This paper focuses on the lyrical turn in the works of Luo Yijun, a budding local writer of the 1980’s. Emphasis is placed on the relationship between Luo and Zhang Dachun, specifically on how Luo first adopted Zhang’s writing skills and worldviews and then departed from his mentor (his “overcoming” Zhang). It is precisely in Luo’s collection of poems Qi de gushi [The story of Qi/desertion], which bears traces of such a significant turn, that the poet picks up stealthily the lyrical tradition deserted by Zhang, seeking the “I-novel” as a source of his narrative strategy and hence accomplishing an aesthetics of desertion.