The defining collection of the Misty Poets, the Chinese counter-cultural movement that emerged after the Cultural Revolution. Bei Dao's most famous poem, "The Answer," became the anthem of the 1989 pro-democracy movement at Tiananmen. His work demonstrates poetry's capacity to speak truth to totalitarian power; the title poem captures the surreal dislocation of living under political terror.

The case for it, the case against, and the rest of the canon open with Pro.