China Seminar | 12 October 1989

China's Underground Literature

Beiling Huang (Bei Ling), poet, writer, and Lecturer at Shenzhen University since 1986, has participated centrally in China’s democracy movement. In 1976 he participated in the “April 5th Movement’; In 1979 he was involved in the officially banned “Xidan Democracy Wall” in Beijing, and in art and literature activities sponsored by the unofficial magazine Today Despite warnings and criticisms throughout 1981, he initiated and sponsored the campus movement of democratic election of the Student Union which almost caused his expulsion. In 1987 he received the “Honor Prize” in the First Culture and Art Festival of Beijing University, and in 1988 won second place in the First Explorative Poem Contest held by The Poetry Press, Beijing. In 1987 he was representative in China for the literary magazine First Line and in 1989 was appointed Special Literary Editor at Hai Nei Wai magazine in New York. He has been a guest lecturer at Harvard University and has participated in Sino-American Poetry Talks at the Asia Society in New York. Currently he is on the wanted list and has been collaborating on a 10 year history of underground literature with Liu Xiaobo, dissident in custody.