Beyond Exile: Zheng Danyi’s Hong Kong Poems (1999–2004)

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Notes

1. The southwestern province of Sichuan had a long and rich poetic tradition and was its own hub of contemporary poetry, as Michael Martin Day describes in China’s Second World of Poetry: The Sichuan Avant-Garde, 1982–1992. See The Digital Archive for Chinese Studies (DACHS), The Sinological Library, Leiden University, 2005. http://leiden.dachs-archive.org/poetry/md.html. However, according to my private correspondence with Zheng Danyi in April 2014, Zheng does not consider himself affiliated with “the Sichuan avant-garde,” or any other school.

2. The circumstances surrounding the trauma that Zheng went through in Beijing remain unclear. He had been hospitalized for several months due to severe injuries when I first met him in Beijing in the winter of 1997. That experience was later dealt with in the poem, “Knocking” (“,” “Qiaoji”), written in Hong Kong on September 5, 2001.

3. Inaugurated in 2003 by two major newspapers, Southern Daily (Nanfang dushibao) and New Beijing Daily (Xin jingbao), the Grand Media Prize for Chinese-Language Literature is the first media-sponsored, rather than government-sponsored, literary award in China boasting the highest cash prizes. It is also the first mainland Chinese literary prize to actively promote the notion of “Chinese-language literature” (, Huayu wenxue) rather than nation-based “Chinese literature” (, Zhongguo wenxue).

4. This mainland Chinese edition includes all the poems from the Hong Kong bilingual edition, as well as thirty new poems written in Hong Kong from 1999 to 2004.

5. Shih, Visuality and Identity.

6. Zhao Xifang, “Dui Taiwan wenxue, women zhidao duoshao?” (“How Much Do We Know about Taiwan Literature?”), Zhongguo tushu shangbao shuping zhoukan (Chinese Publisher’s Weekly Review), http://imyu.cn/read.php?tid=5210 (modified May 21, 2004, accessed June 28, 2011).

7. As quoted in Ibid.

8. The term “global Sinophonia” was used in the title of a conference organized by the Association of Chinese and Comparative Literature (ACCL) in Taiwan in December 2012.

9. Wang, “Wokan nanlai zuojia.” According to Wang, from the mid 1930s to the late 1940s, more than 200 mainland Chinese writers went to Hong Kong, and many of them wrote and published important works there.

10. Huang Canran, “Lun xianggang bentu shi” (“On Local Hong Kong Poetry”), Takung pao, http://www.takungpao.com/history/top/2011-10-30/992802.html (modified October 30, 2011, accessed February 14, 2012). According to Huang, some features that are now considered characteristic of Hong Kong poetry, such as colloquialism, have been developed by immigrant poets such as Dai Tian; Ma Lang, also an immigrant poet, wrote some of the most quintessentially “Hong Kong” poems.

11. Ibid.

12. Huang Canran and Zheng Danyi, both from the mainland, have known each other since the early 1990s. They both appeared in the anthology, Weilanse tiankong de huangjin (Gold in the Blue Sky) (Beijing: Duiwai fanyi chubanshe, 1995). After Zheng Danyi’s controversial nomination for the Grand Media Prize for Chinese-Language Literature in 2004, Huang Canran was nominated for the same prize, and won, in 2011. In comparison with Zheng Danyi, Huang Canran has been much more successful in navigating the literary worlds of both Hong Kong and mainland China.

13. Zheng Danyi, “Interview,” Nanfang Daily, http://news.xinhuanet.com/book/2003-08/06/content_1013571.htm (modified July 15, 2003, accessed June 28, 2011).

14. The mainland Chinese edition of Wings of Summer (Xiatian de chibang) includes thirty new poems written between 1999 and 2004 when the poet first began to live in Hong Kong. A handful of other poems have appeared, often in English translation or in bilingual form, in English-language literary magazines such as Asia Literary Review. None of his poems have appeared in mainstream Hong Kong publications or anthologies.

15. Zheng, Xiatian de chibang, 183; my translation.

16. Ibid., 184–85; my translation.

17. Ibid., 185; my translation.

18. Ibid., 187; my translation.

19. Ibid., 186–87; my translation.

20. Ibid., 194; my translation.

21. Huang Canran, “Huang Canran fangtan: Xianggang shi wo de tican he sucai.”

22. Jin, The Writer as Migrant.

23. Zheng’s unpublished manuscript; my translation.

24. Zheng, Wings of Summer, xxiv.

25. Chow, Ethics after Idealism, 176.

26. Lu, Chinese Modernity and Global Biopolitics, 116.

27. Ibid., 123–24.

28. Zheng Danyi, “Bashi niandai shiren xilie caifang” (“Interviews with 1980s Poets: Zheng Danyi”),, (Chutzpah), http://www.chutzpahmagazine.com.cn/CnVideoDetails.aspx?id=129 (modified August 2011, accessed February 14, 2012).

29. Shih, Visuality and Identity, 164.

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Luo Hui

Luo Hui is affiliated with the School of Languages & Cultures at Victoria University of Wellington in Wellington, New Zealand.