Shu Ch'ing-ch'un (3 February 1899-October 1966), known as Lao She, novelist and shortstory writer with a flair for using the Peking dialect in a comic-satiric vein. During and after the Sino-Japanese war he also wrote propaganda plays. He was known by Americans as the author of Rickshaw Boy, an unauthorized and bowdlerized translation of his novel Lo-fo Hsiang-tzu.

Peking was the birthplace of Lao She, who was of Manchu descent. When he was still an infant, his father died during the suppression of the Boxer Uprising. After attending an elementary school and the Pei-ching shih-fan hsueh-hsiao [Peking normal school], he decided to pursue a career in education. At the age of 17, he became principal of a municipal elementary school. He later was sent by the Peking school authorities to visit schools and to study educational practices in Kiangsu and Chekiang. On his return to Peking, he was promoted to ch'uan-hsueh-yuan [supervisor of education] for the Peichiao district of Peking. Lao She did not like this sort of work, and he soon resigned to become secretary to the Pei-ching chiao-yü hui [Peking education society], organized by Ku Meng-yü (q.v.). He eked out his livelihood by teaching Chinese literature in a high school, and he managed to support himself and his mother, finance his studies at Yenching University, and save money for a trip abroad.

In 1924 Lao She left China and went to England, where he found a job teaching Mandarin at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. For the next five years, he spent most of his time at the home of Clement Egerton, then Gilchrist scholar in Chinese at the school, whom he assisted in the translation of the Ming novel Chin-p'ing-mei, a work which was published under the title Golden Lotus in 1939. The novels of Charles Dickens, which Lao She read while working to improve his English, inspired him to write a work of fiction, Lao Chang-ti che-hsüeh [Lao Chang's philosophy], which he completed early in 1926. This story of conflict between two honest boys and a wicked schoolteacher owed a great deal to Dickensian methods of characterization. Although it revealed Lao She's talents as a humorous writer and as a defender of the underdog, the work failed to commend itself to the author in later years. However, Hsu Ti-shan (q.v.), a pioneer member of the Wen-hsueh yen-chiu-hui [literary association] who then was a student at Oxford, read it and recommended it to the Hsiao-shuo yüeh-pao [short story monthly], which began to serialize it in July 1926.

Lao She wrote two more novels during his stay in England. The first was Chao Tzu-yüeh, which has been characterized as the first serious comic novel in China. This work, which was a marked improvement over Lao She's first novel in style and construction, was serialized in Hsiao-shuo yüeh-pao in March-November 1927. Centered on Chao Tzu-yüeh, a college student in Peking, the novel zestily flays the corruption and ineffectualness of the new breed of Chinese student. Lao She portrayed this new breed as venal, lecherous, stupid, and deceitful — the antithesis of the heroic ideal which Lao She was to proclaim as the only salvation for China. Lao She's third London book, Erh Ma [the two Ma's], was serialized in the Hsiao-shuo yüeh-pao in May-December 1929 and was published in book form in April 1931. The two central characters are a Cantonese father and son who manage a curio shop in London. In the course of writing about their adventures with English and Chinese acquaintances, Lao She managed to explore the attitudes and reactions of both Chinese and Englishmen of differing viewpoints and experience to the phenomenon of revolutionary China and more explicitly to the conflict between personal happiness and national duty as it confronts the younger Ma.

In 1929 Lao She left England and spent three months on the continent before going on to Singapore, where he remained for six months teaching Mandarin in a middle school and beginning a novel. This slight tale, Hsiao P'o-ti sheng-jih [little Po's birthday], was inspired by the children he saw in the streets. It was published serially in Hsiao-shuo yüeh-pao in January-April 1931 and in book form in 1934.

By the time Lao She returned to China in 1930, he had acquired a considerable reputation as a comic novelist. However, he soon found that he could not live by his writing alone, and he took a teaching post at Cheloo University in Tsinan, Shantung. He remained there until 1934, during which time he wrote several works of note. His first novel of this period, "Ta-ming hu" [Ta-ming lake], never was published. The manuscript was destroyed when the offices of the Commercial Press were bombed during the Japanese attack on Shanghai in January 1932. Mao-ch'eng chi [cat city], published serially in 1932-33 in the Hsien-tai, was a satirical fantasy based on China's failure to take her rightful place in the modern world. In a third novel, Li-hun [divorce], which appeared in 1933, Lao She continued his exploration of the endemic weaknesses in Chinese character and society which he considered to be the cause of China's low rank among the nations of the world. The plot revolves around Lao Li, who takes his country wife to the city and tries to transform her into a sophisticated woman. In the end, he is forced to return to the country to curb her extravagance.

