{"id":3777,"date":"2017-05-29T09:00:53","date_gmt":"2017-05-29T01:00:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3777"},"modified":"2017-05-28T21:43:04","modified_gmt":"2017-05-28T13:43:04","slug":"gewirtz-on-bei-daos-city-gate-open-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3777","title":{"rendered":"Gewirtz on Bei Dao’s City Gate, Open Up"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>The Poetry Foundation <\/em>has published “Bei Dao\u2019s Beijing: <\/a>The eminent Chinese poet on exile and his native city,<\/span>” Julian Gewirtz’s review of City Gate, Open Up<\/em>, the newly published memoirs of Bei Dao \u5317\u5c9b, translated by Jeffrey Yang. The review also\u00a0<\/span>weaves in decades of Bei Dao\u2019s poetry, creating a compelling narrative of his development and longstanding interests. It ends:<\/p>\n

Faced with the weight of history and the force of politics, Bei Dao\u2019s struggle to \u201crefute the Beijing of today\u201d and \u201crebuild\u201d his Beijing ultimately\u2014perhaps inevitably\u2014proves unattainable in either poetry or prose. He writes in his memoir, \u201cThis long-consuming task of rebuilding and reconstruction\u2014I feel it\u2019s almost impossible to achieve.\u201d Yet this does not undermine the value of the attempt. In the 1994 interview, he elaborated on this point: \u201cOn the one hand poetry is useless. It can\u2019t change the world materially. On the other hand it is a basic part of human existence\u2026 [and] what makes human beings human.\u201d His yearning for a lost Beijing might fit the same rubric: a desire at once \u201cuseless,\u201d \u201cimpossible,\u201d and intensely human. \u201cWriting is a renaming of the world,\u201d he has said, and his memoir, like his poetry, is fundamentally an act of \u201crenaming.\u201d In a recent poem, \u201cBlack Map\u201d (translated by Weinberger), Bei Dao imagines a final salute to his lost city:<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Beijing, let me
\ntoast your lamplights
\nlet my white hair lead
\nthe way through the black map
\nas though a storm were taking you to fly<\/div>\n
..<\/span><\/div>\n
I wait in line until the small window
\nshuts: O the bright moon
\nI go home\u2014reunions
\nare one less
\nfewer than goodbyes<\/div>\n
.<\/span><\/div>\n

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

The Poetry Foundation has published “Bei Dao\u2019s Beijing: The eminent Chinese poet on exile and his native city,” Julian Gewirtz’s review of City Gate, Open Up, the newly published memoirs of Bei Dao \u5317\u5c9b, translated by Jeffrey Yang. The review … 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":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3],"tags":[50,47,45,1842],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8srwF-YV","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3854,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3854","url_meta":{"origin":3777,"position":0},"title":"Turner on Bei Dao’s City Gate, Open Up","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"September 13, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"The World of Chinese has run Matt Turner's informative review of Bei Dao's City Gate, Open Up, \"Goodbye, Beijing.\" Turner begins with pennamed Bei Dao's birth and name: Construction worker, underground publisher, and acclaimed poet, Zhao Zhenkai (\u8d75\u632f\u5f00) was born, in his own words, in 1949, \u201cas Chairman Mao declared\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.theworldofchinese.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/goodbye-master.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3847,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3847","url_meta":{"origin":3777,"position":1},"title":"ARB on Bei Dao’s City Gate, Open Up","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"August 25, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"London-based poet Jennifer Wong's review of\u00a0City Gate, Open Up, by Bei Dao \u5317\u5cf6 and translated by Jeffrey Yang, is now up at\u00a0Asian Review of Books. \"Born and raised in Beijing,\" the review begins, \"Bei Dao spent decades in exile in Europe because of his alleged involvement in the Tiananmen Massacre\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":3647,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3647","url_meta":{"origin":3777,"position":2},"title":"Publishers Weekly on Bei Dao’s Memoirs","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"March 15, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Publishers Weekly has a brief review of Bei Dao's \u5317\u5c9b memoirs about growing up in Beijing, City Gate, Open Up \u57ce\u95e8\u5f00, translated by Jeffrey Yang (forthcoming from New Directions). It reads: In this ruminative, lyrical memoir, revered Chinese poet Bei Dao (The Rose of Time) reflects on his father, 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":3757,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=3757","url_meta":{"origin":3777,"position":3},"title":"Wenguang Huang on Bei Dao’s City Gate, Open Up","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"May 15, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"In \"A Poet Who Survived Mao,\" Wenguang Huang reviews City Gate, Open Up \u57ce\u95e8\u5f00, the new memoir by Bei Dao \u5317\u5c9b, for the Wall Street Journal. Huang writes: In 18 essays, crafted with poetic precision and enriched by Jeffrey Yang\u2019s assiduous translation, Bei Dao depicts a cast of memorable characters\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":1299,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=1299","url_meta":{"origin":3777,"position":4},"title":"Review of Bei Dao’s The Rose of Time: New and Selected Poems","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"October 18, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"Jonathan Hart reviews Bei Dao's \u5317\u5cf6 The Rose of Time: New and Selected Poems (New Directions), edited by Eliot Weinberger, speaking \"about these translations as if they were poems in English on which the reputation of the poet stands in the English-speaking world.\" He concludes that \"Bei Dao\u2019s poetry translates\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hcl.harvard.edu\/harvardreview\/OnlineJournal\/HRO_7\/reviews\/Dao_lg.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4744,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=4744","url_meta":{"origin":3777,"position":5},"title":"Jeje on Bei Dao\u2019s Blue House","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"March 4, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Akin Jeje on Bei Dao's Blue House Writing for Cha, Akin Jeje reviews Blue House (Zephyr, 2000) by Bei Dao \u5317\u5cf6, transalted by Ted Huters and Feng-ying Ming. Bei Dao\u2019s memoirs in Blue House are stunning in their modesty, candour and startling clarity. As placid and yet as intense as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/chajournal.files.wordpress.com\/2019\/12\/blue-house.jpg?w=350&h=200&crop=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3777"}],"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=3777"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3782,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3777\/revisions\/3782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}