What do you think?
Rate this book
Blue House
Bei Dao not only explores his relationship with poets such as Allen Ginsberg and Tomas Tranströmer, but also sketches the more personal and sometimes seemingly banal episodes of a dissident living in exile. This is Bei Dao’s first collection of essays in English translation. Those familiar with Bei Dao will notice the same lucid eye and strength that mark his poetry.
Bei Dao has been in exile since the 1989 Tiananmen incident, has lectured around the globe, and currently teaches at the University of California Davis. He is the author of four books of poetry in English translation and one fiction collection.
Professor Ted Huters teaches in the department of East Asian Languages and Literature at UCLA and Feng-ying Ming at Whittier College.
Bei Dao has been in exile since the 1989 Tiananmen incident, has lectured around the globe, and currently teaches at the University of California Davis. He is the author of four books of poetry in English translation and one fiction collection.
Professor Ted Huters teaches in the department of East Asian Languages and Literature at UCLA and Feng-ying Ming at Whittier College.
216 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
1 person is currently reading
92 people want to read
About the author
Bei Dao
84 books121 followersName in Chinese: 北岛
Bei Dao ("Northern Island") is another name for Zhifu Island.
Bei Dao literally "Northern Island", born August 2, 1949) is the pen name of Chinese poet Zhao Zhenkai. He was born in Beijing. He chose the pen name 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, from 1969 to 1980.[5] Bei Dao and Mang Ke founded the magazine Jintian[6] (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 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 shootings, Bei Dao was at a literary conference in Berlin and was not allowed to return to China until 2006. (Three other leading Misty Poets — Gu Cheng, Duo Duo, and Yang Lian — were also exiled.) His then wife, Shao Fei, and their daughter were not allowed to leave China to join him for another six years.
Since 1987, Bei Dao has lived and taught in England, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, and the United States. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages, including five poetry volumes in English[7] along with the story collection Waves (1990) and the essay collections Blue House (2000) and Midnight's Gate (2005). Bei Dao continued his work in exile. His work has been included in anthologies such as The Red Azalea: Chinese Poetry Since the Cultural Revolution (1990)[8] and Out of the Howling Storm: The New Chinese poetry.[9]
Bei Dao has won numerous awards, including the Tucholsky Prize from Swedish PEN, International Poetry Argana Award from the House of Poetry in Morocco and the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. He is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Jintian was resurrected in Stockholm in 1990 as a forum for expatriate Chinese writers. He has taught and lectured at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Beloit College, Wisconsin, and is Professor of Humanities in the Center for East Asian Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has been repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Bei Dao ("Northern Island") is another name for Zhifu Island.
Bei Dao literally "Northern Island", born August 2, 1949) is the pen name of Chinese poet Zhao Zhenkai. He was born in Beijing. He chose the pen name 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, from 1969 to 1980.[5] Bei Dao and Mang Ke founded the magazine Jintian[6] (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 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 shootings, Bei Dao was at a literary conference in Berlin and was not allowed to return to China until 2006. (Three other leading Misty Poets — Gu Cheng, Duo Duo, and Yang Lian — were also exiled.) His then wife, Shao Fei, and their daughter were not allowed to leave China to join him for another six years.
Since 1987, Bei Dao has lived and taught in England, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, the Netherlands, France, and the United States. His work has been translated into twenty-five languages, including five poetry volumes in English[7] along with the story collection Waves (1990) and the essay collections Blue House (2000) and Midnight's Gate (2005). Bei Dao continued his work in exile. His work has been included in anthologies such as The Red Azalea: Chinese Poetry Since the Cultural Revolution (1990)[8] and Out of the Howling Storm: The New Chinese poetry.[9]
Bei Dao has won numerous awards, including the Tucholsky Prize from Swedish PEN, International Poetry Argana Award from the House of Poetry in Morocco and the PEN/Barbara Goldsmith Freedom to Write Award. He is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Jintian was resurrected in Stockholm in 1990 as a forum for expatriate Chinese writers. He has taught and lectured at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Beloit College, Wisconsin, and is Professor of Humanities in the Center for East Asian Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He has been repeatedly nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
December 9, 2019
First published in 1998, Chinese poet Bei Dao’s collection of essays focuses on the lives of varied exiled Chinese and Western poets famous and obscure, from luminaries such as Allen Ginsberg, King Hu, Susan Sontag and Octavio Paz, to lesser-known poets whose stories intersect poignantly with the author’s own experiences in life, art and travel.
Written from cosmopolitan backdrops as exotic as Prague, New York City, London, Beijing, and Hong Kong into the rural fastnesses of New England, the South Africa veld, and the enduring countryside of Mao-era China, Bei Dao contrasts the ordinariness of poets’ lives with the profundity and cultural significance of their art.
Bei Dao’s memoirs in Blue House are stunning in their modesty, candor and startling clarity. As placid and yet as intense as his poetry, his anecdotes of colleagues, countries, cats, crows and the irrepressibility of expression ( artistic and otherwise) mark him as one of the world’s greatest contemporary writers, something that he himself would unassumingly deny.
Written from cosmopolitan backdrops as exotic as Prague, New York City, London, Beijing, and Hong Kong into the rural fastnesses of New England, the South Africa veld, and the enduring countryside of Mao-era China, Bei Dao contrasts the ordinariness of poets’ lives with the profundity and cultural significance of their art.
Bei Dao’s memoirs in Blue House are stunning in their modesty, candor and startling clarity. As placid and yet as intense as his poetry, his anecdotes of colleagues, countries, cats, crows and the irrepressibility of expression ( artistic and otherwise) mark him as one of the world’s greatest contemporary writers, something that he himself would unassumingly deny.
July 28, 2022
romanticize academia why don’t you…and yet..catapulting me into Gary Snyder era
September 7, 2024
Thought it would be more interesting and wanted to learn more about his exile from China. Had more pictures than poems lol. The 4th part was more personal and entertaining tho.
November 14, 2020
“话说回来了，那时我们有梦，关于文学，关于爱情，关于穿越世界的旅行。如今我们深夜饮酒，杯子碰到一起，都是梦破碎的声音。”在北岛散文的皮囊之下，依然流淌着诗的血液。
August 27, 2018
more appropriate to call these memoirs than sketches. worthwhile fragments from the life of an artist in exile
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews