Celebrating New Sinology

人能弘道，非道弘人

Yesterday saw the first snow of the season and today the sun was out. Evening closed in quickly and the jackdaws crowing in the bare tree outside only added to my bleak isolation. So, I composed this doggerel verse, a soliloquy by and for me.

— Xu Zhangrun, 13 December 2025

Professor Xu Zhangrun, legal scholar, essayist and outspoken critic of the Xi Jinping era, remains becalmed in far west Beijing. Since 2019, his movements have been restricted to China’s capital district and he survives on a meagre stipend covertly donated by friends and his savings. Fired from his job in the Faculty of Law at Tsinghua University for a famous jeremiad, stripped of his professional standing as a nationally recognised educator and writer, banned from publishing and exiled from China’s burgeoning digital empire, Professor Xu has nonetheless refused to bow down and, since the authorities can find no crime of which to accuse him (and that’s not for want of trying), he continues to write. As he remarked in So It Begins, written in response his receiving of the Human Rights Award from Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg in May 2025,

Ensnared from the start in what has been, and essentially remains, a tyranny, I knew just how far I could go, but it was simply not in my nature to be a submissive and acquiescent bystander to what has unfolded in China. Ultimately, all I did was to pursue the moral duty incumbent upon a scholar simply to ‘speak up’.

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In translating the following poem, I drew on lines from Maya Angelou and Talking Heads that resonated with its message. The last line of the translation contains a reference to The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S. Eliot. Lines from yet another poem by Maya Angelou also came to mind:

The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.

— Maya Angelou, Caged Bird

We conclude with ‘Red Cockatoo’ by the Tang poet Bo Juyi 白居易《紅鸚鵡》. We are grateful to Isabel Hilton for suggesting this work. As we have previously observed, Rock Stands and Mud Washes Away. For more on the poet’s resilience, see the Xu Zhangrun Archive.

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The rubric of this chapter in Celebrating New Sinology —人能弘道，非道弘人 — is drawn from The Analects of Confucius (15.29) 《論語·衛靈公》, translated by Simon Leys as:

The Master said: “Man can enlarge the Way. It is not the Way that enlarges man.”

子曰：人能弘道，非道弘人。

— Geremie R. Barmé
Editor, China Heritage
15 December 2025

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Xu Zhangrun in China Heritage in 2025

• ‘So it Begins, with the Written Word’ — Xu Zhangrun Accepts a Human Rights Award, 12 May 2025
• Dies Irae — June Fourth 2025, 31 May 2015
• Xu Zhangrun Mourns Jerome Cohen, 25 September 2025
• Proof of Life — Xu Zhangrun in Barbed Wire, 8 November 2025

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Surprise and Awe,
my heartfelt companions

依然止不住對這個世界滿懷驚嘆

Xu Zhangrun

translated by Geremie R. Barmé

 

Long ago I abandoned any hope from life,
yet neither in manner nor in appearance do I submit.
Each day I open my eyes, look out and see the sun
then come repeated sighs and delighted disbelief —
what omnipresence is the architect of this,
despite the broken world of ours
… to let things still shine thus!

雖然早已對生活無任何期待，
可依舊不肯將就髮型與體態。
每天睜眼一抬頭，又看見了太陽，
便止不住驚嘆，驚嘆——
是誰全知全能，暗中主宰，
竟然讓這個破落世界
⋯⋯如此流光溢彩！

I’m thankful for that chill wind cutting to my heart,
a reminder of the inconstancy of human sentiment.
Departures and arrivals, we float but as solitary skiffs,
Wind: you too are homeless, wandering untethered,
in our fellowship who’s to say how things turn out?

感念寒風鑽進脖頸，涼了心懷，
提醒我冷暖人間實為蒼茫大海。
離岸，抵岸，人人都是孤帆一片，
風，你不也是沒有家園，這才四處流竄，
貴我既為同儕，哈，誰言成敗！

I’m grateful, too, that last night’s snow wasn’t a blizzard;
early this morning I could wander outside, footloose.
I went to buy rice, vegetables, cartons of milk —
with these I keep body and soul together,
well enough to test if there’s still literature in me.
A solitary life and this lone pen, hah, see:
you’ve not done away with me — and still I rise!

當然，也感念夜雪並未成災，
今天一大早還能獨自蹣跚室外，
買米，買菜，外加一箱牛奶，
苟延殘喘，好再試試是否還有文采。
一條命，一支筆，哈哈，
你整不死我，我就寫出來！

Yet, I might have claimed to expect nought of life,
binding tendrils of existence remain around me:
a desire to see what’s true and to test the counterfeit.
Like a clinician observing a patient, apart from God.
What are the trump cards in this jostling world of becoming.
On the road to nowhere, each with our handcrafted effigies,
let’s go then, you and I, and race on to the end.

不過，雖說對生活並無期待，
可對生命還殘剩一絲掛礙。
想看看究竟怎麼個叫做虛無又實在，
再臨床測試一下，除開上帝，
一本萬殊，眾生還能有什麼底牌。
喂，虛無的跑道上，
泥塑木胎，來，咱倆來個比賽。

The Twenty Fourth Day of the Tenth Month of the Yisi Year of the Snake, 13 December 2025

Yesterday saw the first snow of the season and today the sun was out. Evening closed in quickly and the jackdaws crowing in the bare tree outside only added to the bleak isolation. So, I composed this doggerel verse, a soliloquy by and for me.

乙巳亥月廿四，二零二五年十二月十三日。昨天下了今年第一場雪，今天出了個大太陽。轉眼暮晚，寒鴉棲鳴於窗前枯枝。略感孤寒，乃打油一首，自言自語，呵呵。

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Still I Rise

Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

— Maya Angelou, Still I Rise

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Road to Nowhere

Talking Heads

Well, we know where we’re goin’
But we don’t know where we’ve been
And we know what we’re knowin’
But we can’t say what we’ve seen

And we’re not little children
And we know what we want
And the future is certain
Give us time to work it out

Yeah

We’re on a road to nowhere
Come on inside
Takin’ that ride to nowhere
We’ll take that ride …

… They can tell you what to do
But they’ll make a fool of you
And it’s alright, baby, it’s alright

There’s a city in my mind
Come along and take that ride
And it’s alright, baby, it’s alright

And it’s very far away
But it’s growing day by day
And it’s alright, baby, it’s alright

And would you like to come along?
You could help me sing this song
And it’s alright, baby, it’s alright

They can tell you what to do
But they’ll make a fool of you
And it’s alright, baby, it’s alright

We’re on a road to nowhere

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