A Critical Biography of Lao She

Author: Guan Jixin

While drawing on various relevant existing research results, the author,following a specific train of thought and taking a particular point of view,conducted a comprehensive and fresh summary and description of the life work of writer Lao She. The author paid special attention to conducting a study in which Lao She was depicted not only as a populist writer but also as a prominent intellectual. The key to his analysis was placed on the representative works written by Lao She during different historical stages.These include The Philosophy of Lao Zhang, Master Zhao Said, Ma and Son, City of Cats, Divorce, Biography of Niu Tianci, Crescent Moon, The Spirit-breaking Spear, Rickshaw Boy, This Life of Mine, Four Generations under One Roof, The Drum Signer, Dragon Beard Ditch, Teahouse and Beneath The Red Banner. Step-by-step and delicate observations are provided of Lao She"s writing practice, which produced such extremely strong individual characters. In particular, in-depth exploration was carried out of Lao She"s overall artistic achievement, the basic style of his creation, and the laws underlying the success and failure of his writing.
Utilizing abundant historical materials, the author conducted an analysis of the various cultural influences that Lao She, as a writer of the minority Manchu nationality, imbued during the different stages of his life. Those influences stemmed from Manchu, Han and even the modern western ethnic cultures. The analysis covers his entire lifetime and are unfolded in a progressively insightful way. Through such an examination, the national psyche of Lao She and his multicultural attainments are identified, as are corresponding and accurate reflections in Lao She"s literary creations.

The life locus for Lao She was not only closely associated with Beijing"s Manchu lower classes from which he came, but also with the social changes in modern and contemporary China that he personally experienced. Thus, the author on the one hand focuses his academic reflection on the texts of LaoShe"s works, and on the other makes efforts to ponder Lao She"s life from a humanistic perspective. In Lao She"s literary world, the author tries to reveal the special inner character of Lao She"s life that distinguishes him from many other writers.

Soon after Lao She was born, he encountered events resulting from foreign aggression and his father"s death in war and these constituted the fundamental factors that determined Lao She"s choice to be a writer, namely his lifelong adherence to the spirit of patriotism. Lao She was born and brought up in a poor urban family which serves to explain why his deep affection for people living in poverty was a consistent element underlying his creative work, and why his extraordinary familiarity with and vivid depiction of the life of the urban lower classes emerges as a unique artistic technique of Lao She. Since from his boyhood onwards Lao She was nurtured by Beijing-flavored Manchu culture, he was induced to engage in the lifelong pursuit of the popular arts featuring the Beijing dialect. Due to the special social circumstances facing the Manchu nationality during the course of Lao She"s early life and due to his origins as a Manchu, he was greatly concerned by such subjects as the national spirit and culture. This was a critical factor that eventually turned him into a great writer famed for his contribution to cultural and thought enlightenment.Moreover, his experiences of living in different oriental and western countries and the thoughts these experiences inspired imbued in him a cultural vision and concepts of value that led him to become a world-class writer.

Lao She is the representative of Manchu literature with its fine traditions.In fully displaying the personal literary achievements of Lao She, the author taps into the spontaneous laws governing the transformation of Manchu literature that occurred in the course of its long-term exchange with Han literature and world literature. He also attempts to reveal the demonstrable significance and theoretical implications that the success of Lao She"s art has exerted in the development of China"s multi-national literature. The experience of Lao She proves that writers of minority nationalities, living in an era of great social change should not and cannot achieve success by limiting themselves within a relatively closed national cultural environment. Rather,they should dare to step into the vast world that is full of collisions among heterogeneous cultures, and be encouraged to reveal the intrinsic charm and extrinsic beauty of their own cultures. Among China"s many minority nationality writers, Lao She is a typical representative of that type of writer who draws on his or her original culture and combines it with others. Lao She had a very deep understanding of the culture of his own nationality, saw himself as a literary creator of his own nationality, and maintained a sense of responsibility in developing the literature and culture of his own nationality.However, in close contact with other nationalities, Lao She was extremely open-minded and able to learn from them. In a bid to establish a completely new value concept concerning the national culture, he took the culture of his own nationality as a point of reference and drew widely on the strong points of others. Moreover, he was able to incorporate his new concept of a national culture into his writing. Lao She"s successful writing also proves that the writers engaged in creating national literature must uphold a deep sense of cultural self-reflection if they want to make their national literatures popular among the reading public and well received. This is particularly true of the present day when a variety of nationalities compete with each other in the course of development. Lao She was one of the first Chinese national minority writers concerned for Manchu culture and Chinese culture. Many of his works pursue the theme of presenting a self-criticism for the national culture. This was an intellectual strength underlying his creative writing. Such thinking in literary creation, represented by Lao She, will help enlighten writers of coming generations who work in the field of China"s minority literature reation.

Guan Jixin, male, born in 1950. Being ethnically Manchu, he is an associate professor working in the Institute of Ethic Minority Literature under CASS.