Zheng Min (

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of ...

: 郑敏) (18 July 1920 – 3 January 2022) was a Chinese

scholar A scholar is a person who pursues academic and intellectual activities, particularly academics who apply their intellectualism into expertise in an area of study. A scholar can also be an academic, who works as a professor, teacher, or researc ...

and modernist

poet A poet is a person who studies and creates poetry. Poets may describe themselves as such or be described as such by others. A poet may simply be the creator ( thinker, songwriter, writer, or author) who creates (composes) poems ( oral or wri ...

Early life and career

Zheng Min was born on 18 July 1920 in

Minhou County Minhou County (; Foochow Romanized: Mìng-âu) is a county in the eastern Fujian Province, China, it is under the administration of the prefecture-level city of Fuzhou, the provincial capital. The Min River flows in a southeast direction through ...

, China. She attended the Southwestern University of Kunming, where she graduated with a Bachelor's degree in philosophy in 1943. She first began publishing work during The War of Resistance, one of few female modernist poets doing so at the time. Zheng attended Brown University in the

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and earned her

Master's A master's degree (from Latin ) is an academic degree awarded by universities or colleges upon completion of a course of study demonstrating mastery or a high-order overview of a specific field of study or area of professional practice.

in literature in 1951, before returning to China in 1955. She is one of nine prolific modernist poets considered to be in the "Nine Leaves" school of poetry. While Zheng's work is by and large not considered to be feminist in nature, her position as a female poet in a largely male dominated area, her deviation from expected, traditional female writing, and her explorations of the female psyche in particular still leave her as an important figure in Chinese poetry.

Style

Zheng Min's early works are characterized by their lyricism, philosophy, and social realism. She is praised for her ability to combine all three, especially for her lyrical writing, and for her ability to create emotional depth. Zheng is also commended for blending traditionally masculine and feminine poetry styles, the latter being exemplified by her lyricism and the former by her philosophical influences and explorations of other typically masculine themes. Zheng's style is full of imagery and metaphor, and makes great use of her own sensory perception, but is also, in her own terms, "rooted firmly in sensibility." In this way, her poems are often introspective and profound, and Zheng shows a clear interest in exploring the mind through her works. Zheng's style has also earned her critics as well, however, as it is prone to cause some of her more extensive poems to feel disjointed and as though they lack a clear, unifying idea. Though a modernist poet, Zheng is credited with combining both modernist and traditional techniques in her work. While often employing the modernist tool of split ego, she also often wrote with longing and lament, particularly in her love poems, which are indicative of more traditional literary works. Unlike many later female poets, her works are not viewed as particularly feminist in nature. Rather, critics in the younger generation see them as fitting into the already existing patriarchal mold.

Personal life and death

Zheng died in

Beijing } Beijing ( ; ; ), alternatively romanized as Peking ( ), is the capital of the People's Republic of China. It is the center of power and development of the country. Beijing is the world's most populous national capital city, with over 21 ...

on 3 January 2022, at the age of 101.

Selected works

* ''Zheng Min Shiji 1942-1947'' he Collected Poems of Zheng Min 1942-1947* ''Jiuye ji'' he Collected Poems of the Nine Leaves

References

1920 births 2022 deaths Writers from Fuzhou People's Republic of China poets Chinese women poets Chinese centenarians Poets from Fujian 20th-century Chinese women writers 20th-century Chinese poets 21st-century Chinese women writers 21st-century Chinese poets Brown University alumni Academic staff of Beijing Normal University Educators from Fujian People from Minhou County Women centenarians Chinese expatriates in the United States {{China-poet-stub