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Bei Dao Wikipedia

Bei Dao ("Northern Island") is another name for Zhifu Island.

Bei Dao (born August 2, 1949), literally meaning "Northern Island", is the pseudonym of Chinese poet Zhao Zhenkai. Born in Beijing, his pseudonym was chosen because he came from the north and because of his preference for solitude. Bei Dao is the most notable representative of the Misty Poets, a group of Chinese poets who reacted against the restrictions of the Cultural Revolution.

As a teenager, Bei Dao was a member of the Red Guards, the enthusiastic followers of Mao Zedong who enforced the dictates of the Cultural Revolution, often through violent means. He had misgivings about the Revolution and was "re-educated" as a construction worker the next eleven years.

Bei Dao and Mang Ke founded the magazine Jintian ("Today"), the central publication of the Misty Poets which was published from 1978 until 1980, when it was banned. The work of the Misty Poets and Bei Dao in particular were an inspiration to pro-democracy movements in China. Most notable was his poem "Huida" ("The Answer") which was written during the Tiananmen Incident|1976 Tiananmen demonstrations in which he participated. The poem was taken up as a defiant anthem of the pro-democracy movement and appeared on posters during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. During the 1989 protests and subsequent massacre, Bei Dao was at a literary conference in Berlin and was not allowed to return to China. (Three other leading Misty Poets, Gu Cheng, Duo Duo, and Yang Lian, were also exiled.) His wife, Shao Fei, and daughter were not allowed to leave China to join him for another six years.

Bei Dao has continued his work in exile. Jintain was resurrected in Stockholm in 1990 as a forum for expatriate Chinese writers. He has taught and lectured at a number of schools, most recently Beloit College in Wisconsin. He has been repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Last Modified:   2005-02-26