{"id":3336,"date":"2015-12-28T09:30:39","date_gmt":"2015-12-28T01:30:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3336"},"modified":"2016-01-02T10:02:12","modified_gmt":"2016-01-02T02:02:12","slug":"haysoms-hermits-and-butterflies-nature-writing-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3336","title":{"rendered":"Haysom’s Hermits and butterflies: nature writing in China"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"article<\/a>Pathlight<\/em> managing editor Dave Haysom’s “Hermits and butterflies: the resurgence of nature writing in China<\/a>” has been published on China Dialogue<\/em>, covering the range of contemporary Chinese literature–and even mentioning Xi Chuan:<\/p>\n

Their rural existence was no idyll, and it ended in tragedy: in 1993 Gu Cheng killed Xie Ye with an axe before hanging himself. By that point Hai Zi and Luo Yihe were also dead: Hai Zi committed suicide in 1989 by throwing himself under a train (leaving his copy of Walden in his bag alongside the tracks); Luo Yihe died from a brain haemorrhage just a few months later, apparently from the strain of his editorial efforts to secure Hai Zi\u2019s poetic legacy. Wei An died from liver cancer in 1999.<\/p>\n

Their untimely deaths seem to have sealed these poets behind the curtain of history \u2013 but many of their contemporaries are still with us, and still producing poetry that engages with the same themes. Last year Ouyang Jianghe (\u6b27\u9633\u6c5f\u6cb3<\/em>) published Phoenix, a 400-line mini-epic in which the spiritual and environmental strains of China\u2019s feverish development are embodied in the vast avian sculpture of artist Xu Bing (\u5f90\u51b0<\/em>). The polymath writer, artist, editor and filmmaker Ou Ning (\u6b27\u5b81<\/em>) is perhaps the closest thing contemporary China has to a Thoreau figure, having founded his own rural commune in Bishan, Anhui, as part of the New Rural Reconstruction Movement. Xi Chuan (\u897f\u5ddd<\/em>) was a classmate of Hai Zi and Luo Yihe, and after the deaths of his friends he switched from lyric poetry to a looser, prose-poem style, in which nature is seldom idealised.
\n
\nTrees eavesdrop on trees, birds eavesdrop on birds; when a viper stiffens and attacks a passing human it becomes human … The truth cannot be public, echoless thoughts are hard to sing.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u2014 from \u201cExhor[ta]tions\u201d by Xi Chuan \u2013 translated by Lucas Klein<\/p>\n

As Jennifer Kronovet observes: \u201cThis is not nature poetry and yet it is.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Click the image for the piece in full.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pathlight managing editor Dave Haysom’s “Hermits and butterflies: the resurgence of nature writing in China” has been published on China Dialogue, covering the range of contemporary Chinese literature–and even mentioning Xi Chuan: Their rural existence was no idyll, and it … 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":[3,16,7],"tags":[130,144,895,1662,489,236,629,1654,1685,1374],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8srwF-RO","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4581,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=4581","url_meta":{"origin":3336,"position":0},"title":"Shaw on Haizi","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"June 17, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"\"The life and death of Chinese poetry\u2019s mystical martyr\" As part of their poetry month feature, Tristan Shaw wrote for SupChina on Haizi \u6d77\u5b50: Between 1984 and his death, Hai Zi is estimated to have written two million words worth of work, spanning lyrics, epics, and verse dramas. For all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/supchina.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Hai-Zi.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3297,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3297","url_meta":{"origin":3336,"position":1},"title":"Poetry in the New Pathlight","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"October 21, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The new issue of Pathlight is available, featuring translations of poetry by Hai Zi \u6d77\u5b50 (translated by Eleanor Goodman), Cai Shiping\u00a0\u8521\u4e16\u5e73 (translated by Canaan Morse), and Luo Yihe\u00a0\u9a86\u4e00\u79be (translated by Karmia Olutade), plus an interview with Ouyang Jianghe\u00a0\u6b27\u9633\u6c5f\u6cb3 by Shu Jinyu \u8212\u664b\u745c (translated by Eleanor Goodman). Click the image for\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":4060,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=4060","url_meta":{"origin":3336,"position":2},"title":"Mialaret on Hai Zi","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"May 11, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Writing at mychinesebooks.com, Bertrand Mialaret offers a synopsis of the life and poetry of Hai Zi \u6d77\u5b50. \"Almost thirty years after his suicide, the poet Hai Zi remains celebrated in China,\" it's titled. Hai Zi, who committed suicide at age 25, remains one of the most celebrated poets in China\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mychinesebooks.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/Hai-Zi-3-266x300.gif?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":372,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=372","url_meta":{"origin":3336,"position":3},"title":"Chinese Names in Push Open the Window","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"November 21, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"When I first wrote about the Copper Canyon anthology Push Open the Window, I said, \"My only quibble with the book so far is that, while everything is printed with Chinese and English en face, for some reason the Chinese characters of none of the poets\u2019 names made it into\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthologies"","block_context":{"text":"Anthologies","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=13"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":456,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=456","url_meta":{"origin":3336,"position":4},"title":"Hai Zi in Swedish & English","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"December 5, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Segueing off the days of links to posts on Xi Chuan in German, as well as the recent reports on Chinese week at Norway's Litteraturhuset, here are translations of Hai Zi \u6d77\u5b50 into Swedish by Anna Gustafsson Chen. Hai Zi, a friend of Xi Chuan's whose suicide in 1989 left\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Ruminations"","block_context":{"text":"Ruminations","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=16"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xichuanpoetry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/12\/Hai-Zi.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":316,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=316","url_meta":{"origin":3336,"position":5},"title":"International Poetry Nights","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"November 11, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"The \u201cMasters & (M)other Tongues\u201d discussion at CUHK yesterday was fascinating, though not in the ways I had expected. I had thought that it would be a discussion about the tension between the two sides of the parenthesis around \u201c(m)other tongues,\u201d and about the models the poets use for their\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "International Poetry Nights"","block_context":{"text":"International Poetry Nights","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=8"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"..\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/IPNHK-Xi-Chuan-1.jpg","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"..\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/IPNHK-Xi-Chuan-1.jpg 1x, ..\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/IPNHK-Xi-Chuan-1.jpg 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3336"}],"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=3336"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3336\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3357,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3336\/revisions\/3357"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}