Journal of the Cultural Revolution
Youth, ideals, and life of the “sent-down” (rusticated) youth during the cultural revolution.
Journal of the Cultural Revolution is a collection of poems depicting the lives of educated youth during the cultural revolution. The author uses poetry to reminisce about many friends and memorable experiences during their time as educated youth, reflecting how the era influenced individual destinies. The language is poetic and with bursts of unexpected insights with strong emotions and rhythms. At once a work of narrative lyricism and an act of personal courage, this memoir in verse documents the human cost of a period of political turmoil in China’s recent past.
The “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” marked a critical passage on China’s road to modernity, as momentous for the world as it was for one boy caught up in its throes. In poetry that juxtaposes the political and the personal, the social and the individual, Luo Ying depicts a time when ultra-leftist mass movements and factional struggles penetrated the deepest level of private daily life. In bleak yet vivid portraits he reveals how the period indelibly marred him. “I am a red guard just as I always was,” he writes.
Giving voice to the inner life of a man haunted by his experiences, Journal of the Cultural Revolution bears witness to a traumatic time when ideology threatened to crush individuality. Luo Ying’s poetry stands as eloquent testimony to the power of the individual voice to endure in the face of dire social and historical circumstances.
Luo Ying is the pen name of Huang Nubo. Born in 1956 in Ningxia Province, China, he has published eleven collections of poetry and fiction. His work has been translated into English, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Mongolian, Spanish and Icelandic. He is also an intrepid mountaineer and a key member of the Explorers Club in New York City. A successful Chinese real estate developer and entrepreneur, he is also founder of the Zhongkun Poetry Development Fund, the Sino-Japanese Poetry Fund, and the Sino-Icelandic Poetry Fund.
Denis Mair has translated the work of numerous Chinese poets into English, including the volumes Reading the Times: Poems of Yan Zhi and Selected Poems by Mai Cheng.