exile 145Second, in an approach that is akin to that laid out in the previous
chapter, I hope that my readings of poems by Yang, Wang and Bei
Dao help counter the dominance of biography and historiography in
the reception of poetry written in exile. If much (Western) scholar-
ship politicizes poetry from the PRC, this is understandable in light of
the Chinese government’s active involvement in cultural matters, and
justified as long as the argument is based on evidence and method-
ologically sound. By contrast, popular media and non-specialist audi-
ences often simply display overwhelming interest in the poet’s personal
history, which becomes a political history in that it is automatically
taken to be the product of institutionalized repression. This involves a
prejudice that does no justice to the subtleties of the literary text and is
boosted in press releases and blurbs by foreign publishers, who know
that suffering sells better than symbolism. Yang Lian says of this:^9
For Westerners, if a Chinese writer writes in China, he must be “under-
ground”; if he lives abroad, he must be an “exile.” If a Chinese poet is
introduced to a Western audience, as soon as the word dissident is men-
tioned, the audience immediately relaxes—the poet’s opponents have
guaranteed that the poems must be good.Other examples occur in Bei Dao’s bilingual poetry collections. David
Hinton, translator of Forms of Distance (1994), begins his introduction
thus: “Bei Dao is by now well known as the most prominent literary
voice in China’s political opposition.” The blurb on the back cover of
Unlock (2000) starts in similar fashion:^10
Bei Dao, the internationally acclaimed Chinese poet, has been the poetic
conscience of the dissident movements in his country for over twenty
years. He has been in exile since the Tiananmen massacre of 1989.Bei Dao’s is a literary voice, what it says is often poetic, and his oeuvre
contains texts that may justifiably be called political, although they are
hardly fit for policy-making or, for that matter, appreciation beyond
the high-cultural niche in which the avant-garde finds itself—but to
make these qualities mere attributes of his alleged primary status as ac-
tivist is to turn things on their head. It also disregards Bei Dao’s literary
track record over the last three decades, and what he has said about
his role as a poet. The order of things is as follows. First, he is a poet.
(^9) Yang Lian 1998c: 18.
(^10) Bei Dao 1994: vii and 2000.