Haizi and contemporary Chinese romantic poetry

Modernism and Post-Modernism are widely viewed as the mainstreams of the poetic scene in contemporary China. However, we can still find some Romantic poets of great importance, which illustrates the revival of Romanticism in contemporary China. Haizi, a talented poet who has been exerting great influence on contemporary and younger poets since his death, is a great example which profoundly suggests the opportunity Romanticism has and the dilemma it confronts in the cultural context of contemporary China. The intimacy between Haizi and Romanticism lies mainly in the self-positioning and self-fashioning. Haizi’s emphasis on ego, subjectivity and will, his claim of poets to be “kings,” is a quite unique phenomenon in the contemporary Chinese scene where poets are marginalized and their subjectivities are weakened by the society and even themselves. Therefore, Haizi’s poetry not only reveals its connection with Romanticism, but also the tension between the ideals of Romantic poetics and the reality of contemporary Chinese society.