Autumn Poetry Reading in the Lychee Garden

Co-organised by Centre for Poetry and Drama at Shenzhen University and the Institute of Linguistics at Sun Yat-sen University, Autumn Poetry Reading in the Lychee Garden was held online and offline at 7pm on 18 October 2022, in Shenzhen, China, with more than 230 participants and 39 programs.

The poetry event was chaired by Prof. Zhang Guangkui (head of the Centre for Poetry and Drama) and his students as well as his friends. The event invited guests from nearly 40 universities and institutions across the country. They presented their programs for the audience in a variety of genres, including poetry, drama, opera, and Poepera (poem+opera), and in a wide range of languages, including Mandarin Chinese, English, Japanese and French, as well as Cantonese dialect, Hakka dialect, Chaoshan dialect, Minnan dialect and Yangzhou dialect of Chinese. In particular, the poetry performance by Prof. Zhang Guangkui brought the event to a climax and once again put into practice his Poepera theory of poetry interpretation.

Ms. Liang Yurong, a famous singer of Cantonese Opera in China and President of the Guangdong Provincial Artists & Musicians Association, presented a beautiful performance in Cantonese about Tang-Dynasty-poet Zhang Jiuling's "Looking at the Moon and Longing for Someone Far Away" (recomposed as "The Moon Rising Above the Sea"), immersing the audience in a deep baptism of traditional Chinese culture. Ms. Lin Funa, a famous poet and member of Chinese Writers Association, read her original poetry. The host of the event, postgraduate Liang Xiaodan, read an original poem "A Car Passes by the Greater Khingan Mountains" written by Professor Guo Jie at Shenzhen University, a member of the Standing Committee of the Guangdong Provincial People's Congress, and Vice President of the China Society for the Study of The Book of Songs (the oldest of the Chinese classics of poetry).

The Poetry Reading was a large-scale poetry performance lasting three hours and fifteen minutes, and gorgeously interpretated Chinese and foreign poetry.