So tonight to the Academy of American Poets
who have graciously co-sponsored Bei Dao's visit to Arizona,
because of their participation in the Reading
Series we're able to send him on a bit of a tour
throughout Arizona.
So he's able to meet audiences, poets, and writers
in both Tempe through a visit at ASU on Monday night,
and then tomorrow up at Prescott College.
So we continue to be grateful to the Academy
for their sponsorship.
Tonight's reading will be bilingual
with Bei Dao reading the poems in the original Chinese
and Dennis Evans reading the English translations.
Many of you know Dennis Evans in his role as associate Dean
for external affairs in the College of Humanities.
In that capacity he's been a great ally and supporter
of the Center's community programs, but many of you
will not know that this evening has special significance
to him, because he spent 1986 in Beijing on a Fulbright
lectureship in American literature in Beijing.
And in 1982, he and his wife Nancy
taught at the Foreign Languages Institute in Dalian.
Dennis has been an admirer of Bei Dao's work
ever since he picked up a collection of stories
by a young Chinese writer he had not yet
heard of in a bookstore in Hong Kong in 1985.
It turned out to be the first Chinese University
Press of Hong Kong edition of Bei Dao's fiction work, Waves.
Before introducing Bei Dao, I'd like
to invite another member of the University of Arizona community
to offer a few words of welcome.
As many of you know, Professor Fang Lizhi
is now an internationally renowned professor
in our Department of Physics, specializing
in the structure and formation of the universe and cosmology.
Many of you may not realize that before coming to the United
States, he was one of the most important and influential
voices promoting democracy, educational reform,
and human rights in China.
To give you an idea of his influence
let me ask you the last occasion you
can recall when scores of students
slept outside a lecture hall overnight
in the middle of winter, even a Tucson winter, much less
a Beijing winter, so that they could be assured entrance
to hear the next day speaker.
We're rapidly approaching the 10th anniversary
of the democracy spring, and June 4th massacre
at Tiananmen Square.
Events that focused world attention on China and changed
profoundly the lives of many, many people,
including Bei Dao and Fang Lizhi.
Professor Fang and his wife were forced
to take refuge in the US embassy in Beijing for more than a
year before being permitted to leave the country.
Yet even as we mark the losses brought
to mind by this upcoming anniversary,
the vitality of the ongoing work of Bei Dao and Fang Lizhi
and many others like them should be a source of inspiration
and renewed resolve for us all in the rewards
of nurturing the freedom of mind that
is at the heart of democracy.
May I please present to you Professor Fang Lizhi.
Thank you.
Good evening.
It is my great honor to have this opportunity
to say a few words about Bei Dao.
You know, Bei Dao and me there are many gaps.
We have professional gap.
He is a poet, I'm a physicist.
Quite different at work.
I think I have probably the only physics up
beside my wife in the room.
We have age gap.
I'm probably older than him, at least half generation.
So why do we have so many gaps, but become friends?
Really friends.
You know, yesterday he arrived here.
He first called me and asked me to take him to see around
the site that were here.
I first time I heard his name, Bei Dao
is early 1980s, about 1980-something.
At that time, China to just open.
And before 1980s they are a movement
so-called Beijing Spring.
That happened in 1978, 1979.
At that time many young people, younger than me,
is very active for promote the democracy and the freedom.
Among them, the most famous poet is Bei Dao.
So I heard the name Oh, Bei Dao.
And become more deep because once
I met my classmate in high school.
One of my classmate at high school
is the head or the principal of the high school at that time.
That high school told me, Bei Dao is from this high school.
OK.
Same as me.
You have same high school.
OK.
Same background.
Now I go more detail.
OK.
Then I never met him personally for about 10 years
until in 1989 the events happened.
In the very beginning of that year
I wrote a letter to authorities trying
to appeal there to take a Amnesty,
general Amnesty to release all political prisoners.
That a prisoner signed the letter, I saw it.
Then one day later, almost 10 years ago this time,
Bei Dao and the other two young men went to my home.
They say the support of my letter, and they want to make--
organize other letters.
And that this first time I met him.
Then this letter, we made the letter with my computer.
At that time China computers were very few.
I have a computer there.
Type Chinese characters come with my version.
So I typed it, my wife and I typed it the letter for him.
He wanted to distribute that letter.
That is the day, very beginning the events in that year.
Then his letter is signed by many famous writers,
at that-- more 33 writers.
That very influenced that letter.
And there is a big snowball-- become bigger and a bigger.
Many letters and then finally, Chinese student to go straight.
So that is-- in terms of Chinese wall, a physical wall.
Bei Dao to me do the initial condition
to push that [INAUDIBLE].
So we can really become friend.
And then just like I said, we both cannot stay in our home
countries.
We left.
And since then we met--
I remember in 1990 Bei Dao and my wife and we met in Denmark.
