“The Answer” was written in 1976 and was soon taken as a representative poem of the Chinese Democracy Movement. According to Eliot Weinberger, Bei Dao’s English translator, this seven-stanza poem is the movement’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” (Weinberger 108). It is also regarded as the poet’s affirmation of freedom and independent thinking.

The poem is rich in metaphors, and the tone is direct and determined, enhanced by a strong sense of loss, anger, and disbelief. The first stanza encapsulates pairs of contrasting metaphors: debasement and nobility, the inhuman and the human. Each meets its different outcome in the chaotic situation. When debasement survives, nobility suffers from perished fate.

Based on the description of the previous, infuriating stanza, the poet raises his question: Why are indifference, ignorance, and darkness still in control when “the Ice Age is over” and “The Cape of Good Hope has been discovered”? “The Ice Age” can be taken metaphorically as cruelty, and the “Dead Sea” as the situation of China at that time.

The poet presents himself in the third stanza as a man of responsibility, a representative voice for the people who otherwise lack a means of expression. The phrase “paper, rope and shadow” refers, respectively, to the poet’s poem, his means of survival, and his physical self.

The next stanza is full of doubt when the poet declares that he is skeptical about what is preached and overtly challenges, with defiance, whatever comes up. The emphatic line “I—do—not—believe!” is a rejection of brainwashing. It is made more specific in the next stanza, where the poet utters his refusal to follow blindly the dictates of propaganda. The implication is clear: social reality is bleak, authority may not remain powerful all the time, the dream of democracy is not a dream in vain, and revenge is on the way.

The next stanza foresees the coming storm and shows the poet’s determination and expectation: as an individual he would rather endure all suffering and let there be a choice and a change for a better, more democratic life. The last stanza embodies a sign of promise. There comes an opportunity, an awakening; and history and tradition help to make possible such a change. What happens today will be a meaningful lesson to generations to come.

Bei Dao’s poems are known for their “intensely compressed images and cryptic style” (http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/beidao.htm). As an example of his early poetry, The Answer shares what translator Bonnie S. McDougall characterizes as “a revelation of the self inhabiting two unreal universes: a dream world of love, tranquility and normality, that should exist but does not, and a nightmare of cruelty, terror and hatred, that should not exist but does” (McDougall 10).

Bibliography

Anonymous. “Bei Dao (1949–).” Author’s Calendar. Available online. URL: http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/beidao.htm. Accessed on April 20, 2025.

Bei Dao. The August Sleepwalker. Translated by Bonnie McDougall. New York: New Directions, 1988.

Weinberger, Eliot. “A Note on the Translation.” In Bei Dao’s Unlock, translated by Eliot Weinberger and Iona Man-Cheong. New York: New Directions, 2000.

Categories: British Literature, Literature

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