Lao She, born in 1899 and died in 1966, was originally named Shu Qingchun, a Beijinger, and came from a poor family of Banners. My father is a royal guard and earns the salary of three or two soldiers in January. Lao She was less than two years old and died in Eight-Nation Alliance's artillery fire in the Boxer Rebellion. Since then, the whole family has been raised by the mother alone. ..... For our food and clothing, mother will wash clothes, mend or sew clothes. In my memory, her hands are red and slightly swollen all year round. The hardworking, stubborn and enthusiastic working woman also nurtured Lao She spiritually: "My real teacher, who has inherited my personality, is my mother. My mother can't read What she gave me was the education of life. "The writers of new literature after the May 4th Movement, including those who appeared in the 1920s and 1930s, mostly came from the upper middle class. They often start their literary activities as "rebels and two priests" of their own class. Lao She is different from them. He was at the bottom of society since he was a child, living in poverty and living a hard life. The unreasonable phenomenon combined with what he saw and heard aroused his resentment against evil forces and sympathy for the urban poor, and also cultivated strong national feelings. All these have had a far-reaching impact on his material selection, creative fate and his road to being a people's artist. /kloc-graduated from normal school at the age of 0/9, and has served as a principal of primary school, a student of persuasion institute, a secretary of education association and a middle school teacher. When the May 4th Movement broke out, Lao She had already started teaching. He didn't take part in sports directly, but "all the books published at that time were bought for reading". The anti-imperialist and anti-feudal slogan put forward in the May 4th Movement made Lao She rise from her original feelings in real life to a new level of understanding: "Anti-feudalism made me realize human dignity, people should not be slaves to ethical codes, and anti-imperialism made me feel the dignity of China people, and China people should not be slaves to foreign countries. These two understandings are the basic ideas and feelings of my later writing. "The May 4th Movement made Lao She see a new language and a new form of new literature, which aroused his strong interest in literature and made him obsessed with new literature. He later concluded: "The May 4th Movement gave me a new soul and a new literary language." "Without the May 4th Movement, I couldn't be a writer. The May 4th Movement created conditions for me to become a writer. "Although Lao She didn't become a writer until a few years later, it can still be said that the great changes of the May 4th Movement attracted him to the road of literature.

Lao She's first novel is a short sketch, Jason Chung, which was written between 1922 and 1923 and published in the school magazine of Tianjin Nankai Middle School. But he always described it as "just to make up the numbers" and "perfunctory editing of school publications", which was not included later. Therefore, the official start of literary career should be said to be after teaching in England in 1924. At that time, he taught Chinese at the Oriental College of London University. Because of learning English and reading many English novels, the loneliness of living in a foreign land makes him always fall into the memory of "everything China knows"-they "remember like some pictures ... these pictures often come and go in letters, and often when I read novels, I forget what I am reading, I am just recalling my past. There are some pictures in the novel and some pictures in memory. Why can't I draw my own picture with words? Writing down these events in the form of literature and art is the first novel, Lao Zhang's Philosophy. Then he wrote a long poem Zhao Ziyue and Two Horses. After these works were published in Novel Monthly, they attracted readers' attention with relaxed writing. Lao Zhang's Philosophy is based on the turbulent urban and rural life in Beijing under the rule of Beiyang warlords. Among them, "most people see it with their own eyes, and most people participate in it personally." The novel describes villains doing evil, breaking up the love between two young people and forcing them to die and run away, but it is a tragedy to perform in a playful atmosphere. Two Horses takes London as the stage for the characters' activities. The original intention is to compare the differences between Chinese and English peoples and get comedy effect from their differences and misunderstandings. However, in a series of jokes, it shows that overseas Chinese are discriminated against They all involve serious topics and expose the darkness of society. And Lao She is writing with a "humor" and "watching a play" attitude. He unconsciously explored these aspects, but sometimes he sought jokes from the evil deeds of the oppressors and the misfortunes of the victims, so that his indignation and sympathy for the former were diluted and drowned by laughter. Satire weakens the power, and humor is almost glib, which will inevitably affect the ideological significance of the work, and sometimes it becomes superficial and trivial in artistic expression. These weaknesses are particularly obvious in Zhao Ziyue, which is based on college students' life. Talking about this work, Lao She later said: "He has been away from student life for six or seven years", but in "the students in these six or seven years have been very different from my school days". Although he is "very sympathetic to the enthusiasm and activities of the students", he doesn't know them and is a bystander when writing. Therefore, "in the call for freedom, in the serious and chaotic scene, he found the joke and saw the crack." ..... tickling the new character ". As far as the description of students and student movements after the May 4th Movement is concerned, some plots are untrue, and some ridicule is inappropriate. Despite these weaknesses in the above novels, as Mao Dun pointed out: "Behind Mr. Lao She's laughing and cursing pen and ink, I feel his seriousness about life, his sense of justice and warmth, and his love and yearning for the motherland. "They are consistent with the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal democratic and patriotic tradition initiated by the May 4th literary revolution. At the same time, in these novels, Lao She satirizes humorous artistic features with Beijing local color, pays attention to the creative principle of reflecting social reality through ordinary life scenes and daily life details, is good at depicting the world and human feelings of middle and lower class citizens, and expresses tragic ideas by comedy, which shows his realistic creative style initially but quite comprehensively. Among the new literary works, novel is a genre that appeared late, and the second half of the 1920s was the stage when this genre reached its initial prosperity. With these unique works, Lao She occupies an important position in the earliest novel creation of new literature.

