One of the best loved modem Chinese authors, Lao She( 1899-1966) was famous for his humour and his sympathy with the poor and disadvantaged. He was bom in Beijing in 1899, the son of a Manchu soldier killed fighting the Western army that invaded Beijing during the Boxer Rebellion in 1901.
The outbreak of the second Sino-Japanese War (1937-45) radically altered Lao She's views. Between the years 1937 and 1945 he wrote a number of plays and works as a propagandist in the war against the Japanese invasion, and headed the All-China Anti-Japanese Writers Federation. After World War II Lao She published a gigantic novel in three parts, SSU-SHIH T'UNG-T'ANG (“Four Generations Under One Roof’, abridged translation The Yellow Storm).
This novel dealt with life in Peking during the Japanese invasion of China, and exposed the cruel behaviours of the Japanese imperialism invader and the Chinese traitors, revealed the process from the regret of national subjugation and the awakening to the resistance. This novel described the national Chinese pride which cannot be destroyed by any other nation. This novel regarded Qi and Qian’s families, resistant to the Japanese rule, as the hub of positive characters and regarded Guan's family and his intimate friends, who became traitors of China, as the negative characters, depicted their conflict between good and evil. Rui Xuan, who had been confused between loyalty and piety, with the perception of "No Nation, No Family’, helped Qian Mu Yin and Rui Quan to positively join their anti-Japanese secret activities.
This paper studied the criticism of the traditional way of thinking and the transformation of the spirit of defiance against Japanese aggression through the image of the major characters and detected his literature expression features depicted in <the Yellow Storm>.