Straw Sandals: Chinese Short Stories, 1918-1933

by Harold R. Isaacs (Editor), Lu Xun (Contributor)

Straw Sandals is a collection of 23 stories, a play, and a poem by 16 Chinese writers selected to represent the radical literature produced in China between 1918 and 1933. It was assembled in Peking in 1934 by Harold R. Isaacs with the advice and guidance of Lu Hsün, China's foremost literary figure of this century, and Mao Tun, leading novelist of the younger group that had gathered around Lu Hsün in those tumultuous years. The first half of the collection, including several of Lu Hsün's most famous stories, typifies work that appeared in the first years of China's modern cultural renaissance—short stories written in vernacular Chinese that rejected surviving Chinese traditionalism with its philosophic and social outlooks, its rules of behavior for family life and relationships between men and women. The second group of stories represents the growing ideological and political turbulence of the 1920s and 1930s. Straw Sandals is introduced by Professor Isaacs, who describes the historical setting in which this short-lived and violence-ridden literary movement tried to make its way. He vividly presents the Shanghai of that period, where many of these writers struggled to pursue their craft and were caught between the pressures of Kuomintang repression (many were imprisoned and executed) and the demands for total conformity inside the Communist movement. His account adds an ironic perspective to the collection in light of all that has happened since that time—for the writers who survived Kuomintang repression and the war against Japan to see the Communist victory they had fought so hard and so long to bring about ultimately fell in their turn in the repeated purges that marked the Communist regime's imposition of total control over all art and literature. The English translations of a number of these stories first appeared in the China Forum, a journal that Professor Isaacs edited and published in Shanghai from 1932 to 1934. They were made by a distinguished Chinese language scholar, the late George A. Kennedy, while he was teaching in a Shanghai school. The rest of the collection was translated by several Chinese collaborators and then edited by Isaacs. The book includes updated biographical notes on the writers, many of which were originally supplied by the writers themselves, and an appendix, Mao Tun's "Notes on Chinese Left-wing Literary Magazines."

Genres: Short Stories

444 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1974

About the author

Professor Harold R. Isaacs was an American journalist, South-East Asia scholar, author, and professor of political science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His son, Professor Arnold R. Isaacs, is also a South-East Asia scholar & has followed in his father's footsteps in many respects.

Reviews

[Chet]

This contains I believe the only professional translation into English of the author Jiang Guangci (1901-1931), his short story "Hassan." The story itself is a surprisingly funny little vignette (four pages) about a Sikh immigrant to China during the Republican period who is being used as a cop by the anti-communist Whites to arrest anyone suspected of "Bolshevik" activity. He is only taught one Chinese phrase (roughly equivalent to "F your mother") because his handlers think it's useful for intimidating the Chinese radicals he's been charged with putting in jail. But Hassan gets curious about this "bolshevism" and wants to ask the people he's arresting more about their ideology. So in a hilarious attempt at communication he repeats the "F your mother" phrase but in a curious tone of inquiry. Thankfully the young radicals understand his intent and tell him, "All we want is to see our people free. Why do you stand against us? Have you forgotten your own country? We ought
to get together. . . .”
I've been wanting to read more Jiang Guangci because he's recently been thrust back into the media spotlight in China. An extremely popular TV drama called INTO THE GREAT NORTHWEST (西北岁月) featured the protagonist reading Jiang's novella THE YOUNG DRIFTER (少年飘泊者). The novel is a popular tale of revolutionary awakening in Republican era China. It was read by Xi Jinping's father Xi Zhongxun and many other young revolutionaries in the 20s and 30s. (Xi Zhongxun is in fact the
aforementioned protagonist of ITGN, a biopic of his life). I'm currently subtitling this TV show and posting the episodes on my YouTube channel. You can a lot about Chinese revolutionary history through shows like this, and they're very well made and entertaining as well.