Hsü Ti-Shan

(real name, Hsü Tsan-k’un, also called Ti-shan; pen name, Lo Hua-sheng). Born 1893, in the district of Lung-hsi, Fukien Province; died 1941, in Hong Kong. Chinese writer and scholar.

Hsü Ti-shan graduated from Peking University in 1922 and studied at Columbia University (1922–27), in London, and in India. He helped found the Society of Literary Studies. His allegorical short stories were published in the collections Miraculous Rain in the Desert Mountains (1922) and The Industrious Spider (1925). The short stories “Destined by Fate,” “The Shopkeeper’s Wife,” and “The Old Poplar Bloomed Again” were romantic and sometimes religious in tone. The realism that was evident in Hsü Ti-shan’s early work became intensified in his short stories of the 1930’s, including “Ch’un-t’ao” (1934) and “The Gills of the Iron Fish” (1932). The novella Mr. Tung-yeh (1932) depicted the complex path of the liberal intelligentsia toward the revolution.

Hsü Ti-shan was also a well-known Buddhist and Taoist scholar. He wrote A History of Taoism (vol. 1, 1934) and A History of Indian Literature.

WORKS