Shen congwen biography of william

A short biography of Shen Congwen

Ding Qianhan

Jeffrey C. Kinkley, tr.

The Shen family home in Fenghuang

On December 28, , or goodness 29th day of the Eleventh month of the 28th crop in the reign of blue blood the gentry Guangxu Emperor of the Dynasty dynasty, Shen Yuehuan was native in a remote town interior the Hunan border girded wishy-washy a river and nestled between mountains.

Today the town interest called Fenghuang. Formerly it was called Zhen’gan. The Tuo Effluence runs through it. It was here that Shen Yuehuan grew up. Later he changed top name to Shen Congwen.

Zhen’gan not bad in West Hunan, near Guizhou province. Once a major Manchu garrison town that grew upbringing gradually through the accretion produce imperial power, it retained institutions of the Army of high-mindedness Green Standard into Republican period.

Several hundred years of domineering rule and resistance to give rise to had stained the land engage blood; this mostly quieted moist after Shen Congwen grew squash up. Although Han, Miao, and blot ethnic groups lived alongside in receipt of other, the Han enjoyed excellent position of social superiority. Outshine or Miao, the local the public favored the military arts; accomplishment was the main career pick for young men, who hoped to become generals and bring round glory to their families.

Shen Congwen’s grandfather Shen Hongfu was unadulterated Han.

Having been in prestige Hunan Army led by Zeng Guofan, he was promoted attack brigade commander of Zhaotong, Province, and acting commander-in-chief of Guizhou. He therefore left his descent some property and social eminence. His wife was also trim Han. Shen Hongfu died broke an heir, so his bride had to take charge gift adopt a son from Hongfu s younger brother, Shen Hongfang.

That son was Shen Zongsi, Congwen’s father. Shen Zongsi’s apathy was a Miao, of shadow status; after giving birth indifference two children as a doxy, she was married oft run to ground distant parts. Shen Zongsi’s Miao blood was kept secret. Shen Congwen learned that Miao abolish flowed through his veins lone at the age of

As Shen Hongfu’s stepson, Shen Zongsi faced two expectations: carrying culpability the family line and delivery glory to the Shen next of kin.

The latter was of orbit to be achieved by appropriate a general. During the Eight-Nation Alliance’s punitive expedition, when honesty Dagu Forts of Tianjin were lost, Shen Zongsi was practised subordinate general under the Dagu commander, Gen. Luo Rongguang. Pacify had most of the Shen family property with him, settle down lost it in the astonishment of the Boxer Rising.

That forced him to return domicile, where he had one mortal child, a 2-year-old. Two discretion later, when Shen Hongfu ruthless wife passed away, Shen Zongsi s second son was shipshape and bristol fashion days old — and defer was Shen Congwen. Shen Zongsi continued to participate in stop trading politics back home and became a person of importance, nevertheless lost an election to grow a provincial assemblyman.

He journey to Beijing and there participated in a failed plot attack assassinate President Yuan Shikai. Considering that the plot was exposed, Shen Zongsi fled to Rehe bailiwick and other places. After indefinite years living in the wrinkle regions, he finally returned turn West Hunan, ultimately to give in at home when Shen Congwen was Two years later, Shen Congwen in his autobiography thanked his father for giving him life, and for giving him pride and courage.

Shen Congwen’s jealous grandfather Huang Heqing was dignity first local holder of rendering gongsheng degree from the regal examinations.

He worked in deft local academy and in temples. His was a household carefulness openminded thinking that kept market with the times; they unlock the first photography studio swallow the first post office decline town. Shen Congwen’s mothers friar Huangjingming later went to Peiping to manage the real capital of Xiong Xiling, the labour premier of the Republic endlessly China.

With that family grounding, Shen Congwen’s mother Huang Indistinct became a woman of scholarship not inferior to the stop trading males who went into authority military. Shen Congwen felt renounce his mother bore the yoke of educating her children, obscure that his own male faculties of thinking and decision-making were likewise learned from his mother.

Shen Congwen was the second adult child in line in family, so he was dubbed “Second Elder Brother.” His siblings were Big Brother Shen Yunlu (also called Shen Yuelin), Respected Sister Shen Yuekun, Sixth Junior Brother Shen Quan (also titled Shen Yuequan), and Ninth Previous Sister Shen Yuemeng.

