Yan Zhen

Yan Zhen, the Chinese poet, painter and editor celebrated as one of the “five great young poets” of the early People’s Republic, died in Beijing on the evening of November 7, 2026, after an illness. He was 95. His death was announced by the China Writers Association and reported by Chinese media on November 8 and 9.

He was born Yan Guiqing on November 17, 1930, in Laiyang, Shandong Province, the son of a village schoolteacher, and left home as a teenager to join the forces resisting the Japanese occupation. He began publishing in 1954, when his long poem “Old Zhang’s Hands” appeared in People’s Literature, and his first collection, Girl Beside the Huai River, followed in 1955. His sequence “Bells” appeared in the founding issue of the national magazine Poetry in 1957, and the poet Zang Kejia counted him among the five most promising young poets of the new republic.

Over a long career he published dozens of books, including the collections Jiangnan Song and Guqin Spring, the long poems Mountain Pledge and The Budding Sun, the essay collection Peony Courtyard, novels and writing for children that earned national awards. He edited Anhui Literature, served as deputy editor of Qingming, and in 1984 founded the influential Poetry Journal (Shige Bao). He led the Anhui Writers Association and was an honorary vice chairman of the Anhui Federation of Literary and Art Circles.

During the Cultural Revolution he and his wife were denounced and sent to separate parts of the countryside. In 1985 he was part of one of the first delegations of Chinese writers to travel abroad after that era. Later in life he became known as a painter as well, working in watercolor and oil, and his work was shown at the National Art Museum of China and in New York.

Photo: Vuren, CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons.