144 chapter four
stronger connotations of social formation than exile. Diaspora is more
about being in networks of others of similar origin, however comfort-
able or uncomfortable, powerful or powerless, who are living in two or
more foreign regions; and exile is more about the individual’s not being
in the homeland, and often fundamentally alone.^6
The aim of this chapter is twofold. First, for Yang, Wang and Bei
Dao, I hope to clarify a label with loaded and controversial conno-
tations. Outside China “exile” will frequently lend the poet an aura
of heroic victimhood, whether they embrace this or reject it. Inside
China, on the other hand, identifying with exile or being cited as hav-
ing exile status abroad often provokes dismissive comments—not only
or even primarily from orthodox quarters, but from within the avant-
garde. The ingredients typically include the charge that the poet has
sold out to foreign audiences and at the same time bamboozled them
by claiming to be the victim of political persecution, arrogated the
right to speak on behalf of all of China, lost touch with their mother
tongue and so on; incidentally, such allegations have also been ex-
changed between poets abroad.^7 Especially in the first few years after
June Fourth and continuing until the late 1990s, a breakdown of com-
munications between domestic and exile poetry scenes was perhaps in-
evitable for reasons both material and psychological, with members of
each scene scoffing at texts and people in the other of whose situation
they hadn’t necessarily kept abreast, until long-distance telephone and
the Internet became widely available. To some extent, domestic and
exile scenes have been competing for the stamp of authenticity and
Bourdieuian legitimacy in present-day Chinese poetry. An interesting
in-between case is that of Zhang Zhen, who left China on her own
initiative in 1983 and later felt that some poets whose exile was linked
to June Fourth perceived her as unauthentic in her capacity of Chinese
poet abroad.^8 This is one of many individual stories that complicate
any simple inside-outside dichotomy.
(^6) E.g. Tu 1991, Ang 2001, Chow 1993, Wong (Lisa Lai-ming) 2001 and Teng
- Safran 1991, Cheesman & Gillespie 2002.
(^7) Cf Lovell 2002: 66-67 and 2006: 144-152; e.g. Yu Jian & Zhu 1994: 133 and
Yu Jian & De Meyer 1995: 30; Huang Xiang 2005.
(^8) See chapters Eleven and Twelve for domestic denigrations of exile poetry, and
Yang Lian 1996 and 1998c and Gao Xingjian & Yang 1994: 313-314 for dismissive
comments by Yang Lian on domestic scenes. Bourdieu 1993: 38ff. Zhang Zhen
1999b: 61-63.