Bei Dao
Bei Dao is China’s pre-eminent contemporary poet. Bei Dao - Northern Island - is the pen name of Zhao Zhenkai born in Beijing in 1949. After the Cultural Revolution, which interrupted his formal studies, he co-founded the literary magazine Jintian (Today), which first appeared as a big character poster on Democracy Wall. At the time of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 he was in Berlin and subsequently forced into exile. Bei Dao has published four collections of poetry in English: The August Sleepwalker, Old Snow, Forms of Distance and Landscape Over Zero. Unlocking will be published later this year. Bei Dao currently lives in Davis, California.


© ČTK / Martin Gust