Pains is renowned writer, publisher and editor Zhao Lihong's newest collection of Chinese poetry in translation—a thematically interlinked meditation on the human body, aging, and the complexities of freedom.

In this collection of fifty-one poems, Zhao pulls in his focus and examines the universal in constrained microcosmic units of abstraction. The poet utilizes his decades of influence to pull ahead as a preeminent representative of contemporary Chinese poetry in all of its simplicity, and proves that limitation in itself may be a blessing.