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Ronald G. Knapp: The Chinese house: craft, symbol and folk tradition . (Images of Asia.) viii, 87 pp., map [on end papers]. Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1990. £6.95.

Wang Xindi, deserved a place in this anthology, as did Chen Jingrong, the other woman poet of the group, even though she died in early 1990. It has to be admitted that the poetic sensitivity of the 1950s generation was destroyed by political pressure to turn poetry into rhymed propaganda. Of the five selected from that generation not all sit comfortably here. However, Cai Qijiao, the oldest of them, surely deserves a place, though one might argue that ten poems is too favourable a treatment. The real post-Mao poetry, to which the anthology justifiably devotes most of its space, is the work of the so-called Fourth and Fifth Generation poets. The distinction between them lies not so much in the sometimes exaggerated differences in their poetics, but in the time when they started their writing careers. Generally speaking, the Fourth Generation began around 1980, the Fifth around 1985. There are fifteen poets in the anthology whose careers began during the thaw of the immediate post-Mao years. It seems that four of them are included only because their works won a National Poetry Prize, which, with one or two exceptions, has been the constant laughing stock of Chinese literary circles since, under the control of the propaganda apparatus of the Communist Party, it most often goes to very unpoetical winners. Three others are included because they are based in Shanghai, perhaps because one of the compilers is from Shanghai and is more familiar with the poets of that region. This is reflected in the disproportionately long biographical notes for the Shanghai poets. At the centre of the post-Mao poetry—the Today Group—stood out in the Chinese literary scene through their activities around 1980 when it became the pivot of the re-orientation of Chinese literature. Four of its members—Bei Dao, Shu Ting, Gu Cheng and Yang Lian—are represented generously here. It is understandable that the compilers should not wish to include every single member of the group, but even so, the omission of Mang Ke, Jiang He, Duo Duo and others is regrettable, as the influence of Today poets on contemporary Chinese art and literature is immeasurable. It is admittedly even more difficult to make a selection from the Fifth Generation. Only two poets in the anthology—Tang Yaping and He Xiaozhu—are said to belong to this group. Actually, Yu Jian and Wang Xiaolong, though a little older, should be included too. Yet this is no excuse for ignoring the many representatives of that generation who were at the centre of poetic activities in China, in 1985-6 when more than sixty groups, coteries or societies bought out manifestoes and works with a distinct voice, giving the Post-Misty Generation a spectacular start. Since then, many talented young poets of this generation have been working hard under difficult conditions, often having to print their works themselves. They have nevertheless been producing poetical works that are not outshone by any of their predecessors. Some of them should simply not have been left out—Wang Jiaxin, Xi Chuan, Da Xian of Beijing, Zhai Yongming, Liao Yiwu and Hong Ying of Sichuan, Han Dong and Bai Hua of Nanjing, Yi Lei of Tianjin, and so on. Whatever the list, however, the space devoted to the new generation is unfairly circumscribed here. The compilers seem to have been a little concerned about the value of the anthology. ' It may be easy ', they apologize in the preface, ' to criticize contemporary Chinese poems, as well as these translations, for a lack of the complication or sophistication that modernist readers have come to expect'. This concession is unjustified. Recent Chinese poetry has proved to be as sophisticated and as challenging as the modern poetry of any other nation. Indeed, it is by no means ' easy' to accuse contemporary Chinese poetry of inadequacy, unless the selection and presentation render it so.