Flash Cards is a primer of modern Chinese life-constructing a complex philosophical vision from swatches of daily events and observations. As Yu Jian has written about his own work: “It is possible to see eternity-to see everything-in a teacup or a candy wrapper. Everything in the world is poetry.”
YU JIAN, born in 1954 in Kunming, China, is a poet and film director. He began writing poetry in the early 1970s, influenced both by classical Chinese poetry and modern Western writers such as Walt Whitman. Yu Jian is a major figure among “The Third Generation Poets” who came after the “Misty Poetry” movement of the early 1980s.
A Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, RON PADGETT was named Officer in the Order if Arts and Letters by the French government. In 2009 he received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. His translations include The Complete Poems of Blaise Cendrars.
WANG PING’s books include two collections of poetry, The Magic Whip and Of Flesh & Spirit, and the cultural study Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China. Her novel The Last Communist Virgin was winner of the 2008 Minnesota Book Award in the category of Novel and Short Story.