More on Shen Congwen

Shen Congwen (沈从文, pictured) was so prolific that by the time he was 40, he had written enough stories that, in the words of a critic, piled up to twice his height.

But after 1949, he stopped writing. Indeed, the entire sum of his published creative writing until his death another 40 years later was a few essays and a handful of poems.

According to John Gittings, there were at first rumors that Shen had been arrested or even executed, while foreign admirers of his work claimed that he had been "silenced by communism."

But apparently the truth was more complicated.

Shen was already writing less in the 1940s and there was an unexplained attempt at suicide in 1947. That year, he was also denounced by Communist scholar Guo Moruo (郭沫若), described as "the brilliant but venomous intellectual scholar who was close to Mao" of clothing his works in "peach-blossom pink" to condone the evils of the old society.

Other personal and political pressures combined to make Shen psychologically ready to accept the self-censorship imposed by the new society after 1949.

Shen's course was said to be the reverse from that of Lu Xun (鲁迅, 1881-1936), the other great modern Chinese writer by whose side Shen should be ranked. Lu Xun took refuge in archaeological studies in the confused years of the first republic after 1912, but emerged to lead the left-wing movement for a new culture and was sympathetic to the early communist cause. But Shen turned from writing to archeology when the revolution succeeded, and "declared that he had nothing more to say."

As Shen's nephew Huang Yongyu wrote about Shen: "He loved the soil of China and her people; but how could this new society with its new outlook understand him? That would have required a detailed analysis, and who had time to spare for the feelings of such an insignificant fellow? In that great age, so many important tasks needed to be done."