the arrest of the "Gang of Four" in the latter half of 1976, the Cultural Revolution came to an end, ushering in a relaxation of government control of speech. Bei Dao and his friend, the poet Mang Ke, assembled the literary journal Jintian (Today), working with mimeographs. The first issue appeared in 1978 and was distributed by hand or posted, as broadsides, on what came to be known as Beijing's "Democracy Wall". It featured Bei Dao's poem, "The Answer," as well as a short story he wrote. To avoid governmental scrutiny, he published under a pseudonym, Bei Dao, "Northern Island," chosen by his friend Mang Ke because Bei Dao hailed from the north of China and preferred solitude. The journal was notable for its literary quality: in its pages, readers were introduced to a group of poets—including Gu Cheng, Duo Duo, Yang Lian, and Shu Ting, among others—whom Chinese critics dubbed "menglong", which has been translated in English as "misty" or "obscure", in reference to their embrace of complexity and rejection of the Maoist principles of socialist realism. "The Answer," in particular, spread through the Chinese underground and vaulted Bei Dao to national fame. Bei Dao continued to publish poetry and short fiction in Jintian, which appeared irregularly until Chinese authorities banned it in 1980. In the same year, he married the artist Shao Fei and moved out of his childhood home. He also transitioned away from employment in construction after eleven years—five years as a concrete mixer and six as an ironworker. He found work as a journalist, writing for the magazine China Report. He also translated Western poets into Chinese. Bei Dao's poetry appeared in the officially approved Chinese journal Shi Kan (Poetry Monthly) during the "Democracy Wall" era of 1978-1980. His poems first appeared in English translation in 1983, when they were featured in the journal Renditions, published by the Chinese University Press. In the same year, a collection of his poems was published as Notes from the City of the Sun by the Cornell University East Asia Program as part of its "East Asia Papers" series. The following year, his poems appeared in English in the Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars. During the years 1983-84, his work was banned in China due to a government campaign to combat "spiritual pollution". When that campaign ended, his work appeared again in Chinese in a Communist Party publication called