Lao She

Lao She(Chinese: 老舍), was a notable Chinese writer. A novelist and dramatist, he was one of the most significant figures of 20th century Chinese literature, and is perhaps best known for his novel Rickshaw Boy and the play Teahouse. He was of Manchu ethnicity.

Early Life

Lao She's original name was Shū Qìngchūn (舒庆春). He was born in Beijing, to a poor family of the Sūmuru clan belonging to the Red Banner. His father, who was a guard soldier, died in a street battle with the Eight-Power Allied Forces in the course of the Boxer Rebellion events in 1901. To support her family and Lao Shê's private tutoring, his mother did laundry. "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."

Works

Rickshaw Boy

His first important novel, Rickshaw Boy, also known in the West as "Camel Xiangzi" or "Rickshaw"), was published in 1936. It describes the tragic life of a rickshaw puller in Beijing of the 1920s and is considered to be a classic of modern Chinese literature. The English version Rickshaw Boy became a US bestseller in 1945; it was an unauthorized translation that added a bowdlerized happy ending to the story. In 1982, the original version was made into a film of the same title.

Teahouse

Lao She's most frequently performed dramatic work is Teahouse ((茶馆), Cha Guan), a play written in 1957. The events are set in the Beijing teahouse of Wang Lifa during three different periods: 1898 under the empire, the 1910s under the warlords and around 1945 after WW II. "In the teahouses one could hear the most absurd stories," Lao She writes of the scene set in 1898, "such as how a in a certain place a huge spider had turned into a demon and was then struck by lightning. One could also come in contact with the strangest of views; for example, that foreign troops could be prevented from landing by building a Great Wall along the sea coast." Lao She follows the lives of Wang and his customers. Ambivalently Wang and his friends demonstrate the failure of their lives towards the end by a mock funeral, welcoming the new society. The teahouse is requisitioned as a club and Wang is offered a job as doorman - however, he has already hanged himself. - The Beijing People's Art Theatre performed the play in 1980 in West Germany and France during the three-hundredth anniversary of the Comédie-Française.