Lu Xun Biography and List of Works

Short-story writer, essayist, critic, and literary theorist who is considered to be one of the greatest figures in 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 stories 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, and a dozen volumes of scholarly research, and numerous translations. Lu Xun never wrote a novel.

'"You are a scholar and you have been to the outside world and learned of many things. I want to ask you about something." Her lustreless eyes suddenly lighted up as she advanced a few steps towards me, lowered her voice, and said in a very earnest and confidential manner, "It is this: is there another life after this one?"'
(from 'The Widow')

Lu Xun was born in Shaoxing, in Zhejiang province, into an impoverished but educated gentry family. 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 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. He studied privately and returned in 1909 to China. In 1910-11 he was a teacher in Shaoxing. 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 became associated with the nascent Chinese literary movement, when he published his famous story "K'uangjen jih-chi" (Diary of a Madman). It appeared in Hsin ch'ingnien, the journal that initiated the intellectual revolution. He became a founding member of several leftist organizations, including League of Left-Wing Writers, China Freedom League, and League for the Defence of Civil Rights.

Lu Xun's highly subjective work condemned the traditional Confucian culture. 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" has been called China's first Western-style story. The title was taken from Nikolay Gogol and it was written in vernacular in clear and compact style. Lu Xun's tour de force helped gain acceptance for the short-story form as an effective literary vehicle. He avoided traditional omniscient narration and replaced it with a single narrator through whose eyes the story is filtered. 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.

"Ah Q, too, was a man of strict morals to begin with. Although we do not know whether he was guided by some good teacher, he had always shown himself most scrupulous in observing "strict segregation of the sexes," and was righteous enough to denounce such heretics as the little nun and the Bogus Foreign Devil. His view was, "All nuns must carry on in secret with monks. If a woman walks alone on the street, she must want to seduce bad men. When a man and a woman talk together, it must be to arranged to meet." In order to correct such people, he would glare furiously, pass loud, cutting remarks, or if the place were deserted, throw a small stone from behind."
(from 'The True Story of Ah Q')

"Ah Q cheng-chuan" (1921, The True Story of Ah Q) is Lu Xun's most celebrated story. It depicts an ignorant farm labourer who experiences, with an utter lack of self-awareness, a series of humiliations and finally is executed during the chaos of the Republican revolution of 1911. Ah Q is considered 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 several other works Lu Xun contrasted the hypocrisy of upper-class intellectuals with the suffering of the lower-class people. But the orthodox interpretation of his stories has often neglected their ambiguity and metaphysical levels. His three volumes of stories, Nahan (1923, Call to Arms), Panghuang (1926, Wandering), and Gushi xinbian (1935, Old Tales Retold), deeply influenced modern Chinese fiction.

Lu Xun participated actively in the literary debates of the 1920s and 1930s. He was a patron of younger writer among whom the best known are Xiao Jun, Xiao Hong, Duanmu Hongliang, and Rou Shi. In the early 1920s he began to embrace Marxism. He became wanted in 1926 by 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. 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. He died from tuberculosis on October 19 in 1936.

When the generals kill,
Doctors have to save.
After most are killed,
A few escape the grave.
It hardly makes the losses less,
Alas.
(1930, 'untitled')

The collected works of Lu Xun in twenty volumes was first published in 1938. Lu Xun's work is still widely read in China. He was never a Party member but he was sympathetic to the underground Communist movement. From 1949 the Communists used his name in political campaigns and Marxist literary historians canonized him. During the Cultural Revolution his reputation remained unscathed although his disciplines, friends, and scholars were purged. After the death of Mao, intellectuals and writers started to reread Lu Xun work, seeing him as an anti-authoritarian individualist and a voice of moral conscience.

For further reading: Encyclopaedia of World Literature in the 20th Century, ed. by Steven R. Serafin (1999, vol. 3); Lu Xun and Evolution by James Reeve Pusey (1998); The Lyrical Lu Xun by J.E. 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, ed. by M. Goldman (1977); Lu Hsun's Vision of Reality by William A. Lyell (1976) ; The Gate of Darkness by T.A. Hsia (1968); A History of Modern Chinese Fiction by C.T. Hsia (1961); Lu Hsün and the New Cultural Movement of Modern China by S. Huang (1957)

Nahan, (1923)
Panghuang, (1926)
Yeh-ts'ao, (1927)
Gushi xinbian, (1936)
Lu Hsün ch'uan-chi, (1938)
Ah Q and Others, (1941)
Lu Hsün ch'uan-chi pu-i, (1946)
Lu Hsün shu-chien, (1952)
Selected Works of Lu Hsün, (1956)
Selected Stories of Lu Hsün, (1960)
Wild Grass, (1974)
The Complete Stories of Lu Xun, (1981)
The Collected Works of Lu Xun, (1981)
Diary of a Madman and Other Stories, (1990)
Selected Short Stories of Lu Xun, (1990)