Ming Di

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Ming Di is a poet from China based in the US. The author of seven books of poetry in Chinese and one in collaborative translation, River Merchant’s Wife (2012), she has compiled and co-translated New Cathay: Contemporary Chinese Poetry, Empty Chairs: Poems by Liu Xia, The Book of Cranes, and New Poetry from China 1917–2017. For her translations of English poetry into Chinese, she received the Lishan Poetry Award and the 2021 Best Ten Translator Award in China.

  • A small clutch of elderly women with face tattoos, garbed in native dress

    Two Poems from China

    By Gao Qiongxian
    November 2023
    Gao Qiongxian
    Photo by Feng Weixiang (2012)Prophet When crows fly over the villages Panic erupts like a flash flood Soon after, as Nanmusa has prophesied A plague spreads along the valley Some life soon evaporated …
  • A painting of a woman in Renaissance-era dress

    A Glance

    By Zheng Min
    May 2022
    Zheng Min
    Workshop of Rembrandt van Rijn, Young Woman at an Open Half-Door (1645), oil on canvas, 102.5 x 85.1 cm, Mr. and Mrs. Martin A. Ryerson Collection, The Art Institute of Chicago / CC0 Public…
  • A photograph of downward rolling hills, planted in rice. A cluster of rice heads peek up from the bottom of the frame in the foreground

    Golden Rice Sheaves

    By Zheng Min
    Autumn 2021
    Zheng Min
    Photo by Artur Kraft / Unsplash Golden rice stands in sheaves in the freshly cut autumn field. I think of many exhausted mothers and see beautiful, wrinkled faces along the road at dusk. This is…
  • A photograph of Yu Xiuhua writing on a laptop

    Two Poems

    By Yu Xiuhua
    July 2018
    Yu Xiuhua
    Still from Still Tomorrow (2016), dir. Jian Fan, produced by Youku Tudou, Inc. Crossing Half of China to Sleep with You To sleep with you or to be slept, what’s the difference if there’s any…
  • A black and white photo of a ball of aluminum foil, shrouded in darkness, except for a strip of focused light on its right side.

    Two Poems

    By Liu Xia
    January 2018
    Liu Xia
    above Liu Xia prepared her goodbye for her husband, Nobel Prize winner Liu Xiaobo (1955–2017), in a poem and a series of photographs titled The Lonely Planets (courtesy of the author). For m…
  • Liu Xiaobo, 1991 / Courtesy of Wang Ya

    A Poem from China in Memory of Liu Xiaobo

    September 6, 2017 Liu Xia
    Liu Xiaobo, 1991 / Courtesy of Wang Ya Translator’s note: This photo of Liu Xiaobo swimming surfaced on the Internet after the sea burial in Dalian, China. Those of us who were hear…
  • What One Leaf Tells

    Two Poems

    By Ming Di
    May 2016
    Ming Di
    What One Leaf Tells In the wind, questions to heaven bang the white poplar. Answers fracture – a thousand white leaves. A thousand blameless mouths. A thousand. Ten thousand colorless excuses; I pi…