I would like to dedicate Lost Poet to my father, who goes by his pen name, Ye Zhou 野舟. In English, this name literally translates to “Wild Boat.”

Back in the mid-1980s, Ye Zhou was an electronic engineering college student in China. He ironically spent most of his time hanging out with friends who majored in Chinese language. With barley any digital products like cellphones or video games to consume themselves, Ye Zhou’s generation fell in love with poetry, the pulchritude of language. Instead of developing any interest in his engineering major, Ye Zhou read and wrote a mountain of poetry, and soon became very popular among his friends and classmates for his exceptional writing talent.

Trials of the East 审判东方

In 1986, Ye Zhou and his colleagues published a revolutionary poetry collection, called 审判东方, or Trials of the East. This collection necessarily proclaimed the golden age of poetry, right amid the golden years of my father’s youth. Poetry was not just artwork, it was also an essential form of communication for a generation caught among a society of changing ideals. Amidst this turmoil, Ye Zhou was a sensitive youth who was not afraid of feeling for the sake of feeling, nor was he afraid to translate these feelings into sublime poetry echoing of pain, frustration, longing, sadness, and sometimes happiness and romantic sentiments. Some of his poems are so abstract his friends couldn’t even understand what he was trying to say, other than “it’s so awe-inspiring and deep.” Ye Zhou had poured full an ocean all by himself.

Yet now, he has drifted far beyond the horizon. Ye Zhou is gone. Ye Zhou is no longer in college, society no longer revolves around poetry, the golden years have passed. In an effort to bring back the artwork of this generation known only to a few, I would like to attempt translating Ye Zhou’s poetry for English readers, so that more people may learn about his writings and the world he carries within each character.