Lao She

Biography

Early life

Lao She was born Shu Qingchun on 3 February 1899 in Beijing, to a poor Manchu family of the Šumuru clan belonging to the Plain Red Banner. His father, who was a guard soldier, died in a street battle with the Eight-Nation Alliance Forces in the course of the Boxer Rebellion events in 1901. "During my childhood," Lao She later recalled, "I didn't need to hear stories about evil ogres eating children and so forth; the foreign devils my mother told me about were more barbaric and cruel than any fairy tale ogre with a huge mouth and great fangs. And fairy tales are only fairy tales, whereas my mother's stories were 100 percent factual, and they directly affected our whole family." In 1913, he was admitted to the Beijing Normal Third High School (now Beijing Third High School), but had to leave after several months because of financial difficulties. In the same year, he was accepted to Beijing Normal University, from which he graduated in 1918.

Career

Between 1918 and 1924, Lao She was involved as administrator and faculty member at a number of primary and secondary schools in Beijing and Tianjin. He was highly influenced by the May Fourth Movement (1919). He stated, "The May Fourth Movement gave me a new spirit and a new literary language. I am grateful to the May Fourth Movement, as it allowed me to become a writer."

He went on to serve as lecturer in the Chinese section of the School of Oriental Studies (now the School of Oriental and African Studies) at the University of London from 1924 to 1929, living in Notting Hill for most of that period. During his time in London, he absorbed a great deal of English literature (especially Dickens, whom he adored) and began his own writing. His later novel Mr Ma and Son, about a Chinese father and his son in London, drew on these experiences. Up until that time, he had signed his works with his courtesy name She Yu (舍予). In his first novel "Old Zhang's Philosophy" (老张的哲学 Lao Zhang de Zhexue), first published on Fiction Monthly, he first adopted the pen name Lao She.

In the summer of 1929, he left Britain for Singapore, teaching at the Chinese High School. Between his return to China in the spring of 1930 until 1937, he taught at several universities, including Cheeloo University until 1934, and Shandong University (Qingdao).

Lao She was a major popularizer of humor in China, especially through his novels, his short stories and essays for journals like Lin Yutang's "The Analects Fortnightly" (論語半月刊, Lunyu Banyuekan, est. 1932), and his stage plays and other performing arts, notably xiangsheng.

On 27 March 1938, The All-China Resistance Association of Writers and Artists was established with Lao She as its leader. The purpose of this organization was to unite cultural workers against the Japanese, and Lao She was a respected novelist who had remained neutral during the ideological discussions between various literary groups in the preceding years.

In March 1946, Lao She travelled to the United States on a two-year cultural grant sponsored by the State Department, lecturing and overseeing the translation of several of his novels, including The Yellow Storm (1951) and his last novel, The Drum Singers (1952; its Chinese version was not published until 1980). He stayed in the US from 1946 until December 1949. During Lao She's traveling, his friend, Pearl S. Buck, and her husband, had served as sponsors and they helped Lao She live in the U.S. After the People's Republic of China was established, Lao She rejected Buck's advice to stay in America and came back to China. Rickshaw Boy was translated by Buck in the early 1940s. This action helped Rickshaw Boy become a best seller book in America.

Marriage and family

In 1930, Hu Jieqing was studying at Beijing Normal University. Hu's mother was afraid that she would delay marriage and having children because of her studies. Linguist Luo Changpei was acquainted with Hu Jieqing's brothers. Once, Lao She went to Hu's house to play, and Hu Mu asked him to play hide and seek. At this time, Lao She happened to be returning from London, and he had written works, so Luo Changpei introduced Lao She to Hu Mu. After learning about Lao She's talent and character, Hu Mu was extremely happy and privately appointed Lao She the son-in-law of Chenglong. Luo discussed together a detailed plan for Lao She and Hu Jieqing to meet. In the winter of 1930, Lao She returned to Peiping. Under Luo's arrangement, Lao She was dragged by friends everywhere to eat, and there was always Hu Jieqing at the dinner table. After frequent meetings, Hu and Lao developed affection.

In the summer of 1931 Hu Jieqing graduated. The two held a wedding in the same year. Two weeks after the marriage, Lao She brought his wife to Jinan and continued to teach at the university, while Hu Jieqing taught in a middle school.

The couple had four children, Shu Ji, Shu Yi, Shu Yu and Shu Li. The first child of the two was born in 1933 in Jinan, a girl named Shu Ji; son Shu Yi was born two years later, and after another two years, she gave birth to his third child in Chongqing, named Shu Yu, with the youngest girl Shu Li born in 1945.

Death

Like numerous other intellectuals in China, Lao She experienced mistreatment when the Cultural Revolution began in 1966. Condemned as a counterrevolutionary, he was paraded and struggled by the Red Guards through the streets and beaten publicly at the door steps of the Temple of Confucius in Beijing. According to the official record, this abuse left Lao She greatly humiliated both mentally and physically, and he committed suicide by drowning himself in Beijing's Taiping Lake on 24 August 1966. Leo Ou-fan Lee mentioned the possibility that Lao She was murdered. However, no reliable information has emerged to verify definitively the actual circumstances of Lao's death. His relatives were accused of implication in his "crimes", but rescued his manuscripts after his death, hiding them in coal piles and a chimney and moving them from house to house.