avant-garde poetry from china 7official scenes and their subsets—regional, gendered, stylistic, medi-
al—to varying degrees, ranging from high-profile organizational activ-
ism to dismissal of any identity that transcends the individual.
The Unofficial Poetry SceneFrom an institutional angle, the unofficial poetry scene is that part
of contemporary poetry that operates of its own initiative, outside
the publishing business as formally administered by the state. After
the underground preliminaries during the Cultural Revolution, the
unofficial scene moved to the overground in December 1978, with
the publication of the Beijing-based journal Today (Ҟ).^7 This was a
landmark in PRC literary history, as the journal defied the state’s mo-
nopoly on literature. Today featured authors such as Bei Dao, Mang
Ke, Shu Ting, Gu Cheng, Yang Lian and Duoduo,^8 to name some
of the best-known poets of the first generation that ventured beyond
the Maoist pale. Since the early 1980s, as the state’s grip on literature
and art has progressively weakened, the unofficial scene has expanded
in urban centers throughout the country—Nanjing, Shanghai, Hang-
zhou, Chengdu, Kunming, Harbin, Guangzhou—and made its texts
available to whoever is interested. In a self-protective measure, these
texts often claim to be aimed at “internal” exchange, in an ironic ap-
propriation of orthodox terminology for a designation that is demon-
strably untrue. Unofficial publications make no attempt to control
their readership and would indeed love to see it grow uncontrollably.
Tapping into highly effective, informal networks of poets and critics,
the unofficial scene produces serial journals and one-time single-au-
thor and multiple-author anthologies, from the scruffy to the glossy, in
print and online. It also organizes literary events such as poetry recitals
and cooperative projects with other arts like theater and music.
In many places elsewhere in the world the institutional notion of
publication hinges on formal involvement by members of officially
recognized, professional communities such as publishing houses and
book reviewers. In discourse on mainland-Chinese unofficial poetry,
however, and in other literary scenes where writers and politicians en-
(^7) Usage of underground has continued after the Cultural Revolution but no longer
denotes active concealment from the authorities.
(^8) Yang and Duoduo called themselves Fei Sha and Bai Ye at the time.