China’s New Poetry or Into the Mist

Abstract

The late 1970s and early 1980s represent a period of important innovation in the development of contemporary Chinese poetry. As this was highly personal and experimental, it soon became characterized as being “misty” or “obscure”. A new generation of young poets questioned the Chinese cultural tradition and expressed the need for its re-evaluation. They tried to re-examine the meaning of literature, and while doing so, they based the foundation for their poetry on the tradition and the spirit of personal freedom and democracy of the May 4^th Movement (1919), having been at the same time strongly influenced by the Western modernist poetry, in which they found alternative fresh ideas.