objectification and the long-short line 267guage (᱂䗮䆱) versus regional languages or “dialects” (ᮍ㿔) such as
those of Yunnan or Kunming. In both cases, the former encroaches
upon the latter. He sees “linguistic” issues such as the disappearance
or indeed the repression of Chinese and regional idiom as expressions
of the hegemonic ambitions of English in the world and the Standard
Language inside China; and English and Standard Language idiom
as part of discourses that ultimately represent dominant positions of
political power. In his verse-external, explicit poetics, Yu Jian presents
these views passionately and polemically. In his poetry he does so by
alternating laid-back, informal usage with phrasings that feed on the
politically correct language of government-sanctioned publications,
in other words: by alternating private and public discourse, and the
“unofficial” and “official” realities they represent, as we have seen in
chapter Six. In «Paving», official discourse resonates in a tear in the beau-
tiful carpet and everything must be flattened and guaranteeing high-quality con-
struction and skilled engineering, as well as, humorously, non-standard holes in
the ground. The effect, exemplified in their flatness just isn’t that of the design,
is one of all-pervading irony that combines cheerfulness with sadness,
despair and bitterness between the lines.
Yu Jian’s cheerfulness is a rarity in contemporary Chinese poetry,
exceptions being the more provocative, devil-may-care varieties found
in Macho Men poetry of the 1980s, and in trends such as Lower Body
poetry and other examples of what I have called extreme manifesta-
tions of the Earthly aesthetic since the turn of the century. In «Event:
Conversation» (џӊg䇜䆱, 1990/1992), the undertones of Yu’s
cheerfulness are different from those in «Paving». Whereas below its
disciplined surface «Paving» challenges modernization and its socio-
physical impact, «Event: Conversation» has no such ideological am-
bitions. This poem is a positively clownish account of a visit to the
speaker by an acquaintance who brings along a stranger, thus making
an “intrusion” into the speaker’s home, for shelter from the rain. The
poem’s clownishness derives, again, from the combined effects of ob-
jectification and subjectification. After the setting has been outlined as
a very wet July, we read:^24
(^24) Yu Jian 2004a: 256-258. According to Yu Jian 1990: 1-2 and 1993: 13-16, the
poem was written in May 1990; the revised version in 2004a is dated 1992.