ABSTRACT
Feng Zhi is often and well described as one of China's leading modernist poets. His name is also frequently mentioned in association with another nine poets collectively known as the Nine Leaves, as he taught and mentored four of these younger poets. The most prominent among the Nine Leaves was Mu Dan. Fame came early for a young Feng. He was sixteen when his first published poem, "The Man in Green," attracted favourable attention in the elite Chinese intellectual circles of 1921. The "Nine Leaves" were in the early phase of their literary careers in the 1940s. Their poetry explored diverse themes and drew on equally diverse literary precedents, including early twentieth-century formalist, surrealist and symbolist writings produced in China and internationally that they had encountered as students in the 1930s and early 1940s. In 1949, Feng evidently embraced Chinese Communist Party rule under Mao as a longed-for miracle.
