Page 1 About the Author
Lao She, formerly known as Shu Qingchun, is a novelist and playwright. In his youth, he changed his name to Shu Sheyu, and "Lao She" was his long-used pen name. Lao She was born on February 3, 1899 in Beijing, and is a Manchu. Since childhood, he has been hardworking and has a strong personality. In 1918, he graduated with honors from beijing normal school. From 1924 to 1929, Lao She was hired by the Oriental College of the University of London to teach Mandarin, and began to create literature. "Lao Zhang's Philosophy" and "Zhao Ziyue" were all completed in Britain.
After returning to China, he resigned from his teaching position in 1936 to specialize in creation. The next six or seven years were the peak of his work. Masterpieces such as "Cat City Chronicles", "Camel Shoko", and "My Life" came out in this period. In 1946, Lao She was invited to the United States to give a lecture, and in the United States, he completed the novel "Four Generations Together". Lao She's theatrical creation began at the beginning of the War of Resistance Against Japan. During this period, he created multi-act dramas such as "Residual Fog", "Zhang Zizhong", and "Return to Xi", which were well received by the people.
After the founding of New China, he successively created drama scripts such as "Fang Pearl", "Longsugou", "Chunhua Qiushi", and "Tea House". In the new historical period, his plays have become more mature and perfect, especially the two plays "Longsugou" and "Tea House" have become exemplary works in the creation of new Chinese dramas.
With its profound ideological content and exquisite artistic skills, Lao She's works have not only been loved by Chinese people, but also won a wide international reputation. In the "ten years of catastrophe", Lao She could not bear the humiliation of the "Gang of Four" and committed suicide by throwing himself into the water on The Taiping Lake in Beijing on August 24, 1966.
Page 2 Summary of contents
The cat people also have a history, and in ancient times, they also fought with foreign countries, but in five hundred years, the result of cannibalism made them completely forget the concept of beating foreigners, and the consistent internal, leading to the degradation of civilization. And "I" witnessed a war between cat people and dwarf soldiers, ending this ancient city of alien civilization with the destruction of cat city.
The author uses the description of the chaotic life and ugly behavior of the cat people to attack the chaos caused by the domestic strife in China at that time. The destruction of the whole tribe of cat people also reveals the author's concern for the future of the nation, which reflects the twists and turns of the author's continuous search for truth and the contradictions and pains in his heart. The complexity of Cat City's ideological tendencies and the specificity of its artistic expression have long caused it to elicit different evaluations.
In the novel, "I" and my companions take a plane to Mars to explore, but they do not expect the plane to crash and the companions to die, leaving "me" alone to come to the ancient country of this strange planet - cat country. In cat country, a group of cat people try to catch "me", "I" shoot to scare the cat people away, and are rescued by a cat man named "Big Scorpion". It turned out that the scorpion was a landlord and politician, and he had another plan to save "me": in the cat country, there is a grain called "lost leaf", and eating it will be invigorated, so the cat people often steal the lost leaf. However, cat country people are very afraid of foreigners. Therefore, the scorpion wanted to ask "me" to help guard the lost leaf.
"I" learned that the cat country people used to eat normally, but after eating the lost leaves, they stopped eating, did not love labor, and did not even take a bath. "I" once ran to the river to take a bath, and I didn't expect that the scorpion would organize cat people to visit and make money. "I" was very angry about this, and later the scorpion beat the worker when collecting the lost leaf, and "I" let the scorpion accept the punishment, which made the scorpion very unhappy. After collecting the lost leaves, the scorpion took people to transport them to Cat City, and "I" also went with them.
In Cat City, "I" discovered many drawbacks of this country: the children of cat country have graduated from school on the first day of school, and they all graduated from college; the principal of cat country makes a living by selling school property; the cat country museum has also been sold out by the country and used as an economic pillar; the cat country scholars often insult each other; the cat country is also reformed, but only heard that foreign reforms have been made, and they have imitated the changes... But despite the chaos in Cat City, cat country people are still very happy, hanging out on the streets every day.
