Stranded in Europe, Bei Dao moved from one country to another. After his term as a visiting writer in West Berlin, he spent much of 1990 in Scandinavia, where, in Oslo, he and fellow exiles decided to revive Jintian as an émigré journal. His forced exile garnered global media attention as well as increased interest in his work. For example, in addition to invitations to speak at international literary conferences, two collections of his work appeared in the United States simultaneously: a poetry collection, The August Sleepwalker, and a fiction collection, Waves. Writing in The New York Times Book Review, the sinologist Jonathan Spence praised the books as "powerful" and "astonishing and beautiful". In 1991, Bei Dao relocated to Paris, where he lived on Rue de Venise, across from the Pompidou Center. Another poetry collection, Old Snow, appeared in English that year.
