With his long hair, sunglasses and gray jacket, Zhou Yunpeng looks like an artist. He’s a familiar sight in pubs, live houses, theaters, market plazas, and university lecture halls, playing a guitar and singing his folk songs.
As the last poet to take the stage at a poetry reciting event in Beijing on December 28, 2011, Zhou again sang his songs as a troubadour with his unique style. His popularity has eclipsed other renowned poets who came on the stage earlier than him, such as Duo Duo, Zhai Yongming, and Xi Chuan.
“Zhou is a folk singer, a poet, a columnist, a wanderer and an activist for public causes,”said the event host. Zhou’s career came to a peak on November 3, 2011, when he won the 2011 Poet Prize of the People’s Literature Awards—a well-known public literature award in China—because of his poem, The Speechless Love. The award is organized and granted by the national publisher People’s Literature Publishing House.
Ten years ago, however, the blind poet and singer Zhou could live only by performing in streets.
Unfortunate life
Zhou was born to a worker’s family in Shenyang, northeast China’s Liaoning Province, in 1970. Zhou lost his sight due to a cataract disease when he was nine years old. The last obscure picture in Zhou’s memory was an elephant playing the harmonica in a zoo.
At the age of 10, Zhou was sent to a special school for blind children. There, Zhou learned playing the harmonica and the guitar. Between 1991 and 1994, Zhou studied at the Special Education College of Changchun University in northeast China’s Jilin Province and majored in Chinese literature. “I took Chinese literature as my major because I like reading very much,” said Zhou.
During his college days, Zhou started to write essays and poems, and many of his works were published in the college’s journals. He also co-founded a literature paper with his classmates, though “the paper printed only one issue of a few dozen copies,” Zhou recalled with a smile.
Zhou taught schoolmates to play the guitar. In return he asked them to read books for him. The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera and The Stranger (or The Outsider) by Albert Camus were his favorite novels. In addition, Zhou favored contemporary Chinese poets such as Haizi, Gu Cheng, and Bei Dao at that time, as well as American poet Allen Ginsberg, the representative poet of the Beat Generation, and French poet Charles Pierre Baudelaire.
Every day, schoolmates read novels and poems to Zhou for about three hours. He learned a lot of knowledge during that period. A classmate wrote on Zhou’s commemorative photo album: “Reading for you was my happiest memory.”
Though Zhou listened to various music genres at college, he was not much interested in music then. However, before long Zhou had to make a living by music. After graduating from the university, he was dispatched to a small factory in Shenyang to earn a low wage. But it did not last long. “I got 150 yuan ($23.7) every month, but the factory went bankrupt half a year later,” Zhou said. “Then I went to Beijing with not more than 600 yuan ($95.1).”
In the spring of 1995, Zhou rented a small room at a village near the ruins of the imperial garden, Yuanmingyuan. He sang popular songs on the streets or in pubs for a living in Beijing. Long-time practice brought him continuous improvement of singing songs and playing the guitar. Usually he could earn 100 yuan ($15.85) a day.
Well-known song
Zhou found fame with the song The Cinema for the Blind. Zhou said he wrote it as a poem as early as 2001, inspired by a cinema for the blind in a book by Franz Kafka. Zhou built such a cinema in his mind, which had only sound but no pictures. In 2003, Zhou composed the song and soon it was promoted by the professional music magazine Popular Music. One year later, Zhou launched his first album The Silent Breath that also included the song.
In the song, Zhou sings about “carrying a guitar and traveling.” He also put the names of places where he traveled into the lyrics. From Shanghai in the east to Lhasa in the west, he has been almost everywhere in the country. Zhou recorded all kinds of sounds, such as a flowing river, monks chanting and peddlers hawking goods. Zhou can distinguish the tiny differences in sounds. He said the birdcalls in Tibet don’t sound the same as in Beijing.
Zhou believes that traveling is a kind of education. People will realize they are tiny when they travel, and they can broaden their minds. Zhou regards Homer, an ancient Greek poet, and Gao Jianli, an ancient Chinese musician, as his idols because they were both blind artists and enjoyed traveling. “They spent their lives recording history by singing,”Zhou said.
As good as it gets
Rich experience—composing, writing poems, making albums and wandering—gradually earned Zhou fame in the folk song circle. Though poor, Zhou is a romantic in this materialistic society in the eyes of young people fond of arts and literature. But Zhou never shifts his concerns from social reality. While wondering, he heard a lot of stories and hardships of the ordinary people.
“My father once advised me to be a massage therapist, and tried to prepare a marriage for me,” Zhou joked. That would be an ordinary lifestyle for a blind man.
In 2007, Zhou published his second album, Chinese Kids. With the help of friends, he started a nationwide performing tour, and all 3,000 CDs of the album were sold out by the end of the year.
The album depicts the unfortunate children who died in tragic accidents, criticized the blundering consuming culture, and complained of living stress from soaring prices. Being full of critical realism, the album brought Zhou a lot of media attention. Some people called him“the conscience of Chinese folk singers.”
The album was selected by Southern Weekend—one of the most influential Chinese newspapers—as Respectable Music of the Year 2007. Zhou also won Best Folk Singer and Best Lyricist at the Eighth Chinese Music Media Awards in 2008.
Zhou rose to fame overnight. His living standard has also improved a lot. As a result, he republished his collection of poems Spring Reproach and some essays in 2010. Zhou won the 2011 Poet Prize of the People’s Literature Award. After ploughing and weeding for so many years, the harvest season finally arrived for Zhou.
Public spirited
Although Zhou received many honors and awards, his pure mind and thoughts remain. Zhou launched a public benefit activity called Red Bulldozer and established a foundation for blind children in 2009. Zhou and his colleagues collected funds by performing and selling albums. Then they donated money for those poor children. Many reputed singers took part in this event.
In 2011, Zhou staged a new round of activity with an upgrade title of Golden Bulldozer. This time, he targeted blind children in the Tibet Autonomous Region. “We will hold more events, green, blue and yellow to help those children in need,” he said.