Shen Congwen

Shen Congwen (born December 28, 1902, Fenghuang, Hunan province, China—died May 10, 1988, Beijing) was an author of fiction and prose who is commonly considered the greatest lyric novelist in modern China.

Shen was a member of the Miao ethnic minority. At age 16 he joined a regiment in Yuanling, where he spent the next few years adding to his scanty education and observing the border fighting and the lives of the local Miao people. These early experiences later became the subject matter of many of his successful stories. Shen arrived in Beijing in 1923, and, while there, he began attending classes at Peking University and writing intensely. He also became closely associated with the writer Ding Ling and her leftist companion Hu Yepin. The threesome moved to Shanghai in 1928 to begin a publishing venture, but both the venture and the friendship ultimately failed, and Shen began a teaching career. He continued to write fiction prolifically until 1949, producing a tremendous number of short stories, essays, and novellas of varying quality.

Shen was greatly influenced by the works of Western authors that he had read in translation; the influence was apparent in his loose, vernacular style. His techniques, however, were derived from both classical Chinese literature and Miao oral traditions. In stories such as “Xiaoxiao” (written 1929, revised and published 1935; filmed as Xiangnu Xiaoxiao in 1986), Shen examines rural values and practicality. Of Shen’s longer works of fiction, Biancheng (1934; The Border Town; filmed 1984) is generally considered his best; in it he combines his doubts about modern civilization with an idealized view of the beauty of rural life. Collections of his stories published in English include The Chinese Earth (1947; reprinted 1982), Recollections of West Hunan (1992), and Imperfect Paradise (1995).

During the Sino-Japanese War (1937–45), Shen, out of economic necessity, taught Chinese literature at a number of universities. After the communists triumphed in 1949, the basically apolitical writer came under attack and suffered a breakdown from the pressure of “thought reform”; from that point on he produced no fiction. He managed a recovery by 1955 and was placed on the staff of the Palace Museum in Beijing, about which he wrote a work of nonfiction in 1957. He also became an authority on ancient Chinese costume. In the 1980s there was a revival of interest in his work.