Cat Country

Lore & Background

Lao She had lived in England for six years before returning to China in 1930. In 1931, while living in Jinan, he wrote a novel about the Jinan incident called Lake Daming. However, the manuscript was lost when the Shanghai-based publisher, Commercial Press, was attacked by the Japanese in the January 28 incident. Lao She then turned to a new project and started Cat Country, which had been commissioned by Shi Zhecun. The novel first appeared in serialised form between August 1932 and April 1933 in the journal Xiandai (現代 / "Les Contemporains") and then as a standalone book in August 1933, published by Xiandai Shuju (現代書局) in Shanghai. It was reprinted seven times until 1949, and then no edition appeared in the PRC until 1984.

Reader's Guide

Cat Country is a dystopian satire that has been described as critical of Kuomintang's rule and the corruption in society in that time, but also more generally suspicious of political indoctrination in China. The critique of political parties (called "brawls") has been seen as applicable to KMT and communists alike. Overall, many purported weaknesses of the Chinese national character are examined, and the satire criticises conservatives as well as radicals. The novel shows the influence of European utopian literature and is reminiscent of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, both in its exaggerated satirical tone and in the use of animal-like creatures. While the setting on Mars, the acknowledged influence of H. G. Wells' The First Men in the Moon and the dystopian content have led to Cat Country being classified as science fiction, there is little interest in technology, and some authors have declared it to not be science fiction. Lao She declared his attempt at satire a failure, lamenting its lack of humour, and some critics have described the book as not a great novel. Cyril Birch describes it as sound in structure and fun, but very uneven. Koon-Ki Tommy Ho argues that many critics evaluated Cat Country by standards not applicable to utopian fiction, and states the book "placed [Lao She] among the successful modern writers of dystopia in world literature."

Did You Know?

• The novel was commissioned by Shi Zhecun.
• It first appeared in serialized form in the journal Xiandai between August 1932 and April 1933.
• The manuscript of Lao She's earlier novel Lake Daming was lost when the Commercial Press was attacked by the Japanese.
• The novel was reprinted seven times until 1949, then no edition appeared in the PRC until 1984.

Origins and a Long Silence

Lao She's path to Cat Country was shaped by personal loss and political upheaval. After six years spent in England, he returned to China in 1930 and settled in Jinan, where in 1931 he drafted a novel called Lake Daming, a response to the Jinan incident. That manuscript was lost when Japanese forces attacked the Shanghai office of Commercial Press during the January 28 incident, destroying the work entirely. Grieving the loss, Lao She pivoted to a fresh project commissioned by Shi Zhecun, and Cat Country was born. The story ran in serial form across the pages of the journal Xiandai from August 1932 through April 1933 before appearing as a bound volume in August 1933, issued by Xiandai Shuju in Shanghai. The book found a steady readership, going through seven reprints before 1949. Yet the People's Republic effectively buried the title: no new edition surfaced until 1984, a silence of more than three decades. Outside China, the novel crossed linguistic borders, reaching readers in English, French, German, Hungarian, Japanese, and Russian.

A Mirror of Broken Institutions

The narrator, stranded alone on Mars after his companion perishes in a crash, is taken in by a community of cat-faced beings whose society is a catalogue of institutional rot. His employer, a landlord called Scorpion, cultivates fields of "reverie leaves," an addictive narcotic reminiscent of opium that every member of the cat population consumes. As the narrator learns their language and customs under Scorpion and his son Young Scorpion, he witnesses a world where women are mistreated, hygiene is nonexistent, and construction is so flimsy that a single gunshot brings a school's walls tumbling down. Education is a farce: university diplomas are handed out on the very first day of enrollment. Museums stand as hollow shells, their contents long since sold off to foreigners. Politics takes the form of organized "brawls" among parties borrowed from overseas models, with the dominant doctrine—Everybody Shareskyism—having overthrown the emperor through murder. Slogans are chanted in pseudo-Russian gibberish. A revolution kills many cats, and a foreign invasion ends with the survivors locked in a cage, biting one another to death.

Between Swift and Wells: A Genre in Tension

Cat Country sits at a crossroads of literary traditions. Its exaggerated, mocking register and the use of animal-like inhabitants place it in the lineage of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, while the Martian setting and the acknowledged debt to H. G. Wells' The First Men in the Moon pull it toward the science-fiction shelf. Yet the novel shows almost no curiosity about technology or speculative mechanics; its interest is entirely social and political. This has led some scholars to reject the science-fiction label outright, arguing the work is better understood as a dystopian satire in the European utopian tradition. Nevertheless, it is widely regarded as the most prominent example of Chinese science fiction produced between 1910 and 1949. The satire's targets are deliberately broad: it skewers the Kuomintang's governance and the corruption of the era, yet its suspicion of political indoctrination and its mockery of imported party structures apply with equal force to the Communists. Conservatives and radicals alike find themselves in the crosshairs, and the novel interrogates what its author saw as deep-seated weaknesses in the Chinese national character.

A Disappointed Author and a Divided Criticism

Lao She himself was unsatisfied with the finished work, calling his satirical experiment a failure and mourning the absence of genuine humour on the page. That self-criticism has echoed through decades of scholarly debate. Some reviewers have simply judged the book not to be a great novel. Cyril Birch offered a more measured verdict, praising its structural soundness and moments of fun while flagging its unevenness. A more sympathetic reading comes from Koon-Ki Tommy Ho, who contends that many critics mistakenly measured Cat Country against standards suited to realist fiction rather than to utopian and dystopian writing. In Ho's view, the novel secured Lao She a place among the successful modern practitioners of dystopia in world literature. The book's afterlife has been complicated by politics: after seven reprints before 1949, it vanished from the PRC bookshelf for over three decades, reappearing only in 1984. Meanwhile, translations into six languages carried the story of Mars's cat-faced inhabitants to readers far beyond China, ensuring that its satirical vision continued to provoke discussion even while its author's homeland had largely forgotten it.

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