The Writing Background of Lao She's The First Class

This article is excerpted from Lao She's Four Generations under One roof, and describes Qi Ruixuan's first class in a school after the Japanese invaders occupied Beiping. Four generations under one roof epitomizes the decline of the ancient capital with an ordinary small sheepfold hutong in the west of Beiping in the 1940s, portrays several series of characters, and focuses on Qi, a family figure with four generations under one roof. Most of the length of the novel highlights the pain of the people in Beiping's national subjugation and their spiritual destruction and anger, thus effectively exposing and accusing the evil rule of the enemy and the puppet and the despicable behavior of the traitors. The characters in the first series of Four Generations under One Family are the "blessing culture" characters represented by the old people, including Qi Laoren, Qi Ruixuan, Qi Ruiquan and Qi Ruifeng. Qi Ruixuan is the most excavated and depicted character in Lao She's Four Generations under One Roof. Another core content of "Qijia Culture", "The Way of Filial Piety", has been fully reflected in him, and it also shows the conflict between the old and new cultures. Qi Ruixuan works hard and knows both Chinese and western cultures well. He is a gentle teacher, extremely responsible for his students and eats according to his ability. The outstanding achievement of the work is manifested in the description of the gray citizen life of the alignment Ruixuan and its compromising, perfunctory, compromising and timid citizen life character, which criticizes the national inferiority.