Book excerpt: Insisting on collective and common memories, Floating Clouds Beyond the Elastic Limit champions a new national literature grounded in the histories of a restless tribe, we who have found a home away from home. Xi Ni Er’s poetry is alive with awareness of locality and origins – this awareness feeds the present, the future and the past in his work. Wide-ranging in their sweep, the poems go into historical and societal themes, reflecting deep concern and anxiety for the people, the happenings and the objects in a floating city, a transient life, and a pitiless history.