Cheng Chen-to (1898-17 October 1958), literary historian, bibliophile, and editor, made major studies of the history of Chinese vernacular literature, was prominent in the Literary Research Society, and edited the Hsiao-shuoyueh-pao (Short Story Magazine). In 1937 he became dean of the college of arts and letters at Chinan University. From 1954 to 1958 he served as vice minister of culture at Peking.

Although his native place was Ch'anglo, Fukien, Cheng Chen-to was born in Foochow. In later years he referred to himself as a youth who was "always scribbling." His first literary efforts were stories patterned on the Liao-chai chih-i {Storiesfrom a Chinese Studio) , and at the age of 15 he enjoyed composing verse in the fu and tz'u styles. After completing his early classical education in Fukien, he went to Shanghai, where he attended Communications University. By 1917 he had become so impressed with the literary reform efforts of Ch'en Tu-hsiu and Hu Shih (qq.v.) that he moved to Peking and turned his attention to vernacular literature. That subject was to remain his central scholarly and creative preoccupation in the next four decades of his life.

In Peking, Cheng became associated with Ch'ü Ch'iu-pai, Hsu Ti-shan (qq.v.), and other young intellectuals and students of Chinese literature. He helped to edit two short-lived periodicals, the Hsin she-hui [new society] and Jen-tao yueh-k'an [humanity]. Although these journals were literary magazines sponsored by the YMCA in Peking, they contained some articles on political topics. By this time, Cheng was committed to a literary career—the Shanghai Shun Pao had published his maiden effort at fiction, and Hsin cKing-nien [new youth] had published his translations.

Cheng Chen-to's principal contributions during the period after the May Fourth Movement of 1919 were made through his leading role in the Literary Research Society and his editorship of the Hsiao-shuo yueh-pao (Short Story Magazine). At the time, he was a student at the Institute of Railway Administration. Late in 1920 Cheng and his friend Keng Chi-chih, who had been responsible for selling Cheng's first published work, conceived the idea of reorganizing the Short Story Magazine, a monthly publication of the Commercial Press in Shanghai hitherto devoted to old-style Chinese belles-lettres. Their literary associates at that time included Chou Tso-jen, Mao Tun (Shen Yen-ping), Yeh Sheng-t'ao (qq.v.), and a few other aspiring young writers. After consultation with Chang Yuan-chi (q.v.) and Kao Meng-tan at the Commercial Press, Mao Tun, then an editor at the Press, was named chief editor of the Short Story Magazine, and Cheng Chen-to was appointed its Peking editor. The name of the magazine was not changed, but the new editors were given authority to devote maximum space to the new literature. The renovated magazine became the official organ of the Literary Research Society in January 1921.

Literature, according to this group, must provide an accurate portrayal of the actual experience of real people and should expose social problems with a view to fostering improvements in Chinese life. The constitution of the Literary Research Society stated that its purpose was to "study and introduce world literature to China, to reassess the literature of China's past, and to create new literature," and Short Story Magazine was devoted to pursuit of these aims. Cheng Chen-to was more successful in serving the first two purposes than he was in the third. In 1921 he translated selections from Robert Louis Stevenson and Rabindranath Tagore and contributed essays on the state of Chinese letters and on the translation of foreign literature into Chinese. In the same year he established and edited the first children's magazine in China, the Erh-Vung shih-chieh [children's world] . During this period, when the impact of the May Fourth Movement placed heavy accent on the importance of being scientific, some critics objected to stories of princes, princesses, and fairies, holding them to be detrimental to the future citizens of the Chinese republic. Chang replied that children everywhere delighted in imaginative tales and that such fanciful stories were unlikely to affect their future conduct as citizens.

