As a cofounder of the PRC's first unofficial literary journal Jintian (Today) in1978, Mang Ke was born in 1950. He began writing poetry as a sentdown youthin Baiyangdian, rural Hebei province, during the Cultural Revolution. One of theprogenitors of what would later be called Obscure or "Misty" poetry, his spare,impressionistic poems were among the first to break free of the imposed discourseof Maoism towards an imagebased literary style that left space for both expressionand interpretation. He currently makes his living as an abstract painter and lives inSongzhuang, an artists' colony on the outskirts of Beijing.
