"Wang Guozhen is the one who first brought poetry to me when I was in high school in the early 1990s," says Li Hudie, poet and play-wright. "Although his techniques and artistic conception are not superb, his poems are close to the masses and express a positive mood toward life, which stood out from the 'scar literature' of the 1980s."
However, the sales and popularity didn't earn Wang a ticket into the inner circle of China's established poets.
"Wang's writing had an impeding effect on Chinese poetry," Ouyang Jianghe, a renowned poet of the school of "misty poetry" that flourished in the 1980s, says.
"If we judge the quality of a poem only by its number of readers, then it is a shame for poetry. What represents Wang's poems? The spirit of the time and motivational aphorisms ... These are what I think makes a poem fake."
Wang didn't seem troubled by the criticism. He praised youth, love and hope, always calling for a positive attitude toward life, and influenced a lot of people throughout the 1990s.
His works were also chosen by different Chinese textbooks, including his famous Love of Life - "Since choosing a distant destination, I have to march no matter there is rain or wind. Since aiming at the horizon, what I leave behind can only be a shadow."
Despite gradually losing the readership of the younger generation, Wang responded to the skepticism about his poems in an interview in 2008: "The acknowledgment of the people makes you a poet; you are nothing without the recognition of the people."
Besides being a successful poet, Wang also proved himself to be a versatile artist.
He had practiced calligraphy since 1993, first for signing autographs but later his works of calligraphy sold for several thousand yuan each.
In 2001, Wang started to learn composition, and wrote more than 400 pieces of music for classical Chinese poems. He also did traditional Chinese painting and was associated with literary and artistic creations at the Graduate School of Chinese National Academy of Arts.
"Different forms of art have much in common," wrote Wang in an article in 2006.
"I compose as if I am writing poems, and I paint as if I am creating music."
Wang's new book, a 100,000-word collection of his essays, poems, as well as calligraphy and paintings, was published earlier this month. But Wang, who was in intensive care at a Beijing hospital at the time, wasn't able to read the book.
It is titled, Youth on the Road.
