ABSTRACT
Border Town is Shen Congwen’s most distinctive novel. His contemporary, the critic Li Jianwu, once praised Border Town as “an idyllic masterpiece. When in 1949 Shen experienced a psychological crisis and wrote a group of short “raving” essays, he wrote of three women: Ding Ling, Zhang Zhaohe, and Cuicui. The achievements Shen Congwen had wanted in his real life, a beautiful wife, wonderful family, and so forth – after he got them all, inside he felt a need for something higher and less mundane, and that was “Cuicui.” The chapter shows that the tragedy Shen Con-gwen expresses is one of character, of human nature. Innumerable cultural folkways and episodes of daily life in West Hunan constituted Shen Congwen’s innermost, most indelible memories, and as a novelist, Shen Congwen constantly endeavored to reawaken lost memories of his people. When Border Town appeared in the 1930s, it symbolically indicated the completion of the folk creative intellectual trend.
