Yang Lian (poet)

Yang Lian (Chinese: 楊煉 Yáng Liàn; born 22 February 1955) is a Swiss-Chinese poet associated with the Misty Poets and also with the Searching for Roots school. He was born in Bern, Switzerland, in 1955 and was raised in Beijing, China. where he attended primary school.

His education was interrupted by the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution after 1966. In 1974, he was sent to Changping county near Beijing to undergo "re-education through labor", where he undertook a variety of tasks including digging graves. In 1977, after the Cultural Revolution had ended and Mao Zedong had died, Yang returned to Beijing, where he worked with the state broadcasting service.