and other editors of The Truth Daily severely criticized the unfairness of the society. This newspaper served as a watchdog over the despotic power, and initiated the concept of "freedom of press" in the early modern Chinese society. Due to financial difficulties and disagreement among the editors, The Truth Daily finally terminated after running for 22 days. Yet Ye has never stopped pursuing the truth. After the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), he participated in the struggle against Nationalist government, striving for democracy and the freedom of press. Contribution to literature Realism: the mirror of life Realism became the most sustainable hallmark of Ye Shengtao. Ye was one of the pioneers in realistic writing. His writing was like a mirror, reflecting the rotten side of society and human traits. Being an educator, Ye had many narrations on intellectuals in his works. Many of the protagonists in Ye's works were the exploited, the disabled and the prosecuted who were in lower social class. Ye had worked consistently on reflecting the truth and reality in his works. He expressed his democratic and socialist ideas through his novel series such as "The Fire"(Huozai 《火災》),"Under the Horizon"(Xiàn xià 《線下》) and ."A scarecrow" (Dào cao rén 《稻草人》.These pieces focused on the suffocation of the lower-class people. His highly praised fiction "Ni Huanzhi" 《倪煥之 》 revealed the pathetic life of an intellectual called "Ni Huanzhi". Ye discovered that many people in the New China were selfish, apathetic, hypocritic and conservative. People gave up their values in exchange for a stable life. Ye's works shared a sense of irony. He expressed his discontent in a bid to arouse the awareness of the public towards these social weaknesses. Ye was not only writing stories, but also reporting the fallacies in society. His writings were not only for leisure but feeding the rest by knowing and reflecting the reality, "...the basic requirement for writing fiction is a pair of penetrating and observat eyes and my eyes are not penetrating enough...Of course, it is not necessary to train one's eyes just for the sake of writing but trained eyes do, in reality, nourish life." (Ye Shengtao, 'Guoqu Suitan', op. cit., p. 46.) Children's literature: A mind training for the young Ye's first academic essay was about children literature, called Children's Concept' (), criticizing how feudalism affected children's lives in China. In fact, Ye was the first writer who created fairy tales