''Cat Country'' (, also translated as ''City of Cats'') is a dystopian satirical novel by Chinese writer

Lao She Shu Qingchun (3 February 189924 August 1966), known by his pen name Lao She, was a Chinese novelist and dramatist. He was one of the most significant figures of 20th-century Chinese literature, and is best known for his novel ''Rickshaw Boy'' a ...

(1899–1966), first published in 1933. It has been translated into English, French, German, Hungarian, Japanese and Russian.

Background and publication

Lao She had lived in England for six years before returning to China in 1930. In 1931, while living in

Jinan Jinan (), Postal Map Romanization, alternately romanization of Chinese, romanized as Tsinan, is the Capital (political), capital of Shandong province in East China, Eastern China. With a population of 9.2 million, it is the second-largest city i ...

, he wrote a novel about the Jinan incident called ''Lake Daming''. However, the manuscript was lost when the Shanghai-based publisher,

Commercial Press The Commercial Press () is the first modern publishing organisation in China. History In 1897, 26-year-old Xia Ruifang and three of his friends (including the Bao brothers Bao Xian'en and Bao Xianchang) founded The Commercial Press in Shang ...

, was attacked by the Japanese in the January 28 incident. Lao She then turned to a new project and started ''Cat Country'', which had been commissioned by

Shi Zhecun Shi Zhecun (; December 3, 1905 – November 19, 2003) was a Chinese essayist, poet, short story writer, and translator in Shanghai during the 1930s. He was known for his poetry and essays, but is most known for his modernist short stories explorin ...

. The novel first appeared in serialised form between August 1932 and April 1933 in the journal Xiandai (現代 / Les Contemporains)Isaacson, p. 125 and then as a standalone book in August 1933, published by Xiandai Shuju (現代書局) in Shanghai. It was reprinted seven times until 1949, and then no edition appeared in the PRC until 1984.

Plot

The unnamed first-person narrator's spaceship crash-lands on Mars. His companion perishes in the crash, and he is stranded alone on Mars. He soon meets the planet's inhabitants, who have the faces of cats but otherwise appear human, and is captured by some of these cats and meets the leader of the group, called Scorpion, a landlord who owns a plantation of "reverie leaves", an addictive drug reminiscent of opium that is used by all cats. The narrator is employed by Scorpion to guard his reverie leaves and eventually learns Felinese and gets acquainted with the country and its culture, guided by Scorpion and his son Young Scorpion. He encounters many problems in society, including ill-treatment of women, lack of hygiene and poor building standards, culminating in a visit to a school where a single gunshot makes the walls collapse. The schools give out university diplomas on the first day, and the museums are filled with empty rooms as the contents have been sold off to foreigners. The political debate is dominated by "brawls", political parties modeled after foreign systems, with the currently leading ideology being "Everybody Shareskyism", whose leader killed and then replaced the cats' emperor,Johnson, ''Introduction'' and slogans composed of pseudo-Russian gibberish. Many cat people are killed in a revolution, and finally the country is invaded by a foreign power. The invaders lock up the remaining cat people in a cage, and they end up biting each other to death. Some months later, the narrator is rescued by a passing French spacecraft.

Analysis and interpretation

The novel is a dystopian satire. It has been described as critical of Kuomintang's rule, and the corruption in society in that time, but also more generally suspicious of political indoctrination in China. The critique of political parties (called "brawls") has been seen as applicable to KMT and communists alike. Overall, many purported weaknesses of the Chinese national character are examined, and the satire criticises conservatives as well as radicals. The novel shows the influence of European utopian literature and is reminiscent of

Jonathan Swift Jonathan Swift (30 November 1667 – 19 October 1745) was an Anglo-Irish Satire, satirist, author, essayist, political pamphleteer (first for the Whig (British political party), Whigs, then for the Tories (British political party), Tories), poe ...

's ''

Gulliver's Travels ''Gulliver's Travels'', or ''Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships'' is a 1726 prose satire by the Anglo-Irish writer and clergyman Jonathan ...

'', both in its exaggerated satirical tone and in the use of animal-like creatures. While the setting on Mars, the acknowledged influence of

H. G. Wells Herbert George Wells"Wells, H. G."
Revised 18 May 2015. ''

The First Men in the Moon ''The First Men in the Moon'' is a scientific romance by the English author H. G. Wells, originally serialised in '' The Strand Magazine'' from December 1900 to August 1901 and published in hardcover in 1901, who called it one of his "fantast ...

'' and the dystopian content have led to ''Cat Country'' being classified as science fiction, there is little interest in technology, and some authors have declared it to not be science fiction. Nevertheless, it has been seen as almost the only example of Chinese science fiction between 1910 and 1949.

Critical reception

Lao She declared his attempt at satire a failure, lamenting its lack of humour, and critics have described the book as not a great novel. Cyril Birch describes it as sound in structure and fun, but very uneven. Koon-Ki Tommy Ho argues that many critics evaluated ''Cat Country'' by standards not applicable to utopian fiction, and states the book "placed

ao She AO, aO, Ao, or ao may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Adults Only, an entertainment rating * AO Music (AOmusic), a world-music fusion group consisting of Jay Oliver, Miriam Stockley and others * Ao: The Last Hunter, a 2010 prehistoric d ...

among the successful modern writers of dystopia in world literature."

References

Bibliography

* *Johnson, Ian. ''Introduction''. In: {{Lao She Dystopian novels 20th-century Chinese novels 1932 science fiction novels 1933 science fiction novels Satirical novels Novels by Lao She Chinese Republican era novels Novels set on Mars Chinese science fiction novels