The Misty Poets (Chinese: 朦胧诗人; pinyin: Ménglóng Shīrén) are a group of 20th century Chinese poets who reacted against the restrictions of the Cultural Revolution. They are so named because their work has been officially denounced as "obscure", "misty", or "hazy" poetry (menglong shi). The movement was initially centered on the magazine Jintian (Chinese: 今天; pinyin: Jīntiān; literally "Today"), which was published from 1978 until 1980, when it was banned.

Guo Lusheng is among the earliest poets of the zhiqing generation poets and was an inspiration for several of the original Misty Poets. Four important misty poets, Bei Dao, Gu Cheng, Duo Duo, and Yang Lian, were exiled after the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989. Other Misty Poets like Mang Ke and Shu Ting remain in China. Jintian was resurrected in Sweden in 1990 as a forum for expatriate Chinese writers.

The work of the Misty Poets has had a strong influence on the lyrics of China's first generation of rock musicians, particularly Cui Jian.

Yang Lian (楊煉 Yáng Liàn) is a Chinese poet associated with the Misty Poets and also with the Searching for Roots school. He was born in Bern, Switzerland in 1955 and raised in Beijing, where he attended primary school.

His education was interrupted by the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution after 1966. In 1974 he was sent to Changping county near Beijing to undergo 're-education through labor', where he undertook a variety of tasks including digging graves. In 1977, after the Cultural Revolution had ended and Mao Zedong had died, Yang returned to Beijing where he worked with the state broadcasting service.

Yang began writing traditional Chinese poetry while working in the countryside, despite this genre of poetry being officially proscribed under the rule of Mao Zedong. In 1979, he became involved with the group of poets writing for 'Today' (Jintian) magazine, and his style of poetry developed into the modernist, experimental style common within that group.

The 'Today' group attracted considerable controversy during the early 1980s, and the initially derogatory term of 'Misty Poets' was applied to them at this time. In 1983, Yang's poem 'Norlang' (the name of a waterfall in Tibet) was criticised as part of the Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign, and a warrant was put out for his arrest. He managed to escape after a tip-off from friends; the campaign ended shortly afterwards.

Cen Shen was a Chinese poet of Tang Dynasty. He was born to a bureaucratic family in Nanyang (in today's Henan), but later moved to Jiangling (in today's Hubei). His great-grandfather Cen Wenben, grandfather's brother Cen Changqian and elder uncle Cen Yi were all chancellors. His father Cen Zhi once occupied Jingzhou Cishi. When Cen Shen was 10, his father died, and financial situation of his family descended. After then, Cen was learning with assiduity, reading a lot of scriptures and history books. He moved to Chang'an when he was 20, and obtained jinshi in 744. Seven years later, Cen met Gao Shi and Du Fu, and became their friend.

Cen's early poems were always landscape poems.

Shu Ting (Chinese: 舒婷, pinyin: Shū Tíng, born 1952 Jinjiang, Fujian) is the pseudonyms of Gong Peiyu (Chinese: 龔佩瑜, pinyin: Gǒng Pèiyú), a Chinese poet.

During the Cultural Revolution, she was sent to the countryside, (because her father was accused of ideological nonconformity), until 1973. Back in Fujian, she had to work at a cement factory, a textile mill, and a lightbulb factory. She began to write poetry in 1969 and her work was published in several literary magazines. Her poetry began to appear in the underground literary magazine Jīntiān (Today). In the early 1980s, she achieved prominence as the leading female representative of the Misty Poets. Her first collection, Shuangwei chuan appeared in 1982, as did a joint-collection with Gu Cheng.

She was asked to join the official Chinese Writers' Association, and won the National Outstanding Poetry Award in 1981 and 1983. During the "anti-spiritual pollution" movement that was launched in 1983, she, like other writers that were thought to be subversive by the state, was heavily criticised. Following this she published two collections with poetry: Hui changge de yiweihua and Shizuniao.