In 1946, Mu Dan went to the Northeast China to run a newspaper. Editing a newspaper and writing poetry, the two different practices seemed in conflict but in fact shared the same inner structure. As a poet, Mu Dan had been an outsider of the national and local history, but as a journalist, he became an insider. The experience in Northeast brought more political reality into his observation and writing, resulting in the breakthrough of modern lyric device which was presented as the contradiction between pure individual and ugly society. His writing was involved into rather complicated historical circumstances of the wartime China, even representing the feelings and thought of a certain group. So the relevance of a poet and a journalist may provide a meaningful point of view to understand how the social practices of intellectuals influenced their literary writing in war time.