444 chapter twelve
nese people in the Chinese language have to be Chinese beyond these
two features?
Then again, if geographical-cultural dividing lines are question-
able, they are probably more than just the figments of a bellicose
imagination, especially the dividing line between the capital and the
provinces—and this phenomenon and the arrogance of the capital
are obviously not particular to China. When asked about the exact
nature of the obstruction of their work, Popular poets responded in
various ways. Yi Sha, for instance, didn’t see himself as a victim of
obstruction at all. On the other hand, Popular poets were unanimous
in their observation that in Beijing there are more “opportunities”
than elsewhere: conferences, foreign media and scholar-translators,
and the overall climate of a cultural center. This status undisputed-
ly belongs to Beijing, not just in automated broadcasts on trains and
planes approaching the capital but also according to angry Popular
poets—even if they ridicule it, as does Yu Jian. A final point regarding
geographical-cultural dividing lines in the Polemic is that they can of
course be taken as a continuation of earlier moments in Chinese liter-
ary history. One recent example in poetry is the late 1970s rivalry be-
tween Huang Xiang’s Guizhou-based Enlightenment troupe and authors
associated with the Beijing journal Today. Another is Chengdu poet
Zhong Ming’s assertion of Southern poetic strength vis-à-vis a per-
ceived Northern-capital hegemony in his 1982 unofficial anthology
Born-Again Forest (⫳ᵫ), and later in other publications such as the
unofficial journal Image Puzzle (䈵㔨). A third is a general Southern
connotation of Third Generation poetry from the mid-1980s onward,
as the first challenge to the primacy of Today within the avant-garde.
Author personalities are also divided along institutional lines that
go back to the 1980s. These lines run between unofficial journals of
the kind known as “soulmate journals” or “peer journals” (ߞৠҕ
⠽ǃৠҎߞ⠽), the formation of which is governed by ties of liter-
ary allegiance—meaning a broadly shared poetics—and sometimes
by regional identity. As noted, the concept of Intellectual Writing,
in a proud not a derogatory sense, captures the ambition of Tenden-
cy (1988-1991), with Chen Dongdong, Xi Chuan, Ouyang Jianghe,
Lao Mu and Wang Jiaxin as founding editors or close associates. In
the early 1990s Intellectual Writing was associated with several other
unofficial journals, most of all with the Southern Poetry Review (फᮍ䆫
ᖫ, 1992-1993); contributors to the Review included Chen Dongdong,