Shen Tuan-hsien (1900-), known as Hsia Yen, writer and dramatist who was prominently associated with the left-wing literary movement that began in the 1920's. His best-known works were his war plays.

Born in Hangchow, Chekiang, Hsia Yen came from a family of prominent landowners. He received his early education at the Hui-lan Middle School, a Baptist institution, and later attended the Chekiang Industrial School, from which he was graduated in 1919. He then went to Japan and studied electrical engineering at the Kyushu Engineering School. After being graduated in 1925, he returned to China and taught school in Shanghai. He also lectured at Chinan University. In 1926-27 he took part in the Northern Expedition. After that, he devoted himself to writing. He played a prominent part in the left-wing literary movement and was one of the original sponsors of the League of Left-Wing Writers, inaugurated on 2 March 1930. The same year, Hsia Yen collaborated with Chang Po-ch'i and others in forming the Shang-hai i-shu chü-she [Shanghai dramatic society], the aim of which was to provide contemporary drama with revolutionary content and to spread it through the medium of traveling troupes. During this period, Hsia Yen also edited I-shu yueh-k' an [art monthly], wrote scripts under a pen name for the Star Motion Picture Company, and translated Gorky's Mother and Tolstoy's Resurrection. In 1935 and 1936 Hsia Yen produced two important plays: Shang-hai wu-yen-hsia [under a Shanghai roof], which was about the hard lot of tenement dwellers in a great city; and Sai Chin-hua, which concerned the famous Ch'ing dynasty courtesan of that name, whose gallant actions saved Peking from destruction during the Allied intervention that followed the Boxer Uprising. Sai Chin-hua was a great success and was lauded for its masterly and novel handling of a historical theme. The Dramatists Association held a forum to discuss it and acclaimed it as the first major play to be produced after the pronouncement of the League of Left-Wing Writers that drama should be dedicated to the cause of national revolution and defense.

During the Sino-Japanese war Hsia Yen wrote seven realistic war plays. Among these were Ch 'ou-ch 'eng-chi [city of sorrow], which satirized life in the occupied areas; Fa-hsi-szu hsi-chün [fascist bacteria], which analyzed the contradictions between science and fascism through the wartime tragedy of a Chinese doctor trained in Japan; and Fang-ts'ao Vien-yai [fragrant grass on the horizon], which portrayed the wartime lives of intellectuals. In the early years of the war, Hsia Yen also edited the left-wing newspaper Chiu-wang jih-pao [salvation daily], founded by Kuo Mo-jo. The paper originally was published in Shanghai, but moved to Changsha and then to Kweilin as the Japanese advanced. In 1941, to avoid detention by the Nationalist authorities, Hsia Yen fled to Hong Kong, where he edited a monthly called Keng-yün [culture] in collaboration with Yeh Ch'ien-yü, Tai Wang-shu, and Chang Kuang-yu. When the Japanese occupied Hong Kong in 1942, Hsia Yen escaped to Kweilin and thence to Chungking, where he remained until 1945. He returned to Shanghai in 1946 and founded the newspaper Chien-kuo jih-pao, which was suspended by government order after the twelfth issue. In September 1946 Hsia Yen went to Hong Kong, where he was associated with the Hua-shang pao [Chinese commercial news] until May 1949.

After 1949, Hsia Yen ceased writing for production or publication. He held a number of cultural posts in Shanghai and east China, and he was a delegate, representing Shanghai, to the First National People's Congress. In 1951 he headed the delegation of the Sino- Soviet Friendship Association to the May Day celebrations in Moscow. He held office in the Central People's Government as director of the Asian affairs department of the ministry of foreign affairs and as vice minister of culture in charge of the film industry.

The writing and supervision of films was the most important cultural and political activity of Hsia Yen from 1932, when he headed the Chinese Communist party's film team, until April 1965, when he was removed from his post as vice minister of culture. For more than three decades his scenarios did much to keep the Chinese cinema a force in Chinese intellectual life. Films that he wrote include Wild Torrent (1933), Twenty-four Hours in Shanghai (1934), Spring Silkworms (1934), A Bible for Daughters (1934), New Year Coin (1936), White Cloud Village (1940), The Way to Love (1949), an adaptation of Lu Hsün's "Hsiang Lin's Wife" as New Year Offering (1956), Lin's Shop (1959), and A Revolutionary Family (1960). Even after his ministerial appointment, he continued his work on scenarios and film theory. The public criticism that followed his dismissal used his 1959 film adaptation of Mao Tun's "Linchia p'u-tzu" as proof of his sins and errors. Hsia Yen married the painter Ts'ao Shuhsin. They had two daughters.