"Local novel" is the earliest realistic novel school that appeared after the May 4th literary revolution, and it was formed in the mid-1920s. Its members are mainly writers from the Literature Research Association, including some young writers from Diaosi Society and Wuming Society. From the historical and cultural background of China in the 20th century, there is a close isomorphic relationship between local novels and cultural conflicts between China and the West. When "Western civilization gradually destroys the stability and coherence of traditional culture in various forms, and generally affects the development direction of China's thought and culture", it will inevitably lead to the struggle of China intellectuals' world outlook and the complex contradiction of values during the cultural transformation period. On the one hand, they have to rationally identify with western concepts and values. On the other hand, intellectuals are naturally influenced by China's traditional culture, witnessing the invasion of western civilization and the inherent disadvantages of western civilization, which determines their value choice of revitalizing national culture. When this cultural contradiction has become the main social contradiction, intellectuals, as the inheritors and spokespersons of culture, will inevitably express this motif in novel creation. It is against this background of cultural conflict that local novelists in the 20th century, represented by Lu Xun, began to describe intellectuals' own ideological confusion and emotional imbalance.

Many writers of local novels were directly influenced by Lu Xun, consciously imitated Lu Xun and began to create local novels. Most of them inherited the national characteristics of Lu Xun's novel criticism, but also overcame the conceptualization, blowing a breeze for the novel creation circle at that time with a simple and true face.

Local novels are writers' criticisms of the local customs of their hometown, sharp satire and criticism of ignorance and backwardness. Secondly, writers of local novels often describe their hometown people who are numb, ignorant and suffering with complex emotions of grief and indignation. Sympathy and criticism, satire and pity are intertwined, forming the aesthetic style of comedy and tragedy in local novels. Thirdly, when the authors of local novels criticize and describe the ignorant customs, insensitive humanity and bleak life of their hometown, they still can't restrain their attachment to their hometown, which is often mixed with a sense of loss, so most novels have a melancholy lyric tone.

Shen Congwen's creation also pays more attention to describing the "rough soul" and "pure lust" in rural areas. The cottages and docks written by Shen Congwen are quiet and beautiful, just like a quaint and fantastic genre painting. Especially the love stories that happened in these "foreign countries" are even more wonderful. In Border Town, the girl Cui Cui's love view and love experience are simple and beautiful, clear and implicit, and are not polluted by modern urban civilization. In Shen Congwen's local literature world, everything in nature is spiritual, animals are dreaming, plants can talk, and the "divinity" of nature becomes the silent master of the local world. Then, what theme does Shen Congwen's quiet and detached local works intend to contain? It is "human nature" that Shen Congwen clearly stated in his Selected Novels of Shen Congwen: "There may be people in this world who want to build a pavilion to worship the building on the sand foundation or on the water, but that's not me. I just want to build a small Greek temple. Choose mountains as the foundation and pile them with hard stones. Exquisite, strong, symmetrical, small but not slender, it is my ideal building. This temple is dedicated to' human beings'. " Then, what we need to ask is, does Shen Congwen use the structure of a "small temple of humanity" to avoid the cruel reality that may exist, thus "beautifying backwardness" and "poetic numbness"? If we look at Shen Congwen's local literature works in this way, it is really too rude and too simple. In the corridor of Shen Congwen's poetic myth, even the most exquisite chapters are telling some irresistible sadness. In the face of the death of loved ones and the departure of lovers, didn't Cui Cui's crystal-clear eyes also declare the disillusionment of poetic myth? Another famous work by Shen Congwen, Husband, can almost be regarded as a sad song about the people at the bottom of the countryside. Shen Congwen, who entered the realm of pure beauty of local literature, did not necessarily understand the pain of society, but he described the marginal heterogeneity of local culture with frank, simple, coexistence of god and man, and leisurely brushwork, showing the quiet and far-reaching life force in the weak marginal culture, thus inherently criticizing the disadvantages of the so-called civilized society. In the rural literature writing in the new period, we can still see the continuation of Shen Congwen's rural literature writing type. In the local literature works of writers such as Wang Zengqi, Shen Congwen's clear and ethereal style is endowed with more optimistic and clear local novel characteristics. In addition, Shen Congwen's local literature also created a writing mode to show the influence of cultural customs on people by showing the trajectory of human nature in "heterogeneous culture", which was inherited by writers such as Han Shaogong and Li Rui in the new period.

Shen Congwen greatly expanded the pastoral perspective of local novels and strengthened the pastoral artistic conception of local novels. For example, Love of the Witch, Dragon and Zhu, etc., the rural scenes of pre-modern civilization are full of natural beauty full of wild life. In Border Town, even the prostitute temperament on the diaojiao building is "yes". It's always this thick. "In almost all his works describing the countryside, villages that are not polluted by civilization, simple and harmonious folk customs, and pure and natural humanity have become eternal themes.

However, Fei Ming, Shen Congwen and others' nostalgia and praise for simple folk customs, the potential psychology is the double disappointment of modern intellectuals to the realistic rural China and urban living environment, and the wandering sense of self-identity of modern China intellectuals, which leads to the dilemma of cultural choice between rural and urban and local writers.

Shen Congwen, out of heavy local compassion and anxiety, carried out the so-called "classic re-creation" and built a "Greek temple" dedicated to human nature on the basis of excellent elements of traditional culture. For the filth and deformity in the city, he regarded it as the opposite of Xiangxi in his dream, and exposed and satirized it bitterly, such as Eight Horses, A Woman in the City and so on. He also showed deep anxiety about the modern variation of local culture. Hui Ming ("Hui Ming") and veteran Han Deng (rigid and warm-hearted) are incompatible with the modern living environment, so that they are regarded as unreasonable "bookworms". The rustic flavor of "country people" on them is disappearing. Under the impact of "modern culture" with money as the core, the changes of rural women in Husband also indicate the collapse and disintegration of ancient rural spirit. But Shen Congwen firmly believes that people's pure emotion and complete personality can only be found in the quaint countryside.

In short, the local literature in the 1920s has become a literary phenomenon with extremely rich connotations since its appearance. It is completely rooted in China's local cultural tradition, and implies the local spirit of the Chinese nation, thus showing a completely different local feature from western literature, with extremely obvious regional culture. At the same time, writers of local novels are faced with the dilemma of cultural choice between tradition and modernity. There is nostalgia and love for the homeland, and there is a rational critical spirit in the face of a world full of poverty, backwardness and ignorance, which has an inherent inheritance and influence that cannot be ignored in the formation of other literary schools.