ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
Wang Jibing grew up in rural China with a dream. He wanted to be a writer, but it was the 1990s. Much of China was still very poor, and his parents did not agree with this dream. Wang's father burned the manuscript of the first novel he wrote, telling Wang that he should instead take part in the country's urban growth. Wang, who is now 56 years old, followed his father's orders, and for years, he's worked as a food delivery driver.
In between takeout orders though, he's stuck to his dream. He's managed to write more than 6,000 poems, many of them on scraps of paper. And just a few weeks ago, a collection of his poems titled "Low Flight," won the Lu Xun Prize, one of China's most prestigious literary awards. Eileen Cheng-yin Chow has been following Wang Jibing's work. She's a professor of Chinese and Japanese cultural studies at Duke University. Eileen, welcome.
EILEEN CHENG-YIN CHOW: Hi. How are you?
SCHMITZ: I'm well. Thanks so much for joining us. I wanted to start by analyzing Wang's most popular poem. It's called - loose translation here in English - "Man In A Hurry." In Chinese, the title is "Gan Shijian De Ren."
I was able to get some background on this poem from a great post by writer Anthony Tao. He says that Wang wrote this poem after a work shift where he was given two wrong addresses. He had to run up six flights of stairs multiple times. People were slamming doors in his face, and the rest of his deliveries that day were all late.
I would love for you to read the Chinese version of this poem, but for efficiency's sake, I would love to you - take the honors and read the English translation of this for us. And because you're a professional translator, I understand that you translated the poem yourself.
CHOW: Yes. So "Gan Shijian De Ren", "A Man Rushing For Time."
(Reading) Rushing wind from air, rushing knives from wind, rushing fire from my bones, rushing water from flames. Seasons don't exist for a man rushing for time. Only one stop, and then the next stop. The world is an address, as is Wang Village. Every day I run into couriers, flying here, flying there, striking the earth with their feet, setting off sparks.
SCHMITZ: Why did this poem resonate so much with people?
CHOW: I feel like Wang Jibing, you know, is part of a larger group of new worker poets. So there was already a kind of appetite for stories and poetry by a lot of these new migrant workers in the cities, and almost all of them have the same origin story, which is that one of their poems or one of their essays, short fiction, goes viral. So you can say that this is China's internet poetry.
I think that the reason this particular poem by Wang resonates probably is because everybody has this experience. As you know, looking for a place to talk to you, I just climbed up a flight of stairs. I'm totally out of breath. So - and to imagine a delivery worker who does this day in, day out is something that is instantly identifiable but also completely alien because China has become one big delivery service app. It's the easiest place really to get takeout or delivery or anything, and it's cheap. So everybody has on - been on the other side of the door.
SCHMITZ: That's really interesting. I mean, as you mentioned, Wang is part of this big genre in Chinese writing. This is called new workers' literature. It's prose and poetry written by blue collar workers. Tell us a little more about this. How big is this genre becoming inside of China?
CHOW: Well, what's interesting is, if you think about the whole dictate of New China since 1949, but really since Mao's Yan'an talks in '41, he called for something that the intellectual left had been calling for all through the '20s, '30s and '40s, which is not to speak for workers, but to let soldiers, peasants and workers speak for themselves.
SCHMITZ: Let the proletariat speak.
CHOW: Precisely - and to promote mass literacy. And so in 1941, a little bit ironically, in Mao's talk at Yan'an about art and culture, he condemned Lu Xun, which is ironically the name of the prize that Wang Jibing won named after Lu Xun. And he said that we have to write for the new proletariat. So you could say that from the founding of the People's Republic, these should have been the main characters both as subjects and objects.
But in truth, of course, there's always been the literati, not just pre-modern, but modern, and workers tend not to be part of a highly educated literary scene. However, after opening up and reform, so many rural workers drifted into the cities, and a lot of them found outlets in writing poetry, writing prose. And so there's such a thing as new workers' literature, really known probably after 2000.
SCHMITZ: And, you know, as you mentioned, you know, the preeminent figure of Chinese communism, Mao Zedong, called for this. I'm just curious, how does China's Communist Party today see these writers? Does the party embrace this type of writing?
CHOW: I would say, by definition, they have because the reason we're talking about Wang Jibing today is he just was one of the winners of the Lu Xun Literature Prize, which is given out every four years by the Chinese Writers Association, which is an official party organ. So the fact that he's gotten this official stamp of approval, not to mention that he himself is part of the Writers Association, shows that this is officially sanctioned and encouraged literature.
SCHMITZ: And I would imagine a lot of his work would not, like, overtly criticize the party or its policies, correct?
CHOW: No, no. He makes - you know, sometimes he expresses frustration at the state of things. But he never talks about anything systemic.
SCHMITZ: I read that despite winning this award and despite his literary success, he says he does not plan on quitting his food delivery job. What do you make of that?
CHOW: I don't know if that's a posture or not, or just maybe he's just a really good guy who enjoys delivering parcels and food. So I'm not sure I know the answer for it. Maybe it's his personality. He's very humble. He's also said that he doesn't think of himself as a writer, which is interesting for someone who's been part of the Writers Association for a decade and is, you know, a serious writer. But I think it's also his recognition of the dignity of work and time. And so that's nice, you know, right? And so it doesn't surprise me that he says he still wants to work because it's also his subject.
SCHMITZ: That's Eileen Cheng-yin Chow. She's a professor of Chinese and Japanese cultural studies at Duke University. Eileen, thank you so much.
CHOW: Thank you.
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