relations death_date death_place successor birth_place office birth_date term_start premier image article_title term_end name alma_mater
shen zemin -lrb- brother -rrb- 27 march 1981 beijing , people 's republic of china lu dingyi li yaotang jiejiang , qing dynasty minister chinese writer association of culture of the prc chairman of the 4 july 1896 21 october 1949 23 july 1949 zhou enlai maoduntouxiang.jpg mao dun
 january 1965 27 march 1981 mao dun peking university
mao dun

mao dun -lrb- 4 july 1896 - 27 march 1981 -rrb- was the pen name of shen dehong -lrb- shen yanbing -rrb- , a 20th-century chinese novelist , cultural critic , and journalist .
he was also the minister of culture of china from 1949 to 1965 .
he is renowned as one of the best realist novelists in the history of modern china .
his most famous works are `` ziye '' , a grand novel depicting life in cosmopolitan shanghai , and `` spring silkworms '' .
he also wrote many short stories .
he adopted `` mao dun '' -lrb- -rrb- , meaning `` contradiction '' , as his pen name to express the tension in the conflicting revolutionary ideology in china in the unstable 1920s .
his friend ye shengtao changed the first character from to , which literally means `` thatch '' , to protect him from political persecution .
