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

true disbelief 69

not a shred of doubt left

the Wild Goose Pagoda is right ahead

...
I’ve climbed up the Pagoda
and if I spread my wings
I’d take off straight into the blue sky
now that’d be true happiness
and there’s no way that
in an age without heroes
I’d want to play the hero
all I want is to brush off the dust
put my mind at ease
and listen to the Buddha

Thus, the intertextuality continues and expands, not least because
after using Yang Lian’s title and rewriting important scenes in Han
Dong’s poem, Cai alludes to an early, much-anthologized text by Bei
Dao that gives Han’s gutsy ones yet another twist. Bei Dao wrote «Dec-
laration» (ᅷਞ, 1980?) to commemorate Yu Luoke, a victim of Red
Guard violence during the Cultural Revolution. This is the operative
passage:^8

In an age without heroes

I just want to be a human being

A peaceful horizon

cuts through the ranks of the living and the dead

I can only choose the sky

and will not kneel on the ground

to make the executioners look tall

and block the winds of freedom

Finally, leaving behind national pride (Yang), its deconstruction (Han)
or the injustice of the Cultural Revolution (Bei Dao), Cai redirects the
reader to other, older spheres, foregrounding the Pagoda’s original
function as a storehouse of Buddhist scriptures brought to China from
India: listen to the Buddha.
Back in the early 1980s, just as in «Of the Wild Goose Pagoda» Han
Dong writes back to Yang Lian, so in «So You’ve Seen the Sea» (Դ㾕

(^8) Bei Dao 1987: 73-74.