In November 2013, China Labour Bulletin published five poems by the worker poet Xu Lizhi, translated by Lucas Klein. Since then, an anthology of Xu’s work entitled A New Day has been published in China, and his poems have steadily gained international recognition.
Xu Lizhi in Shenzhen. Photograph. Southern Weekend
The award-winning writer and translator, Eleanor Goodman has translated ten of Xu’s poems, published below, and describes here how she was drawn to Xu’s work:
I first came across Xu Lizhi’s poetry in the film Chinese Verses, a documentary that follows six different manual labourers who also write highly accomplished poetry. As I translated the poetry and then the subtitles for the film, I was immediately attracted to Xu’s straightforwardness, honesty, and darkness. Although his life was clearly unhappy - indeed, he committed suicide a little over a year ago at the age of 24 by jumping from the 17th floor of a building in Shenzhen not far from the Foxconn factory where he worked - there is very little self-pity evident in his poetry. Rather, he casts a cold eye on the larger society, on the conditions in which he worked, and on himself. His reality was one that millions of other people face across China, but particularly in the south, which has become a centre of production and exploitation. His “poem of shame” (I Swallowed an Iron Moon) is not a personal one, but a public and national one.
The poems that I’ve chosen to translate here offer a glimpse into his life and also his creatively cynical view of the world. One of those poems, which is essentially the information given on the label of a jar of peanut butter, is cast into a completely new light by the title: “Obituary for a Peanut.” This off-kilter, startling humour (is it humour at all?), or elsewhere, a twist that sets the poem into a different relief, is typical of the best of Xu Lizhi’s work. He keeps the reader (and translator) on her toes, and given his rhetorical skill and highly topical subjects, he has become an important voice in Chinese poetry, one that was silenced much too soon.
I Swallowed an Iron Moon
I swallowed an iron moon
they called it a screw
I swallowed industrial wastewater and unemployment forms
bent over machines, our youth died young
I swallowed labor, I swallowed poverty
swallowed pedestrian bridges, swallowed this rusted-out life
I can’t swallow any more
everything I’ve swallowed roils up in my throat
I spread across my country
a poem of shame
A New Day
I want to look at the ocean again
to see the vastness of my half lifetime of tears
I want to climb a tall mountain again
to try to call back my lost soul
I want to lie in a prairie
and leaf through the bible my mother gave me
I want to touch the sky
and stroke that swath of pale blue
But I can’t do any of that
so I will leave this world
No one who knows me
should be surprised by my leaving
There’s no need to sigh, or feel sorrow
I came at the right time, and will go at the right time too
Photograph: CLB
I Know a Day Will Come
I know a day will come
when those I know and don’t know
will enter my room
to collect my remains
and wash away the darkened blood stains I’ve shed across the floor
rearrange the upturned table and chairs
toss out the moldering garbage
take in the clothing from the balcony
someone will help me write the poem I didn’t have time to finish
someone will help me read the book I didn’t have time to finish
someone will help me light the candle I didn’t have time to light
last will be the curtains that haven’t been opened for years
someone will help me open them, and let the sunlight in for a while
they will be closed again, and nailed there deathly tight
the whole process will be orderly and solemn
when everything is tidy
they will all line up to leave
and help me quietly shut the door
Terracotta Army on the Assembly Line
On the line are:
Xia Qiu
Zhang Zifeng
Xiao Peng
Li Xiaoding
Tang Xiumeng
Lei Lanjiao
Xu Lizhi
Zhu Zhengwu
Pan Xia
Lian Xuemei
manual laborers who work night and day
wearing
antistatic clothing
antistatic hats
antistatic shoes
antistatic gloves
antistatic wristbands
all at the ready
awaiting their orders
and at the ring of a bell
they’re thrust back into the Qin dynasty
Meditation
After finishing this poem,
I will go to meditate in the willow grove
I will watch the sky above the mountains, as the setting sun
lets cicada chirps and lake water
wash the mortal world, and a visitor’s heart
