Wei Shou, Treatise on Buddhism and Taoism.

heavy reliance on this work by the assertion that it is an excellent, authoritative selection, carefully executed by Chinese experts so that we must assume it to be representative of the literature in general. While Dr. Priisek writes as a Communist and his incessant Marxist lecturing is tedious in the extreme, he displays an intimate knowledge and fine understanding of Chinese literature both ancient and modern. What are the subjects of the new literature? Priisek selects the most frequently occurring topics and lists them as follows: (1) The Anti-Japanese War, (2) Chinese Village Life, (3) The Landlords and Kuomintang Bandits, (4) The Social Revolution in the Countryside, (5) Land Reform, (6) The People's Liberation Army, (7) Industrial and Agricultural Production, (8) Methods of Increasing Production, (9) How to Fight Feudalism, (10) The Reduction of Land Rent, (11) The Anti-Superstition Drive, (12) The Drive for Literacy, (13) The Drive for Better Hygiene, (14) The Fight for Marriage by Free Choice, (15) The Fight Against Oppression, Corruption, and Hypocrisy. If large-scale benefits for the majority of the people affected by this literature resulted from the imposition of this training-pamphlet and textbook culture, the sacrifice of aesthetic and artistic considerations was probably justified. But a continued adherence to such principles after the revolution was won has been a fatal blow to the quality of Chinese literature. Even Mao Tse-tung himself, who is an educated man and writes passable poetry, must wince when he reads the results of his sermon at Yenan. We can only hope that this sort of thing will not long survive the early insecurities of the regime.