Hsiung Shih-Ⅰ And Sino-British Literary Communication

Hsiung, a famous translator and bilingual writer, enters into the literary world as the messenger of Sino-British literary communication. He focuses on the works of James Barrie and George Bernard Shaw in his early translating time, which wins the title from the famous writer Xu Zhimo " The pioneer of studying English drama in China" for him. At the same time, as a intellectual, he also undertakes the mission of being "the spokesman of Chinese culture" when he stays in England. His work, the English three acts play Lady Precious Stream, translated from Bejing Opera, enjoys a great acceptance among the European and American audience. He tries to get rid of the prejudice of European centralism and racism and seek the equality in the Sino-British literary communication by means of translating. But he fails to achieve the goal when he intends to cater for the taste of appreciation of the beauty of the English audience and satisfy their curious hearts, his living environment and cultural identity being greatly related with the British society. So the play is faced with fierce controversy as well as praise, scholars home and abroad putting emphasis on its "China elements". Hereafter, turns his visual angel of his literary creation to the modern society, he writes The Professor from Peking and The Bridge of Heaven one after another, and both books are of modern revolution style. In this period when Hsiung gradually escapes from the restraint of his early works, he begins to demonstrate through his books the local culture, cultural customs and revolution process of Chinese society in a more real way. But the books of new style receive much less acceptance than Lady Precious Stream enjoys. Meanwhile, continuously suffers from Cultural identity crisis:on one hand, as a Chinese, he is controversial for the inevitable tendency of westernization of his works; one the other hand, he could either be accepted by the western world completely, which urges him to seize a sense of cultural belonging in his original country.For a long time, whenever it comes to Hsiung and his work, the academic researches have always fixed eye on his representative works Lady Precious Stream and The Bridge of Heaven. This phenomenon leads to a situation where there is no systematical organization and analysis of Hsiung’s related information. And the information about the knowledge background of his early years as well as his translation experience need to be collected and organized especially. The essay takes "Hsiung and the Sino-British literary communication" as the research object. It aims to look back Hsiung’s activities of translation and literary creations both in China and England, sort out the points of the views from home and abroad upon his works, analyze the various evaluations and reasons, find out the complicated political intentions or cultural demands, besides, make evaluations on the part of Hsiung’s works and the contributions they have made to the cultural recommendations.