Description: A magical, impressionistic autobiography by China's legendary poet Bei Dao
Brief description: Bei Dao, (the pen name of Zhao Zhenkai) was born in Beijing in 1949. During the Cultural Revolution, he worked as a concrete mixer and blacksmith for eleven years. Forced into exile after the Tiananmen Massacre, he lived in Europe and the US until 2007, then settling in Hong Kong until, only recently, moving back to Beijing. He has been hailed as "the soul of post-Mao poetry" (Yunte Huang) and praised for his "intense lyricism" (Pankaj Mishra). Bei Dao has received numerous awards for his poetry all over the world, and founded the International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong. His photography and paintings have been exhibited in China, Hong Kong, and Japan. New Directions publishes ten of his books.
Review Quotes: The soul of post-Mao poetry, Bei Dao reveals in this intimate, lyrical memoir a China that still haunts us with its brutal past and aching humanity. Like Balzac's Paris, Dickens' London, and Pushkin's St. Petersburg, Bei Dao's Beijing is a microcosm caught in a time warp, forever titillating our imagination.--Yunte Huang, Editor of The Big Red Book of Modern Chinese Literature