{"id":4516,"date":"2019-03-29T20:30:16","date_gmt":"2019-03-29T12:30:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=4516"},"modified":"2019-03-29T09:42:45","modified_gmt":"2019-03-29T01:42:45","slug":"on-ha-jin-on-li-bai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=4516","title":{"rendered":"On Ha Jin on Li Bai"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Lauded Chinese-American novelist and poet Ha Jin \u54c8\u91d1 has written a biography of Li Bai \u674e\u767d, The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai, <\/em>newly published by Pantheon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Han Zhang on “Ha Jin\u2019s Self-Revealing Study of the Chinese Poet Li Bai<\/a>.” <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Because it’s by an award-winning author, the biography has been getting reviews–more than I’ve noticed for any other work in English on a Chinese poet! Yet most of these reviews have little of interest to say (I’ve only linked to one, here: Gina Elia writing for SupChina<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here’s one that offers an interesting take, though: Han Zhang in The New Yorker<\/em>, “Ha Jin\u2019s Self-Revealing Study of the Chinese Poet Li Bai<\/a>.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1993, when Jin graduated, with a Ph.D. in English, he fantasized about a future rich in opportunity. Reality soon intervened: he landed only one interview and didn\u2019t hear back. It was then that he thought of Li Bai (or Li Po, as the poet is known in the West) and began to see hardship as a path to literary excellence <\/p>

… <\/p>

Although both Li Bai and Ha Jin accepted their rootlessness, they had different ways of coping with it. Li sought constantly to cloak his pain; he chased the joy of encounters and used wine to suspend his dread. (\u201cThe fine wine of Lanling gives off a fragrance\u2014 \/ Held in a jade bowl, it shines with amber light,\u201d he once wrote.) Jin, meanwhile, believes that the past\u2014and one\u2019s home\u2014become a part of you, no matter the distance. In one poem, Jin writes about his grandmother, who passed away in China and spoke English to him in a dream. \u201cNo, no, you couldn\u2019t pick up \/ foreign stuff over there \/ You must have been here, \/ here, in me,\u201d he writes. \u201cThe Banished Immortal\u201d is a biography, but it is also a document in which a rootless writer nods to the past inside him. Writing about Li Bai\u2014his life, his work, and his country\u2014Jin finally returns home. <\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Click here <\/a>to read the article in full.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lauded Chinese-American novelist and poet Ha Jin \u54c8\u91d1 has written a biography of Li Bai \u674e\u767d, The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai, newly published by Pantheon. Because it’s by an award-winning author, the biography has been getting reviews–more … 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":[903,2098],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8srwF-1aQ","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":4440,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=4440","url_meta":{"origin":4516,"position":0},"title":"Elia on Ha Jin’s life of Li Bai","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"January 23, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Ha Jin \u54c8\u91d1 has written a biography of Li Bai \u674e\u767d, The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai, newly published by Pantheon--and Gina Elia has reviewed it for SupChina. At points, her review gets into the intricate issues of what different contexts do to and for our readings of\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\/01\/The-Banished-Immortal-Ha-Jin.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4877,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=4877","url_meta":{"origin":4516,"position":1},"title":"Madeleine Thien on Chinese Translation and “Poems Without an \u2018I\u2019”","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"September 28, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2018\"Poems Without an \u2018I,\u2019\" Madeleine Thien on Li Bai and Du Fu in Ha Jin and David Hinton The new issue of the New York Review of Books features \"Poems Without an \u2018I,\u2019\" Madeleine Thien's review of three books, The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai [\u674e\u767d] (Pantheon, 2019)\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xichuanpoetry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/thien_2-100820.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xichuanpoetry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/thien_2-100820.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xichuanpoetry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/thien_2-100820.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xichuanpoetry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/thien_2-100820.jpg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xichuanpoetry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/thien_2-100820.jpg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xichuanpoetry.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/thien_2-100820.jpg?resize=1400%2C800&ssl=1 4x"},"classes":[]},{"id":372,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=372","url_meta":{"origin":4516,"position":2},"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":2042,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=2042","url_meta":{"origin":4516,"position":3},"title":"Mindy Zhang on Translating Chinese Poetry","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"June 28, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"When translating Chinese poetry, ancient or modern, one will find that the \u2018subject\u2019 of a sentence is often missing. 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