 On 27 March 1938, The All-China Resistance Association of Writers and Artists (中华全国文艺界抗敌协会) was established with Lao She as its leader.The purpose of this organization was to unite cultural workers against the Japanese, and Lao She was a respected novelist who had remained neutral during the ideological discussions between various literary groups in the preceding years.In March 1946, Lao She travelled to the United States on a two-year cultural grant sponsored by the State Department, lecturing and overseeing the translation of several of his novels, including The Yellow Storm (1951) and his last novel, The Drum Singers (1952; its Chinese version, Gu Shu Yi Ren, was not published until 1980).