Lao She
Lao She, pseudonym
of Shu Sheyu, original name Shu Qingchun (b.
February 3, 1899, Beijing, China—d. August 24, 1966,
Beijing), Chinese author of humorous, satiric novels
and short stories and, after the onset of the
Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), of patriotic and
propagandistic plays and novels.
A member of the
Manchu ethnic minority, Shu Sheyu served as
principal of an elementary school at age 17 and soon
worked his way up to district supervisor. In 1924 he
went to England, teaching Mandarin Chinese to
support himself and collaborating for five years on
a translation of the great Ming-dynasty novel
Jinpingmei. Reading the novels of Charles Dickens to
improve his English, Shu Sheyu was inspired to write
his own first novel, Lao Zhang di zhexue
(“Philosophy of Lao Zhang”), which was serialized in
the journal Xiaoshuo yuebao (“Short-Story Magazine”)
in 1926. He completed two more novels, in which he
developed the theme that the strong, hardworking
individual could reverse the tide of stagnation and
corruption plaguing China. When Lao She returned to
China in 1931, he found that he had achieved some
fame as a comic novelist, and so he continued to
create his humorous, action-packed works.
In Niu Tianci zhuan
(1934; “The Life of Niu Tianci”), Lao She changed
his individualist theme to one stressing the
importance of the total social environment and the
futility of the individual’s struggle against such
an environment. His new theme found its clearest
expression in his masterpiece, Luotuo Xiangzi (1936;
“Xiangzi the Camel”; Eng. trans. Rickshaw or Camel
Xiangzi), the tragic story of the trials of a
rickshaw puller in Beijing. An unauthorized and
bowdlerized English translation, titled Rickshaw Boy
(1945), with a happy ending quite foreign to the
original story, became a best seller in the United
States.
During the
Sino-Japanese War, Lao She headed the All-China
Anti-Japanese Writers Federation, encouraging
writers to produce patriotic and propagandistic
literature. His own works were inferior and
propagandistic. His best work of this period was his
novel Sishi tong tang (1944–50; “Four Generations
Under One Roof”).
In 1946–47 Lao She
traveled to the United States on a cultural grant,
lecturing and overseeing the translation of several
of his novels, including The Yellow Storm (1951),
which was never published in Chinese, and his last
novel, The Drum Singers (1952; its Chinese version,
Gu shu yi ren, was not published until 1980). Upon
his return to China he was active in various
cultural movements and literary committees and
continued to write his propagandistic plays, among
them the popular Longxugou (1951; Dragon Beard
Ditch) and Chaguan (1957; Teahouse), which displayed
his fine linguistic talents in its reproduction of
the Beijing dialect.
Lao She fell victim
to persecution at the outset of the Cultural
Revolution in 1966, and it is widely believed that
he died as a result of a beating by Red Guards.
