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Lu Xun (1881-1936) - name also translated Lu Hsün and Lu Hsun; pseudonym of Zhou Shuren |
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Short-story writer, essayist,
critic, and
literary theorist, one of the leadig figures in the
20th-century Chinese literature. In the West Lu Xun is chiefly known
for his stories, which have been translated into more than a dozen
languages. Lu Xun's acclaimed short fiction appeared in three
collections between the years 1923 and 1935. He also produced sixteen
volumes of essays, reminiscences, prose poetry, historical tales, some
sixty classical-style poems, a dozen volumes of scholarly research, and
numerous translations. Lu Xun wrote in vernacular Chinese as well as
classical Chinese. "From the distance approached another of Ah Q's enemies. This was Mr. Chien's eldest son whom Ah Q also despised. After studying in a foreign school in the city, it seemed he had gone to Japan. When he came home half a year later his legs were straight and his pigtail had disappeared. His mother cried bitterly a dozen times, and his wife tried three times to jump into the well. Later his mother told everyone, "His pigtail was cut off by some scoundrel when he was drunk. He would have been able to be an official, but now he will have to wait until it has grown again before he thinks of that." Ah Q did not, however, believe this, and insisted on calling him "Imitation Foreign Devil" and "Traitor in Foreig Pay." As soon as Ah Q saw him he would start cursing under his breath." (from 'The True Story of Ah Q,' in Selected Stories of Lu Hsun by Lu Hsun, translated by Yang-Hsien-yi and Gladys Yang, Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1994, p. 77) Lu Xun (Lu Hsün; Zhou Shuren) was born Zhou Shuren in
Shaoxing, in Zhejiang province, into an impoverished but educated
gentry family. His paternal grandfather had held a post the the Hanlin
Academy. In 1893, he went to live with his mother's family after
his grandfather, who had directed his schooling, was imprisoned and
almost beheaded following accusations of bribery. Lu
Xun's father died in 1896 on an illness, which the doctors failed to
treat; most like it was tuberculosis. The loss of his father left him
sceptical about traditional Chinese cures and inspired him to study
Western medicine. Lu Xun was brought up by a servant called A Chang, who told him stories about the Taiping Rebellion (1850-1864). He received a traditional education before he attended Jiangnan Naval Academy (1898-99) and School of Railway and Mines (1899-1902) in Nanjing. In 1902 he went to Japan where he studied Japanese language and then medicine at Sendai Provincial Medical School. In 1906 he dropped out of the school to devote himself entirely to writing. While still in Tokyo, he edited the journal New Life, and contributed essays to the Communist journal Henan, sometimes collaboratring with his brother Zhou Zuoren. After studying privately, Lu Xun returned in 1909 to China. He taught in Hangzhou and Shaoxing, and from 1912 to 1926 he held a post in the ministry of education in Beijing. He was Chinese literature instructor at National Beijing University (1920-26), and also taught at Xiamen (Amoy) University (1926) and University of Canton (1927). In 1918 Lu Xun published his famous story 'K'uangjen jih-chi' (Diary of a Madman), which took its title deliberately from Nikolay Gogol. It appeared in Hsin ch'ingnien, the popular journal that initiated the intellectual revolution. Lu Xun was a founding member of several leftist organizations, including League of Left-Wing Writers, China Freedom League, and League for the Defense of Civil Rights. He was also a leading figure in the May Fourth Movement, named for a demonstration protesting the continuation of international sponsored imperialism in China and pro-Japanese provisions at the Treaty of Versailles – the treaty transferred control of the German concessions in Shandong to Japan. The protests led to the rise of modernist, socially critical movement, which flourished only briefly, about a decade, and later came to symbolize intellectual and artistic freedom. Lu Xun is considered as one of the leading forebears of Baihua, or vernacular, literature. 'K'uangjen jih-chi' condemned the traditional Confucian culture, but also helped gain acceptance for the short-story form as an effective literary vehicle. The narrator, who thinks he is held captive by cannibals, sees the oppressive nature of tradition as a "man-eating" society. "Diary of a Madman", written in vernacular and in first-person narrative, has been called China's first Western-style story. Lu Xun avoided traditional omniscient narration and replaced it with a single narrator through whose eyes the story is filtered. With this tour de force, Lu Xun joined the vanguard of the colloquail language movement. 'Ah Q cheng-chuan' (1921, The True Story of Ah Q) is Lu Xun's
most celebrated tales. It depicts an ignorant farm laborer, an
everyman, who experiences, with an utter lack of self-awareness, a
series of humiliations which he interprets as victories, and finally is
unfairly executed during the chaos of the
1911 Revolution, also known as the Xinhai Revolution. Lu
Xun thought that it had been a failure. In 1925 he wrote: "I feel that,
before the revolution, I was a slave, but shortly after the revolution,
I have been cheated by slaves and have become their slave." Ah Q is considerd the personification of the negative traits of the Chinese national character. The term A Quism was coined to signify the Chinese penchant for naming defeat a "spiritual victory." While revealing Ah Q's weakness of will, the author also shows his deep sympathy for his character. In the allegory Lu Xun sees China unprepared to deal with the impact of Western culture and technology. In several other works Lu Xun contrasted the hypocrisy of upper-class intellectuals with the suffering of the lower-class people. But the straightforward interpretation of his stories have often neglected their ambiguity and metaphysical levels. His three volumes of stories, Na han (1923, Call to Arms), Pang huang (1926, Wandering), and Gu shi xin bian (1935, Old Tales Retold), deeply influenced modern Chinese fiction. However, Lu Xun and his younger brother Zhou Zuoren's translations of Western works, including stories by Leonid Andreyev, Guy de Maupassant, and Henry Sienkiewich, were received with near silence by the reading public. Besides short stories, Lu Xun published essays and a volume of childhood memories, Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk. Lu Xun participated actively in the literary debates of the
1920s and 1930s. He was a patron of younger writers, among whom the
best-known are Xiao Jun, Xiao Hong,
Duanmu
Hongliang, and Rou Shi. In the early 1920s he began to embrace Marxism,
but disappointed the underground Communist movement by refusing to join
it formally. In 1926 he received negative attention from the government
because of his support for the Beijing students' patriotic movement and
was forced to leave the city to Fujian to teach at Xiamen University.
