CAT COUNTRY - LAO SHE

A Chinese sci-fi novel from the 1930s about Cat People on Mars!

That description may sound like the answer to a ‘mad libs’ page but that’s a basic log-line for Cat Country. 

To fully understand this novel, we first must understand who Lao She was. Lao She, whose real name was Shu Qingchun was a Manchu Chinese author born in 1899 in Beijing. Born into a poor family ravaged by imperialist conquests against China at the time, he overcame adversity to graduate from Beijing Normal University in 1918 & then become a teacher in Tianjin, inspired by the May Fourth Movement to become a writer.

He then went on to be a lecturer at the university that is now known as SOAS in London where he was inspired by the works of Charles Dickens and then taught in Singapore before returning to China in 1938. His most notable work ‘Rickshaw Boy’ was published in 1936 and is considered a classic of Modern Chinese literature. His plays are also still performed across China to this day.

In 1966 he was caught up in the Cultural Revolution, seen as a counterrevolutionary leading to him taking his own life. In 1978 he was posthumously ‘rehabilitated’ and his works republished.

Now with the important context, we can fully look at Cat Country. My feelings on this novel are very much in line with the consensus of critics and even Lao She himself. The book is most certainly a critique of China in the late 20s/30s but falls short in its attempts at satire.

Lao, S., & Lyell, W. A. (1999). Blade of Grass: The Stories of Lao She. University of Hawai'i Press.

It’s fascinating to see what a Chinese writer in the 1930s thought of Mars and space travel but once you get over the superficial layer of location and Cat People, the book starts to get bogged down in its attempts to demonstrate parallels to Chinese society often ends up falling flat in the satire department. I will add the caveat that this is obviously a book written in Chinese and there is some possibility of things being lost in translation, however, most Chinese critics agree Cat Country falls short of Lao She’s greater works.

As someone reading this book ninety years after the intended audience I feel it serves more like a looking glass to see into what Chinese society was like, obviously from the perspective of one man, more so than as a piece of satire. The distinction between the two is rather thin, but I would compare it to Homer’s version of The Odyssey to Stephen Fry’s version. Both are describing the same thing, it’s just Fry’s version deals mostly with satirising the events with getting too detailed about the events, much like Cat Country takes too long to set up a society that is recognisable to the audience.

Finally, a comment on the introduction to the book. My Penguin version of this book contained an introduction by Ian Johnson. I personally feel this introduction spent too long describing how this book is a condemnation of the growing appeal to Communism in China and how She was supposedly very against it. I disagree. Although there are jabs taken at Communist ideology in this book I feel it comes across as more of a critic of Soviet-style Communism. The criticism I see of Chinese Communism is rooted in the fact the Cat People deal with politics in ‘brawls’ basically combat, which at the time reflected how the Nationalists & Communists were engaged in a civil war.

My parting notes are if you’re interested in reading Lao She’s works I’d recommend you start with one of his more critically acclaimed works, either ‘Rickshaw Boy’ or ‘Teahouse’ and if you’re trying to get into early 20th Century sci-fi start with the more well-known titles before tackling this book!