Hai Zi: The Catcher in the Rye

Hai Zi was one of the most important poets in the late stage of the "obscure poetry" movement. He passed the entrance examination of the Law Department of Peking University in 1979 at the age of 15, and began to create poems in his university years. On March 26, 1989, Hai Zi laidhimself on railway tracks near Shanhaiguan to commit suicide at the young age of 25.

Hai Zi's poems with emphasis on poetic rhetoric are characterized by beautiful and elegant language, recommending the state of transcending secular customs. Relying on his glorious talent, his ingenious imagination and creativity and his extraordinary diligence and will, he completed poems, novels, dramas and dissertations with a total length of nearly 2 million Chinese characters in his short life. Hai Zi was deeply influenced by German poet Holderlin and philosopher Heidegger, and unable to restrain his feeling for unexplainable mysterious things. Therefore, his poems often pursue the spiritual experience of integration between God's words and man's words. Under the poet's pen, the night often mysteriously integrates with harvests, land and skies.

In his poems, Hai Zi persistently stuck to ideals, exploration of the spiritual world and the essence of art and the pursuit of life values. The three main themes of Hai Zi's more than 300 short lyric poems and long poem The Sun - Seven Books are: painful pursuit of love, obsession with and praise of land, and reflection on life and death.

Love is an important theme of Hai Zi's poems. Hai Zi fell in love four times in his lifetime but failed every time. In love, Hai Zi was a failure, so he sank into deep pain. Hai Zi's love poems are simple and sweet. Some are touching and romantic, but more of them express his pain, struggle, pursuit of perfect love and the sadness and despair brought by his failure to get love. For example, Four Sisters is a poem full of desperate cries, showing the poet's loneliness and pain in front of love. The "four sisters" are embodiments of the four women Hai Zi loved, and that "desperate" wheat head is perhaps a symbol of life, expressing his sadness brought by love. Hai Zi's love poems do not pursue aesthetically pleasing language or purposely pursue passionate release of emotions but combine truth, goodness and beauty and manifest the glory of human nature.

Obsession with and praise of land is another theme of Hai Zi's poems. For example, "All brothers in the world will embrace in wheat fields in the east, south, north and west, and four good brothers in wheat fields recalling the past and reciting their poems will embrace in wheat fields" (Wheat Field in May); "Existence does not need to be perceived for land shows it itself, and happiness and pain are also used to rebuild the homeland's roofs; contemplation and wisdom are abandoned: if you cannot bring wheat ears, please face land honestly, remain silent and maintain your dark nature" (Rebuilding the Homeland). Hai Zi was a farmer's son. "Land" fostered his body and sheltered his soul. Hai Zi was an urban vagrant and could hardly integrate into urban life. The nature and countryside not opened up by the modern civilization became Hai Zi's eternal spiritual homeland. He was obsessed with land and villages, eulogized harmonious and quiet rural life, showed deep love for the agricultural society, and looked for his spiritual destiny in it.

Besides, Hai Zi also reflected on life and death in poems - for example, long poems Riven September, Poem of Death and Song of the Suicide. He was concerned about human life and its relationship with history. Among Hai Zi's such poems and even all his poems, the most widespread one is the short lyric poem Facing the Sea, with Spring Blossoms created in 1989:

From tomorrow on, I will be a happy man;

Grooming, chopping,

and traveling all over the world.

From tomorrow on,

I will care foodstuff and vegetable,

Living in a house towards the sea,

with spring blossoms.

From tomorrow on,

write to each of my dear ones,

Telling them of my happiness,

What the lightening of happiness has told me,

I will spread it to each of them.

Give a warm name for every river and every mountain,

Strangers, I will also wish you happy.

May you have a brilliant future!

May you lovers eventually become spouse!

May you enjoy happiness in this earthly world!

I only wish to face the sea, with spring flowers blossoming.

The "sea" is an important image in this poem. The "sea" was the poet's spiritual home and the place where he placed his ideals. "Facing the sea" could let the poet feel peace, while "spring blossoms" could bring warmth and hope. Hai Zi lived alone in his lifetime, solitary and lonely. He was eager to communicate with people and be an ordinary person, but he could hardly bear the noisy and trivial family life and ultimately still returned to the secular living state and mental state. The poet expressed good wishes for everything in the world but still chose to "face the sea with spring blossoms." This poem with plain and refreshing language depicts the real and vivid secular life full of vitality in the poet's imagination, expresses the poet's longing and yearning for secular common life, embodies the poet's good wishes for the world, and reflects the poet's sincere and kind soul.

Hai Zi's creations not only belong to a period, but also are eternal poems of mankind. Therefore, Hai Zi was an important and indispensable poet in the history of Chinese modern poetry.