about the author

Born in 1952, Shu Ting (舒婷)is a famous Chinese poet. She grew up during the Cultural Revolution, a movement that called for the destruction of the “Four Olds,” one of these four being culture. Forced to work in a factory, she rebelled against the government by writing poetry. Her reputation grew through poems she published from 1969 and onward in the underground journal Jintian (“Today”). Shu Ting came to be associated with what we know as “The Misty School” of Chinese poets, so named by the government for their obscure or “misty” qualities but now one the most internationally acclaimed movements in modern Chinese literature. She was eventually invited to join the official Chinese Writers’ Association, and she won the National Outstanding Poetry Award in both 1981 and in 1983.