Liu E
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Liu E (traditional Chinese: 劉鶚; simplified Chinese: 刘鹗; pinyin: Liu E, 18 October 1857—23 August 1909), his courtesy name was Tieyun (铁云) and his pen name was Hongdu Bailian Sheng (洪都百炼生, "Hundred Refining Man of Hongdu"), was a Chinese functionary, economic proponent, writer and novelist.
Liu was born in Liuhe (now Nanjing). In the government he worked with flood control, famine relief, and railroads. He became disillusioned with officials ideas of reform and became a proponent of private economic development modeled after western systems. During the Boxer Uprising he speculated in government rice, distributing it to the poor. He was cashiered for these efforts, but shrewd investments had left him wealthy enough to follow his pioneering archaeological studies and to write fiction.
It was his economic ideas that inspired his literary work the Lao Can Youji (老残游记, "The Travels of Lao Can") published in 1907. Thinly covering his own views in those of the physician hero, Liu satirically describes the rise of the Boxers in the countryside (inaccurately), the decay of the Yellow River control system, and the hypocritical incompetence of the bureaucracy His novel, a social satire that showed the limits of the old elite and officialdom, was an immediate success. Despite this, Liu was framed for malfeasance and exiled, where he died within the next year in Urumqi, Xinjiang.
[edit] References
- Encyclopædia Britannica 2005 Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, article- "Liu E"
- Shen, Tianyou, "Liu E". Encyclopedia of China, 1st ed.
- Travels of Lao Ts'an, translated by Harold Shadick. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1952. Reissued: New York; London: Columbia University Press, 1990. 277p. (A Morningside Book).
- The travels of Lao Can, translated by Yang Xianyi, Gladys Yang (Beijing: Panda Books, 1983; 176p.), omits major sections on the grounds that Liu could not have written them because they were superstitious.
