The Phenomenology of "Crawling out of the Pandemic": Body, Poetry and Accent

This paper investigates the origins and proliferation of the poem "Crawl Out of Your China," contextualized within the COVID-19 pandemic. It examines the motivations behind the crawling behavior among Chinese university students, integral to the poem's conceptualization, revealing that crawling is an intentional existential decision, not an irrational one. The study explores the dynamic interplay between the individual and society through embodied expressions such as poetic imagery and phonetics in crawling, poetry, and dialectal recitations, highlighting the embodied cognition and cultural significance of these practices. It concludes by discussing the metaphorical significance of physical behaviors, particularly the evolving role of the body in the digital age.