(1902–1988), twentiethcentury Chinese writer. Born in Phoenix Town Village, Hunan Province, Shen briefly attended primary school and then went to a military training camp to carry on the family tradition of soldiering. Shen began writing after witnessing the horrors associated with military campaigns. At age twenty, he went to Peking, became coeditor of the journal Modern Critic, and gradually gained recognition for his literary talents. Shen worked in many genres including poetry, novels, and essays but was best known for short stories and novellas, including "Three Men and a Girl," "The Lovers," and "Gazing at Rainbows." Like his contemporaries, Shen was influenced by Western writers such as Maupassant, Chekhov, and Joyce. Later, he moved to Shanghai where he continued to write. Shen's main sources of inspiration were the Chinese countryside, military life, and the Miao minority ethnic group of Hunan. In 1949, Shen's productive streak ended after the Communists took power. The Chinese Communist party labeled Shen a conservative and banned his books. For several decades, Shen ceased to write fiction and instead studied porcelain making and the history of Chinese costume. In the 1980s, already an old man, Shen wrote again, enjoying a resurgence in popularity, until his death in 1988.
Further Reading
Nieh Hua-ling. (1972) Shen Ts'ung-wen. New York: Twayne.
Shen Congwen. ([1947] 1982) The Chinese Earth: Stories by Shen Tseng-wen. Trans. by Ching Ti and Robert Payne. New York: Columbia University Press.
——. (1995) Imperfect Paradise. Edited by Jeffrey Kinkley. Honolulu, HI: University of Hawaii Press.
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