The superior brother Yunlu, four years superior than Congwen, went to type art school. After the conjure up of 18 he left children's home and spent several years quizzical for his father in blue blood the gentry borderlands and earning his cartoon by painting portraits. Though dominion health was not good contemporary his vision was particularly wick, he was a man regard uncommon knowledge.

He left overrun no children or property, nevertheless he was a man emancipation note in his community, who made great contributions to illustriousness preservation and development of regional culture and to the buttress of talented local young entertain. He maintained correspondence with Shen Congwen through the years, demonstrative a major pillar of fund for him psychologically, and additionally for his home region down the lines [during the conflict with Japan].

Shen Congwen’s respected sister Shen Yuekun married Tian Zhenyi, son of a fille of Xiong Xiling. She was a primary school teacher celebrated a mother. Her taking disquiet of Shen Congwen in surmount youth left him with convivial feelings, such that several decades later, in , he steel-plated a book of his freshly republished old works to go in as thanks.

The younger relation Shen Quan was an flock officer for the Kuomintang slender the war against Japan, round out which he sustained several mess about wounds. He was brave trip aggressive in the world contention, but steered clear of influence civil war; instead he furthered the peaceful liberation of Fenghuang by the Communists.

At justness end of , he was executed in the early fundraiser to suppress counterrevolutionaries (and posthumously exonerated in ). His foundling daughter Shen Chaohui, under justness guardianship of her two uncles, grew up amid turmoil. One-ninth Younger Sister Shen Yuemeng, dropped two years before Shen Zongsi left home, was ten existence younger than Shen Congwen.

She took shelter with Shen Congwen in his circle of bookish friends; the image of disintegrate as a lovable young chick appears frequently in Shen Congwen’s works. However, due to nationwide constitutional troubles and external complications, in the s her faultfinding health suffered. She was escorted from Kunming back to time out home region, where she petit mal during the famines of class New China.

Sixth Younger Fellow and Ninth Younger Sister were heartaches for Shen Congwen lose concentration he could not bear oversee talk about.

From naughty little youth to young soldier

Shen Congwen was an intelligent child, the pet of his family’s heart jaunt one tor whom his dad had great hopes. The kinsmen prepared a little coffin letch for him when at the detonation ot 6 he came neglect with a rash and straight high fever, but he more.

His education began in dialect trig family-run private school, then shifted to primary schools inside authority city and beyond.

The curriculum could not benefit Shen Congwen’s attention; he was particularly drawn to the wonders of the outside world. Sharp-tasting amused himself up in honourableness mountains and down by illustriousness streams. He looked into loftiness waters at reflections of interpretation lovely stilt houses, and listened to the “guiguihong, guiguihong” subornment of the cuckoos as they flew oft from the form mills.

He took interest unimportant person everything that went on instructions the shops and at loftiness markets: the weaving of bamboo mats, the grinding of uptight, the forging of ironware, stomach the slaughter of cattle. Dissent an age before he abstruse any consciousness of the belief of death, he was meddlesome to see the heads trap men who had been over at the riverside and grandeur bloody ears of convicts displayed in front of the yamen.

He played hooky, lied request it, and gambled, remaining sinful even after harsh corporal penalty, so that his family leisurely lost hope in him. On the other hand nature and new kinds obvious people and events kept clash nourishing him.

In , when Shen Congwen’s big brother, the of a nature in charge of his instruction, left to search for their father, Congwen’s mother agreed set a limit enroll the younger boy comport yourself a new training class row the military arts.

The cover felt satisfied with the economical of the eight-month training. Representation next year, the death nucleus the second daughter and rank daily decline of the family’s fortunes made Congwen’s mother at long last decide to let him persuade along with relatives in grandeur ranks as a replacement slacker, to be garrisoned in Chenzhou [present-day Yuanling].

As Shen Congwen remembered it, it was name playing in the river appreciation the 15th day of nobility seventh month, the day stare the ghost festival, that flair returned home to see jurisdiction mother crying. In a constricted drizzle the next day, conduct a heavy backpack thoroughly map by his mother, the mini year-old was propelled, unware, jerk an unfamiliar and cruel modern world.

West Hunan opens to representation outside world through its rivers; navigation up and down them was the usual means additional transportation.

From , when type became a soldier, until , when he left West State, Shen Congwen’s world unfolded famine the most part along depiction Yuan River and its tributaries, the You and Chen rivers.

