Ming Di is a Chinese poet based in America with six books of poetry in Chinese and four in translation, including River Merchant’s Wife (2012). She edited and co-translated New Cathay: Contemporary Chinese Poetry (2013) and co-translated The Book of Cranes (2015) and Empty Chairs: Poems by Liu Xia (2015).
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...
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
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
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...