162 chapter four
and Tan Chee-Lay are among those who dwell on exile and related
notions in their research on Yang Lian.^45
Of two bilingual books of poetry Yang published in 1990, in Mabel
Lee’s translation, one is called The Dead in Exile. It contains poems
written before Yang left China in 1988 as well as texts that explicitly
respond to June Fourth. The violence of that historical moment jumps
out at the reader, in an idiom easily recognized as an extension and
indeed an intensification of Yang’s earlier work.
This point calls for a brief digression. Significantly, it shows June
Fourth and Yang’s ensuing exile functioning as catalysts of an indi-
vidual track of poetic development that had started a decade earlier.
Something similar holds for other mainland-Chinese authors, includ-
ing Bei Dao and Wang Jiaxin, but also for broader trends in the intel-
lectual and cultural sphere: disenchantment with government ideology
and the attendant discourse, the ebbing of the high culture fever, and
commercialization of the cultural realm at large. Arguably, then, June
Fourth can be seen as an exceptionally powerful catalyst of the emer-
gence of PRC exile literature itself—as one of several concurrent tra-
jectories of cultural change—rather than its root cause. In addition to
the poets mentioned earlier, practitioners of other genres had also set-
tled abroad in the 1980s, under exilic circumstances. Two well-known
examples are playwright-novelist Gao Xingjian and Liu Binyan, the
doyen of PRC reportage literature.^46 Knowledgeable about foreign
literature and having come up against censorship in the early stages
of his career—for “spiritual pollution,” like Bei Dao and Yang Lian—
Gao declined to return to China while on a visit to France in 1987.
A domestic ban on his work remains in force today. Liu’s exposure
of corruption in the Communist Party and social abuses had put him
through many ordeals inside China before his effective banishment
(^45) For Yang Lian’s individual books of poetry in Chinese and for bilingual Eng-
lish-Chinese editions, including those not cited here, see Van Crevel 2008a; Yang
Lian 2002a and 2006 are monolingual English-language editions. English transla-
tions of some early poems are included in Renditions 19/20 (1983) and 23 (1985), and
in Soong & Minford 1984. Yang Xiaobin 1994, Lin Xingqian 2001, Edmond &
Chung 2006, Tang Xiaodu 2006, Tan Chee-Lay 2007, Edmond 2008a and 2008b.
Other scholarship includes Yip 1985, Golden & Minford 1990, Lee (Mabel) 1990
and 1993, Zhuang 1993: ch 7, Bruno 2003, Edmond 2004, 2005a, 2005b and Ed-
mond 2006, and Twitchell-Waas 2005.
(^46) Authors of PRC provenance living abroad who write in other languages than
Chinese (and had settled abroad when they started writing) such as Ha Jin, Dai Sijie
and Li Li, are beyond the scope of the present inquiry. See also note 36.