I first heard the story of Yongfen Zhang from the cleaning lady at the community library, Yongfen’s roommate. She told me that Yongfen lost her father when she was a baby, that her mother remarried, that she never attended a day of school. To support her children, Yongfen left her hometown for Shanghai. Unable to read a single character, she could only clean streets. She was confined to her room and the streets she cleaned.
Although I never met Yongfen I feel a kinship with her: we speak the same dialect and come from the same region in central China, with its overpopulation, agricultural tradition, history of famines, conservative thinking, lack of trade and emerging industries. Our region has become the primary source of migrant workers for Shanghai. I meet them in libraries, in barber shops, on streets, and I recognize them immediately once I hear how they speak Mandarin.
—Yiran Li
Yongfen Zhang, Female, Central Plains
Yongfen Zhang, 1982, Xihua, Central Plains,
street cleaner, Central Plains Road, Shanghai.
Illiterate and tracing the graffiti
of her name from ID to labour contract
Not even in dreams: no mountain, no sea.
Central Plains to Central Plains Road,
map of half her life.
Reading is the refuge of the people
and she reads too, warnings from heaven,
from the landfill take the third right
and read your way back home,
reading her husband’s face (a good man
schooled three years, pinching her tits
so much more gently than her stepfather).
After meals she sits in the dirt
and reads the moving legs.
Legs are easy to read. There’s only two:
those that have laboured, those that haven’t.
Just as she sat, ten years old, on the ground,
concrete-mixer, digging wild vegetables,
hop-skipping to the field with brother
strapped to her back, arms muscled as hammers.
Never thought she’d grow into a sin called
ignorance.
Now she’s a burden and knows it.
Never open easily, never hurt
by the shrill of any word, but touched
by the crying smiley in the videos
of drought, on TikTok, in the north country.
Always tough for everyone, she says.
Care harder for Central Plains Road,
sweep south to north and day to night,
clean away the leaves and shards
clearing a path for future people
to the Large Learning Model, the centrifugal force
of the Shanghai Ferris Wheel, the Chip War.
With every abandoned thing
she’ll melt away: progress
caressing the feet of the passers-by.
Benevolent and freighted
with wordless knowledge,
like her body never existed.
And a needle pierces the city,
word mountains, seas of words,
sewing the patchwork world together,
keeping a fluorescent rag for her.
Now we sit here, listening to the story,
listening and attempting to reply.
Ms Zhang’s chapped, enduring hands
the sharpest fishbone in the city’s throat.
Translated from the Chinese by James Appleby and Yiran Li
Yiran Li (b. 1993) is an independent poet, essayist, and educator based in Shanghai, often seen performing her poetry in spaces such as bookstores and cafes. Beyond poetry, she has co-authored a collection of reflections on education entitled Education Out of the Box (打口教育手册, 2022独立出版), with a focus on the power relations that influence current Chinese literature education.
James Appleby (b. 1993) is editor of Interpret, Scotland’s magazine of international writing. His translations have been showcased at individual events at the French Institute of Scotland and the Sofia Literature & Translation House; his original poetry is published in The London Magazine. His upcoming debut pamphlet, Spurious Language, was commended in the 2024 International Book & Pamphlet Competition. He was born in Manchester and lives in Edinburgh. You can find more of his work here.
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