HKU

Prof. Bei Dao
General Information
Title: Professor of Humanities
Telephone: (852) 3163 4392
Fax: (852) 2994 3105
E-mail: ceas@cuhk.edu.hk
Address: Centre for East Asian Studies
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Shatin , NT, Hong Kong

Biography
Prof. Bei Dao is the penname of Zhao Zhenkai, the most distinguished poet of his generation and considered by many to be one of the major writers of modern China. Born in 1949, he began writing poetry and fiction during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), and by its end he had already achieved fame as an underground writer. During the late 1970s and 1980s, his poetry was published in a large range of literary magazines in China and began to attract attention abroad. His poetry has now been translated into over thirty languages, including English translations of his poems in Unlock (2000), Landscape Over Zero (1996), Forms of Distance (1994), Old Snow (1992), and The August Sleepwalker (1990), his stories in Waves (1985), and his essays in Midnight’s Gate (2005) and Blue House (2000). His most recent collection of essays on poetry, entitled Rose of Time, was published by Oxford Press University in Hong Kong in 2005.

From his earliest work, Bei Dao has developed a new language for poetry, seeking love, truth and the strength to pierce the darkness against a background full of violence and falsehood. Bei Dao’s achievements have been recognized by his election as honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Other awards and honours include the Aragana Poetry Prize from the International Festival of Poetry in Casablanca, Morocco, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Swedish PEN Tucholsky Prize, and the Jeanette Schocken Literary Prize in Germany.