Chinese Poetry in Times of Mind, Mayhem and Money (Sinica Leidensia, 86)

70 chapter two

䖛໻⍋, 1983) he writes back to Obscure poet Shu Ting, specifically
to her exalted «To the Sea» (㟈໻⍋, 1973) and her «Morning Songs
at the Seaside» (⍋Ⓖ᰼᳆, 1975). Interestingly, «So You’ve Seen the
Sea» is also something of a sequel to Han’s own «Mountain People»,
in which seeing the sea is a wish of the protagonist that goes unfulfilled.
Together, these intertextualities help dismantle what Wang Yichuan
calls a literary myth of the sea, and Liu Shuyuan its imagined cultural
meaning.^9

«So You’ve Seen the Sea»

so you’ve seen the sea

you’ve imagined

the sea

you’ve imagined the sea

and then seen it

just like this

so now you’ve really seen the sea

and imagined it as well

but you’re not

a sailor

just like this

so you’ve imagined the sea

you’ve seen the sea

perhaps you even like the sea

just like this, and nothing more

so you’ve seen the sea

and you’ve imagined the sea

you’re not willing

to be drowned by the sea

just like this

just like everybody else

There can be little doubt that a critical response to and dissociation
from Obscure Poetry were part of the early Han Dong’s motivation.
In interviews in recent years, he has acknowledged the overwhelming

(^9) Shu Ting 1982: 1-6. Wang Yichuan 1998: 239ff, Liu Shuyuan 2005: 216. «So
You’ve Seen the Sea» first appeared in Them 1 (1985): 37; dated 1983 in Tang
Xiaodu & Wang 1987: 208, included in Han 2002: 14. Zhang Zao (2004: 217) calls
Han’s 1988 poem «Afternoon» (ϟज, Them 5: 6, Han 2002: 75) another example of
writing back to Obscure Poetry.