Born in Beijing before the establishment of the People's Republic of China, Bei Dao served as a member of the Red Guards in his youth. However, disillusioned by the Cultural Revolution, he participated in the 1976 Tiananmen Incident and co-founded an influential literary journal, called "Jintian" ("Today"), that came to be officially banned in China. After his poetry and activism were an inspiration to the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, Bei Dao was banned from China and entered a period of exile in the West, living and teaching in numerous countries before settling in the United States. He has been allowed to return to mainland China since 2006, but has not done so except for brief visits. In 2007, he joined the faculty of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. In 2009, he became an American citizen.