lit a candle 3h agoMy mother in law gave me a worn paperback of Girl Beside the Huai River the year I moved to St Louis, said it would teach me patience with a new language. I read it on the porch all that first winter. Ninety six years old, still painting until the end.
Their story
Yan Zhen was a Chinese poet, painter and calligrapher whose verse made him one of the best known young voices of the early People's Republic. Over a career of seven decades he published more than 30 books of poetry, prose and fiction, edited several of China's literary journals, and later…
Yan Zhen was a Chinese poet, painter and calligrapher whose verse made him one of the best known young voices of the early People's Republic. Over a career of seven decades he published more than 30 books of poetry, prose and fiction, edited several of China's literary journals, and later won an international audience as a painter. He died in Beijing on 7 November 2026, reported to be 96.
He was born in 1930 in Laiyang, in Shandong Province, and grew up largely in a small village, where his father was a primary school teacher. At the age of 13 he left home to join the revolutionary forces resisting the Japanese occupation. After 1949 he worked in journalism and literary publishing, becoming editor of the Jiaodong Daily.
Yan published his first volume of poetry at 24. His sequence of poems "The Sound of the Bell" appeared in the first issue of the national journal Poetry, in January 1957. Zang Kejia, the journal's editor, singled him out as one of five outstanding young poets of the new republic, alongside Li Ying, Yan Yi, Zhang Yongmei and Liang Shangquan. By 1963 and 1964 he was regarded as among the most successful young poets in the country. His works include Girl Beside the Huai River (1955), Jiangnan Song, Guqin Spring, the long narrative poem Mountain Oath and the essay collection Peony Courtyard.
During the Cultural Revolution he was denounced by Red Guards, and he and his wife were sent to different parts of the countryside. After it ended he returned to literary life in Anhui, serving as editor of Anhui Literature, deputy editor of the journal Qingming and founding editor of Poetry Journal, and he became a council member of the China Writers Association. In 1985 he was part of the first delegation of Chinese writers to travel abroad after the Cultural Revolution, visiting a number of American cities.
In later life Yan turned increasingly to painting in watercolour and oil. His work was shown at the National Art Museum of China, a watercolour was sold at Sotheby's in New York in 2007, and in 2008 he held his first New York exhibition at the Neuhoff Gallery. He lived and worked in Beijing.
His death was reported by the Shanghai newspaper Wenhui Bao. He was the last surviving member of the five young poets named by Zang Kejia, following the recent death of Liang Shangquan.
Biography adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0); Wenhui Bao via china.com.
Photos
1Yan Zhen in July 2015
by People Forever
That book did the same for me, borrowed from a library sale in Ohio of all places.