Chinese · b. 1949
Zhao Zhenkai was born in Beijing the year the People's Republic was founded, was sent to the countryside as a Red Guard turned construction worker during the Cultural Revolution, and began writing in secret. In 1978 he and Mang Ke founded Today, the first unofficial literary journal in the People's Republic, and pasted it on walls in Beijing. The poems that came out of that circle were attacked as menglong, misty or obscure, and the name stuck to the movement. His line I do not believe, from The Answer, was chanted at Tiananmen Square in 1989. He was abroad when the square was cleared and was not allowed to return for many years, moving between Sweden, Denmark, Germany and the United States before settling in Hong Kong to teach. He has been shortlisted for the Nobel repeatedly, edits Today from exile, and writes essays and memoir as well as the short, cold lyrics that made his name.