This digital edition is a reprint of a 1970 edition. It is an advanced reader in Chinese, giving a text in modern written Chinese reproduced from an original Chinese edition together with an introduction, a bibliography and notes on difficult points of language and on allusions to the cultural and historical context. Chao Shu-Li, born in 1907 in Shansi province of poor parents became first a village teacher and journalist and then a popular author. In the 1940s 'Study and learn from Chao Shu-Li' became a slogan among activist literary people, and he became a model writer of the cultural front formed in response to a call by Mao Tse-tung. In the Cultural Revolution, however, Chao was severely criticized. Chao's writing is simple, popular and unliterary, deliberately aimed at a mass readership.

Chao Shu-li (Zhao Shuli) (1906-1970), a novelist and short story writer, is best remembered for his early novels and short stories depicting rural society in early 20th-century China. Coming from a peasant background himself, Chao Shu-li employed forms of expression and story-telling that were rooted in this society, contributing to the emergence of a new "proletarian" literature vaunted by Mao and characteristic of the revolutionary era.