Xi Chuan
Xi Chuan (Chinese: 西川; born 1963), pen name of Liu Jun (Chinese: 刘军), is a poet, essayist, and translator. He is considered one of the most influential and celebrated contemporary Chinese poets. His poems have been said to "carry a sense of the world’s plentitude and of the world’s puzzlement." In addition to his poetry, he has published two essay volumes, one book of criticism, a play, and translations of works by Pound, Borges, and Miłosz, and others. Xi Chuan was born in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province and raised in Beijing. He attended a foreign-languages school for diplomats, an unusual opportunity at a time when most schools were closed. At Beijing University, he wrote a senior thesis on Ezra Pound's translations of Chinese poetry, earning an English degree. That's when he adopted his pen name, Xi Chuan (meaning "West Stream"). After college, he worked as a magazine editor for Huangqiu (Globus) and launched Qingxiang (Tendency), an independent literary journal that ran from 1988 until it was shut down in 1992, after only 3 issues. From 1990 to 1995, he was one of the editors of the unofficial magazine Modern Han Poetry. He also acted in Jia Zhangke's 2000 underground film Platform.