A short life of the author
Bei Dao (b. 2 August 1949) — born Zhao Zhenkai — grew up in Beijing. During the Cultural Revolution he was sent to the countryside for “re-education.” In 1978 he co-founded Jintian (Today), the most important unofficial literary journal in post-Mao China.
Life and Career
The Misty Poets — Bei Dao, Gu Cheng, Duoduo, Shu Ting, Yang Lian — emerged in the late 1970s as a rejection of the propaganda aesthetics of the Cultural Revolution. Their poetry was called “misty” (menglong) by critics who found it obscure; it was in fact a return to the lyric complexity that Maoism had suppressed.
Bei Dao’s poem “The Answer” (1976) — with its famous opening line “Debasement is the password of the base” — became an anthem of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. He was abroad at the time of the crackdown and lived in exile for over two decades, in Sweden, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the United States, before settling in Hong Kong.
Major Works and Themes
Bei Dao’s poetry is compressed, imagistic, and politically resonant without being didactic. He writes about exile, memory, freedom, and the relationship between language and power. His prose memoir City Gate, Open Up (2017) is a lyrical account of growing up in Beijing.
Key Works
- The August Sleepwalker (1988) — selected poems in English
- Old Snow (1991)
- City Gate, Open Up (2017)
Collecting Bei Dao
English translations (New Directions, New York Review Books) bring $15–$30. Chinese originals are difficult to obtain outside China and Hong Kong.