Chapter Eleven
Naming and Antinaming: Poetic
Debate in Contemporary China
Dian Li
Time: April 16 to 18, 1999; Place: Pan Feng Hotel in a Beijing
suburb. Purpose: A conference on poetry. Among the forty or so
participants were well-known poets and critics from all over the
country including the cheerleader-in-chief for contemporary Chinese
poetry, Professor Xie Mian冕(b. 1932) from Beijing University.
Judging from the name of the conference—“At the Century’s End: A
Seminar on the State of Contemporary Poetry and the Construction
of New Poetics” :
态理研—
the organizers (the Beijing Writer’s Society 北 , the Institute
of Literary Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences
院文 研#所, and the journals Beijing Literature
北文 and Poetry Explorations &') intended it to be a high-
profile forum for the sorting and evaluating of issues and trends in the
past so that new poetics could emerge for the times ahead. The
conference, however, never went beyond the first part of its mission.
After some polite opening remarks by senior critics, a battle line was
drawn between two groups of poets—“intellectual” ()分+and
“popular”,-.^1 The former group represented by Xi Chuan./
(b. 1963), Wang Jiaxin0 1(b. 1957), Cheng Guangwei2光4
(b. 1956), and Zang Di 56 (b. 1964) and the latter group
represented by Yu Jian 78 (b. 1954), Yi Sha9:(b. 1966), Yang Ke
;<(b. 1957), and Xu Jiang=>(b. 1967) accused each other of
writing “bad” poems that have helped breed an atmosphere of
indifference and apathy to poetry in contemporary Chinese society. If
the issue of poetic judgment was a serious one and the disagreements
between the two groups were genuine, the debate was severely
undermined by frequent acerbic exchanges of emotional discharges
and personal attacks. The fired-up poets and critics did not end their
debate at the Pan Feng Hotel; they continued to air their differences
and accusations long after the conference had ended. The Chinese