Over Autumn Rooftops by Hai Zi

Translated by Dan Murphy

In Over Autumn Rooftops, Host Publications is proud to make available to English-speaking audiences the work of this profound and beloved poet. The verse of Hai Zi illuminates the poverty and desperation of his peasant upbringing, touching down on the wheat fields of western China. Zi also reflects on China's literary and cultural history, but he is not simply a cultural poet or a nature poet – his opulent wisdom transcends all of this. 

In the bitter-sweetness of autumn, the poet seeks–and finds in the end–something that transcends and endures.

                                                         Michelle Yeh, University of California, Davis

Hai Zi is the pen name of the Chinese poet Zha Haisheng (查海生), one of the most famous poets in Mainland China after the Cultural Revolution. Born in 1964 to a peasant family in rural Anhui province, his early life took place during the chaos and economic disarray of the Cultural Revolution. At age fifteen he was accepted at China's most prestigious institution, Peking University, and four years later he became a professor at China University of Political Science and Law. In 1989, at the age of twenty-five, he ended his own life. But in the six years prior to his death, Hai Zi wrote over 250 short poems, a number of poetic plays, long poems totaling over 400 pages, and several short stories, leaving behind a brilliant legacy of his genius.

8.5" x 5.5"
271 pages