ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

IN 1988, I FINISHED a Chinese poem, “Don’t Cry, Jade River,” as the title piece of a collection that was to come out the following year. In 1989, I reviewed the galley in the United States, but what happened in Beijing that tragic summer made the publication in China impossible, including an introduction written by my friend Xu Guoliang, to whom I want to express my thanks and apologies again. The galley, after twenty years, finally made its way into the English poem in Don’t Cry, Tai Lake, except for the former being fictional, and the latter, real and far more disastrous.

As always, I want to thank my editor, Keith Kahla, for his extraordinary work, and I also want to thank my copy editor, Margit Longbrake, who gave birth to her daughter, Jane Ray Longbrake McKeown, just upon starting her copyediting work, which she completed beautifully in yuezi (the first month of motherhood).