As a co-founder of the PRC's first unofficial literary journal Jintian (Today) in 1978, Mang Ke was born in 1950. He began writing poetry as a sent-down youth in Baiyangdian, rural Hebei province, during the Cultural Revolution. One of the progenitors of what would later be called Obscure or "Misty" poetry, his spare, impressionistic poems were among the first to break free of the imposed discourse of Maoism towards an image-based literary style that left space for both expression and interpretation. He currently makes his living as an abstract painter and lives in Songzhuang, an artists' colony on the outskirts of Beijing.

Translated by: Lucas Klein, Huang Yibing, Jonathan Stalling