56:59","slug":"time-on-the-poet-who-died-for-your-phone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3215","title":{"rendered":"TIME on the Poet who Died for your Phone"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

Time Magazine<\/em> has a feature on Xu Lizhi \u8bb8\u7acb\u5fd7<\/span>, the former poet and Foxconn employee who committed suicide last September, whom they call “The Poet who Died for your Phone<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

In his 3\u00bd years in Shenzhen, Xu captured <\/b>life there in brutal, beautiful detail. In the city, the country kid found a voice that roared, publishing poems in company newspaper Foxconn People<\/em> and sharing his work online. Factory workers are often treated as interchangeable, anonymous. To readers, his words were a reminder that every laborer has a mind and heart; for him, writing was a way out. \u201cWriting poems gives me another way of life,\u201d he told a Chinese journalist in an unpublished interview that TIME has seen. \u201cWhen you\u2019re writing poems, you\u2019re not confined to the real world.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As sidebars to their article, Time<\/em> runs and links to translations of Xu’s poems by The Nao Project<\/a> as published at libcom.org. In the body of the article, however, they quote (and alter, incorrectly: mala tang <\/em>is not soup) my translation of “I Speak of Blood” \u6211\u8c08\u5230\u8840, published by China Labour Bulletin<\/a>–though without crediting me:
\n<\/span><\/p>\n

In the 2013 \u201cI Speak of Blood,\u201d Xu Lizhi captured the teeming cosmopolitanism of his adopted home, observing from his \u201cmatchbox\u201d room a mix of: \u201cStray women in long-distance marriages\/ Sichuan chaps selling mala<\/em> soup\/ Old ladies from Henan running stands\/ And me with my eyes open all night to write a poem\/ After running about all day to make a living.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Translators, too, are often treated as interchangeable, anonymous. (Nao had their own problems with their translations being run, uncredited, by Bloomberg).<\/span><\/p>\n

Time <\/em>also notes that “Chinese poet Qin Xiaoyu [\u79e6\u6653\u5b87<\/span>] is making a documentary film about Xu\u2019s life and work.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Time Magazine has a feature on Xu Lizhi \u8bb8\u7acb\u5fd7, the former poet and Foxconn employee who committed suicide last September, whom they call “The Poet who Died for your Phone.” In his 3\u00bd years in Shenzhen, Xu captured life there … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3,16],"tags":[1620,1619,165,1485],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8srwF-PR","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2875,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=2875","url_meta":{"origin":3215,"position":0},"title":"I Speak of Blood: The poetry of Foxconn worker Xu Lizhi","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"November 12, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"The China Labour Bulletin has posted my translations of some poems of Xu Lizhi \u8bb8\u7acb\u5fd7, a twenty-four year-old worker at Foxconn who committed suicide on September 30, 2014. As CLB reports, \"In his brief two-year tenure as a production line worker at Foxconn, Xu published more than 30 articles in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3371,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3371","url_meta":{"origin":3215,"position":1},"title":"Goodman’s Xu Lizhi in China Labour Bulletin","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"January 15, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Eleanor Goodman's new translations of the work of Xu Lizhi \u8bb8\u7acb\u5fd7 have now been\u00a0published on China Labour Bulletin. She writes: As I translated the poetry ... I was immediately attracted to Xu\u2019s straightforwardness, honesty, and darkness. Although his life was clearly unhappy--indeed, he committed suicide a little over a year\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.clb.org.hk\/en\/sites\/default\/files\/Image\/general\/shenzhen%20worker%20housing%202.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3874,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3874","url_meta":{"origin":3215,"position":2},"title":"Goodman on Wang’s New Literary History of Modern China","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"October 11, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The new \"China Channel\" of the LA Review of Books has published Eleanor Goodman's review of A New Literary History of Modern China, edited by David Der-Wei Wang \u738b\u5fb7\u5a01. An enthusiastic review, Goodman writes: one theme of the book is the importance of inclusivity, exchange, and communication to understanding trends\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/chinachannel.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/lithist.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2976,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=2976","url_meta":{"origin":3215,"position":3},"title":"Xu Lizhi","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"February 4, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"China Labour Bulletin reports on a forthcoming collection of poems by Xu Lizhi \u8bb8\u7acb\u5fd7, the migrant laborer who committed suicide on September 30, 2014: A New Day is now the title of a forthcoming anthology of Xu\u2019s work that contains nearly 200 poems dating back to 2010. Most of the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3724,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3724","url_meta":{"origin":3215,"position":4},"title":"Matt Turner on Qin & Goodman’s Iron Moon Anthology","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"May 8, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"In a piece titled \"A Poem of Shame: In the Words of China\u2019s Workers\" published at Hyperallergic, Matt Turner gives his take on Iron Moon: An Anthology of Chinese Worker Poetry, edited by Qin Xiaoyu\u00a0\u79e6\u6653\u5b87 and translated by Eleanor Goodman. He explains, In 1923, not long after returning from working\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthologies"","block_context":{"text":"Anthologies","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=13"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ironmoonmovie.com\/upload\/18\/3516187fd3f7a29444e3a8d1d9917c90.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3578,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3578","url_meta":{"origin":3215,"position":5},"title":"NYTimes Reviews Iron Moon Chinese Worker Poetry Documentary","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"November 14, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Andy Webster at the New York Times has published a brief review of Iron Moon \u6211\u7684\u8bd7\u7bc7, a documentary on poetry-writing industrial workers in southern China, directed by Qin Xiaoyu \u79e6\u6653\u5b87 and Wu Feiyue \u5434\u98de\u8dc3. Webster writes\uff1a With arresting images, \u201cIron Moon\u201d powerfully addresses China\u2019s moral crisis in the wake of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/9\/90\/Iron_Moon.jpg\/220px-Iron_Moon.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3215"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3215"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3218,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3215\/revisions\/3218"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}