- Advertising, accounting, finance, insurance, business law are a few
examples of such services. Obviously, most of these have a long history.
Sassen argues, however, that fundamental changes in these services in
recent decades warrant a new understanding of their function globally
and locally. - This, in Sassen’s analysis, is what separates the truly global cities from all
the rest. It is not my purpose to argue this point at length here, except
perhaps to mention that Yan Li is in fact resident of one of the three. - Ritzer places “glocalism” and “something” at the alternate pole of the
continuum. The notion of a truly “local” entity, independent from the
global system, is, in Ritzer’s estimation, increasingly difficult to find. - Other publications that bear witness to this phenomenon are the 1993
Post-Obscure Poetry 朦, and the 2003 Mid-generation Poetry
LH ̧. Covering roughly two decades of literary production, these two
publications demonstrate the voluminizing tendencies of differential
poetics in China. - Today’s encampments are increasingly conceived in terms of geography,
though the “academic” ²分uversus “popular” Hdichotomy has
also served to compartmentalize in recent years. - His work figures prominently, for instance, in the 1980 issue (8) of Today
magazine. In that issue Yan Li’s two poems “I Am Snow” (我)and
“Mushroom” (蘑ù)—the latter of which is discussed a little later in the
chapter—are couched between publications by Shu Ting and Shi Zhi )指
(b. 1948). - By his own account, Yan Li was writing poetry by 1973 and painting by
1979 (Wang 1999: 157). - A fact that can be observed in the many versions of Yan’s poems. Online,
for instance, one finds many of Yan’s thirty- and forty-line poems
condensed to two- and three-line versions. According to the author, this
makes them “easier to remember.” Correspondence, January 2005. - This text is a compilation of roughly five hundred of these short poems
composed between 1990 and 1999. Yan continues to compose in this
format, however, and has numerous other manuscripts that include these
poems. - Personal conversations with the author, August 2005.
- This particular manuscript brings together Yan’s short and long poems,
many of his paintings, autobiographical essays, and other materials in
Chinese and English translation. - This work is also a good example of Yan’s tendency to rewrite, which the
“poetry gum” method makes particularly convenient. The opening lines
of Yan Li’s section in a collection of contemporary Chinese poetry
edited by Wang Ping has the following: “We have the power to change
ourselves. / We can’t behave worse than people. / Today we are nothing
but tools for science. / To walk past the grave, we must make some noise”
(Wang 1999: 159).
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