Lao She (1899-1966), pseudonym of his given name Shu Qingchun, was born of Manchu descent into a poor family in Beijing. His father, who was a guard soldier of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911), died in a street battle during the Boxer (an anti-imperialist uprising launched by peasants and handicraftsmen from North China in 1900).
Fatherless since then, Lao She spent his poor and hard childhood in a compound occupied by many households, which enabled him to get acquainted with the daily life of those urban residents living in the society's rock-bottom and to gain a deep understanding of their happiness and sadness. His life there also gave rise to his love for and fascination with the traditional art forms popular among the folks, such as Quyi (storytelling, comic dialogue , and so on accompanied by musical instrument) and opera. It was right in such an environment that Lao She became educated about life and art, which greatly influenced his literary career.
In 1906, Lao She entered a private school with the help of others, and went to a new one three years later. In 1913, he was admitted to the Beijing Normal College where everything from tuition to accommodation was supplied by the government. After graduating with merits in 1918, Lao She became a headmaster of a public primary school in Beijing.
With the outbreak of the May 4th Movement came the call for science, democracy, and individuality emancipation, which led him to make a bold decision. In September 1922, Lao She resigned from all the posts he held and became a Chinese teacher in Nankai Middle School, which was known for its democracy and new thoughts. There he wrote his first story Xiao Ling'er.
In 1924, Lao She went to Great Britain, where he served as a Chinese teacher in the Oriental School of London University. The dazzling world and strong homesickness pushed him into the ocean of literature. He read lots of English works and began to write novels in his spare time. Philosophy of Laozhang, Sayings by Zhao Zi, and Two Horses were all creations of this time.
In 1926, he joined the Literature Seminar, finally getting a job worth embarking on in his literary career and a substantial life he had been dreaming of. By that time, his literary works had taken on the tone of realism from the very beginning, with clear-cut artistic features from language and tone to content and theme.
In 1929, Lao She returned to his motherland -- China -- by way of France, Germany, Italy, and Singapore, and began to teach a year later in Qilu University and later Shangdong University. In his leisure time, he continued with his literary creation, giving rise to a great many famous works, such as Divorce, Crescent, Camel Xiangzi, and My Life. Among them, the novel Camel Xiangzi, in particular, showed Lao She's sincere sympathy with and deep understanding of the poor urban people, and has been viewed as his representative work.
Camel Xiangzi, one of the most outstanding works in the 1930s as well as an excellent long novel of modern China, established Lao She's important role in the history of modern Chinese literature. When translated into English 40 years after its birth, the novel was still received by the foreign readers.
After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, Lao She went to Hankou (in Hubei Province) and Chongqing, where he created various literary works themed on the war and saving the country, including the drama Remnant Fog and the novel Four Generations Living Under the Same Roof .
Upon victory of the war, Lao She, invited by the US Department of State, went to America for lectures in March 1946 and stayed there for literary creation until the founding of the People's Republic of China (1949).
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