From: Kevin Lawrence kglnyc@gmail.com
A poem by Yu Xihua (“I’d cross half of China to sleep with you”) goes viral
The following is a poem by poet Yu Xihua (余秀華) that seems to have lit up some of the Chinese-speaking world’s internet chat-space recently:
“穿过大半个中国去睡你”
其实，睡你和被你睡是差不多的，无非是
两具肉体碰撞的力，无非是这力催开的花朵
无非是这花朵虚拟出的春天让我们误以为生命被重新打开
大半个中国，什么都在发生：火山在喷，河流在枯
一些不被关心的政治犯和流民
一路在枪口的麋鹿和丹顶鹤
我是穿过枪林弹雨去睡你
我是把无数的黑夜摁进一个黎明去睡你
我是无数个我奔跑成一个我去睡你
当然我也会被一些蝴蝶带入歧途
把一些赞美当成春天
把一个和横店类似的村庄当成故乡
而它们
都是我去睡你必不可少的理由
And here’s an English language article touching on the poem as a phenomenon and comparing the poet to Emily Dickinson (!!??!!):
source: http://www.wantchinatimes.com/news-subclass-cnt.aspx?id=20150119000110&cid=1604
“Hubei woman dubbed China’s Emily Dickinson after poem goes viral”
Yu Xihua. (Internet photo)
Yu Xihua
Yu Xihua has emerged from an obscure part of rural China to take the country’s poetry world by storm after her poem Chuan Guo Da Ban Ge Zhong Guo Shui Ni (“Cross Half of China to Sleep with You”) went viral on the country’s blogosphere.
The poem’s popularity and critical acclaim has led some to dub Yu, 38, China’s version of renowned 19th century American poet Emily Dickinson.
Yu, who had not heard of Dickinson before the epithet was applied to her, lives in Hengdian village under the jurisdiction of Zhongxiang in central China’s Hubei province. Born in 1976, a lack of oxygen during childbirth left her with congenital cerebral palsy which affects her movements and speech to this day.
Due to her disability, Yu quit education as a high school junior and married a man 12 years her senior after they were introduced in 1995. While they are still technically together, Yu describes her 19-year marriage to Yi Shiping as a “sin from my youth.” There is no love in the marriage, she says, and while they used to argue continually they are now engaged in a cold war where they simply ignore each other.
Yi told reporters who tracked him down that although he and his wife are incompatible in terms of personality, their marriage still has to go on.
Yu rarely sees her husband however as his work takes him out of the village for most of the year, while their 18-year-old son is currently attending university in Wuhan, the Hubei capital. She now lives with her parents and says she spends most of her days pacing the yard, reading books, cleaning and feeding rabbits.
Yu, who has been innundated with interview requests since her poem became an internet sensation, says she does not think the piece is particularly well written and has no idea why it has struck a chord with so many people who say they can feel all the pain, regret and emotion it expresses. She says she does not recall when she first started writing poetry but tells people who insist on asking that it was probably 1998, when she wrote a poem called Impression. She has since written more than 2,000 poems, she says.
The rural poet is infamous in her village for not caring about her appearance and never wearing makeup, though she brushes this off by saying that poor people like her need only worry about whether there is food to eat and clothes to wear. She also has a reputation for not backing down from a fight, having been involved in several arguments with people online. She once wrote a poem about a person who insulted her on an online forum.
Yu said she does not like it when she is labeled as the “disabled poet” or “peasant poet” as this restricts who she is. She doesn’t avoid the reality of her disability, she says, but hopes that people can focus more on her poems than who writes them.
“I am first and foremost a woman, then a peasant, then a poet,” she said, adding, “but if you forget to ask about all my labels when you read my poems, then I respect you.”
Yu has been contacted by several publishers hoping to publish her works and says she has signed with two of them. In the future she hopes to travel, read more and write down her feelings whenever she experiences an emotional connection to something. She also hopes she can finish one of her novels within the next couple of years.
The unexpected success has not affected Yu, who says not all attention is necessarily positive and that writing poetry is “a very personal thing.” She compares her fame to the wind, saying that it will soon be gone and things will go back to the way they were.
“I’ll have more and more readers, but there might only be one or two in the whole world who truly understands me, understands my poems,” she said.