438 chapter twelve
One immediately thinks of the impressive track record of official pub-
lications, public reviews, media appearances and foreign conference
attendance of prominent Popular poet and theorizer Yu Jian—whom
Han Dong doesn’t mention a single time. Are we to take this as evi-
dence of Yu’s eviction from the Popular ranks, at least in Han’s book?
Also, if it seems reasonable to assume that Han sees himself as a Popu-
lar poet, we should note that a first official collection of his poetry had
in fact come out as early as 1992—and that this was to be followed
in 2002 by a major, official survey collection of his work as well as
the first ten volumes in the Epoch Poetry Series of which Han was edi-
tor, including books by authors associated with the unofficial journals
Them and Not-Not who had no previous official book publications to
their name.^20 Does this mean that Han Dong and the Epoch authors set
foot in the mainstream poetry scene, too? If so, how tenable are Han’s
views on the Popular any longer?
Han Dong particularly disapproves of poets entering mainstream
discourse for the wrong reasons, even if it be—in his two examples—
through no fault of their own. With some justification, he holds that
Haizi and Gu Cheng became martyrs or heroes of poetry in broad
public view because they killed themselves, not primarily through the
merits of their writing. He risks invalidating this point when he him-
self invokes as exemplary for the Popular cause two authors who died
before their time and one whose saintly status is closely connected to
his mental illness: Hu Kuan, Wang Xiaobo and Shizhi. This bespeaks
the very image of poethood that has contributed so much to Haizi’s
thanatography—to which Popular, demystifying and more generally
Earthly authors should in theory not subscribe.
As noted in chapter Eleven, according to Han Dong the Popular
inherently resists the influence of the three “big beasts” of the System,
the Market and the West, with big beast denoting the expansive cor-
ruption of an original, authentic category. Han finds the Popular itself
inherently incapable of becoming a big beast in its turn. Its standpoint
is characterized by (p2)
an independent spirit and free creation.(^20) Han 1992a and 2002.