From a Child Who Couldn't Afford School
to a Voice That Shook the World

Teahouse · Rickshaw Boy · Four Generations Under One Roof — a writer who walked from Beijing's alleys to the global stage.

He was the first "People's Artist" of New China. Born so poor that his family couldn't pay his primary school fees, Lao She went on to write Teahouse — still a national treasure — and Rickshaw Boy, translated into dozens of languages. His pen travelled from Beijing's hutongs to the world's bookshelves.

This note explores two essential themes from his life: the courage to speak when silence was easier, and the tragic depth behind a comedian's mask. A rare lens for powerful essay writing.

i Key Milestones

1924–1929 — Taught in London, began writing novels influenced by Charles Dickens.
1936 — Published Rickshaw Boy, his masterpiece of realism.
1937 — Left his comfortable writing life to serve the war effort in Wuhan.
1944–1948 — Wrote Four Generations Under One Roof under extreme hardship.
1951 — Awarded the title "People's Artist" by the government.

1 From "Cannot Speak" to "Must Sing"

In 1937, as war engulfed China, Lao She was living a stable writer's life in Shandong. Rickshaw Boy was still on everyone's mind. He could have kept writing novels. Instead, he made a decision many didn't understand: he put down his long fiction, travelled to Wuhan, and became the Director of General Affairs of the All-China Resistance Association of Writers and Artists.

A writer known for detachment and humour turned into a wartime organiser — raising funds, coordinating meetings, writing propaganda ballads in forms he neither mastered nor loved. He admitted the quality of his work suffered. But he saw no retreat. "Literature should serve the war of resistance," he said.

The tension between being unable to speak and having to sing is the spiritual trial of every individual in a nation's crisis. Lao She's answer: even a hoarse voice is a duty.

📖 2025 National College Entrance Exam (Gaokao) · Volume I

The reading passage featured Lao She's The Ancient Storyteller — a story about a performer who "wanted to sing for the children, but his heart churned, and he couldn't open his mouth." The question explored the very same dilemma: silence vs. responsibility.

Insight: Every moment a person could stay silent but chooses to speak — that is where the national spirit lives.

From the study to the street, from novels to folk ballads — each step away from his comfort zone was a step into the fire of history. It wasn't artistic decline; it was an ethical choice in a time of national crisis.

The national soul is never an abstract slogan. It lives in every instant a person who could stay silent chooses to open their mouth.

— on Lao She's wartime transformation

2 The Comedian's Tragic Core

In 1944, during the darkest years of the war, Lao She began writing Four Generations Under One Roof in Chongqing. The million-character novel took four years. By day he managed association affairs; by night he wrote by a dim oil lamp. He wrote about ordinary people in occupied Beijing — the Qi family, four generations — each character a mirror of the nation's spirit.

Old Mr. Qi asks himself again and again: should I leave home? Yun-mei holds the family together through daily struggles. Lao She fell ill several times, stopped and restarted, but never gave up. He knew he wasn't just writing a book — he was building a monument for his countrymen under occupation.

📖 2022 National Gaokao · Volume A — Dream of the Red Chamber

The exam question discussed "direct borrowing, indirect adaptation, and original creation" in naming a pavilion. The same arc applies to Lao She: from early Dickensian imitation (The Philosophy of Old Zhang) to the profound originality of Four Generations Under One Roof. He walked a long road from mimicry to mastery.

Humour was his first love, but not his final home. When he realised laughter alone could not carry a people's suffering, he stepped out of the comfort zone that had made him famous. This was not a drying-up of talent — it was a deeper fidelity to truth.

His early novel Cat City is filled with bitter satire; his later works carry a沉郁 (heavy melancholy) that Dickens never knew. The comedian's mask gradually revealed a tragic face.

✧ Essay lens

This theme fits topics on comedy & tragedy, individual & era, persistence & transformation. In a sea of essays about Lu Xun or Zhang Guimei, Lao She's arc from humour to gravitas is a rare, high-calibre angle.

✦ Core Takeaways for Writers

Dual theme lens: "Cannot speak vs. must sing" — a universal dilemma of conscience in crisis.
From imitation to originality: Lao She's journey mirrors the creative process itself — borrow, adapt, then invent.
Humour with weight: The best comedy carries a shadow. Lao She proves that laughter and sorrow are two sides of the same coin.
Concrete details win: The oil lamp, the hoarse voice, the four-year manuscript — these images stick.

✦ In a nutshell

Lao She's life is a masterclass in moral imagination. He could have stayed in his study, writing novels for posterity. Instead, he chose to write for his time — in forms that were rough, urgent, and necessary. His legacy is not just Teahouse or Rickshaw Boy, but the example of an artist who placed his nation above his art, and in doing so, elevated both.

From a Child Who Couldn't Afford Schoolto a Voice That Shook the World

i Key Milestones

1 From "Cannot Speak" to "Must Sing"

2 The Comedian's Tragic Core

✦ Core Takeaways for Writers

From a Child Who Couldn't Afford School
to a Voice That Shook the World

Lao She · People's Artist