she describes Xia Yu as a woman-centric poet, a rarity among
modern women poets in Taiwan. Chung argues that although she is
less preoccupied with the biological facts of women’s lives, she
nonetheless locates a woman’s identity in her physical being. Thus, it
is inevitable that Xia Yu will touch on the subject of women’s sexu-
ality and desires (Zhong 1989b). She does so in “Jiang Yuan” ìí
(Xia 1984: 107–108), which playfully conflates Chinese mythology
with an individual woman’s consciousness. Jiang Yuan was the
mother of Hou Ji îï, the legendary ancestor of the Zhou people,
and the epigraph to the poem is taken from Song 245 in the Book of
Songs.
She who gave birth to the people ðñ
Ý
Was Jiang Yuan 時òìí
How did she give birth to the people
Ý如ó
She sacrificed and prayed ôõô祀
To exorcise selfishness ,÷無Ê
Book of Songs,“Birth of the People” ùú
ÝWhenever it’s a rainy day V逢ü天
I get a certain kind of feeling 我有ý þ
I want to copulate propagate e要
descendants spreading them Ê
over the world each with their own I 各 各的
dialects ¿G
clans $
kingdoms 9
like an animal á獸
in a hidden cave 在A_的Ê
whenever it’s a rainy day V逢ü天
like an animal á獸
doing it like a human 用 的¿
“Jiang Yuan” stands as a celebration of female fertility and sexual-
ity that bears as well some of the mythic quality found in Zhai
Yongming’s poems alluding to Nüwa. Although Xia Yu and Zhai
Yongming both find much to deplore in traditional attitudes toward
women, each has also found sources of strength in Chinese culture,
deliberately and fundamentally recasting much of that cultural legacy.
Whether satirically, like Xia Yu, or earnestly, like Zhai Yongming,
each engages traditional culture—revising, subverting, and ultimately
appropriating ancient concepts to make them her own.
The Poetry of Zhai Yongming and Xia Yu 119