Misty Poets

The Misty Poets (Chinese: 朦胧诗人; pinyin: Ménglóng Shīrén) are a group of 20th century Chinese poets who reacted against the restrictions on art during the Cultural Revolution. They are so named because their work has been officially denounced as "obscure", "misty", or "hazy" poetry (menglong shi). But according to Gu Cheng, "the defining characteristic of this new type of poetry is its realism--it begins with objective realism but veers towards a subjective realism; it moves from a passive reaction toward active creation." The movement was initially centered on the magazine Jintian (Chinese: 今天; pinyin: Jīntiān; literally: "Today"), which was founded by Bei Dao and Mang Ke and published from 1978 until 1980, when it was banned.

Guo Lusheng is among the earliest poets of the zhiqing generation poets and was an inspiration for several of the original Misty Poets. Five important misty poets, Bei Dao, Gu Cheng, Shu Ting, He Dong and Yang Lian, were exiled after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Jintian was resurrected in Sweden in 1990 as a forum for expatriate Chinese writers.