Lao She also began writing short stories during this period. These were published in three collections : Kan-chi [collection of hastily executed stories], in 1934; Ying-hai-chi [cherries and the sea], in 1935; and Ko-tsao-chi [clams and weeds], in 1936. These collections contained some of Lao She's best writing, including the well-known story "Hei-pai Li" [dark Li and fair Li], a story of two brothers. After a life of constant sacrifice for his younger brother, the elder Li finally is executed in his stead. In 1934 Lao She decided to leave the teaching profession and to devote all of his time to writing. He soon finished Niu T'ien-tz'u chuan [the life of Niu T'ien-t'zu], described as "the education of a little hero of the petty-bourgeois class." The book, though slight in literary merit, throws considerable light on a significant change in Lao She's thinking. Li-hun, by implication, had suggested that an assertion of individualism was the key to delivering China from corruption and apathy. In Niu T'ien-tz'u chuan this thesis is questioned, and the paramount importance of social environment, against which it is useless for the isolated individual to struggle, is stressed. The full implications of this change of heart were to be worked out in Lao She's later works. Because the returns from his writing were still too meager to support him, Lao She returned to teaching, this time at Tsingtao University. He soon completed his greatest masterpiece, Lo-Vo Hsiang-tzu [Hsiang-tzu the camel], which first appeared in 1936-37 in serial form in Yü-chou feng [cosmic wind], edited by Lin Yü-t'ang (q.v.). In this moving story of the corruption and doom of a strong and good-hearted ricksha puller in Peking, Lao She gave clearest expression to what now seemed to him the tragic futility of individual effort in a society hostile to human values. Publication of the novel was halted by the Japanese attack of July 1937, and it did not appear until 1939. In 1937 Lao She did publish Lao-niu p'o-cKe [old ox and worn-out cart], a collection of essays dealing with the genesis of a number of his novels and with matters of language and style.

After the Sino-Japanese war began, Lao She went to Hankow, where in March 1938 he was elected head of the All-China Anti-Japanese Writers Federation, a post he retained throughout the war. With Yao P'eng-tzu, he edited the federation's journal, K'ang-chan wen-i [literature for national resistance]. Of all the Chinese writers of this period, only Lao She seems to have maintained good relations with both Communists and anti-Communists; he was elected unanimously to this important information and propaganda post. Lao She spent the greater part of the war years in Chungking, where he was active in organizing writers and encouraging them to use literature in promoting the war effort. He also continued to produce works of his own. He associated himself with theater groups and began to write plays. Ts'an-wu, his first drama, was followed by such works as Kuo-chia chih-shang [the state above all], a fervently patriotic piece depicting cooperation between Muslims and Chinese in common support of the national cause. He wrote this play in collaboration with the young playwright Sung Chih-ti. Participating in a then-current fad, he also wrote a long poem for recitation in the ta-ku [popular ballad] style, Chien-pei-p'ien [north of Chienmenkuan]. Throughout the war period he wrote many short ballads and ch'u-i. He published a collection of short stories, Huo-cWe chi [the train] in 1939. The following year, the Tso-che shu-she in Hong Kong published an unauthorized edition of Hsuan-nien [the citizen], which had appeared in 1936-37 in the Lun-yü, under the title Wen po-shih [Dr. Wen]. This was a mordant study of a student with an American Ph.D. degree who ends up marrying a rich girl and wondering why he went to the United States to study in the first place.