And then when we moved to Princeton,
he also went away our home in Princeton.
Then we met in New York.
Now today we met in Tuscon.
Very sad we cannot be in China right now.
So there's a history.
We both, two person the history is
something we show you the history of China history.
Race in the last 20 years almost [INAUDIBLE]..
So I think of Bei Dao, the poet were
making more of course more deep describe that pure old
and he's the fading.
And the poet is just a tool maybe not really related
to today's events.
Let me say a few words about today's events.
You know, today is the [INAUDIBLE] reading.
Today is the March 3.
March 3 to me is if I was a child,
it's a very important date.
Not only me.
I think most of the my generation
as a child knows this date.
This date is March 3.
In ancient China, it's a tradition, you know,
day to take and party.
And the point of party?
I don't know, I think that the my generation always knows,
even when I was child.
I was to be asked to read, to remember
a very famous the poem even by the Tang
dynasties in the Du Fu.
I remember as a child be asked, read that, reading that,
remember that.
三月三日天氣新，長安水邊多麗人
Like that.
You know, as a child who is reading the poem realize that.
Easy to remember, you know, easy to remember.
That's a very famous poem, I remember.
And also, I remember that who we studied the catagraph.
Also the very famous Chinese poem the catagraph,
the 王羲之.
The very famous, you know, his catagraph,
the 蘭亭序 is also about March 3.
Also March 3.
March 3 is day at that time to get together, take a party,
to go is to expel the evils and the ghosts of that year.
OK?
Every year.
So take a party besides the waters or lake or river.
The participants should be at [INAUDIBLE] points.
And the [INAUDIBLE] and beauties.
Today we have poems.
Also, we have a lot of beauties here.
Only thing we are no river.
But we have River Road very close.
So, I believe today is the raining.
We also gave us, we expelled.
All evils and ghosts will not touch you this year.
Thank you.
Thank you so much, Professor Fang.
Bei Dao's work in English appears
in seven volumes from New Directions Press,
including The August Sleepwalker, 1990, Waves, 1990,
Old Snow, 1991, Forms of Distance,
1994, and Landscape Over Zero, 1996.
His work has been translated into 25 languages, including
Danish Dutch, French, German, Japanese and Swedish.
After serving as visiting scholar
at several universities in Europe, Holland, Norway,
and Germany, he came to the United States
in 1993 under the sponsorship of poet, Clayton Eshelman, who
invited him to be the Mccandless chair in Humanities
at Eastern Michigan University.
From 1995 to 97, he was visiting professor
in Chinese and Japanese at the University of California
in Davis where he continues to live.
He's no longer teaching but working
now as a freelance writer.
Garcia Lorca once said, that the police
are the mother of metaphor.
Such is the marvel and power of Bei Dao's poetry,
dwelling in the privacy of subjectivity
while reaching metaphorically out into the political domain.
His translator, David Hinton, has
written, the more private and introspective his work became,
the more subversive political it was.
Individuality is the mysterious space
where political freedom and self-determination become
conceivable.
It was perhaps this space itself more
than the political revolution it makes possible
that the protesters were demanding at Tiananmen Square.
End of Hinton quote.
Bei Dao's poems give us a voice, startling and new.
The clarity of images and economy
of form of China's ancient masters.
The weird and thrilling leaps of surrealism.
The passion born of political necessity.
And metaphors so unexpected and right,
one feels awakened again and again
to a world of possibilities.
It is an honor to introduce to you, Bei Dao.
[AUDIENCE CLAPPING]
Thank you.
I say a few words about this event.
It's a great honor to meet Professor Fang [INAUDIBLE]
again, yeah, since we've been exiled for over ten years.
I still remember after we signed this opening letter, one day I
heard she has been in danger.
She had been in danger because the government and authorities
want to put him into prison.
So I still remember that day I went to his home,
we make conversation by writing on the paper.
So I said, you are in danger.
You had to be careful.
Then, it's--
[SIDE CONVERSATION]
But in China, you know, that time we couldn't talk freely.
So even we couldn't talk, make really conversation.
But finally, yeah, we've been forced--
we were forced to live in exile.
But I think, anyway, China still has hope.
And I think China has been changed since last ten years.
As a poet, I think Professor Fang mentioned
that we have this such thing different but at least
we are former schoolmates.
And we were involved in the same human rights activities.
And sometimes, I envy of him because I
think he's dealing with the future,
I'm dealing with this moment.
He's watching sky, I'm the digging hole.
So, and it makes me sometimes very nervous, hard to get
sleep.
And he said he can sleep anywhere at any moment.
So, that is lucky.
Yeah.
OK.
I'm going to read, poems with Dennis.
So, we are going to read.
And then Dennis will read English first.
So, then I'm going to read Chinese second.