At an Open Auction
This pair of human hands used to belong to
Neither da Vinci, nor Mozart, nor Napoleon
Nor Newton, nor Van Gogh, nor Thomas Edison
Nor Shakespeare, nor Doug Henning, of course nor Li Bai
Look, the blood is still dripping!
But it once warmed the heart of a frozen crow
Opened the door to a stranger starving to death
Added a handful of soil to a withering rose
Waved to a breeze blowing from nowhere
Wouldn’t it be a big fool to buy these hands?
Most important, the hands carry with them authentic spirits
Inherited from gods though still unknown to us, and the owner
Has cut them off to donate to an honorable human cause
Our initial price is set exactly one thousand, any bid higher
Say, than two thousand, three, five or even ten perhaps?
The Universal Law of Balancing
Heaven above earth to begin with, except
This hidden universal law of balancing:
If you lose here, you are bound to gain
There; if you suffer now, you will be elated
Then; if you fail in many small matters
You are going to win in a big way, or
The other way around, or vice versa. Or
In terms of Dao, the ultimate meeting point
Between yin and yang: just as your whole
Mindset is a matter of consciousness, all
Your life & World can be changed for the
Better only if you adopt a positive mentality
The Unspeakable Spoken Out: For Hong Qi (祁红)
After a deep, deep breath
Out of the back, back yard
Of my heart, I blow each and
Every filament of thought of you
(Not unlike Li Shangyin’s silkworm)
Stained with my spiritrons high
And higher up into the mid-
Summer wind
In which to dance
The wildest dance, to the freest tune of
The blue sky, as it sweeps over an
Entire forest without leaving
A single fragment of shadow.
Who knows if it will reach you in the heart of
Your world, embracing you fully in the most
Tender moment of night, caressing your whole
Being inside out with its finest numerous
Fingers. All invisible, all un-hearable.
South China Cicada
no human ear has ever heard of you
cloistering yourself deep in the soil
silently sucking all sounds from roots
for more than thirteen years in a row
until high up on a summer-painted twig
you slough off your earthly self
pouring all your being into a single song
before the sun sets for the yellow leaf
Gaxyden: A Paradise Regained
While all my fellow humans hope to
Enter heaven after they die, I am alone
Living in paradise already:
An earthly realm I have built myself
With the light from Lapland, where the setting sun
Shines with the morning glows above golden snow
The air from Shangri-la, where the yin
And yang are in pure and perfect balance with
Each other in every grass, every cloud
The water from Waterton Lakes, which
Reflect the mountain of trees as clearly
As the mountain reflects upon the clear water
That’s all my spirit needs, not the fragments
Of the meaning about Eden long lost
But the whole backyard within my solitary heart
Bionote
Yuan Changming grew up in an isolated village, started to learn the English alphabet in Shanghai at age nineteen and published monographs on translation before leaving China. With a Canadian PhD in English, Yuan currently lives in Vancouver, where he co-edits Poetry Pacific with Allen Yuan. Writing credits include 16 chapbooks, 12 Pushcart nominations for poetry and 3 for fiction, 6 nominations for BOTN besides appearances in the Best of the Best Canadian Poetry (2008-17), BestNewPoemsOnline and 2,207 other publications across 52 countries. A former poetry juror for Canada's National Magazine Awards, Yuan began writing and publishing fiction in 2022. His debut hybrid Detaching, 'silver romance' The Tuner, short story collection Flashbacks, creative nonfiction collection Return to Roots and novel trilogy Towards are all available on Amazon.
MH: Like every seminal work of art, your trilogy must have a compelling origin story. How did Towards come into being?
YC: Like many authors, I harbored a dream of writing a "magnum opus" from a young age, though the subject matter remained elusive for decades. The seeds were sown in 2000, when I wrote a 170,000-character diary-letter to my first love, detailing our life paths since our separation in 1980. After a friend’s harsh critique in 2002, I abandoned the project for nearly twenty years.
It took a reencounter with my first crush in 2019 to reignite the flame. During the pandemic, I composed nearly 200 love poems for her, but I soon realized that poetry—while intense—could not contain the sheer scale of my longing. During Christmas week of 2021, I turned to prose. Within three months, the draft of Towards was complete. Without my personal muse, I would never have bridged the gap between record-breaking love poetry and expansive, philosophical prose.
MH: Between the first draft in 2022 and this release by Silver Bow Publishing, how did the manuscript evolve?
YC: My path was not linear. After revising the draft in early 2023, I navigated a series of "soft rejections" and editorial hurdles with international presses who found the second-person POV (in vol. 2) and bilingual elements "difficult." Rather than compromise the work's integrity, I reclaimed it. I harmonized the narrative viewpoints, infused the text with more direct dialogue, and—as karma would have it—found a champion in publisher Candice James. It is a testament to the Chinese proverb: "Good things happen to those who exert enough effort."
MH: You’ve called Towards your most ambitious project. What sets it apart?
YC: It is a radical hybrid. Within the narrative, I have integrated almost every literary genre: poetry, drama, travelogue, memoir, and modern digital correspondence. Through the protagonist Ming, I explore the total spectrum of the human condition—bridging "macro" concerns like geopolitics and philosophy with "micro" realities like infidelity and spiritual cultivation. It is an encyclopedic representation of contemporary life across two continents. By contrasting two eras and two cultures, I hope to encourage a more open-minded, respectful global dialogue.
MH: What is the central message you hope to convey through Ming’s journey?
YC: The central hook is a fundamental question of the soul: What happens after one achieves the "Canadian Dream"? I want readers to ponder whether happiness is merely success, or if it requires something deeper.
In my view, the "Dream" provides the material foundation, but love and spiritual growth form the Superstructure of Happiness. To reach this higher state, Ming must follow a specific trajectory: he must Detach from the material "red dust," Derail from conventional relationships to find raw love, and Detour through the natural world to harmonize his spirit. Happiness is the immediate goal, but spiritual wholeness is the ultimate purpose of life.
MH: Aside from your muse, what were the primary literary influences on this trilogy?
YC: I see the trilogy as a challenge to, and a dialogue with, world literature. If the first volume, Detaching, emulates Bill Porter’s Road to Heaven, the second, Derailing, serves as a parallel to Orhan Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence. The final volume, Detouring, stands as a direct challenge to Junichi Watanabe’s A Lost Paradise.
MH: Who is your target reader, and what are the market opportunities for such a complex work?
YC: I write to make my life meaningful, but I believe the "Boomer" generation—those in the "silver age" (65–75) navigating romance and spiritual health—will find themselves in these pages. While a bilingual, hybrid work poses a market risk, it also offers unique opportunities. This is a story of "seniors in love" that is ripe for film adaptation or Chinese translation. The "Superstructure" of the story is, after all, universal.
MH: This trilogy is a massive achievement. Do you have other projects in the works?
YC: The last six years have been a renaissance for me. I’ve recently finalized Museum of Limerence, a record-breaking sequence of love poems. My output—including 218 love poems, Towards (a trilogy; Silver Bow, 2026), Detaching (a hybrid collection; ABP, 2024), The Tuner (a “silver romance;” ABP, 2025), Return to Roots (a CNF collection: ABP, 2026) and nearly 80 short stories, as well as a recently completed cultural-philosophical novel and a collection of travel essays —is the direct result of my reencounter with my muse. My work today is about breaking records and challenging the "intrinsic" limits of both English and Chinese literature.
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