Liu E.

(Liu T’ieh-yün). Born 1857, in Tant’u, province of Kiangsu; died 1909, province of Sinkiang. Chinese writer.

Liu E was the son of a civil servant. He worked on the irrigation project on the Huang Ho and also practiced medicine. For “illegal” aid to famine victims, he was exiled to Sinkiang (1908), where he soon died.

Liu E is the author of The Travels of Lao Ts’an (1903-07), a novel-exposé about the Chinese civil-service class that describes various aspects of the bureaucratic system: the terrorization of subordinates, the moral hardening of a man, and sometimes the transformation of an individual into a cruel satrap. The philosophical disputes of the novel’s main characters and the innovative descriptions of nature are noteworthy. Other writings by Liu E include a collection of verse, works on river construction, and a study of porcelain.