Centuries on, ancient capital still immersed in poetic odyssey

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2009-05-28 15:12

XI'AN -- American poet Jane Hirshfield gulped down a cup of liquor that floated toward her on a lotus-shaped wooden plate, and improvised a lyric in line with a centuries-old Chinese tradition.

"A lake's water does not carry last year's poems; a boat's hull does not travel last year's waves," she read out the lines Tuesday at a national poetry festival in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province.

The eager crowd of 130 poetry lovers cheered and clapped as an interpreter put the lines into Chinese.

The award-winning poet, whose works are rarely read in China, instantly became the star of the tri-annual gathering, sponsored by the Ministry of Culture, Chinese Writers' Association and the Shaanxi Provincial Government.

Amateur Chinese poet Guan Zhongbin timidly invited her for a photo together.

"I really admire her," said the 31-year-old from the neighboring Gansu Province. He waited until the end of the game but that lotus plate never came near him, so he never had a chance to improvise a poem.

"In ancient times, only scholars who stood out in imperial exams had such honor," said Guan.

Xi'an served as China's capital in 13 dynasties, from Western Zhou (1134 to 771 BC) to Tang Dynasty (618 to 907). It was a custom in history for the emperors to treat outstanding scholars to feasts by the Qujiang Lake, which has now been renovated into a holiday resort in the southeast of Xi'an.

The climax of such a feast was the lotus-floating drinks, and whoever got the drink had to improvise a poem.

More than 1,000 years after the collapse of Tang Dynasty, the golden period that left behind nearly 50,000 well-written poems, poets from across the country still take pride in improvising poems while drinking liquor by the Qujiang Lake.

Unlike Hirshfield, who got her bachelor's degree from Princeton University and later studied at San Francisco Zen Center, Guan was forced to quit school at 15 because his impoverished farming family could not afford his higher education.

One of China's migrant millions, Guan said his love for poetry never died. He learned of the poets' gathering from a local newspaper, and took his own works there hoping to meet some of the best-known poets.

Most of Guan's works are pastoral, based on the rural life of his hometown.

"Wandering stream around my humble home, with weeping willows over its roof, wild geese frolicking in the water, and cattle dozing off in the shade," read one of his poems.

Twenty-nine-year-old Zheng Xiaoqiong shares Guan's sentiments and experience.

The migrant factory worker in Shenzhen and one of the country's best-known poets, is known for putting the migrant population's hardship and struggle in city life behind her beautiful, often sentimental lines.

"That tired man from the countryside, cautious and timid, like a dim lamplight in the shade" was the portrait of a typical migrant laborer in a hardware plant where Zheng worked for four years.

"I keep trying, to put that feeling into words; it's poignant, like a burning iron, that scorches my body, my soul."

She described what it felt like to be a migrant worker in one of her poems.

Such poems impressed Hirshfield, whose love of poetry and Chinese culture brought her to the event

She was surprised by the widespread enthusiasm for poetry writing in China, even among peasants and migrant laborers, Hirshfield told Xinhua.

"These people have in fact become a major group of poetry writers in China," said Prof. Shen Qi with Xi'an University of Finance and Economics. "Their works spread fast on the Internet."

Just 10 years ago, before the Internet became popular, it was still difficult for these amateur poets to publish their works because the country's few literary magazines didn't have enough pages even to carry works by the best-known poets, said Prof. Li Zhen, a poetry critic with Shaanxi Normal University.

Last year, about 70,000 poems were printed on China's leading literary magazines, while at least 200,000 well-written pieces were published by the online media, said Yang Kuanghan, a researcher with Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

The Chinese Poetry Association, a non-governmental organization of poetry lovers, now has 2 million members compared with the 16,000 upon its establishment in 1987. An additional 43,000 people have registered as members on its online forum, which opened in 2003, and posted more than 10 million poems.

"Many of these members are migrant workers who take delight in poetry writing," said Zhou Duwen, a researcher on Chinese poetry. "They have helped revive and diversify Chinese poetry."