Like many others in her youth, she was made to work in the countryside as part of the Maoist era's plans for a Cultural Revolution, which reflected the idealistic push for women's entrance in the workforce as a means of gaining national wealth.
[2] While this choice was shocking to her peers and family, Zhai reaffirmed that poetry was her own religion; it provided her with the freedom of expression she longed for and the ability to take control of her life, granting her more fulfillment than money and status could.
She stands by the knowledge that her status as a woman comes before her poet identity; her works continuously hold a conscious acknowledgement of women's oppression as she navigates the waves of Chinese literati culture.
[9] Zhai's works predominantly rely on re-shaping normalized concepts gender and femininity, using imagery of darkness and the night to convey unquantifiable depths of emotion in her poetic dialogues.
[3] Using this "nocturnal writing" style as a gateway for women's self-reflexive, subconscious progressive thoughts was radical for her time, as the traditionally quiet, feminine night suddenly became a symbol for societal reform.
She explains that while she does use gendered imagery, she actively refutes 'inherent' connotations of masculine or feminine, further highlighting how normalized assumptions of patriarchal power imbalance pervade an artist's imaginary world just as in real life.
[9] Zhai is known as one of the first women writers in China to discuss the non-beautiful aspects of femininity including things like the trials of childbirth, menstruation, and the transformations of the female body with age, all subjects that are traditionally considered taboo.
In other words, Zhai resents the capitalization of the 'pastoral' effect, one where the sensations of loss of nature's inherent beauty is sold to the public by implementing portioned reminders of its splendour, such as the existence of private beaches or the insertion of artificial lakes in industrialized cities.
[1] Her nineties style also took on a reserved air, indicating a rise in maturity for the poet: upon returning from her two-year American stay, Zhai showed her growth as a writer in “Song of the Café” (1993), which featured realistic narrative modes through the characters’ perspectives as opposed to her usual confessional speaker.
Rather than hold the helm as an 'anti-patriarchy figure' for women, he stressed that the poet's main goal in altering her prosaic style was the exploration of methods to unravel gendered nuances in Chinese literary culture.