Meng Lang

Meng Lang (Chinese: 孟浪; 1961 – 12 December 2018) was a Chinese poet and dissident. He was a signatory of the human rights manifesto Charter 08 and a co-founder of the Independent Chinese PEN Center.

Meng Lang was born in 1961 in Shanghai, China, with his ancestral home in Shaoxing, Zhejiang. His original name was Meng Junliang (孟俊良).^[1] In the 1980s, he was a participant in China's unofficial poetry movements and co-edited the anthology A Compendium of Modern Chinese Poetry, 1986–1988.^[2]

He moved to the United States and became a writer in residence at Brown University between 1995 and 1998. He later moved to Hong Kong in 2006.^[2] He was a signatory of Charter 08, a human rights manifesto co-authored by his former colleague Liu Xiaobo, and co-founded the Independent Chinese PEN Center in 2011.^[1] Following the arrest of several book publishers in Hong Kong, Meng and his wife Tu Chia-chi (杜家祁) moved to Hualien County, Taiwan in 2015.^[1]

Meng's poems have been published and translated into multiple languages.^[2] After the death of Liu Xiaobo in 2017, Meng published a poetry anthology in Taiwan in his memory the following year.^[2]

Meng returned to Hong Kong with his wife in February 2018, and fell ill soon afterwards. He was hospitalized and diagnosed with stage four lung cancer.^[1] On 12 December 2018, he died at Prince of Wales Hospital at the age of 57.^[2]