ABSTRACT
Lao She's Maocheng ji (Cat country, 1933) is a bitterly satiric analysis of Chinese society in the form of a dystopic vision akin to science fiction. Luotuo Xiangzi (Rickshaw, 1938), which traces the degradation and ruin of a Peking rickshaw puller, came to be seen as a general study of China's social misery, and a twentieth-century classic. During the war, Lao She as patriotic propagandist wrote plays and ballads on wartime themes. His epic trilogy, Sishi tongtang (Four generations under one roof, 1947), depicts life in Peking during the Japanese occupation. After returning to China in 1949, following a three-year sojourn in the United States, Lao She wrote rather propagandistic plays under the people's government, among them, Chaguan (Teahouse, 1957). In 1966, he was murdered or driven to suicide by Red Guards in his native Peking. The text below gives insight into how Lao She conceived his art. On the occasion of writing a play about the Boxer uprising, he recalls the premature death of his father and protests against foreign aggression.
