Lao She and His Beijing Civil Society

Lao She (1899-1966), with the original name of Shu Qingchun, was a native of Beijing and a Manchu. He extensively practiced many artistic and literary styles, and his long novels and stage plays were most influential. His.early works are long novels The Philosophy of Old Zhang, Zhao Zi Says and Ma and Son written during his teaching in Britain between 1924 and 1929 and revealing his unique artistic personality: he was good at depicting Beijing citizens' life humorously with broad vision. The period from his return to China in 1930 and the outbreak of the War of Resistance against Japan in 1937 is the second stage of Lao She's creation. During this period, he created long novels The Tale of Cat City, Divorce and Rickshaw Boy, medium-length novels The Life of Niu Tianci and This Life of Mine, short novel Crescent Moon, etc., sighed for the hardships of citizens at the bottom of the society, cried out against injustice, and built his unique Beijing citizens' society. After 1940s, Lao She's creation entered the stage of in-depth development. Representative works include long novels The Drum Singers, Cremation and Four Generations under One Roof etc.

Lao She was very familiar with the social life of Beijing citizens at the bottom of the society. He tried to analyze the whole nation's inherent flaws from the perspective of the citizen class and expose the Chinese society's fundamental problems from the perspective of citizens.

Rickshaw Boy is Lao She's representative novel. He also deemed it as "my hit." The work tells the story of Xiangzi, a bankrupt young peasant who comes to Beiping and makes a living by pulling a rickshaw. He is hardworking, honest, kindhearted, righteous, ambitious, enterprising, responsible and sympathetic. His biggest wish is to buy a rickshaw and work for himself without being exploited by rickshaw owners. Though he works hard and fights tenaciously, setbacks come one after another: soldiers robs him of his first rickshaw bought with three years' savings; detective Sun relies on his power to extort the money saved by him through hard work to buy a rickshaw; after marrying Tiger Girl, he finally buys a rickshaw under her help, but Tiger Girl dies of dystocia, so he has to sell the rickshaw for funeral arrangements... At last, the cruel social reality not only crushes his dream, but also finally turns him into "a depraved, selfish and unlucky child born in the sick social environment and an ultimate victim of individualism."

Rickshaw Boy vividly reflects the sharp conflict between Xiangzi's life ideals and the social environment he is in, and truly reflects the chaos, darkness and decadence of the society and laboring people's miserable fate. The work describes the characteristics of Xiangzi such as a small producer such as selfishness, narrow-mindedness and overestimation of individual strength. The failure of his personal striving shows that under the social system of that period, laboring people could never "live well" on their own. The work depicts the endless pain and disaster brought to people in that era of tangled warfare among warlords, and shows the extreme poverty of laboring people at the bottom of the society. Under Lao She's pen, laborers living in Beiping's residential compounds occupied by many households lead inhuman miserable lives. Poverty changes their personalities. They beat their children, and scold their wives. Some of them even force their daughters to be prostitutes, and some cannot bear the humiliation and commit suicide... All these truly reflect the miserable life of people at the bottom of the society and shows Lao She's concern about citizens' fate.

Four Generations under One Roof is Lao She's longest work with a length of 800,000 Chinese characters, consisting of three parts: Bewilderment, Ignominy, and Famine. The work chooses

Xiaoyangjuan Hutong, a very common alley in the west of Beiping as an epitome of this "fallen city" and unfolds a broad historical picture and a complicated plot centering on the circumstances of the four generations of the old-style businessman Qi Tianyou's family. It does not directly depict the all-out War of Resistance against Japan but analyzes the root causes of the nation's disaster in depth, showing the painful experiences of people in the enemy-occupied area in the War of Resistance against Japan and the course of their gradual awakening after disillusionment of the dream of momentary ease and their realization that sticking to the fight is the only way out. They are faithful and unyielding, fight hard, pay a hefty price, and finally win. The novel depicts the atrocity of Japanese invaders, the despicableness of various traitors, the kindheartedness, weakness and dejection of intellectuals, and the indomitable spirit of some citizens at the bottom of the society. Four Generations under One Roof with the pain of Beiping's citizens in the conquered country as theme makes up for the insufficiency of artistic and literary works reflecting citizens' life during the War of Resistance against Japan, and is a high monument in the course of Lao She's creation.

Apart from Rickshaw Boy and Four Generations under One Roof, stage play Teahouse created in 1957 is also one of Lao She's most influential works. Teahouse chooses Beijing's time-honored brand "Yutai Teahouse" as the specific scene where all sorts of people gather, and reflects the historical changes in the Chinese society and diversified and complicated human relationships and ways of the world in 50 years with the failure of the "Hundred Days' Reform" in 1898, the tangled warfare among warlords in the early period of the Republic of China and the Kuomintang's reactionary rule from the victory of the War of Resistance against Japan to the outbreak of the Liberation War as three cross-sections of time. Teahouse is Lao She's representative "Beijing-style" stage play with a strong cultural atmosphere of the "Beijing style." It has become an artistic treasure in the history of Chinese modern and contemporary stage plays and is reputed as "a miracle on the Eastern stage."

From Rickshaw Boy and Four Generations under One Roof to Teahouse, Lao She always focused on the civil society. The civil world is the main content and basic picture of his creations. Under Lao She's pen, Beijing people at the bottom of the society form a gallery of people with diversified but distinctive personalities. Lao She's works have strong local color of Beijing. The idiomatic expressions of the Beijing dialect and the indigenous customs of Beijing make his works reveal special national styles and thus exert important influence in China's literary circles. Lao She was always concerned about the issue of the national character reform, but his works have an honest, unsophisticated and humanistic flavor, full of understanding of and compassion for people at the bottom of the society. His works have distinctive humorous and satirical color but manifest love and tenderness. Lao She was good at writing stories, so his works all contain coherent and vivid plots and good stories, making Lao She's works easy to understand. As a result, Lao She was one of the modern writers most liked by readers.