ABSTRACT
Ai Qing (1910–1996), pen name of Jiang Haicheng, is one of the most renowned Chinese poets of the 20th Century. After graduating from secondary school in Zhejiang province, he enrolled at Hangzhou’s National West Lake Academy of Art (today’s famous China Academy of Art) in 1928, founded by the prominent modern Chinese artist, Lin Fengmian (1900–1991), and began studying modern painting. Encouraged by Lin Fengmian to study in France, he went to Paris the following year. There, while earning his own livelihood, he kept studying painting in private academies and exhibited his work at the Salon des Indépendants in 1931. While learning painting, he started to read literary works by poets like Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891), Emile Verhaeren (1855–1916), Guillaume Apollinaire (1880–1918), and French translations of Russian poets such as Sergei Essenin (1895–1925), Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893–1930), or Aleksandr Blok (1880–1921). In the meantime, he came to know some compatriots involved in left-wing and anti-imperialist movements. He returned to China in 1932, and participated in artistic and political activities. He was arrested by the French concession’s police on grounds of seditious activities, before being handed over to the Kuomintang authorities that imprisoned him, first in Shanghai’s prison, and then in Suzhou’s House of Correction.
