I Didn 't Know About The World Of The Late Qing Dynasty
915 Words4 Pages
Born in 1899 to parents of Manchu descent, Lao She was brought into the world of the late Qing dynasty and, due to his ethnicity, experienced childhood as part of the ruling elite. His father was killed in a street fight by Eight-Nation forces during the Boxer Rebellion in 1901. Quoted as saying ‘I didn 't need to hear stories about evil ogres eating children and so forth; the foreign devils my mother told me about were more barbaric and cruel than any fairy tale ogre with a huge mouth and great fangs’ as a result of his father’s death, he developed a strong sense of nationalism at a young age. Lao She remained a great supporter of the May Fourth Movement - which favoured national independence and rebuilding Chinese culture and society – later claiming that it gave him a ‘new literary language’. In travelling to London in his 20s to work as a teacher, Lao She only further strengthened his sense of pride and value of Chinese cultural traditions, his love for China and desire to rebuild the country and educate youth grew. Following the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in 1937, Lao She became hugely radicalised as anti-Japanese. He headed the All-China Anti-Japanese Writers Federation, which encouraged writers to produce nationalist writings, and his own work subsequently became vehemently patriotic and propagandistic. The two texts on which this essay is focused, Black Li and White Li and An Old and Established Name are both prime examples of writings of this nature.
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