page_title: Bei Dao
section_title: 1976 Tiananmen Incident and aftermath
hierarchical_section_title: Bei Dao / Biography / 1976 Tiananmen Incident and aftermath
caption_attribution_description: English: Xidan Wall, May 1979
context_page_description: Bei Dao is the pen name of the Chinese-American writer Zhao Zhenkai. Among the most acclaimed Chinese-language poets of his generation, he has been repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature. In addition to poetry, he is the author of short fiction, essays, and a memoir. Known as a dissident, he is a prominent representative of a school of poetry known variously in the West as "Misty" or "Obscure" Poetry.
  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, 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.
context_section_description: A watershed event occurred in April 1976, when the government's attempt to minimize public mourning for the death of Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai led to protests in Tiananmen Square—the first significant anti-government protests since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. Bei Dao participated in the demonstrations, which were violently suppressed. Inspired by his experience, he wrote what became his most famous poem, "The Answer," which has been compared to Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind" for its impact on a generation of Chinese. Written with defiant language, and extolling human agency, the poem has been described as a refusal of restrictions like those adopted during the Cultural Revolution.
  After the death of Mao and the arrest of the "Gang of Four" in the latter half of 1976, the Cultural Revolution came to an end, ushering in a relaxation of government control of speech. Bei Dao and his friend, the poet Mang Ke, assembled the literary journal Jintian (Today), working with mimeographs. The first issue appeared in 1978 and was distributed by hand or posted, as broadsides, on what came to be known as Beijing's "Democracy Wall". It featured Bei Dao's poem, "The Answer," as well as a short story he wrote. To avoid governmental scrutiny, he published under a pseudonym, Bei Dao, "Northern Island," chosen by his friend Mang Ke because Bei Dao hailed from the north of China and preferred solitude. The journal was notable for its literary quality: in its pages, readers were introduced to a group of poets—including Gu Cheng, Duo Duo, Yang Lian, and Shu Ting, among others—whom Chinese critics dubbed "menglong", which has been translated in English as "misty" or "obscure", in reference to their embrace of complexity and rejection of the Maoist principles of socialist realism. "The Answer," in particular, spread through the Chinese underground and vaulted Bei Dao to national fame.
  Bei Dao continued to publish poetry and short fiction in Jintian, which appeared irregularly until Chinese authorities banned it in 1980. In the same year, he married the artist Shao Fei and moved out of his childhood home. He also transitioned away from employment in construction after eleven years—five years as a concrete mixer and six as an ironworker. He found work as a journalist, writing for the magazine China Report. He also translated Western poets into Chinese.
  Bei Dao's poetry appeared in the officially approved Chinese journal Shi Kan (Poetry Monthly) during the "Democracy Wall" era of 1978-1980. His poems first appeared in English translation in 1983, when they were featured in the journal Renditions, published by the Chinese University Press. In the same year, a collection of his poems was published as Notes from the City of the Sun by the Cornell University East Asia Program as part of its "East Asia Papers" series. The following year, his poems appeared in English in the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars. During the years 1983-84, his work was banned in China due to a government campaign to combat "spiritual pollution". When that campaign ended, his work appeared again in Chinese in a Communist Party publication called An Anthology of New Trends in Poetry, which Bei Dao has credited with having "a profound and wide-reaching influence" in China. In 1985, a selection of his work was included in an English-language anthology called Contemporary Chinese Literature, while his story collection, Waves, was published in Chinese by the Chinese University Press. Collectively, these publications introduced Bei Dao to scholars in the West, and he received an invitation to visit Europe in 1985. In the same year, his daughter, whom he nicknamed Tiantian, was born. In 1986, his collected poems appeared in Chinese. By the spring of 1987, he had taken up a post as a visiting lecturer at Durham University in England.
caption: A section of Beijing's Democracy Wall, 1979
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