Lao She and Chinese Folk Literature

Lao She and Chinese Folk Literature* Peter Li Rutgers University In times of war, heavy artillery and bayonets, are equally important. Similarly, drum songs and folk verses are just as important as novels and dramas in times of war. My pen must be like heavy artillery as well as the bayonet. ... [But] since I do not know how to use a bayonet, I will use my pen .... I should not feel that I will be demeaning myself by writing drum songs and folk verses. Lao She1 Introduction Lao She's place as a writer of fiction and drama is widely recognized, but his contribution to the field of folk literature, especially oral literature is not very well known. This report is a preliminary attempt to address this area of relative neglect Lao She's involvement in folk literature began with China's War of Resistance against Japan from 1937-1945. Soon after the Marco Polo Bridge incident in 1937, Lao She made the difficult decision to leave his home and family in Jinan, Shandong, where he had been teaching and writing since 1930, to work on behalf of the war effort in Wuhan. He left on November 15, 1937. At the time his son was only four years old and his daughter not quite three months (Lao She 1945:279). It .•This article is dedicated to the memory of my mother, Hsuying Li, who braved the inclement weather on the night of March 25, 1993 to hear my talk on Lao She at the annual CHINOPERL meeting at the Ackerman Union on the UCLA campus. We had to walk in the rain from our hotel to the Union that evening because of a freak incident. There was a flre opposite our hotel and a flre truck blocked our garage exit just at about the time of the meeting, so we could not drive. I remember as we hurried along in the rain, mother slipped and fell. But she got up quickly and we continued on our way. When we flnally reached the Union, the four of us were all soaking wet but in good spirits. The next evening was the famous CHINO PERL Frolic, Hsuying sang a aria for the occasion. About a month later she passed away in an automobile accident on April 28, 1993. She was eighty-three but always young at heart The last time we were together was on March 25, 1993 at the Chinoperl meeting. I would like to thank the editors of Chinoperl Papers for their helpful suggestions for improving the manuscript Any errors remaining are my responsibility. 1 Quoted in Hu Jieqing:389. However, no date was given for the statement. CillNOPERL Papers No. 18 (1996) e 1996 by the Conference on Chinese Oral and Performing Literature, INC. ClllNOPERL Papers No. 19 was a painful decision that he struggled with for months. After reaching Wuhan, Lao She immediately became active in the newly fonned All China Association of Literature and Arts Against the Enemy (g:t~~~)(_:WtJt :fi1ltt Zhonghua quanguo wenyijie kangdi xiehui). The Association's motto, prominently displayed at the inaugural meeting on March 27, 1938, was: "Literature Down to the Countryside ()(_~~ wenzhang xiaxiang)!" and "Literature Enter Into the Ranks C)(_A ffi. wenzhang ruwu)!" Lao She and Wu Zuxiang ~m~ were drafted into writing the manifesto of the Association (Wen Tianxing 1982:44-5). From then until the end of the war Lao She wrote continuously to fulfill his mission as one of the central literary figures during that period of time and assumed the de facto leadership of the Association on account of his then relative neutral status vis-a-vis the writers of the Right (Nationalist) and the Left (Communist). The first objective of the organization was to provide literature to soldiers on the front lines, and secondly, to provide performing literature to the illiterate masses in the countryside. To fulfill these objectives, many of the intellectuals of the time, including Lao She, turned to popular literature (mm-X_ tongsu wenyi) or "folk" literature (~rmXe minjian wenyi) as models.2 It must not be misconstrued, however, that Lao She did not have any previous interest in folk...