Chao Shu-Li

Born 1906 in Ch’inshui County, Shansi Province. Chinese writer. Member of the Communist Party of China. Deputy to the All-China National People’s Congress since 1949.

Chao was educated at a pedagogical school. In his youth he gave performances at which he sang antimilitarist songs, and in 1928 he was imprisoned by the Kuomintang authorities for his work on behalf of the Communist Party of China. In 1936 he headed a people’s governmental body for a small rural district in the northern liberated areas. Chao used his experience in agrarian reform as the basis of the short stories “Hsiao Erh-hei’s Marriage” (1943) and “Rhymes of Li Yu-ts’ai” (1943), which were written in the traditional style of folk prose. The short stories “Meng Hsiang-ying Starts a New Life” (1944) and “The Marriage Registration” (1950), the novella Changes in Lichiachuang (1946; Russian translation, 1949), and the novel Sanliwan Village (1955) realistically describe transformations in the countryside and changes in people’s mores and in their attitudes toward labor and society. In the early 1960’s, Chao published short stories dealing with rural life.

Chao’s fate since the mid-1960’s is unknown.