Resistance moon: The watchful eyes of future generations

Like the Jews, the Chinese know from playing the long game. As a culture, they measure time in terms of centuries and are willing to plant seeds they know they’ll never see grow to fullness, content with the understanding that their children or grandchildren or great-grandchildren will taste the fruit.

This means that individuals, communities, whole generations have lived hard lives under successive repressive regimes, but the civilization keeps moving forward.

And their poets understand that if you want to transmit a message, you use language in a way that encodes it. Those not in the know won’t be able break the code, but it’ll reach those who have the key; they’ll be able to decipher it.

Contemporary poet Bei Dao (nom de plume of Zhao Zhenkai) has said that “Each language keeps the secret code of a culture.” Even though China has a unifying written language, “the local accent keeps their secret, keeps their code.” And that’s how poets, especially the group known as the Misty Poets, who resisted the repression of the Cultural Revolution, protested.

As a teenager, Bei Dao was a member of the Red Guards, but as he began to withdraw from pro-Mao activities, he was “re-educated” as a construction worker. But no amount of re-education could suppress his poems.

“The Answer” is one of Bei Dao’s most famous works. It was written in response to the 1976 Tiananmen demonstrations and became a focal point of the pro-democracy movement. It was featured on posters during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Bei Dao was out of the country at the time of this second suppression and he has worked in exile ever since. (He did not return to China until 2006.) You can see how it might get up the noses of the Party elite.

“The Answer”

Debasement is the password of the base,

Nobility the epitaph of the noble.

See how the gilded sky is covered

With the drifting twisted shadows of the dead.

The Ice Age is over now,

Why is there ice everywhere?

The Cape of Good Hope has been discovered,

Why do a thousand sails contest the Dead Sea?

I came into this world

Bringing only paper, rope, a shadow,

To proclaim before the judgment

The voice that has been judged:

Let me tell you, world,

I—do—not—believe!

If a thousand challengers lie beneath your feet,

Count me as number thousand and one.

I don't believe the sky is blue;

I don't believe in thunder's echoes;

I don't believe that dreams are false;

I don't believe that death has no revenge.

If the sea is destined to breach the dikes

Let all the brackish water pour into my heart;

If the land is destined to rise

Let humanity choose a peak for existence again.

A new conjunction and glimmering stars

Adorn the unobstructed sky now;

They are the pictographs from five thousand years.

They are the watchful eyes of future generations.

But I find “Accomplices” to be perhaps more applicable in this time of our own cultural revolution. Bei Dao reminds us that freedom lies somewhere between the hunter and the hunted, that it is a 24x7 effort to maintain it. We who do not resist are accomplices.

“Accomplices”

After all those years

mica glints in the mud,

evil as it is bright,

tiny suns in vipers' eyes.

Branch roads appear and disappear

in the hands of trees.

Where did that fawn go?

Only cemeteries could assuage

this desolation, like tiny cities.

Freedom is only the distance

between the hunter and his prey.

As we turn to look,

a bat describes a sweeping arc

across the vast canvas of our inheritance

and vanishes into the dusk.

Nor are we free of guilt.

Long since, in history's mirror,

we became accomplices,

awaiting the day we might

seep down through the layers of stone

into subterranean pools

to contemplate darkness again.