428 chapter twelve
orthodoxy, one cannot but notice that the images of a true face and
of unmasking—literally, ‘seeing through’ (䗣㾚)—are strikingly simi-
lar. What’s more, the structure of Yu Jian’s piece is near-identical to
that of Zhang’s: a number of central, rhetorical questions in bold type,
each followed by a predictable answer, dished out in an irreconcilable
tone.
Content aside, one of the reasons that the Popular camp held the
upper hand in the Polemic from start to finish was the sheer productiv-
ity of authors such as Yu Jian, Yi Sha and Xu Jiang. Another was their
readiness to be rude and, quite simply, shout down their Intellectual
adversaries. This point is illustrated by the breathless sentence length
in the concluding paragraphs of Yu’s “Their True Face” (p47-48):
Poets from the provinces who insist on the Popular standpoint, on Poets’
Writing, on the Chinese experience and on poetry’s freedom, indepen-
dence, originality and democratic spirit, who are non-ideological and
position themselves in the margin [on the one hand], and hegemonic
critics who use the geographical dominance of the cultural and politi-
cal center that is Beijing to attempt, in line with historical practice, to
make the discourse of power once more incorporate a poetry that has
regained independence and dignity since the Eighties, and to establish
an overweening type of order in the poetry scene [on the other]—theirs
is an irreconcilable relationship of water and fire, and its true face is now
there for all to see.
Superior poets making their own rut, immersed in writing in the vast
lands of China’s provinces, without critics to wave banners and shout
battle cries for them, far from the convenience of international connec-
tions to be found in Beijing, who have relied only on creative and ex-
traordinary poetic texts to establish within the bronze walls and iron
ramparts of China’s poetry scene the dignity of poetry and its individual
charm [on the one hand], and the “Intellectual Writing” line of thought
of make-believe, mediocre poets who are really readers of Western po-
etry and literary-artistic theory, who count on the discourse of power
and the critics’ lavish praise and who would cease to exist without this
discourse and this praise [on the other]—theirs is a clear distinction of
good and bad, and its true face is now there for all to see.
The Beijing part of the New Tide poetry criticism that relied on the ac-
tual achievements of excellent Third Generation works to make a name
for itself in the great Eighties has now thoroughly betrayed the toler-
ance toward minority and alternative writing of a poetry criticism resur-
rected in that great time filled with the spirit of liberalism: a non-moral,
non-ideological, free, independent, objective, fair professional spirit and
text-oriented scholarly standpoint have pitifully turned into “Intellectual