Gu Cheng (顾城，1956-1993) was a famous Chinese modern poet, essayist, and novelist. He was a prominent member of the “Misty Poets”, a group of Chinese modernist poets.

Gu Cheng began life in privilege as the son of a prominent party member. His father was the army poet Gu Gong. At the age of twelve, his family was sent down to rural Shandong because of the Cultural Revolution(as means of re-education) where they bred pigs. There, he claimed to have learned poetry directly from nature.

In the late 1970s, Cheng became associated with the journal “Today” (今天) which began a movement in poetry known as “menglong”(朦胧) meaning “hazy, “obscure”. He became an international celebrity and travelled around the world accompanied by his wife, Xie Ye(谢烨). The two settled in Auckland, New Zealand in 1987 where Cheng taught Chinese at the University of Auckland.

In October 1993, Gu Cheng attacked his wife before hanging himself. She died later in a hospital.

– Wikipedia

Sometimes I guess I am expecting too much from Wikipedia since there should be so much ‘humanity’ behind each entry, when I read a topic been cut and dried so much that it’s reminds me a impersonal, academic study. This is the case of Gu Cheng.

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