In the 1930s in Beijing, Zhu Guangqian hosted a literary salon that met monthly to recite prose and poetry, east and west. Regulars included Wen Yiduo (聞一多), Chen Mengjia (陳夢家), Zhu Ziqing (朱自清), Zheng Zhenduo (鄭振鐸), Feng Zhi (馮至), Shen Congwen (沈從文), Bing Xin (冰心), Ling Shuhua (淩淑華), Bian Zhilin (卞之琳), Lin Huiyin (林徽因) and Xiao Qian (蕭乾). These were pivotal figures in Republican literature, and it can perhaps be argued that the salon was important to the formation of the so-called Beijing style literature (京派文學) of the period.
Zhu was one of the earliest post-Cultural Revolution Chinese proponents of Marxist humanism[4]:220 and "aesthetic humanism," many of whom had previously been persecuted for their humanist writings.[5]
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