Shen Congwen: Nationality and National Identity

In Shen Congwens early works, the image of the Miao people appeared strange and extraordinary. Later on, supposing himself a member of it, Shen wrote a series of romances about the Miao people whose culture is served as the backbone of his fictions taking place in West Hunan. Since 1933, instead of focusing on the intensive conflicts and possible conversation between the Miao and the Han as he did before, he began to lay stress on the fate of the whole Chinese nation, and endeavored to make a poetic summary of the local stance and national consciousness nurtured by the cultural conventionality in modern China. Such endeavor can be seen in his masterpiece The Border Town (Bianchen) which gave birth to a new image of China. During the late 1930s and the 1940s, Shen pondered on the future of the Chinese nation who was gravely being ravaged by war. He sought energy from nature, the lower strata, and also the heart of himself, so as to provide the nation with spiritual resources for revitalization.