Friendships blossom across borders in verse

Poets from China and Latin America unite, exchanging words, heritage and shared inspiration spanning continents.

As the G58 high-speed train raced from Xi'an in Shaanxi province to Beijing on the afternoon of Sept 18, a lively poetry reading took place in one of its carriages.

It was spontaneously staged by a group of Chinese and Latin American poets, marking the end of their four-day journey to Shaanxi for the 2025 International Youth Poetry Festival — Special Session for China-Latin American Countries, as they headed to the festival's second leg in Beijing.

The event, one of the largest in the exchange of Chinese and Latin American literature, brought together 40 poets from 15 Latin American and Caribbean countries with 37 Chinese counterparts. From Sept 15 to 21, they participated in a range of activities, including visiting cultural landmarks, engaging in poetry readings and impromptu improvisations, and holding academic discussions.

"I've enjoyed the festival in so many ways. China's kindness and its hospitality are as ancient as its architecture. I marvel and feel small in China. It's so vast, so vast, like Latin American jungles, like the sunset on the beaches of Mexico," Mexican poet Roberto Acuna told China Daily during the train ride.

"But what I've loved most are all the people who have helped us, assisted us, and looked upon us with affection. In Xi'an, my heart broke when I said goodbye to them."

Although it's the Mexican poet's first time visiting China, Acuna, who is also a professor at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, composed a long poem, Larga Noche a Li Bai (Long Night to Li Bai), inspired by the Tang Dynasty (618-907) poet better known in Latin America as Li Po.

The poem was translated into Chinese and published in the seventh issue of China's most eminent poetry magazine, Shi Kan (Poetry Periodical), in 2024. In Acuna's verses, Li Bai sheds the image of a wine-loving bohemian and emerges as a profoundly solitary figure conversing with a lonely soul imbibing mezcal.

"Li Bai is very vital; his being is directly connected to the world. …In my case, the images in his poems take me back to the absence of what was once joy. The lake is a mirror of memory. Cicadas rustle before the emptiness of love. The wine is bitter, but it still warms the poet's heart," Acuna muses.

The legendary Tang poet inspired a new tale of friendship at the poetry gathering on Sept 20 at Beihai Park in Beijing.

There, poets wrote in their native languages and, after translation, exchanged their works by drawing from a box — Chinese poets selecting from Latin American poems and vice versa — before reading them aloud.

Acuna drew a poem titled Brothers and Sisters of the World — For My Poet Friends. It was by Chinese poet Wang Fangfang, who wrote:

My brothers and sisters

My ceramics are filled with the rain of the Andes

Qinqiang Opera resonates with the eagle flute

And a poet greets Li Bai in Quechua

Upon reading the poem, Acuna, brimming with excitement, presented Wang with the Poetry Periodical magazine containing his own work.

Wang later told China Daily that he was deeply struck by Acuna's line "I want to lock myself into Li Bai's long night", which strongly echoes his poem.