Shen Congwen

Shen Congwen came from the Miao people. He mastered the Chinese literary language in the county school. Since 1918 he served in the local parts of the Chinese army as the head of the library, he was engaged in self-education. Along with Chinese classics and popular literature, he was interested in works of enlightenment and democracy, translations of Western authors. The attention of Shen Tsongwen was attracted by new Chinese literature, which was born during the “literary revolution” (wensue geming) that began in 1917-1918. The greatest influence on his formation as a writer was exerted by the work of Lu Sin and his followers from the Literary Community, which contributed to the formation of such features of his works as life truthfulness, humanity, love for his native land and its inhabitants.

In 1923, Shen Tsong-wen left for Beijing to study at the university. Due to material difficulties, he begins to work in literary applications for newspapers. In 1926 the first collection of his short stories, essays, and poems Yatszy (The Duck) was published. In 1927, Shen Cong came to Shanghai, where he began teaching at secondary and higher educational institutions, which he continued almost his whole life. At the same time, he, along with other young writers Hu Epin, Dean Lin, and others, publishes and edits literary supplements to leading newspapers, where he publishes his new works (mainly short stories). In 1927-1928 they appeared in Shanghai: Migan (Honey Oranges), Laoshi Ren (Humble People), Zhu u hou (In the Army), the story Alice Zhongguo Yuji (" About Alice's Travel to China ”). Thanks to such intense creativity, Shen Congen earned the critics the nickname "Dochan Zujia" (Polygraph). Until 1949 he published over 70 books: literary works (short stories, short stories, poems), essays, collections of journalistic and literary articles, autobiographical and epistolary. And in the 1980-1990s, during the writer's life and after his death, several multi-volume collections of his works were published.

In the history of modern Chinese literature, Shen Tsung-wen remained primarily as a novelist, and the prevailing opinion is that, with the known differences in the manners and style of the writer between his early and late works, his work is inherent in ideological and artistic unity. It is marked by a bright seal of the author's personality. For many years, the main subject of the image of the writer was his native West Hunan . The writer thoroughly knew local people - their way of life, mentality, beliefs and aspirations; from the first pages, it was felt that he, without closing his eyes to the weaknesses and prejudices inherent in many of them, seeks to shade the best, humane that is hidden in their souls, sometimes resorting to idealization and poetry. So, in the story “Fufu” (“Spouses”, 1929), a crowd of conservatively minded peasants is ready to crack down on a young couple convicted of “adultery”. However, when it turns out that a young man and a girl are newlyweds, making ritual rounds of relatives and lost their way, the mood of the crowd changes and people try to help them. Under the influence of Aboriginal folklore, Shen Congen creates works imbued with romance with a touch of mysticism, for example, the story “Shen u zhi ah” (“The love of a shaman and a witch”, 1929).

In the stories of the 1930s, the writer’s interest in people living “according to the laws of nature” —naturally strong-willed, morally persistent, sometimes unbridled, more often comes to the forefront. There is a juxtaposition of these “natural”, even “wild” people, mainly villagers, and people of “civilized”, “scientists”, representing urban culture, endowed mostly with negative properties. For the first time this was clearly shown in the story “Shanshi dy taytai” (“Landowner's wife”, 1930), was developed in “Huzi” (“Tiger Cub”, 1932), “Ba chi tu” (“Eight horses”, 1935) and the story “ Bian Cheng "(" Border Town ", 1936). Outlining a life story about the unrequited love of young Tsuitsui and the efforts of the elderly owner of the fishing pier Shunshun to give her granddaughter the head of the self-defense squad, the writer creates subtle psychological portraits of the characters, making it possible to feel the unfavorable influence of the “modern” mercantilist views spreading around them. Recognizing the artistic merits of the story, left-wing criticism reproached the writer for underestimating the factor of the class struggle. Shen Tsongwen rejected the rebuke, arguing that the "class nature" of man is far from exhausting his inner essence. Adhering to this position, he did not join the influential literary associations of the left and did not show political activity, but in his work he did not pass over social problems in silence, creating impressive images of people offended by life. He denounced the "upper layers" of society with their hypocrisy and spiritual emptiness.

The writer spent the years of the Japanese resistance war in the rear, in Yunnan , where he evacuated with the educational institutions in which he worked. Its main genres are essay and journalism. Returning to Beijing after the war, he resumed teaching at Peking University, as well as collaborating in literary applications to a number of leading print media. In 1948, the first part of the novel Chan he (The Long River) was published about the life of a Hunan village on the eve of the anti-Japanese war. The book appeared at the height of the civil war, when the country was already undergoing agrarian reform, radically changing the life of the village. Work on the historical plot was deemed "not in keeping with the spirit of the era." Shen Congong welcomed the victory of the revolution; for several years he appeared in print mainly with publicistic responses to events taking place in the country; at the same time, he begins research work in the field of art criticism, collaborating in the Historical Museum of China, the Gugun Museum, and since 1981 - at the Academy of Social Sciences. The result of the research was the publication of works on the applied art of Ancient China (the subject of study was fabrics, metal mirrors, the history of the costume). Shen Congen completed his literary work in 1957, having prepared a new edition of his selected works for publication.

Sheng Wong died of a heart attack on May 10, 1988 in Beijing at the age of 85. Despite political rehabilitation before his death, the state-owned media in China were silent about his death. Four days later, a single-line obituary was published in which he was called the “famous Chinese writer” and did not mention political issues or the importance of his work for Chinese literature. The American newspaper The New York Times published a detailed obituary describing him as “a writer, author of short stories, lyric poet and passionate advocate of literary and intellectual independence” ^[5] .

• "Border Town" by Shen Congen: Dialogue of Utopia and Anti-utopia
• Shen Congwen
• Reflection of intercultural differences and conflicts between the Chinese and the Miao people in the work of Chinese writer Shen Tsongwen (1902? 1988)