Novelist of 湘西, the hill country of west Hunan, best known for 边城 (Border Town). After 1949 he gave up fiction and became an expert on ancient Chinese dress.
In his later years Shen Congwen turned to researching ancient Chinese costume.
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He never studied beyond primary school, yet became a professor at Southwest Associated University. He won his student 张兆和 with a flood of love letters: she agreed to marry him in 1933, reportedly because they were written too well.
