Tseng Pu

(second name, Meng P’u). Born 1871 in Ch’angshu District, Kiangsu Province; died there 1934. Chinese writer.

Tseng took part in the liberal reform movement of 1895–98. In 1907 he founded and edited a literary journal, Hsiaoshuo lin. In 1919–20 he worked on An Essay on the History of French Literature, and in the early 1930’s he prepared a Chinese-language edition of works by V. Hugo. Tseng’s novel Flowers in a Sea of Evil (1906; Russian translation, 1960) expressed anti-Manchu and antimilitarist sentiments. It was the first Chinese novel to describe Russia, Germany, Korea, and Vietnam and to portray the followers of Sun Yat-sen, as well as foreign, including Russian, revolutionaries. In 1929, Tseng P’u published Love, the first part of an uncompleted novel entitled The Boy Lu. This work contained autobiographical themes.