the lower body 339of dichotomies that make up the contrast of Elevated and Earthly out-
lined in chapter One: the “lyrical,” the “mythical,” the “utopian,” the
“Westernized” and so on. It bears reiteration that the poetry of demys-
tifiers from Han Dong to Shen Haobo far transcends their resistance
to other poetries, as I hope to have shown in the preceding pages.
By way of concrete examples, some of which have been previously
discussed, Han Dong’s «Of the Wild Goose Pagoda» and «So You’ve
Seen the Sea» effectively deconstruct canonical landmarks of Chinese
civilization and clichéd, inflated imagery. Yi Sha’s poetry does some-
thing similar, famous texts being «As the Train Crosses the Yellow
River» (䔺䖛咘⊇, 1988) and «Starve the Poets», with the latter spe-
cifically targeting Haizi and his epigones. More explicitly than Han
Dong in «So You’ve Seen the Sea», Yi Sha proceeds from a perceived
abuse of poetic imagery to contempt for the arrogance of poet-hood.
Yu Jian’s oeuvre, most notably «File 0», extends demystification to the
sacred status of poetic language.^38
Bad BehaviorAnother feature of Lower Body poetics that builds on earlier trends
in its literary surroundings is that of being unruly and offensive in
conventional terms. That is, conventional within the avant-garde, to
say nothing of government-sanctioned literary orthodoxy. This po-
etics of bad behavior manifests itself in the systematic breaching of
(socio-)sexual and other bodily taboos such as prostitution, substance
abuse, masturbation, defecation, urination, disease and violence; in
the denigration of education and learning, often through association
with these taboos; and in the shameless display of sexism, specifically
misogyny, homophobia and a general machismo. Here, too, there are
well-known precedents and parallels, overlapping with the category of
demystification. Yet again, one thinks of Yi Sha. Other, earlier authors
that come to mind include Macho Man Li Yawei and Not-Not poet
Yang Li. Notably, the impact of their bad behavior went well beyond
poetry. According to Zhu Dake, the cradle of “hooligan discourse” in
other literary genres and art in contemporary China stood in avant-
garde poetry of the 1980s.^39
(^38) Han 2002: 10, 14; Yi 1994: 5, 3; Yu Jian 1994.
(^39) Zhu Dake 2006: ch 6.