116 chapter three
Haizi was a dazzling shooting star on contemporary China’s poetry
scene. In his brief life, he kept a holy and pure, elevated poetic heart.
Misunderstood in his time by the people of this world, he bore loneliness
and pain. Through his own literary talent and sheer perseverance, he
wrote close to two hundred short lyrical poems and seven long poems.
When, like maxims and holy songs, lines from his poetry were collec-
tively recited by university students in the square, included in junior high
school teaching materials, used for profit by real estate business in adver-
tising slogans for seaside homes.... people recalled with emotion this “son
of the wheatfields,” this “hero of poetry.”Like Yu Xugang, Zhou underpins his status as biographer by identify-
ing himself as a fellow Anhuinese of the poet. The many pictures in his
book include a prominently placed, sorrowful portrait of Haizi’s moth-
er and images of a well-maintained house with a plaque that reads
“Haizi’s Erstwhile Residence” over the front door.^37 Face to the Sea is a
romanticized, tear-jerking account of Haizi’s life. Zhou rehearses all
well-known anecdotes about Haizi and, like Yu, semi-fictionalizes his
biography. He provides detailed, empathetic descriptions of Haizi’s
fateful love life and of dreams that he portrays Haizi as having had,
for instance of his suicide. The narrative is set up to take the reader
unerringly toward Haizi’s death. Zhou’s description of Haizi’s final
moments—“he slowly lay down, his back pressing against the ice-cold
iron rail”—is at variance with Luo Yihe’s letter to Wan Xia, based
on the freight train crew’s report, that said Haizi had thrown himself
under the train from the side. It is not unlikely that Zhou saw this letter
before completing his manuscript. If so, his decision to make Haizi “lie
down slowly” in readiness for the approaching train may bespeak a
desire to orchestrate the climax in style, as the glorious end to a tragic-
heroic life. Zhou’s version of events is of course easier to picture as a
ritual “sacrifice” than Luo’s.
DemythificationJust like there are a few voices that question the uncritical celebration
of Haizi’s poetry, there are some that refuse to go along with a sim-
plistic, abstract reading of his suicide as a “death for poetry.” Writing
in 1991, poet Han Dong, disbeliever in high-blown representations of
(^37) Zhou Yubing 2005: 154, 215.