exile 141The presence of poets in mainland-Chinese exile literature is visible
in the 1990 revival of Today outside China, with its editors scattered
across continents. The new Today emerged in response to June Fourth
and contributors were initially envisaged as mainland-Chinese authors
abroad, but the journal soon cast its net wider. Smuggled into China
from day one, in the early 1990s it counted as blacklisted material.
While the journal has since become less dangerous or even “sensitive”
(ᬣᛳ) to have in one’s possession, postal delivery inside China re-
mains erratic. Like the old Today, it carries fiction, drama and criticism
as well as poetry, but many of its associates are poets—editor-in-chief
Bei Dao, for one—and it continues to be primarily identified with po-
etry. Two other foreign-based journals with PRC roots and centrally
featuring poetry are Yan Li’s New York-based First Line (ϔ㸠, since
1987), and Beiling’s Tendency (ؒ, 1993-2000). Both journals dissoci-
ate themselves from orthodox PRC-domestic discourse, and Beiling
and Meng Lang have emphatically linked Tendency to underground
and unofficial writing inside China, and made it part of their (personal)
exile narratives. Yet, neither journal has the (perceived) exilic-literary
identity of the new Today.^3
The notion of exile is as common in popular and scholarly discourse
as it is complicated. Does exile presuppose physical displacement, or
is it a “homeless” state of mind that can befall one “at home” as well
as elsewhere—or, an actively sought-after distance from centers of
power and authority and from collective identities? If exile presup-
poses physical displacement, must this come about as a consequence
of political persecution or coercion, economic need, danger? Is the ex-
ile’s habitat always forced upon them, as the lesser of two evils at best?
Is exile always involuntary or should we make room for what Rob-
ert Edwards calls the overlay of compulsion and will? Are exile and
happiness mutually exclusive? Is exile always terrible to experience,
in the words of Edward Said, or can it become comfortable, perhaps
even turn into a preferred mode of existence? Does exile have cre-
ative potential—might it even be, in whatever form, a prerequisite for
originality? Bringing in literature gives rise to additional issues, some
(^3) See the editorials to Today 1991-1 and 1991-2, Bei Dao & LaPiana 1994 and
Bei Dao & Zha 2006: 78. The classification of First Line as an exile journal in Wan
Zhi 1997b: 81 is post hoc and, interestingly, doesn’t occur in the original Chinese
edition (1997a: 72). Cf the discussion of Yang Lian’s self-presentation in English,
below. Beiling 2006 and 2007, Meng 2005.