LAO SHE

born Feb. 3, 1899, Peking, China died Aug. 24?, 1966, Peking Pinyin Lao She, pseudonym of (WadeGiles romanization) Shu She-y, original name Shu Ch'ing-ch'un Chinese author of humorous, satiric novels and short stories and, after the onset of the Sino-Japanese War (1937), of patriotic and propagandistic plays and novels. Lao She 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 Chin p'ing mei. By reading the novels of Charles Dickens to improve his English, Lao She was inspired to write his first novel, which was published in China in the Hsiao-shuo yeh-pao (Short-Story Magazine) and enjoyed some success. He also 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 T'ien-tz'u chuan (1934; The Life of Niu T'ien-tz'u), 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, Lo-t'o Hsiang-tzu (1936; Hsiang-tzu the Camel), the tragic story of the trials of a ricksha puller in Peking. 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 and World War II, Lao She headed the All-China Anti-Japanese Writers Federation, encouraging writers to produce patriotic and propagandistic literature. His own works were inferior and overly infused with propaganda. In 194647 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) and his last novel, The Drum Singers (1952), which never appeared in Chinese. 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 Lung-hs kou (1951; Dragon Beard Ditch) and Ch'a-kuan (1957; The Teahouse), which displayed his fine linguistic talents in its reproduction of the Peking 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.