About Hai Zi

Hai Zi, a young contemporary poet, formerly known as Cha Haisheng, was born in 1964 in Cha Wan, Gahe, outside Anqing, Anhui Province. Growing up in the countryside, he was admitted to the Law Department of Peking University in 1979 at the age of 15, and began to write poetry during his college years. After graduating from the university, he was assigned

to work in the Philosophy Department of the China University of Political Science and Law. With his brilliant genius, miraculous creativity and keen intuition, Hai Zi created a large number of literary works, including poems, novels and plays, in an extremely poor and monotonous living environment. Hai Zi was awarded the Special Prize of the May Fourth Literary Award of the First Art Festival of Peking University (1986) and the Honorable Mention of the Third October Literary Award (1988). Some of Hai Zi's works have been included in nearly 20 poetry anthologies, but most of his works have yet to be compiled and published. on March 26, 1989, he committed suicide by lying down on a railroad track in Shanhaiguan. During the poet's short life, he maintained a holy heart. He was not understood by the world for a long time, but he was one of the poets in the history of China's new literature in the 1970s who pushed the limits of literature and life with all his might. With brilliant talent, miraculous creativity, keen intuition and extensive knowledge, he produced nearly two million words of poems, novels, dramas and essays in an extremely poor and monotonous living environment. His major works include the long poem But Water, Water, the long poem Land, the verse drama Sun (unfinished), the first choral drama Messiah, the remnants of the second choral drama, the long poem Great Zaza (unfinished), the drama Deicide, and about 200 lyrical short poems. He has co-published with Xichuan a collection of poems, Urn of the Wheatland. He was awarded the Special Prize of the May Fourth Literary Grand Prix of the First Art Festival of Peking University in 1986 and the Honorable Mention of the Third October Literary Award in 1988. Some of his works have been included in nearly 20 poetry anthologies, but most of his works have yet to be organized and published. He believes that poetry is that which returns freedom and silence to mankind. It has been said that Hai Zi was a martyr of the agricultural civilization, while "the train, the symbol of the technical civilization, ran over his body, and he returned to his long-absent home from the mist of the intersection of the technical civilization and the agricultural civilization". Hai Zi thus became a symbol, between the agricultural civilization and the technical civilization, a bit like Mr. Wang Guowei, a great scholar at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, who was also a martyr to the old culture and embraced the heart of the scholars.