Covert nighttime event is poetry in motion

It was almost 10 pm. A man in his late 20s was addressing a group of 40 people in a packed courtyard in central Beijing before dispatching them to all parts of the capital.

"Don't target government bodies, such as police stations. Our action is not political at all and I don't want to make it look political," says the thin man with long hair.

The guerrillas, most of whom have never met each other before, were divided into six contingents and sent to raid the city with something they conceive as powerful - poetry.

From narrow hutong to the high-rise central business district, the guerrillas pasted sheets printed with poems on walls, signboards and street lamps as a gift to the local neighborhood and passers-by on March 20, the eve of World Poem Day.

"You may also put them under the windshield wipers of cars. When drivers see them, they may expect them to be parking tickets but will find they are poems," says Li Dongzhe, the organizer of the event, who briefed the crowd.

A former journalist and a poetry lover, Li initiated the activity on Someet, an online platform he co-founded, where users come up with interesting activity proposals and ask other people to join in.

Other than the works of well-known poets such as Wislawa Szymborska of Poland and Beidao of China, Li intentionally included the poems of quite a few Chinese poets or grassroots writers, who are not very well-known yet.