Retirement School and Their Personage Demeanour: From FEI Ming, SHEN Cong-wen to WANG Zeng-qi

The modern Chinese literature has had an aesthetic vein of retiring back to naturalness since ZHOU Zuo-ren. The line of FEI Ming, SHEN Cong-wen and WANG Zeng-qi may seemly be, from the perspective of naturalness conveyed in their works, regarded as descendent from ZHOU, but the three writers in a teacher-pupil relation have surpassed ZHOU with their remarkable characteristic of sentiment in life and nature. This paper makes an attempt, in terms of their fiction creations, to reveal their shared aesthetic pursuit for naturalness and simplicity, and their differences as well, hence their unique cultural merits in the history of modern Chinese fiction.