Xu Zhangrun Archive
哦莫怪！我是路人
The last meal on the last night of the traditional calendar — 年夜飯 niányèfàn — is one of the most important occasions in the Chinese year. Families and friends gather to bid farewell to the old year and welcome in the new with food, drink and merriment.
The ‘dark guests’ of China are a hidden presence in the country’s cities, towns and villages. They are like shadows on such festive occasions. Unlike people who are formally imprisoned by the state or in one of the camps in the country’s gulag, these ghosts still live amidst their fellows, generally unacknowledged, ignored or actively avoided. Many, like Xu Zhangrun, a man who was a celebrated professor of jurisprudence at Tsinghua University in Beijing until he spoke out, are ‘former people’ — individuals stripped of everything apart from the bare minimum means of survival. He is part of a shadowy corps of undesirables the existence of which haunts those who have a conscience. For others, they are an insignificant by-product of the ever-victorious rule of China’s party-state, an organisation that every day of every month of every year celebrates itself as being ‘magnificent, glorious and infallible’ 偉光正.
The fashionable New China Experts, China maxxers, influencers and Kumbayistas are, for the most part, blind to the existence and significance of China’s ‘former people’. They are too absorbed in what Lu Xun called the banquet of China.
Professor Xu marked the last day of the Year of the Snake with a poem, translated here with his permission.
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For our commemoration of the 2026-2027 Year of the Horse in China Heritage, see:
- The Little New Year
- On the Cusp of Fire — The Flaming Horse and The Blood-red Ram
- Snakes Retreat with the Advent of The Horse
- Other People’s Thoughts, LXXIII
- New Years in China Heritage
- Fuck the Year of the Horse! China’s Homophonophobia
— Geremie R. Barmé
Editor, China Heritage
17 February 2026
First Day of the First Month of
The Bingwu Year of the Horse
丙午馬年正月初一
The Last Dinner
Xu Zhangrun
1
The bright glow inside dims the street lights
as they gather around the table in festive haze
It’s the last night of the old northern year
one tarries a while to look, and look again
— don’t get me wrong, I’m only a passerby
2
Back home light and shadow make three of us
silent at first I then turn solemnly to inquire
It’s all so very clear: the how’s and the why’s
should I have, or not? Who is there to adjudicate?
— don’t get me wrong, I’m only a passerby
Twenty-ninth Day, Twelfth Month
Yisi Year of the Snake
The 16th of February 2026
trans. GR Barmé
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最後的晚餐
許章潤
一
窗口的流光黯淡了街燈，
他們圍桌而坐，薰風若蒸。
這是北國年三十的夜晚，
忍不住駐足，往裡多看了兩眼。
——哦莫怪！我是路人。
二
回到家，對影成三人，
我用沉默以對將自己莊敬訪問。
講得清來龍和去脈，
但該與不該？誰又能仲裁？
——哦莫怪！我是路人。
乙巳臘月廿九，除夕，二零二六年二月十六日
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