Liu E

This article is about the Qing Dynasty official and writer. For the Han Zhao empress, see Empress Liu E.

Liu E (simplified Chinese: 刘鹗; traditional Chinese: 劉鶚; pinyin: Liú È, 18 October 1857 — 23 August 1909), courtesy name/"zì": "Tieyun" (T'ieh-yün) (鐵雲), was a Chinese scholar, entrepreneur, and writer.

Government and politics

Liu was a native of Dantu (modern day Zhenjiang). In the government he worked with flood control, famine relief, and railroads. He became disillusioned with official 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.

Oracle bone archeology and scholarship

He collected five thousand oracle bone fragments, published the first volume of examples and rubbings in 1903, and correctly identified thirty-four oracle bone script characters.

The Travels of Lao Can

It was his economic ideas that inspired his literary work The Travels of Lao Can (Chinese: 老残游记; pinyin: Lǎo Cán Yóujì, or using the Wade-Giles romanization: "The Travels of Lao Ts'an") written in 1903-04 and published in 1907. Thinly disguising his own views in those of the physician hero, Liu satirically describes (inaccurately)^{[citation needed]} the rise of the Boxers in the countryside , the decay of the Yellow River control system, and the hypocritical incompetence of the bureaucracy. The novel, a social satire that showed the limits of the old elite and officialdom, was an immediate success. The 1983 translation by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang omits major sections on the grounds that Liu could not have written them because they were superstitious.^{[citation needed]}

Exile and death

Liu was framed for malfeasance related to his work during the Boxer Rebellion and was exiled in 1908, dying within the next year in Urumqi, Xinjiang.

References

• Shen, Tianyou, Encyclopedia of China, 1st ed.
• The Travels of Lao Ts'an, Liu T'ieh-yün (Liu E), translated by Harold Shadick, professor of Chinese literature in Cornell University. 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.)