The article presents the results of the study of existential novel by Lao She "Notes about the cat's city" as an active evidence of the social culture in China around the 30-ies of the last century. The true novel materials and comments, written by Lao She, have firstly been analyzed. The author of the article draws attention to the fact that the novel is neither ideological nor possess any major implications, created as a kind of art tracing the social structure of China. It’s on the contrary more intuitional, contains personal writer’s reaction to multifocal social events in China – the experience that comes from the tradition of ethical and social awareness of Chinese culture and potentially in spite of it. It is not a novel of warning, rather a novel of real experience and hope in art. It's neither important that the cat's city represents an analogy with Chinese city in reality, nor that the city is fictional. The city of cat-headers is always possible in a society that doesn’t take care of itself and falls into a moral deconstellation and everyday formal simplicity. The most important and not considered Lao She’s desire is to see China where "the flawed becomes perfect, the curve – straight, the empty – filled, the dilapidated is replaced by the new".