AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
One of China's best-known contemporary poets is a middle-aged woman from the countryside who is loved by millions for her unpretentious and suggestive verse. Some call her China's Emily Dickinson, although she chafes at that notion. But she has pushed artistic boundaries her whole life. Now she's taking it to a new level, as NPR's John Ruwitch reports.
(CROSSTALK)
JOHN RUWITCH, BYLINE: We meet Yu Xiuhua in a dressing room backstage at a community theater in Shanghai.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
YU XIUHUA: (Non-English language spoken).
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: (Non-English language spoken).
RUWITCH: She's in sweatpants, and her hair's a mess. She's not here for a poetry reading. She's here to dance. And that might surprise people who know about her.
YU: (Speaking Mandarin).
RUWITCH: Yu, who's 48, has cerebral palsy. It affects not only the way she talks but her movement. Her gait is stiff and slow. And she says she does not qualify as a dancer.
YU: (Through interpreter) Someone who dances isn't necessarily a dancer, just like someone who writes poetry isn't necessarily a poet and a man isn't necessarily a man (laughter).
RUWITCH: But soon, she's up on stage.
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RUWITCH: "Ten Thousand Tons Of Moonlight" is a dance theater production inspired by Yu's poetry. It reflects on love, beauty, disability and the societal expectations placed on women. In it, Yu performs simple dance moves, waving her arms, crouching down low, swaying and twirling alongside two live professional dancers. She recites poems, and an actress narrates portions in English.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
YU: (Non-English language spoken).
RUWITCH: The stage is a very long way from Yu's roots, in a farming village in central China. But Yu has been catapulted to unlikely national fame by poems like, perhaps, her best-known one, entitled "I Traveled Across Half Of China To Sleep With You."
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RUWITCH: Her openness about love and sexual desire bucks norms for women in China and is all the more liberating because she hails from a farm. Yu says, as far as she's concerned, there's no deep message in her artwork.
YU: (Through interpreter) I am Yu Xiuhua, nothing more. I'm not trying to use anything to tell others what I am. Poetry or dance - they simply prove my existence as Yu Xiuhua, not as a poet or a dancer.
RUWITCH: But her very existence and fame is, in some ways, extraordinary, in a place where people with disabilities are often marginalized or hidden. British dance producer Farooq Chaudhry is the show's director. He stumbled upon Yu's life story a few years ago.
FAROOQ CHAUDHRY: This is an incredible story of a woman, who, in many ways, defies many of the societal rules - right? - and is loved by many, particularly young women.
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CHAUDHRY: You know, she's almost a feminist in some ways, and so she - and not that she's necessarily driving a cult movement of any kind, but just by being honest and true to herself, she's empowering other people.
RUWITCH: That potentially skirts close to a red line in China. The authorities have targeted feminist organizations and snuffed out a nascent #MeToo movement by jailing activists. Yu says activism has never been her goal. She's inspired by love, she says. The poem "I Traveled Halfway Across China To Sleep With You," for instance, is just an expression of feelings.
YU: (Through interpreter) As for any deeper interpretations, these are others' understandings and have nothing to do with me. I was simply writing down my thoughts from that particular moment - nothing more, nothing else.
RUWITCH: Artists, she says, are responsible for the creation and transmission of beauty.
YU: (Through interpreter) I've never thought about expressing anything. When no one knew me before, when there was no such thing as fame, I wrote a lot of poems, all for my own enjoyment, never to please others or to express something.
RUWITCH: So I asked her, what if nobody came to see the show or read her poems? Would she be OK with that?
YU: (Speaking Mandarin).
RUWITCH: "It would not make a difference," she tells me, adding that my question is weird. She says she can't lose her job because writing poetry is a form of self-expression of the soul. It doesn't depend on an audience. The evening that I caught a rehearsal of her show, though, the audience seemed to enjoy it thoroughly.
(APPLAUSE)
RUWITCH: John Ruwitch, NPR News, Shanghai.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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