"Scrap Metal and Poetry: Verse Among the Trucks"
Zhou Yinde, a 54 year old merchant from Sichuan Province in southwest China, has for more than thirty years woven poetry into his daily life while collecting scrap metal and selling goods – a quiet testament to how the ordinary can give birth to the extraordinary. When a man whose hands are used to steel pipes and hammers picks up a pen to write a line about sunlight as delicate as a cicada's wing, the line between prose and poetry blurs. Zhou Yinde never sought fame. He sought a home – in words, in rhymes, in the silence between his truck stops. And he found it.
Sixteen years ago, he returned to his hometown to care for his mother, bought a used truck for 20,000 yuan, and began a life on the road. In the intervals between stops, he steals moments under trees or by rice fields to write. In those quiet hours, he has written more than 600 poems, some of which have been published. His house reflects his two lives: scrap metal downstairs, poetry upstairs. The journey began in 1991, when a school friend brought him a poetry collection. He was nineteen. Poetry found him and never let go. "It was their university poetry journal. I was captivated by the beautiful words inside. So I started imitating their style, trying to learn. My early attempts were quite clumsy, but they still felt like a victory. It made me b elieve I really could do this," Zhou said.
Poetry opened a window to a world Zhou had never known, and with it came the urge to write. He read, he wrote, and his dream began to grow. But life was hard. At nineteen he left home to take odd jobs – carrying cement, hauling bricks, working at power stations. Work consumed him. Yet poetry never left him, and he wrote about it all. "That year I walked through a noisy city – on one side my hometown, on the other, myself. Steel pipes, couplings, hammers – they emptied my memories. Home could only be found in dreams," he wrote.
Missing his family and working far from home, Zhou wrote a poem for his mother titled "Spring Sunshine": "The sunlight is thin – as delicate as a cicada's wing. Through it I see my mother walking alone in the twilight." In tender, restrained words, he expressed his love and longing for her.
More than ten years ago, Zhou turned to the internet in search of poetry communities. In 2015, he met Wei Guangwu, a poet from his hometown of Neijiang. "He shared a couple of poems he'd written while away from home. After reading them, I felt he had a natural gift – his style was simple and honest. There was a struggle in his words, but never despair," Wei said. Encouraged by Wei, Zhou began to refine his style and submit his poems to publications. "When I finish a good poem, I feel a real sense of satisfaction. It's a joy that nourishes the soul," Zhou said.
Publications in newspapers and magazines gave Zhou confidence and deepened his sense of achievement. His passion for poetry grew, and over time he won several literary awards in his region, gaining wider recognition. Zhou said he owes the most to his wife, who quietly supported him from obscurity to publication and awards. "Writing poetry is his way of finding meaning in life. Sometimes I praise him a little – just to show my support – and it makes him truly happy," said Jiang Li, Zhou's wife.
In 2015, Zhou was admitted to the writers' associations of Jizhong County and Neijiang City. Since then, he has had more opportunities to learn from fellow poets and teachers, and as his craft developed, his ambitions grew. "His poetry is down to earth and genuine – full of the flavour of everyday life. He cares for his elderly parents and children, and he has no steady income. Everything he earns comes from driving around villages, buying and selling odds and ends. That sets him apart from most of us – and that's what we respect most about him," said Gu Jiande, head of the county writers' association. "I really want to publish a book of my poems someday. That's the dream that keeps me going," Zhou said.
Zhou Yinde's story is not unique. Poetry has never been the privilege of armchair sages – it has always found its servants among those who earn their living with their hands. American poet Wallace Stevens, a Pulitzer Prize winner, worked as an insurance agent for nearly forty years, and his colleagues often knew nothing of his other self. His contemporary William Carlos Williams, one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century, practiced as a paediatrician for more than forty years, jotting down lines between patients.
In eighteenth century England, John Clare, known as the "peasant poet," wrote of the beauty of rural life while labouring as a farmhand. And in Russia, the great Alexei Koltsov, the son of a cattle trader, never abandoned his family business but created poems that are essential to Russian literature. What unites them all is this: they did not wait for special conditions to create – they carved their art out of the noise of everyday life, just as Zhou carves minutes between the stops of his truck.
As Rilke wrote: "If your everyday life seems poor to you, do not blame it; blame yourself, tell yourself that you are not poet enough to call forth its riches."
As CCTV+ reports, Zhou Yinde's story has become yet another reminder that poetry requires no diplomas or accolades – it only needs a heart willing to see beauty in the most ordinary things, and the courage to write it down, even when the world around is noisy and rushing.
