Imprisonment is, in fact, also a classic approach.

The poet as jailer, imprisoned in self-dialectic, yet gazing at the sky within his poems; Grandpa Lin's chickens, ducks and pigs, imprisoned beneath the raised floor of the Japanese-style dormitory at Hsinchu Prison, inadvertently gave rise to a creative alternative use for Japanese-style architecture; and the value of negative cultural heritage, though imprisoned within social prejudice, has already opened a new chapter in the discourse on alternative cultural heritage. In the end, imprisonment gave birth to the classic; and the classic arose from a pair of poetic eyes.

Starting from Poetry

The poet most skilled at evoking the tension between imprisonment and release is none other than Shang Qin (1930-2010), known as the "maverick genius." His life story of constant flight kept the poet tossed back and forth between shackles and escape, and images of imprisonment recur throughout his poems, using contrast to reinforce his own sense of existence and the projection of his will.

Take "Giraffe" as an example: although the young jailer can intuitively grasp that the prisoners' bodies are confined, and can vaguely sense the helplessness of the prisoners who long to see the outside world but cannot, his repeated performance of dutifully upholding his post is precisely proof of his own inner self-confinement. What repeatedly troubles and questions him between the lines is the self-reflection, awakening and struggle of one who, since time immemorial, no one can escape the prison of the passing years.

"That young jailer noticed that the prisoners' height increased month by month at every physical examination was all behind the neck, so he reported to the warden, saying: 'Sir, the window is too high!' And the answer he got was: 'No, they are gazing at the years.'

The kind young jailer, ignorant of the face of the years, unaware of the native place of the years, uncomprehending of the whereabouts of the years; night after night he went to the zoo, to beneath the giraffe enclosure, to pace, to keep watch."

Likewise in "Door or Sky"

"Beneath a sky utterly absent, at the far-off center surrounded by a road walked into being by this unguarded prisoner, inside walls without a roof surrounded by wire fencing, surrounded by a moat with no outer bank, this unguarded prisoner pushes open a door made by his own hands, a mere door frame and nothing more
Goes out.
Comes out.
Goes out.
Comes out. Goes out. Goes out. Comes out. Comes out.
Goes out.
Out. Out. Out. Out. Out. Out. Out.