Chorography, Ecosophy, and Ecopoetics in Chen Nianxi’s Migrant Worker Poetry

Arising from his life as a high-explosive blast miner, Chen Nianxi’s poems describe not only his precarious life as a Chinese migrant worker but also a set of ecological concerns prevalent in post-socialist China. This essay contends that reading Chen’s poems as ecopoetry helps uncover the relationship between humans and nature in the social ecology of migrant worker poetry. Focusing on Chen’s iconic poem “Zhalie zhi” from 2013, translated here as “Explosion Chorography,” this paper proposes the concept of chorography as a lens through which to examine the nexus of materiality, pathology, and affect in Chen’s poetry. Chorography — the art of mapping a region or its features — teases out the ecosophical relevance and the ongoing process of social, cultural, and natural forces in Chen’s poetry. Drawing on Félix Guattari’s notion of three ecologies, my reading also compares Chen’s poetry with its predecessors in the socialist era and attempts to explore his potential contribution to ecocriticism in the post-socialist context.