Zhao Shuli

Zhao was born in 1906 in Qinshui County, Shanxi Province. He was originally called 趙樹禮, which, in Mandarin Chinese, was a homophone of the name he later adopted in his adult career. Zhao's family was declining gentry, and owned land on which his father worked. Zhao's family members were adherents of late-imperial era sectarian religions, including the Three Sages Sect and the Pure Tea Sect.

Zhao read widely at a young age, including the Confucian classics, divination books, and Three Sages Sect scriptures. Growing up, he was a talented musician in the village opera band. At age 19 in the Changzhi Provincial Normal School, he learned about May Fourth literature and began reading even more broadly, including Ming-Qing vernacular fiction, Lu Xun, Henrik Ibsen, and Ivan Turgenev. Zhao experimented with writing in the May Fourth style of "new fiction," but found village audiences preferred more traditional forms. This prompted him to advocate political and social change through writing in traditional literary forms. At age 21, he developed his opposition to practices deemed superstitious and abandoned his former vegetarianism (which was a tenet of the Three Sages Sect). He attended a teachers college and went on to teach in primary schools. In 1937, Zhao joined the Communist-led Sacrifice League and in 1939 became a Communist cultural worker.

In 1946, the Chinese Communist Party praised Zhao as a model of peasant writers. His works were promoted as an ideal combination of political education with popular entertainment, and the Communist Party distributed them to local cadres and urged Communist writers and artists to follow the "Zhao Shuli direction". Zhao was a member of the executive committee of the Chinese Writers Association and also served as the director of the Society of Chinese Authors, the president of the Society of Chinese Poets, and an editor of the journals 曲藝 Quyi (Performing Arts) and 人民文學 Renmin Wenxue (People's Literature). He was also appointed a delegate to the 8th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, and a deputy in the first, second, and third sessions of the National People's Congress. Zhao's works passed in and out of political favor at various times. Among the criticisms of his works was that they depicted peasant characters who were "in-the-middle" rather than heroes. During the Cultural Revolution, Zhao was persecuted and tortured. He died on 23 September 1970.