A campaign aimed to rejuvenate Chinese poetry and develop the traditional culture of the Chinese nation kicked off in early July in Zigui, the hometown of Chinese ancient poet laureate Qu Yuan, in central China's Hubei Province.

Qu Yuan lived in the state of Chu during the Warring States period (475 B.C. to 221 B.C.). He drowned himself in a local riverin 278 B.C., on May 5th of the Chinese lunar calendar, hoping that his death could awaken the king to revitalize their kingdom. In the ensuing 2,000 years, Qu Yuan had been revered as one of the representatives of Chinese poetry.

With a population of 400,000, Zigui, adjacent to the reservoir of China's massive Three Gorges Water Conservancy program. The small town has a tradition of loving poetry. It even has China's first poetry society for farmers named "Poetry Altar".

The poetic atmosphere in the town made itself to have been chosen as the venue for the starting ceremony of the Chinese poetry rejuvenation program, according to Zhang Tongwu, head of the China Poetry Society.

Sponsored by the Society in partnership with the local government, the program will take four to eight years to build 10 poetry writing bases and cultivate 1,000 county-level poetry institutes and about 10,000 young poets nationwide, Zhang Tongwu said.

China has a long history of poetry creation and once was praised as a nation of poems. However, over the past two decades, literature, especially poetry, tended to fade away from Chinese people's cultural life.
 
(Xinhua News Agency July 6, 2004)