Quotes from Lao She

Sloth is the natural result of unrewarded hard work among the poor, reason enough for them to be prickly.

In this twentieth century, people are judged according to their nation. The people of a powerful nation are people; the people of a weak nation are dogs.

the novel is a vicious attack on the guiding ideology of the party – Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tsetung Thought.

Perhaps the god who had made the Cat People intended them as a joke. They had schools, but no education; politicians but no government; people, but no personal integrity; faces, but no concept of face. One had to admit that their god had gone a little too far with his little joke.

And so the result of several years of Everybody Shareskyism, other than slaughtering people, is for everybody to stand around and stare blankly at each other.

As he grew accustomed to the dark, his mind seemed to stop functioning and he could no longer keep his eyes open. Was he still walking, or had he stopped? All he sensed was a wavelike motion in his head, like black ocean swells; the darkness attached itself to his mind, unsettled, flustered, confused

It was intensely cold, with sand swirling in the air. The wind seemed to be racing past overhead, blurring the outlines of stars in the sky, except for a few of the largest ones, which shimmered slightly. There was no wind near the ground, but the freezing cold air was everywhere, opening long cracks in the wheel ruts…

The man was still there. Suddenly forgetting about the snow on the street, he picked up his pace. Ahead was a long, straight, silvery-white road illuminated by the cold glare of street lamps; behind, a detective on a bicycle.

The old fellow gazed out at the empty tent, painted a soft green by the carbide lamps, and at the tables, now missing their tablecloths, and felt utterly desolate, imagining that this is what his funeral would be like: the tent would become a place of mourning, but there would be no dutiful sons or grandsons in mourning attire kneeling before his coffin, nothing but a few casual acquaintances playing mahjong through the night

At midnight, Huniu delivered a dead infant and then stopped breathing.

the representative committee