Zhai Yongming

Early life Zhai was born and raised in Chengdu, China, in the southwest of Sichuan Province. Like many others in her youth, she was made to work in the countryside as part of the Maoist era's plans for a Cultural Revolution, which reflected the idealistic push for women's entrance in the workforce as a means of gaining national wealth. The hardships she endured during her two years of labouring became one of her main inspirational themes at the start of her career. Education Zhai enrolled into the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China in 1976 after her mandatory labour was done, graduating in 1980. Having majored in the study of laser technologies, she decided to work as an engineer at the Physics Research Institute, before eventually quitting in 1986 to pursue her poetry career. Career motivations & personal beliefs Zhai's reasoning for giving up the financial stability of her job at the Research Institute was that she felt too constricted by its rigorous environment, believing that her prospects for promotion were unsatisfactory. While this choice was shocking to her peers and family, Zhai reaffirmed that poetry was her own religion; it provided her with the freedom of expression she longed for and the ability to take control of her life, granting her more fulfillment than money and status could. The poet revealed her personal sense of duty as writer towards Chinese women who may not have the option to voice their opinions against societal injustices. She also points out her disdain for the pre-destined role of the 'female poet,' women writers who were only accepted as long as they did not threaten patriarchal norms with outspoken verse. One of her values as a writer lies in staying true to her roots: while she is not opposed to Chinese literary trends and the complexities of poetic verse, she wishes to follow her own intuition regarding poetic language and thematic choices. She stands by the knowledge that her status as a woman comes before her poet identity; her works continuously hold a conscious acknowledgement of women's oppression as she navigates the waves of Chinese literati culture. == Style and thought ==

Poetic influences Among her more notable poetic influences, a major inspiration for Zhai's early works is American poet Sylvia Plath, herself a world renowned feminist poet. Plath's confessional style and 'dark' imagery can be seen reflected in Zhai's poem cycles, especially in collective works like 'Woman' and 'Plain Songs in the Dark Night' and most explicitly in 'Song of the Café,' written in 1993 after Zhai's return from America. Main themes: gender, femininity, darkness, the subconscious mind and the dream Zhai's works predominantly rely on re-shaping normalized concepts gender and femininity, using imagery of darkness and the night to convey unquantifiable depths of emotion in her poetic dialogues. The poet exploits the night's traditionally 'feminine' connotations in Chinese culture to create metaphors for women's pain and explore their psyches under the quiet cover of moonlight. Her acclaimed poetry collection 'Woman' features poems exploring the subconscious feminine mind through such metaphors of darkness and dream, as well as providing a space where women who would normally feel invisible in the daytime can be 'seen' in the enlightening poetic space Zhai creates for them. Style from 80s to 90s Zhai's style of writing in the eighties consisted of viewing the world from a historical perspective while employing a distinctly structured and direct style of prose, though by the nineties her writing becomes more flexible and fragmentary regarding the specificity of language. Her nineties style also took on a reserved air, indicating a rise in maturity for the poet: upon returning from her two-year American stay, Zhai showed her growth as a writer in “Song of the Café” (1993), which featured realistic narrative modes through the characters’ perspectives as opposed to her usual confessional speaker. == Bibliography ==

Zhai's contemporaries and scholarly critics alike have dubbed her "the avant-garde poet of the third generation" due to her many progressive contributions to Chinese feminist literati culture, in addition to earning the title of a "stream of consciousness" poet thanks to her writing style. When faced with criticism for supposed hypocrisy in attacking patriarchal systems in "The Most Tactful Phrases" (2009), Chinese critic Deng Wenhua stood in defence of Zhai's poetic dialogues. Rather than hold the helm as an 'anti-patriarchy figure' for women, he stressed that the poet's main goal in altering her prosaic style was the exploration of methods to unravel gendered nuances in Chinese literary culture. ==References==