Mirror
Dark and dazzling experiments from a poet who died too young, but who wrote to “transform one’s self and life."

This bilingual posthumous collection in Fiona Sze-Lorrain’s inspired translation is a detailed, retrospective look at Zhang Zao, one of the more brilliant poetic minds from China of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He moved to Germany in 1986. After returning briefly to China in 2004, he taught in Beijing as of 2007.  These poems span Zhang Zao’s short career, beginning with “Mirror,” one of his earliest and best known works, and ending with “Lantern Town,” written less than two months before his death in Germany at 47 in 2010. As Bei Dao writes in his afterword, Zhang “possessed both a thorough grasp of European literature and culture and an introspective understanding of the broad, profound Asian aesthetics: between the two philosophies, he sought a new tension and melting point.” Mirror is his first book translated into English, bilingual in Chinese and English on facing pages.

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Mirror
Dark and dazzling experiments from a poet who died too young, but who wrote to “transform one’s self and life."

This bilingual posthumous collection in Fiona Sze-Lorrain’s inspired translation is a detailed, retrospective look at Zhang Zao, one of the more brilliant poetic minds from China of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He moved to Germany in 1986. After returning briefly to China in 2004, he taught in Beijing as of 2007.  These poems span Zhang Zao’s short career, beginning with “Mirror,” one of his earliest and best known works, and ending with “Lantern Town,” written less than two months before his death in Germany at 47 in 2010. As Bei Dao writes in his afterword, Zhang “possessed both a thorough grasp of European literature and culture and an introspective understanding of the broad, profound Asian aesthetics: between the two philosophies, he sought a new tension and melting point.” Mirror is his first book translated into English, bilingual in Chinese and English on facing pages.

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Mirror

Mirror

Overview

Dark and dazzling experiments from a poet who died too young, but who wrote to “transform one’s self and life."

This bilingual posthumous collection in Fiona Sze-Lorrain’s inspired translation is a detailed, retrospective look at Zhang Zao, one of the more brilliant poetic minds from China of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. He moved to Germany in 1986. After returning briefly to China in 2004, he taught in Beijing as of 2007.  These poems span Zhang Zao’s short career, beginning with “Mirror,” one of his earliest and best known works, and ending with “Lantern Town,” written less than two months before his death in Germany at 47 in 2010. As Bei Dao writes in his afterword, Zhang “possessed both a thorough grasp of European literature and culture and an introspective understanding of the broad, profound Asian aesthetics: between the two philosophies, he sought a new tension and melting point.” Mirror is his first book translated into English, bilingual in Chinese and English on facing pages.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781938890352
Publisher: Zephyr Press
Publication date: 05/13/2025
Series: Jintian Contemporary Chinese Poetry
Pages: 248
Product dimensions: 5.75(w) x 7.87(h) x 0.79(d)

About the Author

Zhang Zao 张枣 is a key literary figure of the “third generation” of Chinese contemporary poetry. Born in 1962 in Changsha, Hunan province, he rose to national fame as one of the “Five Sichuan Masters.” Greatly admired by his peers for championing a complex yet harmonizing fusion of traditional writing and avant-garde flair in his work, and for his versatility in many foreign languages, Zhang was a recognized literary critic, translator, and scholar. In 1986, he moved to Germany. For several years, he served as poetry editor for the literary magazine Jintian and taught at the University of Tübingen. He returned briefly to China in 2005 to lecture at Henan Universityand the Minzu University of China. Zhang Zao died in Tübingen in 2010 at the age of 47.

Fiona Sze-Lorrain is a writer, poet, translator, musician, and editor who writes and translates in English, French, and Chinese. She is the author of a novel Dear Chrysanthemums (Scribner, 2023), five poetry collections including Rain in Plural (Princeton, 2020) and The Ruined Elegance (Princeton, 2016), and fifteen books of translation, most recently Moonlight Rests on My Left Palm by Yu Xiuhua (Astra House, 2021). Longlisted for the 2024 Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction and the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation, she was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, and the Best Translated Book Award. As a zheng harpist, she has performed around the world. She lives in Paris.

Bei Dao is considered one of China's most important and influential writers, and has authored several books of poetry, essays, short fiction, and a memoir. His poems have been translated into more than 30 languages. He was a leading member of the avant-garde movement “Ménglóng Shi Rén,” or “Misty Poets” in the 1970s and ‘80s, and much of his work appeared in the underground journal, Jintian, which he co-founded in 1978. After the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and massacre in 1989, Bei Dao was exiled from China and spent many years living abroad. He now lives in Hong Kong.

Read an Excerpt

MIRROR


 

Once regrets come to mind

plum blossoms fall

Like watching her swim to the other shore

Like climbing a pine ladder

Beauty exists in danger

Why not watch her return on horseback

cheeks warm

with shame. Head bowed, she answers the Emperor

A mirror awaits her forever

Let her take her usual place in the mirror

Looking out the window, once regrets come to mind

plum blossoms fall over the southern mountain


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Poetry
Asian Poetry
Chinese Poetry
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