| Bei Ling | |
| Birth Date: | 28 December 1959 |
| Birth Place: | Beijing |
| Alma Mater: | Capital University of Economics and Business, Brown University |
| Genre: | Poetry |
| Movement: | Independent Chinese PEN Center |
Bei Ling (Chinese: t=貝嶺) (born December 28, 1959, in Beijing) is a Chinese poet, and journal editor.[1] [2] He is usually associated with the Chinese misty poets.[3]
He came to the United States as an exchange student, he was a fellow at Brown University.[4] After the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, in 1992, he founded the literary journal Chinese: 傾向 (Tendency).[5]
In 2000, he opened an office in Beijing.
He launched a literary magazine named Tendency in 1993 as a platform for young underground writers' talents.[6] On August 13, 2000, he was detained for 14 days at the Qinghe Detention Center, and charged with "illegal publication." After an international protest, he was fined $24,000, and deported.[7]
He lives in Boston, and New York City.He founded the Independent Chinese PEN Center together with Liu Xiaobo[8] and later became its president [9]
In 2009, he sought dialogue with Chinese officials at the Frankfurt Book Fair.[10] In 2010, he wrote about Liu Xiaobo in The Wall Street Journal.[11] In 2011, he organized a letter in support of Ai Weiwei.[12] In 2016, he was prominent in the campaign to preserve freedom of expression in Hong Kong after the Causeway Bay Books disappearances, one of whom was Gui Minhai, his friend since the 1980s.[6]