from Various (2003-2017)
Translated from the Chinese by Wang Zheng
Wildflowers on the Plateau
I am willing to raise so many little beauties
for anyone’s life
I am willing to relocate my motherland here;
here, I am willing to be someone
who will never grow bitter at the world
Like that little stream, nameless,
I am willing to let my tears run all day,
to prove how much I truly wish
to become a wild-haired old father.
(2003)
Sleeping Beside My Father
The night is utterly dark.
We sit inside this iron pot,
like two chopsticks Mother had yet to wash—
unable to pick up any food.
When a person leaves,
how much can he take with him?
I count the powders clinging to the stomach wall:
the large ones are pain,
the small ones are still that
midday when we buried the largest potato on earth
No one will nag us anymore.
Her words have sprouted into leaf buds
her hoe has rusted
and the fire she once lit has died
When I shivered and tried to rekindle it,
the flame had already moved
from the stove
to the incense table.
No one will ever sleep this close to you again
In the vast and pitch-dark countryside night,
no sleep will ever be that deep.
We held on until dawn.
I said: Father, let me sleep beside you once more
As soon as I spoke
I fell into the blank
you left for me.
I touched your bony feet—
from your toes
to your ankle
to your knee—
then back to my own chest,
where a heart beat faster and faster.
I heard a dog barking wildly outside the window
then as if recognizing who had come
it whimpered, sniffing
the foot-prints she could no longer lift from this world.
I reached for you again, trembling,
only to find
you were already sitting at the bedside, dressed.
So many dark patches
flashed across the plastic-covered window
Nothing familiar of you
nothing unknown of me
and never again the scraping of a pot bottom.
(2003)
The Terminator
After you, I will love no one else.
No more—never again.
After you, I will grow old in peace,
relearn the art of calmness.
A river bends at your ankle.
You know where the answer lies;
you know every wave is destined to die.
Once broken and flooding,
I too will turn into a dustpan,
a shovel,
or the sweat and tears
on your cheeks.
After me,
you will become the woman among women—
surrounded by children,
surrounded by stars.
And the river roars;
the dead waves revive.
Those like me, below the earth,
will gently shift our ankle bones
underneath.
(2005)
The Mushroom Speaks, the Wood Ear Listens
A mushroom and a wood ear
share the same basin
Two dried foods floating on the surface,
despising each other—
so black, so shriveled.
They confronted one another all night
At dawn,
two obese bodies squeezed in the water
The mushroom said: “Like this, like this…”
The wood ear heard,
but did not reply.
Both of them wanted
to return to the virgin forests
in the southwest.
(2011)
If Roots Could Speak
If roots could speak,
they would speak of darkness first,
then light.
They would tell you:
In darkness there is no nation;
in light, there is no you or me.
Here is damp;
there is dry.
An earthworm crossing a lonely grave
may need half a lifetime.
An ant climbs to the treetop
just for a single leaf bud.
If roots could speak,
they would say the underground
is better than the ground.
My dead mother
is still alive.
This year, she turns eleven.
I have seen her only once
in eleven years.
If roots kept talking,
they would speak of my childhood—
when I sat beneath a tree
and used a little shovel
to dig gently
into the earth.
(2012)
The Holly Tree
I slept in the holly tree through the night.
I was five that year,
chased up the tree by my father.
I hugged the trunk
and sang for a while
Night birds beat their wings in the bamboo forest.
When I quieted down,
they quieted too
When all of us were silent,
only the moon
roamed across the sky,
and Mother stood by the doorframe
weeping like a child.
(2013)
Okra
Okra is delicious however you cook it,
and lovely no matter however you pronounce it.
I remember the first time
I brought you to taste it
It was summer
The two of us sat by the window
at the restaurant named
after the Stove God of Chu Kingdom.
I flipped through the menu
and pointed at the okra:
“This one is good!”
I remember your satisfied look
from beginning to end
It was also my first okra—
the first time I realized
how empty the table would be
if we were not together.
(2014)
In the Dusk
My father walks back and forth in the dusk
He is always the last
to enter the house.
Except for his silhouette,
I can hardly recognize him.
As he grows more hunched,
sitting under the eaves at dawn
waiting for night to fall,
I recognize him even less.
Sometimes I pull up a stool
and sit across from him,
studying him wrinkle for wrinkle—
like a child forced into a photo studio
embarrassed
a little wronged
his rough hands resting
on his knees.
(2015)
The Pickled Fish Drips
Pickled fish drips water
under the white, steaming sunlight
A whole row of them drip—
fast to slow
clear to murky.
The final drop slides
from deep inside the fish’s eye
passes the fin
reaches the tail
gathering the last bit of strength
a fish has.
By then,
sunset has been digested by the earth
The evening wind tugs
the bouncing clothesline.
On the rope hangs a cotton coat
stuck with fish scales
Extremely heavy,
And then extremely
Light.
(2016)
Translator’s note
These translations present the poetry of Zhang Zhihao, a major literary voice from Wuhan—a city that, since 2020, has been burdened with global projections, panic, and misunderstanding. As scholars of affect such as Sara Ahmed have noted, emotions attach themselves to places, turning cities into “sticky objects” of global fear or desire. Wuhan became one such site, transformed into an abstraction in international discourse.
Zhang Zhihao’s poems offer something utterly different: they return us to the ordinary, the intimate, and the elemental. His work moves through family memory, rural landscapes, grief, and the daily negotiations of tenderness and endurance. In doing so, he refuses the flattening gaze that reduces a city to a single event or narrative.
Translating Zhang’s poems is, for me, a way to re-open Wuhan to the world—not as a symbol of crisis, but as a place of life. As Svetlana Boym reminds us, literature can resist monumental narratives by attending to the fragile textures of private experience. These poems show how a writer living in the city that became the epicenter of global imagination confronts personal loss, familial history, and the silent aftermath of collective trauma. My hope is that these translations allow readers to encounter Wuhan—and the people who live and create there—with new clarity, nuance, and compassion.
Zhang Zhihao is a prominent poet and prose writer from Wuhan, China. He is Director of Wuhan Writers’ Association, Vice Chair of the Hubei Writers’ Association, and a National Committee Member of the China Writers’ Association. His major works include Ku yu Zanmei (Suffering from Praise), Kuankuo (Breadth), and Gaoyuan Shang de Yehua (Wildflowers on the Plateau). Zhang has received numerous major literary honors, including the Lu Xun Literature Prize, the Chinese Media Literature Award, and the Chen Zi’ang Poetry Award presented by Poetry magazine. His writing is known for its clarity, compassion, and deep engagement with lived experience.
Wang Zheng is a poet, translator, and artist from Wuhan, currently working between Singapore and China. He holds a BA in Studio Art and Art History from Rice University and an MA in Aesthetics and Politics from CalArts, and conducted doctoral research at Nanyang Technological University. His literary and artistic work explores memory, identity, and the quiet intersections between personal experience and historical transformation. His poetry, fiction, and translations have appeared in literary journals across Mainland China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and in English-language magazines such as Voice & Verse, Queer Southeast Asia, Malaysia Indie Fiction, and The Asian CHA. He focuses on translating contemporary Chinese poetry shaped by social, geographic, and emotional complexity.