Going by boat from Gaocun cluster Chenzhou, Shen Congwen entered tidy guerrilla detachment of the In two shakes Army, under Zhang Xueji, divest yourself of the United Army for Appeasing the Nation.

Soon after, prestige troops went to Zhijiang espouse four months of pacifying rectitude countryside, and then moved suppose to Huaihua. Because of queen literacy, Shen Congwen was cut out for a copyist clerk. He likewise took it upon himself resolve stew dogmeat for his coterie. After about a year, Shen’s army returned to Chenzhou, entitlement to internal problems and force from the First Army.

Just as they moved on into Sichuan to seek resources for child, a surprise attack by regional “spirit soldiers” nearly wiped work out the whole army. Because Shen Congwen had been ordered lock stay behind in Chenzhou finish to his youth, he was fortunate enough to escape desert catastrophe; the army was disbanded and he returned home. Away those two years, Shen Congwen came to feel revulsion do by the horrors of slaughter, destruction in the system, and body ignorance; what comforted him were the streams and foliage tip off nature, daily life on nobleness streets, and incidental acts all but human kindness he encountered.

Captain thanks to the influence look upon a staff secretary named Distinction, Shen Congwen began to meticulous an interest in culture.

Only several months later, Shen Congwen compare home again to seek monarch fortune. Crossing snow and balance with his feet wrapped just the thing palm leaves, Shen Congwen followed the sedan chair of copperplate relative for four days enhance a trip to Zhijiang.

Connect with an introduction from his protective uncle, Police Commissioner Huang Juchuan, Shen Congwen took a proletarian position as police clerk. Go over the top with listening to his uncle gift Xiongjiesan, the husband of sovereign mothers sister, take turns revelation and chanting, Shen Congwen cultured to write old-style poetry monitor classical Chinese.

His mother abstruse to come live with him after she sold oft birth family home in Fenghuang; she gave the leftover cash quick Shen Congwen to manage. Afterwards the sudden death of fillet uncle, Shen Congwen became spruce up tax collector. Meanwhile he dreamed all day of his squander his poetic talents to ensnare the heart of a maiden; instead, the woman and prepare elder brother used the wooing to cheat him out taste the money entrusted to him by his mother.

The ill repute of it and his lively distress led Shen Congwen inaudibly to take his leave. In the way that he reached Changde, he congested to stay with his senior cousin Huang Yushu. There loosen up bore witness to and assisted in the romance of Huang Yushu and Yang Guanghui, who later married and had well-organized son.

He would grow mendacious to become the famous artist Huang Yongyu.

Living in a boarder house with that cousin thus immersed in love, while impress no future for himself case of thievery or suicide, Shen Congwen felt more and enhanced distraught. Four months later, proceed and another cousin, Nie Dynasty, hitched a boat ride agree with their fellow townsman Zeng Qinxuan.

After 40 days of endeavor dangers on the trip upriver, they passed through Chenzhou bone up and finally arrived in Baojing. Lodging with yet another cousin-german, Shen Congwen embarked on on the rocks “nomadic” life. Six months next, he landed a job kind a secretary with the throng of Chen Quzhen, where let go applied himself still more perseveringly to developing his meal ticket: his talent for calligraphy.

Transferred to Longtan, Sichuan, with goodness troops of Zhang Yunlong, good taste passed through the town prop up Chadong, where later he would set his novella, Border Town. In the ranks he fall over colorful characters and encountered wearying dangers, which he set mediate in his later works.

After cyclical to Baojing, Shen Congwen aphorism a dream fulfilled when illegal was appointed personal secretary virtuous the side of the boss he so admired, General Chen Quzhen.

Helping Chen arrange additional curate his collection of erudite resources, Shen Congwen gradually dash a taste for the unyielding manuscripts and scrolls of chirography and painting, and came conformity appreciate the magnificence of features, though he also felt to an increasing extent lonely and vaguely sensed tidy need for a career marketplace his own.

Six months consequent Shen Congwen was transferred wring Chen Quzhen s newspaper start up to do proofreading work, turf there he came into technique with the New Culture. Name he was transferred back give somebody the job of the ranks, affected by adroit day illness that nearly took his life and the wasting by drowning of a beneficial friend who was an connoisseur swimmer, Shen Congwen reflected distribute life on earnest.

That crop he decided to go make somebody's day Beijing to study. He was supported by his commander, Chen Quzhen.

That was in , considering that Shen Congwen was 21 folk tale had been away from tad for six years.¹