|
RAS Book Club
?
Monday, 16 March, 2015, 7:00 – 9:00 pm
?RAS Library
1195 Fuxing Road Middle Road near South Shaanxi Road
上海市复兴中路1195号
上海理工大学中英国际学院
The Rickshaw Boy?
?
By Lao She (1937)
?Translated by Howard Goldblatt (2010)
??
eBook Book for Sale RAS Book Club RAS Library (Wednesdays, 2:00-9:00pm, Saturdays, Sundays, 2:00-5:00pm) Garden Books, Main Store, 325 Changle Lu, Xuhui District, (21)? 5404-0882Garden Books, Shanghai Center B/F, 1376 Nanjing Xi Lu, (21)? 6215-0418RAS Lectures by prior arrangement (please email bookevents@royalasiaticsociety.org) ?
|
|
The Book:?The Rickshaw Boy
(from Harper Collins)
?
First published in 1937,?Rickshaw Boy?is the story of Xiangzi, an honest, serious country boy, who works as a rickshaw puller in Beijing. A man of simple needs, Xiangzi’s great ambition is to one day buy his own rickshaw and keep his earnings for himself. After years of grueling work, Xiangzi realizes his dream, only to have it stripped away through a series of tragic events that are beyond his control.
One of the most important and popular works of 20th century Chinese literature,Rickshaw Boy, is an unflinchingly honest, darkly comic look at life on the margins of society and a searing indictment of the philosophy of individualism.?
|
|
The Author: Lao She
(from Harper Collins)
?
Lao She (Shu Qingchun,?1899-1966) remains one of the most widely read Chinese novelists of the first half of the twentieth century, and probably its most beloved. Born into an impoverished Manchu family- his father, a lowly palace guard for the Qing emperor, was killed during the 1900 Boxer Rebellion. Lao She was particularly sensitive to his link to the hated Manchu Dynasty, which ruled China from the mid-seventeenth century until it was overthrown, 1911.
?
? The view of one of this biographers is difficult to dispute: “the poverty of his childhood and the fact that these were also the years when the dyn asty was collapsing and the Manchus were becoming a target of increasingly bitter attacks left a deep shadow on Lao She’s impressionable mind and later kept him from personal participations in political activities. But his alienation strengthened his sense of patriotism and made his need to identify with China even more acute.”After graduating from Beijing Normal School, Lao She spent six years as a schoolteacher, primary school principal, and school administrator. Then, in 1924, after joining a Christian society and studying English, he accompanied a British missionary, Clermont Egerton, to London, where he taught Chinese at the University of London’s School of Oriental Studies. Lao She’s literary career began during his five-year stay in England, where he wrote three novels.
?
?On his way back to China, he stopped for six months in Singapore and then landed a teaching job at a Shandong university, where he continued to write and publish. By the time that Lao She wrote?Rickshaw Boy, he had matured as a writer and was finally able to quit teaching, a job he admitted he did not like and devoted all his time and energies to his craft.
?
Lao She was invited by the U.S. Department of State to visit America in early 1946; though the initial invitation was for a year, he did not return home until the establishment of the People’s Republic, reportedly at the request of Zhou Enlai.
A celebrated cultural figure in the People’s Republic for the first seventeen years of its existence, Lao She held a variety of important of symbolic offices after his return in 1949.??
|
|
?
RESERVATIONS ESSENTIAL AS SPACE IS LIMITED AT THIS EVENT.
??
ENTRANCE CONTRIBUTION:?Members 20 RMB? Non-members 50 RMB.?Those unable to make the donation but wishing to attend may contact us for exemption.
?
MEMBERSHIP?applications and membership renewals will be available at this event.
?
RAS MONOGRAPHS?- Series 1 & 2 will be available for sale at this event. 100 rmb each (cash sale only)
?
?
|
|
??
|
The Sino-British College, USST
|
|
No.1195 Fuxing Zhong Road
|
|
Fuxing Zhong Lu/Shaanxi Nan Lu
|
| Enter the main gate and turn right towards the SBC Learning |
|
and Resource Centre Building with the white balcony.
|
| The RAS Library?is situated on the second floor. After you ascend the stairs, turn right and proceed straight ahead. |
?
?
|
|
?