The enemy dwarf state attacked, but the politicians played with prostitutes at meetings to discuss how to retreat from the enemy. As a result, the soldiers of the Cat Kingdom collapsed and surrendered, sacrificing their city. However, the enemy not only did not spare the cat people, but also slaughtered them. Only a dozen cat people ran into the mountains, but they themselves killed each other, and finally only two cat people were left. When the enemy found the two cat people, they were still biting each other, and finally the enemy put them in a wooden cage and watched them bite each other to death. At this point, the cat country collapsed, and "I" returned home on an expedition plane from France.
Page 3 Background of writing
At the time of writing "Cat City", Lao She had just returned from England. In 1931, the "918 Incident" suddenly erupted, the Japanese army swallowed the three eastern provinces in one fell swoop, and the rumbling cannon sound shook China... China is facing the danger of national subjugation, and the broad masses of the people are worried. As a writer with the most sensitive nerves of the nation, Lao She hated those invaders and hated the corrupt officials. He picked up a pen and wrote "Cat City".
"Cat City" is a novel written by the modern writer Lao She. It was first published in 1933. The book unfolds the story in a travelogue-style structure, written in the first person, beginning with "I" flying off Earth and ending with "I" returning to Earth, describing "I" experiencing an adventure in cat country. "Cat City" reflects the melancholy state of mind when Lao She's novel was created, and contains Lao She's deep thinking about social reality and deep love for the country.
One of the purposes of Mr. Lao She's writing is because after he returned to China, he saw the current situation of Chinese society, the society at that time was really impossible to look at directly, the society was not only backward, the country was decaying, the society was full of holes, human nature was selfish, ignorant, and did not want to make progress, Mr. Lao She felt impatient and sad about this, and at the same time was very disappointed. Therefore, in "The Tale of Cat City", Mr. Lao She used the big scorpion to represent the big bureaucratic bourgeoisie in China at that time, the small scorpion to symbolize the new class ideologists who returned from studying abroad, and the big eagle to represent the reformists.
Biography
"I": Forced to land on Mars due to the destruction of the spaceship, the Cat Nation on Mars used the care of the Misty Forest, and entered the Cat Country by escorting the Lost Leaf, witnessing the demise of the Cat Country. The "I" in the novel was a rational bystander at the beginning, but this kind of cleanliness and self-improvement did not always be consistent, and in the process of observing the cat country, I saw the decay of the cat country, and I also unconsciously fell into the quagmire of the cat city.
Scorpion: Greedy "progressive" youth. Scorpion is the representative of the political community, stubbornly obeying the old system and old rules that seep into the bone marrow, and indulging in the psychedelic world after sucking the leaves every day, but he was also a new youth when he was young, with avant-garde and progressive ideas, which is mentioned in the novel by the words of his son Xiao Scorpion: "The father is a new character, at least a new character from twenty years ago." Twenty years ago he was against eating lost leaves, and now he inherits his grandfather's lost forest. Twenty years ago he advocated women's rights, and now he doesn't allow you to go in because there are women in the house. The image of the scorpion not only represents the political community, but also represents the old generation of "new youth", which has gradually been assimilated into the image of being driven by monetary interests and enslaved to flesh and skin under the wear and tear of the material society with soaring interests.
Scorpion: Cold-blooded "progressive" youth. The little scorpion is one of "my" friends in the cat country, is the son of the big scorpion, the youth representative of the cat country, stayed in the ocean, with a foreign flavor in his tone, and plays a role in the novel to solve the puzzle for "me". He has broad knowledge and far-reaching ideas, and has a second sharp and profound criticism of cat country education.
Minister's wife: The minister died at an early age, leaving behind the minister's wife and his eight concubines, and the minister's wife lived with these eight concubines. The sadness of the minister's wife is that she has always been floating with the world, clinging to the dogmas given to women by the patriarchal society, such as humility and humility, observance of festivals, etc., these dogmas have also become the dignity that supports the minister's wife in the society, she carefully and cautiously follows the constraints of the patriarchal society on women, and plays the role of the "good wife" under the patriarchal society, so as to get psychological compensation and spiritual comfort to fill the pain and unbearableness of real life.
