Life in poetry

Celebrated poet Ya Hsien has lived a colorful life marked by the tumultuous events of the past century. But it is his idyllic childhood in North China that provides the inspiration for his work. Mei Jia reports.

When a 17-year-old Ya Hsien waved goodbye to his mother in his hometown of Nanyang, Henan province, to join the Kuomintang army heading to Taiwan in 1949, he didn't expect the departure would be the last time they saw each other. "I left as if I was going on a hike with my schoolmates, not knowing that I would be cut off from correspondence with the mainland and lose contact with my mother for decades," the poet says. "I was only able to return home some 42 years later. But when I returned, I found my hometown unfamiliar and my mother long passed away."

In the years of separation from home and family, writing poems offered him a way to express his nostalgia and remember his hometown. His most productive writing period in the 1950s and '60s earned him quite a reputation. Today he is hailed as a phenomenal poet who bridges the time between Ai Qing in the 1930s and '40s and the post-1970s period of Bei Dao.