Time of Utopia

Time of Utopia is a collection of youthful poetry that Sonia Hu began writing in the 1980s. As critic Hong Junzhi observes, reading Hu’s poems quietly draws us into an era filled with passion, uncertainty, and confusion. Its innocence belonged not simply to young men and women, but to society itself: a culture still finding its way, a literary world still coming into its own. With language that is youthful, tentative, innocent, and understated, Hu’s poetry gently opens the thin membrane surrounding the heart.

Whether marked by innocence or a stirring of emotion, the play of light and shadow leaves us confronting the helpless realization that time flows on without pause. In a world as fleeting as dreams, bubbles, dew, and lightning, each person must nevertheless follow a path of their own. ‘Days and years are, in our eyes, / a line without markings.’ Without markers or boundaries, the illusory world becomes a virtual one: the strange, dazzling three-dimensional space of a ‘shimmering record of life’ contracts into a two-dimensional plane, then into a single line. Yet youthful determination remains a powerful force. These young people ‘follow the sunlight and its shadows’ and ‘move toward one another.’ They ‘pass through the mist / green childhood vanishes from their gaze / maturity / gathers the language of passion.’ They believe that ‘one day, we / will find a point where our focus converges’ (‘Untitled,’ January 1983). In these lines we encounter the uncertainty, hope, hesitation, and resolve of the young people of that era.

Across the poems from the 1980s and 1990s collected here, we witness both the passion of youth and its collapse. The collection offers an intimate reflection of its time, tracing the inner journeys of a generation of young men and women.