1930, Lao She came back from England, stayed in Singapore for half a year and taught in a middle school. In this British imperialist colony at that time, he saw more facts of national oppression and racial discrimination, and felt the surging wave of the Eastern Revolution from the enthusiasm of young students to explore the revolution. Although he didn't fully understand all this, and he was on the verge of revolution, it made him care more about the fate of his motherland and understand and treat life more seriously. "When I arrived in Singapore, my mind jumped forward a few feet". He resolutely stopped writing the love novel Probably So, which has already written more than 40,000 words, and began to write the fairy tale Xiaopo's Birthday. This is a novel of "fantasy and reality mixed together", which is about a group of innocent children, but what it wants to express is "thoughts that do not belong to the children's world" in the writer's mind; Sympathize with the oppressed nations and hope to "unite the weak nations in the world to fight together." The theme of opposing imperialism is fully displayed in this fairy tale. In the late 1970s, some Singaporean writers, in connection with the development and changes of Singapore's society, praised this work as "all kinds of insights and accurate predictions about Singapore's society hidden in children's stories" and thought it was a work "intended to tap overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia and some important local social problems". This is also closely related to Lao She's thinking on the liberation of the oppressed nation. After returning to China, he taught at universities in Jinan and Qingdao. At that time, Japanese imperialism was advancing step by step, the society was in turmoil, and the people were struggling in dire straits. This prompted Lao She to rethink many problems. This process of thinking and exploration has left obvious traces in his creation.

The first work after returning to China was Daming Lake. This novel is based on the May 3rd tragedy provoked by Japanese imperialism in Jinan. According to Lao She, "There is not a humorous word in Daming Lake because I thought of May 3rd." This work failed to meet the readers because the manuscript was burned in the "December 28th" Shanghai War. Later, the author extracted a part of the plot and wrote a short story "Crescent Moon". Written in 1932, A Tale of Cat City is an allegorical novel, which alludes to the dark China under the rule of the Kuomintang. It mainly writes "the weakness of national character, ... which is related to the transformation of national character". In the book "National Character", "Carmen exposed the weaknesses of" National Character "attacked by writers from Wu to Lu Xun to a great extent". This is undoubtedly a serious theme. This novel also makes more attacks on the dark China than its earlier works. But at the same time, it describes the people's revolutionary movement in a distorted way. The mockery of young students that once appeared in Zhao Ziyue has developed into a mockery of revolutionaries here. For a long time, Lao She took a cold-eyed and even disgusted attitude towards politics, and even lacked understanding of revolutionary politics. Although he felt the corruption and injustice of society, he was skeptical about realistic revolutionary movements such as change. In laughter, you can feel his deep pessimism, because he can't find a way out and can't see the light. This weakness is exposed in the story of Cat City. Shortly after the novel was published, Lao She publicly stated, "A Tale of Cat City, in my opinion, is a failed work, which mercilessly shows what an ordinary brain I have." He explained: the main reason for writing this novel is "disappointment in national affairs, military and diplomatic failures, which makes a person like me who has some feelings but no opinions easily disappointed by resentment." It can be seen that this is the product of his political hesitation. The failure of A Tale of Cat City shows that Lao She has gone through a somewhat tortuous road in the process of finding the future for the troubled nation. Since the 1960s, the United States, the Soviet Union and other countries have successively translated and published this book, and some have more than one translation. 1980, which was translated and published in the science fiction library in Japan. Some people in China think that Cat City is the earliest science fiction novel in China. In recent years, there are great differences on how to understand and evaluate the ideological significance of this novel. These are probably not thought of by the writer himself.

