Lao She (lou shŭ), pseud. of Shu She-yü (sh

shŭ-yü) or Shu Ch'ing-ch'un, (chĭng-ch

n), 1899–1966, Chinese writer. He wrote his first novels while teaching Chinese at the Univ. of London's School of Oriental Studies (1924–30). He continued to teach and write in China during the 1930s, receiving high praise for his novel Camel Xiangzi (1939, tr. 1981). In the 1950s he wrote a number of popular plays with Marxist themes, including The Teahouse (1958), but fell victim to the Red Guards at the outset of the Cultural Revolution Cultural Revolution, 1966–76, mass mobilization of urban Chinese youth inaugurated by Mao Zedong in an attempt to prevent the development of a bureaucratized Soviet style of Communism.
..... Click the link for more information. and was either murdered or driven to suicide. His fiction was noted for its farcical tone. Translations of his work include The Crescent Moon and Other Stories (1985) and The Two Mas (1984).

Bibliography

See studies by G. Kao (1980) and D. D. Wang (1992).

Lao She

orig. Shu Qingchun or Shu Sheyu

(born Feb. 3, 1899, Beijing, China—died Aug. 24?, 1966, Beijing) Chinese writer. He worked as an educator before going to England in 1924, and he was inspired to write his first novel while reading the works of Charles Dickens to improve his English. He originally championed strong, hard-working individuals but later expressed the futility of the individual's struggle against society, as in Luotuo Xiangzi (1936), the tragic story of a ricksha puller; Rickshaw Boy, an unauthorized translation with a happy ending (1945), became a U.S. best-seller. After the onset of the Sino-Japanese War, he wrote lesser patriotic and propagandistic plays and novels. In 1966 he fell victim to the Cultural Revolution.