(1916-1985) poet
Tong Tianjian was born on May 14 in Anhui province’s rural Wuwei County, in China. He moved to Shanghai in 1933 and studied foreign languages at Guanghua University, where he edited the journals New Poetry and Literary Mosaic. He published poems written during his college years in Before Dawn in 1935.
Tian Jian’s poetry was known as declamatory poetry because of its political nature and revolutionary ideas. Much of his work was influenced by the Japanese occupation of Nanking and the Sino-Japanese War and had a very nationalistic slant.
Before the Sino-Japanese War, Tian Jian focused on the lives of Chinese peasants, for whom he wrote two volumes of poetry, Pastoral Songs (1936) and Stories of the Chinese Countryside (1936). The latter is a long poem comprised of three parts: “Hunger,” “On the Yangtze River,” and “Go Ahead.” Tian Jian used the river as a metaphor for China and depicted the hardships of peasant life and resistance against the old regime.
In the spring of 1937, Tian Jian traveled to Japan and returned to China after the Sino-Japan-ese War began later that year. He served as a war correspondent with the Service Corps on the Northwestern Battlefield. He wrote poems influential for their military fervor and rhythms during the war in two volumes, Odes to Soldiers on Patrol in a Sandstorm (1938) and Poems Dedicated to Fighters (1943).
Tian Jian joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1943. He held high-level information posts and participated in land reform. He also continued his literary pursuits. He began a drive for “street verse,” edited a new party literary magazine called New Masses, and joined the Chinese Writers Association after its 1949 formation. He then taught at the Central Institute of Literature in Beijing.
During the Korean War, Tian Jian served again as a war correspondent and visited Eastern Europe and Africa in 1954. He produced many volumes of poetry and essays, including A Hero’s Battle Song (1959), Travels in Africa (1964), and A Sketch on a Trip to Europe (1956), before the onset of the Cultural Revolution, when he was suppressed.
After the revolution ended, Tian Jian began to write poetry again in 1976. His work celebrated the new life of “liberated” peasants, such as China in her Prime (1986). Tian Jian died August 30 in Beijing.
