Lao She

Lao She (老舍, Pinyin: Lǎo Shě), (1899 - 1966) is the pen name of SHU Qingchun (舒慶春) (its family name “舒” will give him its adult name, Sheyu 舍予) Chinese writer of the modern period is a . Novelist and also Playwright, his characters are drawn from the small people of Beijing, of which it preserved the language.

Resulting from a family of Manchu origin, they evoke in its novels the urban framework of the hutong of Beijing where interpenetrated the cultures Manchu, han and Moslem woman. They trace a portrait of family units under the Japanese occupation or during the last hours of the Manchu imperial mode.

Its most famous works are the novels the Gunner of rickshaw (駱駝祥子), Four generations under the same roof (四世同堂) and the Play the House of the (茶馆). Discovered a long time after the tragic death of the author, the child of the New year , a largely autobiographical work, in 1979.

Partisan of Mao Zedong and the Communism which it incarnated, it wrote of the works renting the Chinese Communist party after his return of the United States in 1949. During the Cultural revolution which Mao in 1966 started, it was persecuted physically and psychologically. It was claimed that it had been thrown in the lake Tai Ping so much it was desperate (太平湖, lake of the Great Peace) on August 24th, 1966.

Biography

Orphan of father since 1900 (his father belonged to the soldiers which died during the Guerre of the Boxers), wire of a washing machine, Lao She said When I was small, my mother did not tell me legends on the ogres which eats the small children. For it, the monsters were the foreigners, crueler and more barbarians that the ogres, with enormous jaws and frightening hooks. And the tales for children are only tales, while the stories of my mother rested on facts which had reached all our family directly After studies with the college of Beijing, Lao She taught as of age the 17 years and it occupied various administrative employment, in particular in elementary schools. Of 1924 with 1929, it taught Chinese at the school of the Eastern and African languages of London where, after having read Charles Dickens, it began its first novel. Of return in China in 1930, it launched out in satirical writings (the City of the cats), before describing in " the Gunner of rickshaw " terrible living conditions of a peasant who tries to survive Beijing with the limited resources of a gunner of rickshaw. The release of the second Sino-Japanese Guerre changed its attitude radically: of 1937 with 1945, it wrote many plays all while launching out in an anti propaganda - Japanese woman to which testifies its novel Four generations under the same roof . Between 1946 and 1949, Lao She obtained a purse of the State Department and went to live with the the United States. It returned to China when the Popular republic of China was established. Member of the educational and cultural committee of the government, deputy to the Popular National congress, he was an influential character in the field of arts and letters, defending the anti-impérialiste system and referring to the Boxers like heroes. But when the Cultural revolution burst, he publicly was denounced and criticized like so many of other intellectuals. It is claimed that it committed suicide on October 24th, 1966.

Polemic on death

The official version of died of Lao She by way of suicide was questioned by Claude Roy, in his collection of articles On China , 1979. Quoting a maintenance published in the newspaper Qishi Niandai in November 1978 when the widow of the writer Hu Jieqing (painter) answers the question: did Your husband commit suicide? . - Not, surely not answered Hu Jieqing. The polemic around this suicide then agitated already the French intellectuals as of the end of the Revolution Culturelle.Les pro-Mao to the mode facing the anti ones. Thus Michelle Law, on her return of China, wrote in 1973: I do not think that it is a question so interesting for everyone to know if Lao She or not committed suicide , which will make to enrager the large friends of the people and the Chinese writers who are Claude Roy and Simon Leys.

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