340 chapter nine
«The View Is Limitless» (亢ܝ᮴䰤, 1999), the first poem in Yi Sha’s
second officially published collection of poetry, opens with the joys of
defecation linked to the classical-literary topos of ascending a moun-
tain to take in the view. This and other taboos occur throughout his
oeuvre, such as in «Address at a Seminar on Women’s Literature»
(ཇᗻ᭛ᄺⷨ䅼ӮϞⱘথ㿔, 1997) and «My [Academic] Advisor
and I» (៥៥ⱘᇐᏜ, 1996). An early instance of the denigration of
higher education is Li Yawei’s «The Chinese Department» (Ё᭛㋏,
1984). Simultaneous with the emergence of the Lower Body, Yang Li
published «Fire the Cannon» (ᠧ⚂, 1999?), a long-drawn out account
of mostly prostitutional sex, firing the cannon being phallocentric slang
for intercourse and ejaculation. The poem first appeared in 2000 in
Poetry Reference. In addition to many other types of poetry, this influen-
tial, long-standing unofficial journal has consistently given the poetics
of bad behavior opportunities for publication. So has Original Writing,
which carried «Fire the Cannon» in 2001.^40
Social ConcernOf special interest in this literary-genealogical exercise is Lower Body
poetry’s expression of social concern. I use this broad notion specifical-
ly to refer to the fact that many Lower Body poems engage with issues
of social justice and discontent that result from present-day China’s
radical transformation. One example is the widening gap between ur-
ban and rural lives and livelihoods, and generally between haves and
have-nots and the powerful and the powerless. Another is young peo-
ple’s rejection of socialist ideology and its institutions, not to say their
indifference to these things, certainly since the 1990s. This is starkly
visible in an overall incompatibility of experience from one generation
to the next, in areas ranging from norms and values for social relations
to tastes in fashion, music, literature and so on. Shen Haobo’s and Yin
Lichuan’s poetry illustrates this point, which is driven home by the
astonished reactions of several of their critics.
Not just since the 1990s, a decade that has inspired views of China
as a postsocialist and jungle-capitalist society, but in fact ever since the
avant-garde’s early years there have been many examples of socially
(^40) Yi 1999a: 1-44, 125; Zhongdao 1998: 259; Li Yawei 2006: 6-11; Original Writ-
ing 2 (2001): 4-9.