Xiao Kaiyu published his first poems in 1987, and since then has become increasingly productive as well as increasingly complex in his poetic expression. Born in Heping township, Zhongjiang county, Sichuan Province, he graduated from the Sichuan Mianyang Institute of Chinese Medicine and practiced Chinese medicine for a number of years. In 1993, he moved to Shanghai and took up work as a news reporter, teacher and editor. He lived in Germany for three years in the late 1990s, before  returning to China in the early 2000s where he assumed a position as professor of Chinese literature at Henan University in Kaifeng. [Translation]