In a letter written from Wuhan and published in the Yü-chou feng a few months after the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese war, Lao She urged young writers to guard their good health so that they would work for their country, and complained that he was not getting enough sleep and was damaging his health because he could not rest for thinking that he must devote every hour to the anti-Japanese struggle. His health soon deteriorated, and toward the end of the war he was hospitalized for some time. Lao She published a play, Kuei-ch'ü-lai hsi [return], in 1943. The following year saw the appearance of the novel Huo-tsang [cremation], a melodramatic and romanticized tale of traitors and patriots in a fictitious Chinese city. In the preface to this naive and propagandistic tale, Lao She confessed that he never would have published it in normal times, blaming economic pressures for forcing its appearance. Also, in 1944 he published a collection of short stories entitled P'in-hsueh chi [collection of anaemic stories]. Tung-hai Pa-shan chi [sea and mountain], a collection of stories selected from Huo-cKe chi and P'in-hsueh chi, appeared in 1945. During this period, he also began working on a trilogy, Ssu-shih t'ung-t'ang [four generations under one roof], a saga of Peiping during its eight years of occupation by the Japanese. The first two parts, Huang-huo [bewilderment] and T'ou-sheng [ignominy], were published in 1946. The third part, Chi-huang [famine] did not appear until 1950. Like Huo-tsang, the trilogy Ssu-shih Cung-Vang suffers from its conception as a species of propaganda. In 1945 an English translation of Lo-t'o Hsiang-tzu by Evan King (pseudonym of Robert S. Ward) was published under the title Rickshaw Boy; it became a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and a best-seller in the United States. Lao She and the dramatist Ts'ao Yü (Wan Chia-pao, q.v.) went to the United States in 1946 on a cultural cooperation grant from the American Department of State. During their sojourn, Lao She gave lectures on Chinese literature and helped with the translation into English of several of his novels. Rickshaw Boy had been translated and published without his authorization, and he was unhappily surprised to discover that the tragic ending of the original had been discarded in favor of a happy reunion. Li-hun also presented problems. An unauthorized translation of this work by "Venerable Lodge" (a literal rendering of Lao She) had appeared, and Lao She had to seek legal redress before the authorized version, translated by Helena Kuo as The Quest for Love of Lao Lee, could be published. Lao She remained in the United States for three years, during which time he wrote his last novel, The Drum Singers, which was translated by Helena Kuo and published in 1952. This work never appeared in Chinese.

After returning to China, Lao She was given a formal welcome in Peking by the All-China Literary Workers Association. He soon set to work writing plays and participating in government literary organizations and committees. His play Fang Chen-chu was followed in early 1951 by Lung-hsü kou [dragon beard ditch], a drama concerning the successful reclamation of a slum district in Peking which received enthusiastic critical and popular acceptance. In 1951 P'eng Chen (q.v.), then the mayor of Peking, awarded Lao She the title of "People's Artist." He soon became chairman of the Peking Municipal Federation of Literature and Arts. In 1953 he became vice chairman of the Union of Chinese Writers, and in 1956 he was made vice chairman of the central work committee for the popularization of standard spoken Chinese. Throughout the 1950's he was active in the promotion of such political and cultural movements as the Hundred Flowers campaign. In March 1958 he was among the 50 writers and artists who issued a statement of determination to bring about a "great leap forward" in literary production. Lao She also continued to be active as a writer. In addition to the plays already mentioned, he published Pieh mi-hsin [don't be superstitious] in 1951; Lung-hsü kou in 1953; the influential Ho kung-jen t 'ung-chih-men fan hsieh-tso [discussions on writings held with worker comrades] in 1954; Wu-ming kao-ti yu-le ming [that high ground has a name now], a collection of Korean war fiction, in 1955; Hsi-wang CKang-an [looking westward toward Ch'angan], a satirical play, in 1956; and Shih-wu kuan [fifteen strings of cash], based on a well-known theme in ancient Chinese literature, in 1956. Ch'a-kuan [the teahouse], a three-act play published in 1957, was a fine drama and a masterpiece of linguistic skill and command of various strata of the Peking dialect. In this play, Lao She attempted to summarize his human and political experience. Other works of Lao She were Fu-hsing chi [the lucky stars], a collection of historical and critical essays, published in 1958; the play CWüan-chia fu [the whole family happy], published in 1959; Pao-cliuan, a children's play, which appeared in 1961; and Ch'u-k'ou Ch'eng-chang [essays on the use of literary language], published in 1964. In October 1966 Lao She's death as a result of Red Guard harassment was reported.