老舍作品英文简介

老舍作品英文简介

Teahouse

By She Lao

This is one of the famous dramas by Lao She. The drama is set in a typical, old Beijing teahouse and follows the lives of the owner and his customers through three stages in modern Chinese history. The play spans fifty years and has a cast of over sixty characters drawn from all levels of society. Brought together in Yutai Teahouse, they reflect the changes that took place in Chinese society.

The strength and appeal of the play lie in part in Lao She's masterful recreation of the characters and language of the streets of old Beijing, but the center of its strength is Lao She's vision, his unerring choice of significant detail, and his familiarity with the old society he is describing, with its strengths, weaknesses, and ironies. It is this which carries Teahouse beyond the borders of social criticism and makes it a complex and living work of art. Written in 1957, Teahouse bids an inspired, lingering farewell to old Beijing and the old society, despite their evils and ills, and extends a passionate welcome to the new society with its promise of freedom and equality of the people.

Standing as it does between old and new China, and deeply rooted in both, Teahouse shimmers with a fine sense of ambivalence. True to its writer, to China, and to its time, it is a masterpiece of modern theater.

About the Author

Lao She (1899-1966) was one of the most renowned contemporary Chinese writers, famous for his novels and plays. His works have been translated into over 20 foreign languages.

Lao Shê (1899-1966) - also Lao She - pseudonym of Shu Sheyou, original name Shu Qingchun  Chinese playwright and author of humorous, satiric novels and short stories. Lao She is perhaps best known for his story LO-T'O HSIANG-TZU (1936, Rickshaw), a twentieth-century classic. An unauthorized and bowdlerized English translation, Rickshaw Boy, with a happy ending, appeared in 1945 and became a U.S. bestseller. "The person we want to introduce is Hsing Tzu, not Camel Hsiang Tzu, because "Camel is only a nickname. We'll just say Hsiang Tzu for now, having indicated that there is a connection between Camel and Hsiang Tzu." (from Rickshaw) Shu Quingchun (Lao She) was born Shu She-yü of Manchu descent in Beijing. His father, who was a guard soldier, died in a street battle during the 1900 Boxer uprising. To support her family and Lao Shê's private tutoring, his mother did laundry. "During my childhood," Lao She has later said, "I didn't need to hear stories about evil ogres eating children and so forth; the foreign devils my mother told me about were more barbaric and cruel than any fairy tale ogre with a huge mouth and great fangs. And fairy tales are only fairy tales, whereas my mother's stories were 100 percent factual, and they directly affected our whole family." (Lao Shê in Modern Chinese Writers, ed. by Helmut Martin and Jeffrey Kinkley, 1992)