From May 1921 until May 1925 the Literary Research Society also controlled the Wen-hsueh chou-pao [literary weekly], the literary supplement of the Shanghai newspaper Shih-shih hsinpao (China Times), and Cheng Chen-to was its editor and a frequent contributor. In addition to these activities, he represented the Society at numerous student meetings. Cheng's involvement in the intellectual currents of those years led him, in his definition ofliterary realism, to take the position that works of fiction should be imbued with social color and revolutionary spirit, a stand close to that later articulated by more politically oriented advocates of so-called revolutionary literature. In 1926 he became chief editor of the Short Story Magazine. Cheng Chen-to focused his attention on literary history, specifically on the history of Chinese vernacular literature, rather than on the political activism to which Mao Tun and others turned. In 1923 Cheng collaborated with Ku Chieh-kang (q.v.) on a number of studies of traditional Chinese literature. Between January 1924 and December 1926, 41 chapters of his Wen-hsueh ta-kang [outline of literature], inspired by the Outline of History which H. G. Wells had published in 1920, appeared serially in the Short Story Magazine. A bibliophile and a proponent of the "popular literature" of the past, Cheng began to collect and comment on early and rare editions of Chinese vernacular literature from the Sung, Yuan, Ming, and Ch'ing periods On 21 May 1927, shortly after the Nationalist occupation of Shanghai, Cheng Chen-to left China to visit Europe. The diary kept on this trip, which was published in 1934 as Ou-hsing jih-chi [diary of a trip to Europe] , is in the form of an extended letter to his wife and displays a naive irredentism inspired by nationalism rather than by political doctrine. Of Southeast Asia he wrote, "Singapore—indeed the entire Nanyang area—should belong to China. It was all opened up by us, and all that is civilized about it, even the way of life, came from China." During the trip from the Far East to Marseilles aboard the French ship Athos, he wrote articles which were published in Shanghai in the Wenhsueh chou-pao. After landing, Cheng Chen-to went to Paris. There he spent much of his time in the Bibliotheque Nationale investigating its holdings of Chinese vernacular literature, particularly the Pelliot Collection of Tunhuang manuscripts. Cheng Chen-to was keenly interested in the collection because it contained specimens, dating from T'ang times, of pien-wen [popularizations]. These pien-wen were stories, both sacred and secular, which had been used by proselytizing Buddhist priests and missionaries; they were written in a style which approximated the spoken language. Some pien-wen texts represent a transitional stage between the oral (story teller's) and the written colloquial language tale, and they may have been the first attempts to write vernacular prose in China. After his stay in Paris, Cheng went to London, where he examined the British Museum collection of Chinese popular language fiction.

After his European sojourn, Cheng returned to China and by February 1929 was again active in Shanghai, writing and editing the Short Story Magazine. In 1930 he accepted a teaching position at Tsinghua University in Peking. By the winter of 1931, however, he was again in Shanghai where, amidst the growing tensions following the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, he continued his personal program of research, writing, and editing. His first major work on the history of Chinese literature, the CKa-fu-pen Chung-kuo wen-hsueh shih [illustrated history of Chinese literature], appeared in 1932. It was reprinted in 1957. Although marred by a unitary explanation of the evolution of literature, this massive four-volume work was acclaimed by many Chinese students and scholars. The Chung-kuo wen-hsueh shih dealt largely with the history of Chinese vernacular literature and stated that all other Chinese literature of worth was derived from the "literature of the people." During these years Cheng also served as chief editor of the extensive Sheng-huo Bookstore collection "Shih-chieh wen-k'u" [world literature library], a massive anthology of Chinese and world literature. In accordance with his earlier interest, the volumes of the anthology to which he devoted most attention were the Hsing-shih heng-yen [stories that rouse the consciousness of the people] and Ching-shih t'ung-yen [stories that alarm the people], two late Ming collections of short stories, and the Wan-Ch'ing wen-hsuan [selected writings of the late Manchu dynasty], a selection of predominantly anti- Manchu writings from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth century. He also published three volumes of general and critical essays : Hai-yen [seagull], in 1932; Chü-lou chi [the hunchback collection], in 1934; and Tuan-chien chi [the shortsword collection], in 1935. In addition, he wrote a volume of critical essays on Chinese literature, Chung-kuo wen-hsueh lun-chi [collection of essays on Chinese literature], published in 1934; and an outline history of Russian literature, 0-kuo wen-hsueh shih-lueh [short history of Russian literature], published in 1934. Cheng's peripheral interest in Russian literature was as much intellectual as political in origin. Essentially, it reflected the similarity of many of the topics which concerned Russian authors of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the sensitive and patriotic Chinese of the republican period. Cheng became increasingly opposed to the Kuomintang during the early 1930's. Like many other Chinese writers, he was less concerned with political ideology than with government censorship and other oppressive publishing restrictions. In 1933 he collaborated with Lu Hsün in the printing from woodblocks of a selection of Chinese letter-papers. That same year Cheng Chen-to, Mao Tun, Yu Ta-fu (q.v.), and others founded the literary review Wen-hsueh tsa-chih [literature magazine] to take the place of the Short Story Magazine, which had ceased publication in 1932. The Wen-hsueh tsa-chih continued publication in Shanghai until 1937. Cheng, then using the name Cheng Hsi-ti, also edited the Wen-hsueh chi-k'an [literature quarterly], published at Peiping; several former members of the Literary Research Society contributed to this magazine.

