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A magical, impressionistic autobiography by China's legendary poet Bei Dao In 2001, to visit his sick father, the exiled poet Bei Dao returned to his homeland for the first time in over twenty years. The city of his birth was totally unrecognizable. "My city that once was had vanished," he writes: "I was a foreigner in my hometown." The shock of this experience released a flood of memories and emotions that sparked Open Up, City Gate. In this lyrical autobiography of growing up -- from the birth of the People's Republic, through the chaotic years of the Great Leap Forward, and on into the Cultural Revolution -- Bei Dao uses his extraordinary gifts as a poet and storyteller to create another Beijing, a beautiful memory palace of endless alleyways and corridors, where personal narrative mixes with the momentous history he lived through.