The sixth collection by China's foremost contemporary poet, Bei Dao, was greeted as perhaps his finest on its publication in America. The 49 poems were written in the USA, and have been translated into English by Eliot Weinberger (the distinguished essayist and translator of Octavio Paz and Jorge Luis Borges) in collaboration with the historian Iona Man-Cheong and with Bei Dao himself. Saturated with startling, surreal imagery and oblique political references, this book shows the restless development in style which is the hallmark of the authentically innovative poet.