and in the dusk I will whisper pardon, forgiveness,
absolution, compassion……
River / Bank
I stand on the roadside watching the road’s
constant flow of pedestrians and cars
I stand under a tree, under a bus sign
watching the constant flow of water
the constant flow of blood and desire
I stand on the roadside watching the constant flow of people
they’re on the road watching my constant flow
they’re in the river, I’m on the bank
they struggle to swim with bare arms
the scene infects me
I hesitate about whether I want to go into the river
and struggle with them, gnash my teeth with them
I hesitate, until the sun sets over the western mountains
Photograph: Peng Key
Waiting in Line
The packed crowds in this city
crawl up and down the streets
crawl up and down the pedestrian bridges, into the subway
crawl up and down this earth
one lap around is one life
this fire-driven fire-singed species
busy from birth to death
only at the moment of death do they not cut in line
they lower their heads, follow in order
and burrow back into their mothers’ wombs
Single-Dish Menu: Twice-Cooked Meat
Garlic scape twice-cooked meat
Bitter melon twice-cooked meat
Green pepper twice-cooked meat
Dried tofu twice-cooked meat
Potato twice-cooked meat
Cabbage twice-cooked meat
Bamboo shoot twice-cooked meat
Lotus root twice-cooked meat
Onion twice-cooked meat
Smoked tofu twice-cooked meat
Celtuce twice-cooked meat
Celery twice-cooked meat
Carrot twice-cooked meat
Beansprout twice-cooked meat
Green bean twice-cooked meat
Pickled bean twice-cooked meat
Xu Lizhi twice-cooked meat
Obituary for a Peanut
Merchandise Name: Peanut Butter
Ingredients: Peanuts, Maltose, Sugar, Vegetable Oil, Salt, Food Additives (Potassium sorbate)
Product Number: QB/T1733.4
Consumption Method: Ready to consume after opening the package
Storage Method: Before opening keep in a dry place away from sunlight, after opening please refrigerate
Producer: Shantou City Bear-Note Foodstuff Company, LLC
Factory Site: Factory Building B2, Far East Industrial Park, Brooktown North Village, Dragon Lake, Shantou City
Telephone: 0754-86203278 85769568
Fax: 0754-86203060
Consume Within: 18 Months
Place of Production: Shantou, Guangdong Province
Website: stxiongji.com
Production Date: 8.10.2013
Rented Room
About ten square meters of space
cramped, damp, never seeing the sun
in here I eat, sleep, shit, think,
cough, have headaches, get old, sick but not dying
again and again in the dusky lamplight I stare blankly, laugh stupidly
pace back and forth, sing softly, read, write poems
every time I open the window or the grated door
I’m like a dead man
slowly pushing open the lid of his coffin
My Friend Fa
You’re always holding your lower back with your hands
just a young guy
but to the other workers, you look
like a pregnant woman in her tenth month
now that you’ve tasted the migrant worker life
when you talk of the past, you always smile
but the smile doesn’t cover over hardship and misery
seven years ago you came alone
to this part of Shenzhen
high-spirited, full of faith
and what met you was ice,
black nights, temporary residence permits, temporary shelter….
after false starts you came here to the world’s largest equipment factory
and began standing, screwing in screws, doing overtime, working overnight
painting, finishing, polishing, buffing,
packaging and packing, moving finished products
bending down and straightening up a thousand times each day
dragging mountain-sized piles of merchandise across the workshop floor
the seeds of illness were planted and you didn’t know it
until the pain dragged you to the hospital
and that was the first time you heard
the new words “slipped disc in the lumbar vertebra”
and each time you smile when you talk about the pain and the past
we’re moved by your optimism
until at the annual New Years party, you drunkenly
grasped a liquor bottle in your right hand, and held up three fingers with your left,
you sobbed and said:
“I’m not even thirty
I’ve never had a girlfriend
I’m not married, I don’t have a career—
and my whole life is already over.”
Read the selected poems in the original Chinese here.
Eleanor Goodman’s book of translations, Something Crosses My Mind: Selected Poems of Wang Xiaoni (Zephyr Press, 2014) was the recipient of a 2013 PEN/Heim Translation Grant and winner of the 2015 Lucien Stryk Prize. A collection of her own poetry, Nine Dragon Island, which was shortlisted for the Drunken Boat First Book Prize, will be published early next year.