ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the cultural environment in which Shen Congwen grew up, the reader is bound to question the relevance of all this detail about the Chen-Yuan cultural landscape of 2,000 years ago. Shen was one of the preeminent writers nurtured by the May Fourth New Culture movement. This judgment, comparing him with other excellent writers of his time, puts him in the same league. Studies of Shen’s style and the artistic features of his works have generated views of greater depth. The culture the young Shen was exposed to in Fenghuang and the Chen and Yuan river valleys was a living “Chu shamanic” culture passed down to his times due to historical and geographical factors. In his essay “Preface to West Hunan,” Shen wrote that the locations of many places Qu Yuan arrived at as he went upstream along the Yuan River could be identified.
