The Translation and Reception of Shen Congwen in France and Elsewhere in Europe

Shen Congwen’s reception in France may be called a belated reception. However, in 1932, at a time when modern Chinese literature did not even exist as a distinct academic field, a French-language journal based in Beiping (Beijing), La Politique de Pékin, published a translation by Tchang Tienya [Zhang Tianya] of five short pieces by Shen. This little collection came out much earlier than the famous anthology by Ching Ti and Robert Payne, The Chinese Earth (1947), but the stories it contains, written by Shen at the beginning of his literary career, are not particularly famous, except for “After Rain” (“Après la pluie”). ¹ Tchang Tien-ya, who also translated works by Xu Zhimo and Yu Dafu, spoke highly of this young writer, whose works “provoked admiration from all quarters,” especially from Liang Qichao. Tchang described Shen as a traveler who had gathered “heaps of knowledge about life in the countryside that gave him the ability to later describe natural sites,” and who successfully endeavored “to write what he saw.”