Page 4 Reader Comments
1. In "The Tale of Cat City", although Lao She adopts the form of fairy tales, he criticizes the spirit of Chinese national culture. The "laughter" in "Cat City" is no longer "laughter", laughter with irony and ridicule, flogging the bad habits of the Chinese nation, behind each laughter there is a certain implication that makes the people feel deep in their hearts.
2. In the dystopian society in "Cat City", all things that conform to popular values, such as normal order and norms, have been subverted, lost their rationality, and expressed as a national carnival. Through the defamiliarization of artistic techniques, Lao She satirizes that stormy era and the real society and human feelings, and cleverly avoids many writing resistances and obstacles. It can avoid causing trouble by stabbing the authorities directly, and increase the irony with a clear character image.
3. Writer Liang Shiqiu: "'The Tale of Cat City' marks the maturity of Lao She's artistic thought, especially when the author satirizes reality with great pain, but also maintains a calm attitude. ”
4. Literary critic Wang Shuming: "'Cat City' is a success! In the unique style, it contains an implicit sense of humor, giving a very profound portrayal of a nearly declining society. ”
Page 5 Quotes
1. The heart is a tree, the roots of love and hope must be rooted in the soil, and the branches and leaves of wisdom and emotion are spread under the blue sky. Whether it is the wind and rain of the years, or the rolling dust that obscures the green leaves and green branches, it always stands there silently waiting, and accepts that everything is coming, neither arrogant nor humble.
2, "You are scared to death, it's okay!" "If I kill someone," said the scorpion with a gasp, "I only need to lose some lost leaves, and the lost leaves are everything, and the law is just a few lines of words carved into the stone; with the lost leaves, killing people is not the same thing." You beat people to death, no one cares, the laws of the cat country can't control foreigners, not even 'one' lost leaf; I hate myself for not being a foreigner. If you kill people in the countryside, leave them alone and give the white-tailed eagle some snacks; if you kill people in the city, you only need to report to the court, and the judge will thank you very politely. The scorpion seemed to envy me very much, and there seemed to be a little tear in his eyes. Tears will also fall in my eyes, poor cat man, where is life? What are the axioms?
3. Forgive me for asking, are there real civilians in these cajoles? "I was about to tell you. They are uneducated, they have no knowledge, they have no brains, they are waiting to be deceived, there is no way, no matter which time they are coaxed, they are all serving the country and the people. When they got the official work, the emperor gave money, and the emperor's money naturally came from the people. When they did not get the official work, they desperately coaxed the people to provide money, and when the people were not deceived, they joined forces with the soldiers to make trouble for the people. The more people are coaxed, the more miserable the country becomes. I interjected again: "Aren't there good people in the coax?" Is there not a single one really for the country and the people? “
4, "Well, the political party, or any other name, anyway, we have changed it to a coax." You see, since ancient times, we have always been in charge of everyone by the emperor, and the people are not allowed to speak out. Suddenly, a message came from a foreign country that the people could also manage government affairs; so how could everyone think that they could not escape from this conclusion -- isn't this just a cajoling? Besides, since ancient times, we have taken cleanliness and self-improvement as a moral standard, and suddenly we have heard that many people can form a party, or they will, so how can everyone turn to ancient books and find a proper word; only coaxing the word is still a little meaningful: why do we go to one place? For coaxing. So we started coaxing ......"
5, the big scorpion is really busy to die: look at the family general, do not steal a piece of lost leaf; look at the direction of the wind, so as to order the retreat; look at the forest outside the visit, so as not to lose a half of the fallen leaves. He had now eaten thirty lost leaves in one go. It is said that after eating forty lost leaves in one go, you can not sleep for three days, but on the fourth day you will whine and mourn. This kind of thing is to eat less and have the spirit and do not want to do it; eat more to be able to do it and die soon after. The scorpion can't eat more leaves, knowing that he will die, but he can't eat less because he is afraid of death; although he is extremely afraid of death, poor scorpion!
(To be continued)
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