Lao She--(1899-1966) born Shu Qingshun.

     Father dies in 1901 in street battle with western forces during the Boxer Rebellion. "During my childhood," Lao She has later said, "I didn't need to hear stories about evil ogres eating children and so forth; the foreign devils my mother told me about were more barbaric and cruel than any fairy tale ogre with a huge mouth and great fangs. And fairy tales are only fairy tales, whereas my mother's stories were 100 percent factual, and they directly affected our whole family."
Worked his way through poverty through schools, graduating from Bejing Teacher's College. Spent 1924-29 in London, where he taught Chinese at SOAAS (School of African and Asian Studies). Influenced in his writing by his reading in Charles Dickens. Wrote Ma and Son in England, about racial predjudice (among other things)
Cat Country a kind of distanced critique of contemporary China, set on Mars to make for a kind of indirect critique. Became a propagandist for China during the second Sino-Japanese war (1937-45). Lived in the US between 1946 and '49, returning to China after the establishment of The People's Republic of China.
     During the Cultural Revolution, Lao was persecuted by the mobs who denounced the old and the traditional as anti-revolutionary. He was brutally beaten during one of the public struggle meetings. In the aftermath of this, his body was found in Taiping Lake, and there is speculation about whether, in depression, he had committed suicide, or whether he was murdered. The Party did not allow his family to have his ashes after cremation, so in his burial urn they placed small items that had belonged to him, like his glasses, a pen, some jasmine tea leaves, etc.

“An Old and Established Name”

     The action here is mostly historical. It is the history of a small shop that tries to remain true to old and austere values through its honest practices and refusal to enter into the modern world of flashy business techniques. For such people as the manager Qian and the apprentice Xin Dezhi, what matters is integrit--not the amassing of money.
      I believe we are meant to see the story as an allegory of contemporary, post revolutionary (but pre-People’s Republic) China. Qian and Xin value some of the old ways that for them promote community and a real exchange of vales, where the new ways are profit driven and reliant on making dupes of the customers. People seem especially willing to be duped (into thinking they are getting not only a bargain, but also something for nothing (i.e., free cigarettes, sesame cakes, etc.) Nothing much happens in the story excepting thec change of business practices. I think my favorite anecdote is when the leader of the “investigating students” is implicated in the Japanese complicity by the new manager, Zhou.

     The story could find its counterpart in many cultures, as this transition from the old to the new crosses borders. Think, for instance, of the transition from Main Street stores in central town areas to big box stores along highway access roads.