acknowledgments xiACKNOWLEDGMENTSResearch for this book, including the collection of source materials,
was facilitated by grants from the Netherlands Organization for Sci-
entific Research (NWO), the Faculty of Arts at the University of Syd-
ney, the Faculty of Arts at Leiden University, the Leiden University
Research School for Asian, African and Amerindian Studies (CNWS),
the Leiden University International Office, the Leiden University
Fund (LUF), the International Institute for Asian Studies (IIAS), the
Peking University Office for International Cooperation and the Re-
search Center for the Theoretical Study of Literature and Art of the
Faculty of Arts at Beijing Normal University.
In addition to anonymous reviewers who commented on journal
submissions over the years, I thank Ernst van Alphen, Piet Gerbrandy
and Petra Couvée, for what they have to say about poetry, and Michel
Hockx and Michael Day, for what they had to say about this book
once it was written. More generally, I am indebted to critical audienc-
es at the academic institutions where I have presented this research,
in classroom and conference settings. Steve Bradbury, David Godwin,
Lloyd Haft, Oliver Moore and Simon Patton were among those kind
enough to comment on my translations. Remy Cristini and Hanno
Lecher of the Leiden University Sinological Library provided superb
librarial and IT support.
As is true for my earlier work, I am deeply grateful to the many
Chinese poets, scholars, critics and other readers who helped me find
the poetry that this study is about and all that comes with it, including
its performance and its many histories. They are too numerous to list
here, but I wish to reiterate publicly the gratitude that I have conveyed
to each of them in private settings. There is one name that cannot be
left unsaid: Che Qianzi, whose art graces the cover of this book.
I thank the editors of the following journals, books and websites for
permission to use previously published material. In order of appear-
ance in the present volume:
Chapter One: The China Quarterly 183, reprinted as Julia Strauss
& Michel Hockx (eds), Culture in the Contemporary PRC, Cambridge: