what was all the fuss about? 427Wang Jiaxin’s “On ‘Intellectual Writing’” (Ѣ݇ “ݭᄤߚⶹ䆚”,
#55) states that
[Intellectual Writing], in a society like China’s, first of all demands writ-
ing to be independent, oriented toward humanist values, to have a criti-
cal spirit; it demands a basic quality and style that have been lacking
from modern Chinese poetry for too long.Notably, the word translated as quality and style (કḐ) also means ‘mor-
al character.’ Shen Qi’s “What Is ‘Intellectual Writing’” (ԩ䇧 “ⶹ䆚
ݭᄤߚ”, #53) holds that critical discourse has generally supported
Intellectual Writing and contributed to the obstruction of Popular
poetry. Beijing poet Hou Ma rails at the affectations that come with
Intellectual poethood in his “The Nineties: The Beginning of Profes-
sional Writing by Amateur Poets” (90ᑈҷ: Ϯԭ䆫ҎϧϮݭⱘᓔ
ྟ, #52).
Part two of the Beijing Literature special feature opens with Yu Jian’s
“Their True Face: On ‘Intellectual Writing’ and New Tide Poetry
Criticism” (ⳳⳌ: Ѣ݇ “ݭᄤߚⶹ䆚” ᮄ╂䆫℠ᡍ䆘, #63). In
this piece, Yu’s lack of argumentative cogency appears to have been
aggravated by drastic editorial cuts, but the article was soon published
in full in the September issue of Poetry Exploration. In “Their True Face,”
which is a declaration of allegiance to Xie Youshun’s controversial
usage of this phrase, Yu Jian fulminates against Ouyang Jianghe’s fa-
mous essay “Writing Poetry in China after ’89: Indigenous Disposi-
tion, the Marks of Middle Age and Being an Intellectual.”^15 Yu traces
a monopolizing and obstructionist spirit informing publications such
as Cheng Guangwei’s Portrait to the early 1990s and blames poetry
critics for having sold out to the Intellectuals. Earlier having charged
the Intellectuals with ideologizing poetry through “hard” language
and identified Intellectual discourse with orthodoxy by contrasting it
with the Popular, he reaffirms this identification by claiming that at-
tacks on the Third Generation—meaning Earthly authors from the
mid-1980s onward—came first from orthodox and then from Intel-
lectual quarters. As evidence, he cites an attack on the avant-garde
by orthodox critic Zhang Hongming in the Literature & Art Review
(᭛㡎) in 1990, entitled “‘New Tide Poetry’ Unmasked” (ᇍ “ᮄ䆫
╂” ⱘ䗣㾚).^16 Precisely because of Yu Jian’s active dissociation from
(^15) Ouyang 1993a.
(^16) Zhang Hongming 1990.