Translator’s Note

In 2013, Jidi Majia asked me if I would be willing to translate a collection of his poems into English. I was living in Beijing then, and Majia and I had become like family. Initially we’d developed a respect for each other’s work while participating in various poetry events in Beijing and in different parts of China. I’d also attended several poetry events he’d helped to organize in Qinghai and had gotten a sense of his work as a facilitator of international literary and cultural exchange. I agreed to translate the collection on the condition that Majia would be willing to discuss his poems with me at length throughout the project. He agreed, and we embarked on this five-year journey that saw Majia move from Qinghai to Beijing and my move from Beijing to California and Arizona. When describing our collaboration, Majia says, “You had a fate connection with the Nuosu people and with me.” Whatever the reasons this project came to me, it has been one of the great gifts of my life.

Majia sees himself as a Nuosu poet, a Chinese poet, and a poet of the world. Once I was at a conference in Beijing in which many writers and literary critics had gathered to discuss his long poem “I, Snow Leopard.” A participant commented that Majia was someone who knew his fate, or saw clearly his life’s path at a young age, and this enabled him to arrive at where he is today, both as a writer and a facilitator of local, national, and international cultural exchange. In his poem “Perhaps I’ve Never Forgotten,” Majia writes, “Perhaps I’ve never forgotten/the promise I made alone under a starry sky:/to be a poet faithful to my culture and a poet of conscience.”

After growing up in Zhaojue, in the Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture, Majia moved to Chengdu at the age of seventeen to attend Southwestern University for Nationalities, in Chengdu. Like the work of many young Chinese poets at the time, his writing was influenced by classical Chinese poets, world poets, and modern Chinese poets—but his work was also influenced by Nuosu epics and folklore. He made the decision to write in Chinese, but to do so in a way that asserted and honored his Nuosu identity, and that insisted on recognition of Nuosu writing as part of Chinese and world literary history. In his poem “For My Motherland,” he writes, “Just like the voice of my People/Perhaps it comes from a distant border/but its existence/is always necessary / just like our ancient Nuosu script/Without a doubt / everything it records has become / a proud immortal chapter / in your monumental literature.”

Majia told me he chose a path that involved writing and politics out of his sense of responsibility toward other people and society, as well as from his personal literary dreams. His father was from the noble, ruling class of the Yi, had joined the Communist Party in the early 1950s, and became head of the Butuo County People’s Court in Liangshan. His mother also had a strong sense of social responsibility, and emphasized the importance of treating others with compassion and kindness. Majia brought this sense of cultural responsibility and compassion for others into his work. After he began gaining recognition as a poet in the 1980s, he joined the Sichuan Writers’ Association; later he held the post of secretary, and then was given a position in the National Writers’ Association. During the nine years Majia spent working in Qinghai, he devoted a great deal of energy to promoting writing, education, and environmental protection. It was during this time that the Qinghai International Poetry Festival grew, bringing hundreds of poets to the Tibetan Plateau. He also hosted events specifically for Indigenous writers from all over the world. In his current position with the National Writers’ Association, Majia continues to promote international exchange between writers. He was instrumental in building a poet’s residence in Butuo, and a writing center and Nuosu cultural museum in the mountains just outside Xichang. Certainly, Majia doesn’t...