Waves

Waves is the only novella the poet Bei Dao ever published. The first draft was written around October 1974, revised twice in 1976 and 1979, and serialized in Jintian (Today) issues 4 to 6 in 1979 under the pen name Ai Shan; it later appeared in Changjiang and was issued as a separate volume by an overseas publisher. In 2015, SDX Joint Publishing released a revised edition under Bei Dao's name as part of the "Bei Dao Collection." The novel depicts the lives of sent-down youth in the 1970s, centering on the meeting, love, and separation of Yang Xun and Xiao Ling, while interweaving the fates of Lin Dongping, Lin Yuanyuan, Bai Hua, and other characters. Xiao Ling comes from an upper-class intellectual family; her parents died young, and she struggles alone at the bottom of society with an illegitimate daughter. Yang Xun is from Beijing, a young man with an idealistic temperament sent down to the countryside. The cadre Lin Dongping wavers between principles and reality, and his past leads him to intrude on the couple's relationship. The story ends with Yang Xun boarding a train to distant parts and Xiao Ling dying alone on a rainy night. The book unfolds through the intersecting first-person perspectives of five main characters, with dense dialogue and a rapid pace, its narrative shifting between realism, expressionism, and stream of consciousness; literary history therefore regards it as a representative of the "modern" style in 1970s underground writing and as a precursor of the 1980s avant-garde novel. This volume also includes Li Tuo's long preface and Bei Dao's "Fragments," an account of the circumstances in which he wrote the book.