Divorce, written in 1933, is a long article that Lao She is satisfied with. The work indirectly exposes the corruption of bureaucracy through the gray and boring life pictures of a group of civil servants working in the reactionary government, and the second half also exposes the evil of espionage system. Lao She intends to make this novel "return to humor"; But most of these humorous elements are no longer additional jokes, but help to express the theme. Although the irony is not strong enough, the characters in the book are selfish, vulgar and fighting with each other. However, he criticized in a tearful smile and played a humorous role. This novel is based on the daily life in Beiping. "Beiping is my hometown. When I think of these two words, I have a hundred feet of' the scenery of the old capital'. " The life reflected in the works is familiar to Lao She. Through the description of the details of life, he focuses on the worldly wisdom, joys and sorrows of the middle and lower class citizens, which is what he is good at. Many chapters are like interesting genre paintings and world paintings. The layout of the works is quite symmetrical, which overcomes the weakness of loose structure that existed in some novels before this. This is a work with more realistic content and positive significance, and it is also a mature work that fully shows Lao She's artistic style. Another later novel, Biography of Niu Tianci, is full of Lao She's humor and satire, but its ideological significance is not as good as that of Divorce.

After 1932, Lao She began to write short stories while continuing to write novels. Most of what she wrote before 1936 was compiled into fair, sakura sea collection and mussel algae collection. The first few articles tend to "write jokes casually", such as "hot steamed bread" and "love kids" Soon after, I wrote serious works one after another. Liu Jia Courtyard outlines the miserable life of the poor in Beijing School. Sacrifice exposed the ugly face of a comprador intellectual who came back from the United States; Liu Tunde focuses on portraying the image of a rural bully who relies on the power of outsiders to benefit the fishermen. Caterpillar and Neighbor focuses on the vulgar life and humble psychology of ordinary citizens. "Taking Office" describes that the bandit leader becomes the inspector general to defend local public security and continues to carry out criminal activities with bandits from all walks of life; The Story Heard tells the story of a mediocre and incompetent man who made a fortune in his official career and attacked the corruption of reactionary bureaucrats. Both Tie Niu Sick Duck and New Han Mulie are centered on intellectuals. The former describes the disillusionment of the good wish of saving the country by science under the reactionary rule, while the latter reflects the decline of national industry and commerce under the dumping of Japanese goods. "Black and White Lee" also photographed the profile of the revolutionary, showing his revolutionary activities and integrity with a few strokes. These works vividly reproduce the social features of semi-feudal and semi-colonial old China from different angles. They either lashed out at the evil deeds of evil forces, or voiced grievances for the insulted and injured, all of which showed anti-imperialist and anti-feudal ideological tendencies.

Among Lao She's short stories, Crescent Moon is the most acclaimed masterpiece. The novel describes the tragic experience of a mother and daughter who were forced into prostitution by life. My daughter is so innocent, she knows almost nothing about sin and depravity, and her destruction is even more tragic. "The world is a voracious world, and whoever is bad will be cheap." This is an accusation against the old world shouted by the writer through this story. In Lao She's works, there has never been such a fierce protest. The novel unfolds in the way that her daughter recalls her life track. Lyric sentences and symbolic images of "crescent moon" appear repeatedly, which makes the works shrouded in cold and sad brilliance and quite artistic.

Compared with earlier novels, these short stories have wider themes, more distinct tendencies and more refined words. When talking about his creative experience, Lao She repeatedly said that short stories are more difficult to write than novels, and the former "needs skills most, and almost becomes an independent genre with skills". Admittedly, his own short stories have undergone more scrutiny, and he pays more attention to artistic skills than writing long stories. His short stories are different from novels, but pay attention to structural layout; Pay attention not only to the development of the story, but also to the description of the environmental atmosphere. In short stories, such as "Mr. breeches" and "The Good Man", the ugliness of philistines and hypocrites is highlighted with comic style, and the power of irony is exerted; Like "Holding the Sun" and "Opening the Market", it is full of comic jokes, which makes people laugh. Seeing the stupidity and falsehood in life, laughter becomes a weapon. Works such as Time-honored Brand and Broken Soul Gun turn to the depiction of characters' inner feelings and the rendering of life atmosphere, from which the projection of the times flashes, which is different from some grandiose works and endures people's chewing aftertaste, showing Lao She's different artistic talents and achievements. Among various literary genres, Lao She was first famous for his novels. After the 1950s, he took pleasure in drama creation, but he did write some wonderful short stories.

Lao She claimed to be a "person who loves to laugh", but he knew that "laughter can't be forced". To borrow the words of a character in his works, "my laughter often goes hand in hand with my tears, and I can't tell which is which." The combination of lightness and solemnity, laughter and sadness complicates his humor and satire. Judging from the changes before and after, the criticism and flogging in early works are often mild, "laugh and scold, but not kill them all." I lost irony and got humor. "Because of this, he was once called" humorous writer ". In the mid-1930s, his writing style became more and more severe, and he made more and more angry attacks and accusations. 1May, 935, Lao She explained the change of his writing style when he compiled Sakura Sea Collection, which was "in line with his mood". With more understanding of the profound disasters in the motherland, the style and content of his works have also changed accordingly.