what was all the fuss about? 399CHAPTER TWELVEWHAT WAS ALL THE FUSS ABOUT?
THE POPULAR-INTELLECTUAL POLEMICIn the final years of the twentieth century, countless Chinese poets
and critics partook in a protracted Polemic (䆎ѝ) of Popular Writing
(⇥䯈ݭ) and Intellectual Writing (ݭᄤߚⶹ䆚) to which I have
often referred in the preceding chapters. The Polemic made head-
lines in specialist and general media, and involved prominent players
including Cheng Guangwei, Shen Haobo, Yu Jian, Yang Ke, Tang
Xiaodu, Sun Wenbo, Wang Jiaxin, Han Dong, Xi Du, Xu Jiang, Yi
Sha, He Xiaozhu, Chen Chao, Zhongdao and many others. All major
protagonists were men. As noted more than once in this study, the
male dominance of the avant-garde’s metatextual arena is all the more
remarkable in light of the significance of Women’s Poetry as a textual
category of widely acknowledged impact.
If we allow for some generalization, it would doubtless be possible
to arrive at a textually argued contrast of so-called Intellectual and
Popular poetry as written by the individuals associated with each side.
The reader will recall that intellectual and popular form one of the
dichotomies that constitute the overarching contrast of the Elevated
and Earthly aesthetics within the avant-garde outlined in chapter
One. However, literary texts per se played a negligible role in the Po-
lemic. Instead, contributors put forward verse-external poetics more
than anything else. What’s more, for all their mutual hostility, Popu-
lar and Intellectual contributions to this particularly large and intense
metatext exhibit some notable similarities. So, what was all the fuss
about?
Section 1 of this chapter offers a critical inventory of over one hun-
dred such contributions to outline what the issues were, that is: what
people talked about. Section 2 considers geographical-cultural, insti-
tutional and biographical dividing lines and ties of allegiance (㋏݇)
between authors, and reflects yet again on the sociology of modern
Chinese poethood, in order to identify what was at stake, that is: why
people talked about what they talked about. The Appendix to this