In 1927 he went to teach at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou but
resigned from his post. Rumors started to spread that he had gone into
hiding because of his Communist sympathies. Many of his students, who
had followed him from Xiamen to Guangzhou, were expelled from the
university. "I am probably growing old. Is it not a fact that my hair is turning white? Is it not a fact that my hands are trembling? Then the hands of my spirit must also be trembling. The hair of my spirit must also be turning white." (from 'Hope,' in Silent China: Selected Writings of Lu Xun, edited and translated by Gladys Yand, London: Oxford University Press, 1973, p. 121) In the late 1920s Lu Xun moved to Shanghai,
where he found sanctuary in the International Settlement. He was editor
of the magazines Benliu in 1928 and Yiwen
in 1934.
During these years Lu Xun was the titular head of the League of
Left-Wing Writers. In 1933 he contracted pulmonary tuberculosis. Lu Xun
died from tuberculosis on October 19, in 1936. With his death, the May
Fourth literature, a liberal movement of enlightenment, lost its major
leader and representative. The collected works of Lu Xun in twenty volumes was first published in 1938. Lu Xun's work is still widely read in China. In his lifetime Lu Xun managed to maintain his status as an independent but leftist artist, but since his death political factions have been slightly nervous about his legacy and the polemical tone of his essays. From 1949 his name was used in political campaigns by the Communists and he was canonized by Marxist literary historians. During the Cultural Revolution his reputation remained untouched although his disciplines, friends, and scholars suffered from purges. After the death of Mao, intellectuals and writers started to reread Lu Xun, seeing him as an anti-authoritarian individualist and a voice of moral conscience. Zhou Zuoren (1885-1967), essayist, psychologist, translator, the younger brother of Lu Xun. Zhou spent a long time in Japan as a student and acquired a knowledge of Western culture and literature. In 1909 he married Habuto Nobuko; they had one son and three daughters. He returned to Zhejiang province in 1911 and worked in the educational service. Like his brother, Zhou became a prominent figure in the May Fourth Movement. This movement came to symbolize artistic and intellectual freedom and influenced the pro-democracy students in 1989 in Tianenmen Square. From 1931 Zhou was the dean of the department of Japanese literature of the Peking University. During the Sino-Japanese war (1937-1945) he collaborated with the Japanese invaders. After the war he was imprisoned (1945-49) and then pardoned. For the rest of his life Zhou lived in Beijing. Zhou's finest pieces combine relaxed humor with sadness. In 'Shuili de dongxi' (1931, things in the water) Zhou examined beliefs concerning "river ghosts," spirits of the drowned. In 'Gui de shengzhang' (1934, the aspiring ghosts) he pondered the question of whether or not ghosts continue to age in the spirit world. Zhuo also wrote under the names Zhitang and Yaotang, translated the works of Havelock Ellis into Chinese, contributed to various journals, including Xin qingnian, Xiaoshuo yuebao, Yuzhou feng, Lunyu, Renjian shi, and Yusi, and published over two dozen books of essays. Lu Xun's brother Zhou Jianren was a biologist and eugenicist. He made the first translation of Darwin into Chinese. For further reading: Lu Xun and Russia by Sun Yu (2025); Transpatial Modernity: Chinese Cultural Encounters with Russia via Japan (1880-1930) by Xiaolu Ma (2024); 'Introduction: Lu Xun and A Madman's Diary,' in A Madman's Diary: English and Chinese Bilingual Edition, translated by Paul Meighan (2014); Lu Xun "Zhao hua xi shi" yan jiu by Wei Hongqiu (2014); Capturing Chinese Short Stories from Lu Xun's Nahan, edited by Kevin Nadolny (2009); Ah Q Archaeology: Lu Xun, Ah Q, Ah Q Progeny, and the National Character Discourse in Twentieth Century China by Paul B. Foster (2005); Lu Xun and Evolution by James Reeve Pusey (1998); The Lyrical Lu Xun: A Study of His Classical-style Verse by Jon Kowallis (1996); Voices from the Iron House by Leo Ou-fan Lee (1987); Lu Xun and his Legacy by Leo Ou-Fan Lee (1985); Lu Xun: A Chinese Writer for All Times by Ruth F. Weiss (1985); Lu Xun: A Biography by Wang Shiqing (1984); Lu Hsün and his Predecessors by V. I. Semanov (1980); Modern Chinese Literature in the May Fourth Era, edited by Merle Goldman (1977); Lu Hsun's Vision of Reality by William A. Lyell (1976) ; The Gate of Darkness: Studies on the Leftist Literary Movement in China by Tsi-an. Hsia (1968); A History of Modern Chinese Fiction by C. T. Hsia (1961); Lu Hsün and the New Cultural Movement of Modern China by Huang Sung-k'ang (1957) Selected works:
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