He was a qualified doctor who rarely practised but instead devoted his life to writing. He once said: 'Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my lover. ' Russian writer Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a great playwright and one of the masters of the modern short story. When Chekhov entered the Moscow University Medical School in 1879 , he started to publish hundreds of comic short stories to support his family. After he graduated, he wrote regularly for a local daily newspaper. As a writer he was extremely fast, often producing a short story in an hour or less. Chekhov's medical and science experience can be seen through the indifference (冷漠) many of his characters show to tragic events. In 1892, he became a full-time writer and published some of his most memorable stories. Chekhov often wrote about the sufferings of life in small town Russia. Tragic events control his characters who are filled with feelings of hopelessness and despair. It is often said that nothing happens in Chekhov's stories and plays. He made up for this with his exciting technique for developing drama within his characters. Chekhov's work combined the calm attitude of a scientist and doctor with the sensitivity (敏感) of an artist. Some of Chekhov's works were translated into Chinese as early as the 1940s. One of his famous stories, The Man in a Shell (《装在套子里的人》) , about a school teacher's extraordinarily orderly life, was selected as a text for Chinese senior students. Anton Pavlovich Chekhov ______.