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Lao She: The Humourist in his Humour

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Cyril Birch
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Extract

Appended to this article are two excerpts from Lao She's writings. The first comprises most of a chapter from his first novel; the second is a brief sequence from one of his latest plays. Each is concerned to establish a character, a man who has found his niche in society. Each of these men is quite peripheral to the piece in which he appears, each is a humble creature anxious only to do right by his fellows. On Chao Number Four are lavished all the colourful touches which leap from the brush of a young writer glorying in invention; Wang Jen-te is sketched with the master's economy of line. But the greater contrast appears in the resolution of the two men's respective fates: Chao, pressed down by his own ingenuousness and the cupidity of others into the trough of the “old society” as a beast of burden; Wang Jen-te, proud recipient of a new dignity as chef de cuisine to a People's Commune!

Type
The Intellectuals (II)
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 8 , December 1961 , pp. 45 - 62
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1961

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References

1 Lao Chang-ti Che-hsüeh (First edition—Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1928; third post-war printing—Shanghai: Ch'en-kuang Press, 1949).Google Scholar Like the other early novels, Lao Chang was serialised in Hsiao-shuo Yüeh-pao (Fiction Monthly) before publication in book form.

2 An anagram of the character of the surname gave the name Shu She-yü; the familiar lao is then added to the first syllable of the personal name to give the nom-de-plume Lao She.

3 First edition—Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1935; second post-war printing—Shanghai: Ch'en-kuang Press, 1949.

4 A History of Modern Chinese Fiction, 1917–57 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961).Google Scholar The present article should be supplemented by reference to Mr. Hsia's excellent accounts of Lao She's novels.

5 Lao niu p'o ch'e (The Rickety Ox-cart), p. 4.Google Scholar This book, published (no date) in the Ch'en-kuang wen-hsüeh ts'ung-shu, comprises fourteen essays, mostly on “How I Wrote …”, first published in the periodical Yü-chou feng in 1935. The essays contain much valuable information on his early writing career.

6 Lao Chang, p. 188.Google Scholar

7 Lao niu p'o ch'e, p. 20.Google Scholar

8 First edition—Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1928; first post-war edition—Shanghai: Ch'en-kuang Press, 1948.

9 Huo-ch'e, in the collection Huo-ch'e chi (Shanghai Magazine Co., 1939; fifth printing, 1941)Google Scholar, translated in Payne, Robert and Chia-hua, Yuan, Chinese Short Stories (New York: Transatlantic Arts, 1946).Google Scholar

10 Lao niu p'o ch'e, p. 32.Google Scholar

11 Op. cit., p. 33et seq.Google Scholar

12 In the collection Ying hai chi (Shanghai: Jen-chien shu-wu, 1935; second printing 1936).Google Scholar

13 Third post-war printing–Shanghai: Ch'en-kuang Press, 1949.

14 Wu Ching-tzu's eighteenth-century satire Ju-lin wai-shih has been translated under the title The Scholars by Yang Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang (Peking: Foreign Languages Press); Lu Hsün's Ah Q cheng-chuan (True Story of Ah Q) is in C. C. Wang's Ah Q and Others (New York: Columbia University Press).

15 “Reverie leaves” (mi-yeh) are much prized as an opiate by the cat people.

16 Cat City, pp. 136–137 and 141–142.Google Scholar

17 First published 1935; revised version first published by Ch'en-kuang Press, Shanghai, 1947. Translated by Helena Kuo as The Quest for Love of Lao Lee, and by Evan King with the original title, Divorce.

18 See Lao She's “new preface” to the revised edition, written in New York and dated May 1947.

19 Collected in Ying hai chi, see above, note 12.

20 Lao niu p'o ch'e, p. 29.Google Scholar

21 Hsia, , op. cit., p. 187.Google ScholarLo-t'o Hsiang-tzu was first published 1937; English translation by King, Evan, Rickshaw Boy (author's name romanized as Lau Shaw) (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1945).Google Scholar

22 The action and mood of the final sections of the novel undergo considerable alteration in the English version, which provides a rather sentimental happy ending. See Hsia, , op. cit., p. 623, n. 15.Google Scholar

23 Lo-t'o Hsiang-tzu, pp. 15–16.Google Scholar

24 In the collection Kan chi (Shanghai: Liang-yu Book Co., 1934)Google Scholar, translated in Wang, Chichen, Contemporary Chinese Stories (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944).Google Scholar

25 Translation by Kuo, Helena (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1952).Google Scholar

26 Published in three volumes, with separate titles but none intended as complete in itself: Huang-huo (Bewilderment), and T'ou-sheng (Ignominy) were published 1946, Chi-huang (Famine) not until 1950. Abridged English translation by Pruitt, Ida, The Yellow Storm (New York: 1951).Google Scholar

27 Hsia, , op. cit., pp. 369–375.Google Scholar

28 “From San Francisco to Tientsin,” in Jen-min Wen-hsüeh, No. 4, 02 1950.Google Scholar

29 Loc. cit.

30 “The New Society is a Great School,” in Jen-min Wen-hsüeh, No. 6 (24), 10 1951.Google Scholar

31 Shanghai Ch'en-kuang Press, 1951; third printing 1952.

32 English translation by Hung-ying, Liao (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1956).Google Scholar

33 Jen-nun Jih-pao (Peoples Drily), Peking, 05 21, 1952Google Scholar; translated in Current Background (Hong Kong: U.S. Consulate-General), No. 203, pp. 38–40.Google Scholar

34 Included in Lao She chu-tso hsüan (Selected Plays of Lao She), Peking: People's Literature Press, 1959.Google Scholar

35 Also included in the above selection.

* See p. 45.