Originally published in the Literary Journal
Li Jingze / Vice Chairman of the Chinese Writers Association and famous literary critic
The winners of the Poetry Award for the Top Ten Outstanding Ethnic Poets of Contemporary China are: Jidimaga (Yi), Xiaoxue (Bai), Aldinfu Yiren (Sala), Shu Jie (Mongolian), Mu Axe (Hui), Altai (Mongolian), Liemei Pingcuo (Tibetan), NanYongqian (Korean), Na Ye (Manchu), He Xiaozhu (Miao) Ten poets who received this honor.
This is a golden minority. This selected poem includes the works of ten Ethnic Minority Chinese poets. They are certainly not the only ethnic minority poets in China, they are the ten selected by the editors among the ethnic minority poets in China.
Some of them are familiar to me, such as Gideimaga and Altai, whose names mark the people to which they belong, who stand in front of you, and you will immediately realize that he is from a distance, and that he carries the breath of a distance; their poems, such as Xiaoxue's poems, such as Aldinf Wingman's long poem "Shipwreck" and Liemepincuo's poetry short chapter, will make you feel the existence of another world order, a certain life arrangement and a life attitude.
Other poets, such as Shu Jie and Na Ye, as well as Wooden Axe, Nan Yongqian, and He Xiaozhu, I have never realized that their ethnic minority identity ——— modern life has a magical power to eliminate all marks and ignore all differences, and they walk in a large crowd, and no one will realize that they belong to a certain minority in the national sense. But now, as they stood here, it suddenly made me realize that there was a hidden depth in each of them. Reading their poems again at this time, the poems are different, because the poems have a different context; the fish must be put into the water, and the words and sentences take on new meanings in the context of the poet's presence.
Broadly speaking, poets are a minority, a very small minority, among human beings. In this regard, the poets themselves have expounded a great deal, and in human civilization there is probably no group that has maintained its minority status as continuously and resolutely as the poets——— the general trend of history is that the growing masses have digested the proud minority with a very strong appetite: the Confucians, the nobles; only the poets, this powerless and powerless minority, firmly guard their "holy grail" or "ark of the covenant", they think that they hold some special truth, Some kind of secret of the world that is revealed individually and selectively. Within them, of course, quarrels about doctrine often erupt. Their pride, introversion and quarrel, their manners and craftsmanship, have earned them both respect and suspicion and questioning. Frankly speaking, the people of this age may not like the poets among them, writing and self-writing are no longer a privilege, and the growing masses do not like a suspicious-looking minority to declare to them that there is a territory to be guarded in the language and writing that belongs to everyone.
Being a poet is difficult and lonely. From this you can understand why poets are far more "piling up" than novelists, most novelists belong to the majority, to the masses, at least in the dimension of reading and marketing, a huge and powerful mechanism to help them find the "same way" in the crowd; and the poets are destined to seek each other, the poets want to know the poets, and the poets have to identify their own minority in another and some other poets.
For the ten poets here and now, they contain another sense of minority, they belong to the minorities in the vast land of our motherland.
What does it mean to be a poet from an ethnic minority? When he roams the world, singing and chanting, what is his internal structure? What does their voice mean to us, for example, to me, a Han Chinese reader? These questions do not arise from this book alone, but involve an understanding of the history and characteristics of the Chinese language.
All ten poets wrote poems in Chinese. They come from nine ethnic groups, most of whom speak other languages. I don't know how well they master their respective native languages, but I am sure that inside them there are two pianos with very different tones and timbres. Do they need to translate internally? How does the sound of one piano sneak into the sound of another? Or is the sound of the piano that we hear echoing in the distance and depths of another piano, a dream of another piano?
Perhaps they no longer use their mother tongue for daily communication, and they are able to use Chinese without any obstacles, but in the poem, a phonetic breath still echoes, that is, the voice of his mother, the voice of his ancestors. I had read the old Manchu document in Chinese translation many years ago, and I had always wanted to hear someone read it aloud in the original Manchu language, because even after translation, the voice and breath of that language were still tenacious, carrying mountains, wilderness and strong bodies.
Similarly, the poems of these ten poets were written directly in Chinese, but their accents exposed them ——— rhythms, tones, and expressions of the body and the heart.
It's a language that is spoken in amazement in the early morning or late at night. The Book of Poetry used to be such a language, as fresh as the morning mist and colostrum, "sleepy and thoughtful", or "Han has a wandering girl", we can all feel that the language is aptly and innocently expressing the body and mind. Later we are not appropriate and innocent, because language continues to expand its power, and it acts like a sinister despot who has turned its rule into the purpose of its rule.
And texts such as the Secret History of the Mongols or the Manchu Old Archive contain a marginal and precious genealogy of the Chinese language: the long development of the Chinese written language is undoubtedly the result of brilliant civilization, but the most brilliant civilization is in danger of collapsing in its highest achievement——— which is almost imitating astronomical phenomena. For thousands of years, the Chinese language has suffocated itself several times because it is too complex, delicate or rigid, and it is covered and oppressed by layers of words and metaphors, like a mirror, covered with layers of dust and brocade, covering a mountain; at this time, it must be reborn, it needs a baby's heart, it needs another pair of eyes and another tongue, get up, get on the horse, expand new territories, accept new experiences, and get closer to people's living lives.
At this time, the voices of the Himalayas came, the voices of the ocean came, and the translation of Buddhist texts and the large-scale translation of Japanese and Spanish in the early twentieth century revived the Chinese language. But equally important and less striking is that, on the fringes of the Chinese language, the fierce and powerful shepherds and hunters come, they speak another language, a language from the steppes and the mountains, their metaphors are not rhetoric, they are conclusive connections between things, their words are shooting arrows at what they are referring to, and they may know at all that the boundless books are destroying the language, that they are making the people who speak it lose their flesh, their sharp eyes, their weakness and paleness.
They came, and their language was translated into Chinese, or they adopted Chinese directly, what kind of Chinese it was, concise, clumsy, bright, carrying out a new rhythm, shy, bold, like youth.
I have always believed that the contribution of ethnic minorities to the Chinese language is not fully recognized. This contribution has not ceased to this day. I have felt the sound and texture of knives and horseshoes in Zhang Chengzhi's pen, and I have seen the freedom and simplicity of children in the notes of an ordinary ethnic minority shop owner in the northwest. Now, in these poets, we can read another chinese language, as altai sang, which is the language that wakes up in the morning, as gedimaga sings, which is the flame generated from the "root of the mother tongue"...
They are a minority in the minority. When poets are questioned and ridiculed in our culture, it may be difficult for us to understand that the poets here, who still maintain the "honor of poetry", as Shu Jie put it, they are national poets, the halo has not dissipated, they are in the same line with the great wizards and singers in the history of the nation, the "psychics", they still solemnly recognize their mission: memory, imagination, chanting, inheritance, their writing is still closely related to the inner life of a nation.
This is the envy and lamentation of the poets of the Han people and other ethnic groups in the world, who, like us, feel the tremendous pressure of this modern world, but they really know that they have a deep root system under their feet, they have a hometown and homeland, and they can get definite support from there.
Eventually, they became a golden minority.
(This article is the preface to "Selected Poems of Ten Contemporary Chinese National Poets")