what was all the fuss about? 431In addition to Friends in Letters, two other publications that consistently
supported the Popular side were the Social Science New Book Catalog (力
里ᮄкⳂ) and Poetry Reference. Especially in the spring of 2000, the
weekly Catalog gave Popular voices (#91, 93, 94, 95, 98, 99, 105) much
more and, judging by the editor’s notes (#92), much more sympa-
thetic exposure than Intellectual ones (#97, 100). Issues 14/15 and
16 of Poetry Reference, published in November 1999 and July 2000,
contained articles earlier featured elsewhere as well as contributions
written especially for this long-standing unofficial journal. In 1999 its
special feature called “Journal within a Journal” (ߞЁߞ) pays lip ser-
vice to impartiality by reprinting Intellectuals Wang Jiaxin and Zhang
Shuguang side to side with Popular authors Yu Jian, Yi Sha, Xu Jiang,
Yang Ke, Song Xiaoxian and Shen Haobo, but the loyalties of editor
Zhongdao are explicitly of the Popular kind. In the 2000 edition all
polemical entries in the “Journal in a Journal” are of Popular per-
suasion. Poet and painter Yan Li’s “Preaching and Packaging” (䇈
ᬭࣙ㺙, #109) was written in 1997, long before the Polemic had
begun, and Yan discusses a type of intellectual—overseas, dissident—
with political policy-making aspirations that has nothing to do with
the Intellectual poets. Its mind-boggling inclusion may be explained
by Yan’s pejorative use of the word intellectual, grist to the editor’s mill
and evidence of his strategic motivation.
If publicity beyond specialist and general literary circles was by and
large conducive to Popular image-building, it wasn’t entirely one- sided.
Ding Mang’s “The True Nature of the So-Called ‘Popular Stand-
point’” (᠔䇧 “⇥䯈ゟഎ” ⱘᅲ䋼, #69), published in the China Times,
manages to maintain critical distance while tearing Popular theorizing
to pieces and charging it with intolerance and an attempt at monopo-
lizing avant-garde status. As for specialized literary and literary-critical
journals, Mountain Flower and Grand Master published Intellectual and
Popular contributions equitably—as did Poetry Exploration, in by far the
greatest number of pages and the richest variety of content.
The present chapter gives the Popular more space than the Intel-
lectual. This reflects the sheer size of the two camps’ respective output
and the fact that the Popular side by and large kept the initiative in
1998 and 1999. Intellectual rejoinders, moreover, warded off or de-
constructed Popular arguments but generally stopped short of attack-
ing Popular poetry in their turn, and occasionally hinted that reacting