Abstract: Han Shan, a poet that had not been accepted by orthodox literati until the Qing Dynasty at home, was extremely popular in exotic countries. However, it was such nameless poet in China’s literary history that aroused great attention in the sixties and seventies of the 20th century in the United States and Europe. Han Shan’s popularity at abroad far exceeds those famous poets that we know very well Li Bai and Du Fu, and he was also honored as the grand master of the beat generation and the hippie movement and he became the sources of Europe and the United States the spirit of the counterculture, accompanied by an era that the growth of the youth. His spirit and image was also adored by the Japanese people. This paper will study deep into the effect that translation and transmission took in the popularity of Han Shan’s poems, and finally ponder what we can learn from the incident.
Key words: transmission; translation; popularity in exotic countries
