ABSTRACT
Literary groups such as Shanghai's Communist-dominated League of Left-wing Writers tried to drill their members into adopting a "correct" ideological stance, but had no prospects of inducting independent-minded writers such as Xu Dishan, Shen Congwen, and Qian Zhongshu. Following the Communists' military victory over the Nationalist regime in China's late-1940s civil war, many independent fiction writers such as Shen Congwen, Wu Zuxiang, and Qian Zhongshu eschewed the palpable ideological hazards that would continually dog creative writing within Mao-Era China in favor of relatively safe scholarly research on premodern Chinese culture. Border Town is Shen Congwen's most famous longer work of fiction, while "Quiet" is arguably his most distinguished short story. In addition to his impressive array of academic publications, Xu Dishan is most admired for his achievements in the shorter forms of stories, novellas, and informal essays.
