Verse Going Viral: China's New Media Scenes

Acknowledgments

ac k now l e d g m e n t s Like any book, this one has been on a journey and many people have helped it along the way. I would like to thank all the poetry scene participants in China who kindly provided me with mountains of research materials and made this project feasible. They include A Xiang, An Qi, Bei Ta, Duoyu, Fu Mahuo, Huang Lihai, Jiang Hao, Lao Chao, Li Shaojun, Pidan, Shen Haobo, Shi Zhongren, Tan Kexiu, Tang Xiaodu , Wang Mingyun, Xie Youshun, Xu Jiang, Xu Xiangchou, Yang Ke, Yi Sha, Yu Jian, Yudu, Zhou Zan, and the poets who completed my online poetry questionnaire. My gratitude also goes to my poet friends and teachers who welcomed me during my time at Peking University , in particular Hu Xudong, Jiang Tao, Leng Shuang, Wang Pu, Zang Di, Zhang Li, and members of the May Fourth Literature Society , all of whom were instrumental in getting me involved in poetry activities in China. Special thanks to Li Wei, Xu Xiangchou, Yang Li, and Wang Yin for generously granting me permission to include my translations of their poems in the epigraphs to the chapters of this book, and to Li Zhenghu (Su Shansheng) for allowing me to cite his viral earthquake poem in full in Chapter 4. Funding for this project was provided first by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) of the United Kingdom and later by a generous start-up grant from The Ohio State University (OSU) for tenure-track faculty, which enabled me to return to China to conduct additional fieldwork. In the U.K., I am most grateful to my teacher at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), Michel Hockx, who continues to be a source of wisdom and guidance, as well to Henry Zhao for his energetic classes on critical theory and other members of the SOAS community including Cosima Bruno, Margaret Hillenbrand, and Andrew Lo. Chris Berry and Maghiel van Acknowledgments viii Crevel provided invaluable feedback on my research that helped see me through the process of writing this book. In the United States, my thanks go to everyone in OSU’s Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures for their friendship and support, and in particular to my colleagues in Chinese literature, each of whom shared their advice on this project at one stage or another: Mark Bender, Kirk Denton, Meow Hui Goh, and Patricia Sieber. Some parts of this book were originally published as articles. An earlier version of part of Chapter 1 appeared as “Identity Politics in Online Chinese Poetry Groups,” in the Postmodern China edition of Berliner China-Hefte/Chinese History and Society 34 (2008): 77–94, and a section of Chapter 4 appeared in a slightly different form in “Multimedia Quake Poetry: Convergence Culture After the Sichuan Earthquake,” China Quarterly 208 (2011): 932–50. All of the translations in this book, unless otherwise noted, are my own. Finally, I would like to express my thanks to the three readers at the University of Washington Press for their incisive and in some cases extremely detailed feedback and to Lorri Hagman for her patience, optimism, and seemingly miraculous achievement of guiding such an interdisciplinary book through to publication. Last but not least, thank you to all my friends and family around the world for your humor and love, and most of all to my partner, Di, whom I am incredibly lucky to have by my side no matter where life takes us. Verse Going Viral Is Zhang Ziyi beautiful or not? Some think she’s beautiful Some think she’s not Liu Ping who works in the same office as me Definitely thinks not But Zhang Yimou thinks she’s beautiful Ang Lee thinks she’s beautiful Jackie Chan thinks she’s beautiful Wong Kar-wai thinks she’s beautiful Henry Fok’s grandson thinks she’s beautiful Steven Spielberg thinks she’s beautiful Now even Feng Xiaogang thinks she’s beautiful So is Zhang Ziyi beautiful or not? My opinion is Zhang Ziyi is more beautiful than Zhang Yimou More beautiful than Ang Lee More beautiful than Jackie Chan More beautiful than Wong Kar-wai More beautiful than Henry Fok’s grandson More beautiful than Steven Spielberg And more beautiful even than Feng Xiaogang But Not as beautiful as Liu Ping who works in the same office as me —li wei, “Is Zhang...