In 1937 Cheng, who had taught at both Chinan and Futan universities in Shanghai, became dean of the college of arts and letters at Chinan University. Also in 1937, Cheng Chen-to and Hsu Kuang-p'ing (q.v.) organized the Fu She [recovery society] to promote anti-Japanese sentiment. In 1938 Cheng's Chung-kuo su-wenhsueh shih [history of Chinese vernacular literature] was published by the Commercial Press. This work was an expanded version of part of his earlier Chung-kuo wen-hsueh shih, which had been published in 1932. Cheng also worked with Lu Hsün's widow, Hsu Kuang-p'ing (q.v.), and others in preparing the posthumous edition of Lu Hsün's works published by the Fu-hsing Press in 1938-39.

Cheng Chen-to remained in Shanghai through the war years (he later described his experiences in Chih-chü san-chi [random reminiscences on life in hibernation], published in 1951). His major activity during that period was book collecting. He lived under an assumed name, emerging each morning "carrying a briefcase to demonstrate that I had a job." Cheng haunted the bookshops of Shanghai during this period of uncertainty when many private owners were forced to sell their libraries. Disturbed by the possible loss of "national treasures," Cheng spent all ofhis money purchasing books, many of which he later had to sell again. His greatest triumph came in the summer of 1938 when the priceless collection of 242 Yuan and Ming operas which had belonged to the prominent bibliophile and collector of rare books and manuscripts Huang P'ei-lieh (1763-1825; ECCP, I, 340-41), came on the market. Cheng, who had known of this item as early as 1929, persuaded the National Government, then in Chungking, to purchase the collection and remove it to safety. The original collection remains in China, and a typeset edition of 144 of the rarest and most interesting pieces has been published as Ku-pen Yuan Ming tsa-chü [ancient edition of plays of the Yuan and Ming dynasties], at Peking. After the Japanese surrender in 1945, Cheng edited a literary magazine called Wen-i fu-hsing [literary renaissance]. He also edited the Minchu [democratic weekly] . Though non-partisan, it was critical of Kuomintang policies. Among the contributors were Yeh Sheng-t'ao, Hsu Kuang-p'ing, Liu Ya-tzu, Ma Yin-ch'u, and Mao Tun. Although he had no record of previous intellectual commitment to Marxism or of connections with the Communist party, Cheng remained in Shanghai after the breakdown of the postwar negotiations and the eruption of full-scale war between the Nationalists and Communists. He then moved to Peking and lived there until his death nine years later. After 1949 Cheng's activities centered in the ministry of culture, headed by his old friend Mao Tun, and in the Academy of Sciences, headed by Kuo Mo-jo. Cheng was vice minister of culture from 1954 to 1958. In the Academy of Sciences, he headed both the institute of archeology and the institute of literature. Cheng also played an active role in the programs of international cultural cooperation — on which the new authorities at Peking laid much stress. From 1953 to 1956 he headed the Sino-Burma Friendship Association, and he led several cultural missions from the People's Republic of China to other Asian countries: India and Burma (1951), India (1954), and Indonesia (1955). Cheng was killed in October 1958 in the crash of a Russian jet aircraft which was carrying a Chinese cultural delegation, of which he was a member, to Afghanistan and the United Arab Republic.

Cheng Chen-to's Chieh-chung te shu-chi [books obtained in the midst of plunder], first published in 1956, provides a descriptive bibliography of 180 titles which he "rescued" during the wartime years. In the preface to this work, dated August 1956, Cheng expressed his feelings about the collection of Yuan and Ming dramas which he obtained in 1938: "the Ku-chin tsa-chü [ancient and modern plays] was the peak of my collecting experience .... It was no less a find than the oracle bones at Anyang or the caves at Tunhuang." Cheng's principal work was in the fields of literary history and criticism. He began to find creative writing uncongenial as early as 1929 and thereafter wrote only short stories, never an extended piece of fiction. The most interesting collection, to some extent autobiographical, is his Chia-fing te ku-shih [stories of the family]. Two anthologies, Cheng Chen-to wen-hsuan [selected works of Cheng Chen-to], both published in 1936, are collections of his belles-lettres, poetry, short stories, and historical essays. A new and important edition of Cheng's works, Chung-kuo wen-hsueh yen-chiu [studies in Chinese literature], appeared in China in December 1957. It contains all of his essays on literature from Chü-lou chi, Tuan-chien chi, and Chung-kuo wen-hsueh lun-chi [essays on Chinese literature], as well as a previously unpublished work, Autumn River Collection. The new publication provides a virtually complete record of Cheng's life as literary historian and critic.