Welcome to the World Wide Web Home page of Road to East Asia
York University
Vol.3, 1998-99
Gregory Lee,
University of Hong Kong: I was very interested to see the interview with Oliver
Kramer on the Misty Poets. Kramer and your readers may also be interested to know that
several chapters of my book Troubadours, Trumpeters, Troubled Makers: Lyricism,
Nationalism, and Hybridity in China and Its Others, published by Duke University
Press in 1996, are devoted to Duoduo's poetry, and the whole book discusses the culture
of contemporary poetry in China and its reception in the West. Road to East Asia is a great idea.
Hope you keep it up.
Martin Bensch,
Sweden: Great page! I have just started reading Bei Dao, and this page inspired me to
read on. Keep up the good work.
Geremie Barme,
sinologist of Australian National University: Hope
your journal takes something of a more skeptical view of the
literary luminary of China.
Have you seen The Gate of Heavenly Peace?This film should
give you some food
for thought. I think it adds a few much-needed complicating factors
to the discussion of
Chinese culture.
Anonymous
reader (cites human rights violations worldwide that he
or she deems equally outrageous or more deplorable than the 1989
killings in Beijing): Let us not confuse the issues. This
is not at all to justify what happened in Tiananmen Square, but just
to help see things in perspective.
Brian Castro,
Australian novelist, Victoria: I have enjoyed
reading your journal very much. A degree of
idealism has manifested itself in the latest essays on the
Tiananmen Tragedy. As an old sceptic, I wonder if the students had
sacrificed a knowledge of foreign policy between China and the West
for opinions on human rights and freedoms. I would have preferred
more realpolitik over rhetoric. Perhaps historicising
China's progress towards modernization would be a more fruitful
path to understanding the numerous revolutions China has sustained.
These can only be fully appreciated in hindsight.
Huguette Fontaine,
translator, Toronto:I wish I could read all the works
discussed by the writers. Freedom is an unremitting quest for
those young Chinese "Misty poets" [in Jessica Martin's article "Poetic Voices from
Today's China"] and will
guide them on the road of creativity. Perhaps their art originates
from this quest and their quest takes root in their art.
Huang Guanyun,
Berkeley, California: I have been thinking lately to some degree about this question of
culture. Once someone had suggested that this entire generation of Asian Americans, with
its hyphenated heritage, is a generation of people in exile, dislocated and accursed by the
cultural memory of a century of turmoil and upheavals. It has struggled to stay alive in the
chasm between two cultures and the midst of radical changes between generations of its
culture; yet for those discontinuities, it is constantly being stifled by the feeling of loss and
disillusionment. In the end, it could only adhere itself to one culture or the other; it must be
constantly searching for its home, roots, and origin.
I suppose we are both part of this generation of people; our attempts to unravel our personal life history all in one way or the other reflect this greater experience. And this quest for identity, perhaps as we'll come to discover, is a task we must all take on as individuals.
Visitors: since
Jan. 24, 1996