Lao She Biography and List of Works

Chinese playwright and author of humorous satiric novels and short stories. Lao She is perhaps best known for his story LUOTUO XIANGZI (1936). An unauthorized and bowdlerized English translation, Rickshaw Boy, with a happy ending, appeared in 1945 and became a U.S. best seller. Among his most famous stories is 'Crescent Moon', written in the early stages of his creative life. It depicts the miserable life of a mother and daughter and their deterioration into prostitution.

  "I used to picture an ideal life, and it would be like a dream. But then, as cruel reality again closed in on me, the dream would quickly pass, and I would feel worse than ever. This world is no dream - it's a living hell.
   Mama could see that I was feeling low, and she would urge me to get married. A husband would give me food, and she could get a cash payment for her old age. I was her only hope. But who would marry me?"
(from 'Crescent Moon')

Lao Shê was born of Manchu descent in Beijing. Fatherless since early childhood, Lao Shê worked his way through Peking Teacher's College. After graduation he supported himself and his mother through a series of teaching and administrative post. He served as a principal of an elementary school at age 17, and later he was a district supervisor. Lao Shê spent from 1924 to 1929 in London, where he taught Chinese at the School of Oriental and African Studies. By reading the novels of Charles Dickens among others, Lao She improved his English, and decided to start his fist novel.

In 1931 Lao Shê returned to China and continued to write and teach in various universities. MAO CH'ENG CHI (1933, Cat Country) was a bitter satire about Chinese society. In NIU T'IEN-TZ'U CHUAN (1934, Heaven sent), partly modelled on Fielding's Tom Jones, Lao Shê turned again to humour. He reversed his early individualist theme and stressed the futility of the individual's struggle against society as a whole. The outbreak of the second Sino-Japanese War (1937-45) radically altered Lao Shê's views. Between the years 1937 and 1945 he wrote a number of plays, worked as a propagandist, and headed the All-China Anti-Japanese Writers Federation.

After World War II Lao Shê published a gigantic novel in three parts, SSU-SHIH T'UNG-T'ANG (abridged translation The Yellow Storm). It dealt with life in Peking during the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. Between the years 1946 and 1949 Lao Shê lived in the United States on a cultural grant at the invitation of the Department of State. When the People's Republic was established in 1949, Lao Shê returned to China.

He was a member of the Cultural and Educational Committee in the Government Administration Council, a deputy to the National People's Congress, a member of the Standing Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, vice-chairman of the All-China Federation of Literature and Art and vice-chairman of the Union of Chinese Writers as well as chairman of the Beijing Federation of Literature and Art. He was named a 'People's Artist' and a 'Great Master of Language'. His plays, such as LUNG HSÜ-KOU (1951, Dragon Beard Ditch), became ideologically didactic, and did not reach the level of his former works. Persecuted by Lin Biao and the gang of four Lao Shê committed suicide on October 24, 1966. His last novel was The Drum Singers (1952), which was published only in English. Since the fall of Chiang Ch'ing, guiding hand of the Cultural Revolution, in 1971, Lao Shê's works have been republished.

Among Lao She's most frequently performed plays is CHAGUAN (Teahouse), which was written in 1957. The events are set in the Beijing teahouse of Wang Lifa during three different periods: 1898 under the empire, the 1910s under the warlords and around 1945 after WW II. Towards the end Wang and his friends confess the failure of their lives. The teahouse is requisitioned as a club and Wang is offered a job as doorman - however, he has already hanged himself. - The Beijing People's Art Theatre performed the play in 1980 in West Germany and France during the three-hundredth anniversary of the Comédie-Française.

For further information: Encyclopaedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999, vol. 3); Merriam-Webster's Encyclopaedia of Literature (1995); Fictional Realism in Twentieth Century China: Mao Dun, Lao She, Shen Congwen by T. Wang (1992); McGraw-Hill Encyclopaedia of World Drama, ed. by Stanley Hochman (1984); Two Writers and the Cultural Revolution: Lao She and Chen Jo-hsi, ed. by G.Kao ( 1980); Lao She and the Chinese Revolution by R. Vohra (1974); The Evolution of a Modern Chinese Writer: An Analysis of Lao She's Fiction, with Biographical and Bibliographical Appendices by Z. Slupski (1966)

CHAO TZU-YÜEH, (1927)
Crescent Moon and Other Stories, (1985)