Chinese Poetry in Times of Mind, Mayhem and Money (Sinica Leidensia, 86)

avant-garde poetry from china 43

Figure 1.6. Page from Luo Yihe’s letter to Wan Xia, describing Haizi’s suicide. The
second paragraph reads: “The train was going slow, and [Haizi] had thrown him-
self [under the wheels] from the side. His head and heart were intact, but he had
been cut in two at the abdomen. The freight train crew (it was the 1205 service)
never realized he had been run over. In the instant that he had thrown himself un-
der the wheels the glasses he was wearing hadn’t even been cracked or damaged”
(Yang Li 2004: 16).