Zhou Shuren, better known by his pen name Lu Xun, was a Chinese writer, essayist, poet, and literary critic.
49 Facts About Lu Xun
2.
Lu Xun was a leading figure of modern Chinese literature.
3.
Lu Xun was born into a family of landlords and government officials in Shaoxing, Zhejiang; the family's financial resources declined over the course of his youth.
4.
Lu Xun became interested in studying literature but was eventually forced to return to China because of his family's lack of funds.
5.
Lu Xun was highly acclaimed by the Chinese government after 1949, when the People's Republic of China was founded, and Mao Zedong himself was a life-long admirer of Lu Xun's writing.
6.
The name by which he is best known internationally, "Lu Xun", was a literary pseudonym that he chose when his story "Diary of a Madman" was first published in 1918.
7.
Lu Xun's grandfather was implicated, and was arrested and sentenced to beheading for his son's crime.
8.
Lu Xun half-heartedly participated in one civil service examination, in 1899, but then abandoned pursuing a traditional Confucian education or career.
9.
Lu Xun intended to study at a prestigious school, the "Seeking Affirmation Academy", in Hangzhou, but was forced by his family's poverty to study at a tuition-free military school, the "Jiangnan Naval Academy", in Nanjing, instead.
10.
Lu Xun later wrote that he was dissatisfied with the quality of teaching at the academy.
11.
Lu Xun intended to sit for the next-highest level, but became upset when one of his younger brothers died, and abandoned his plans.
12.
Lu Xun transferred to another government-funded school, the "School of Mines and Railways", and graduated from that school in 1902.
13.
Lu Xun did very well at the school with relatively little effort, and occasionally experienced racism directed at him from resident Manchu bannermen.
14.
In 1902, Lu Xun left for Japan on a Qing government scholarship to pursue an education in foreign medicine.
15.
Lu Xun had an ambiguous attitude towards Chinese revolutionary politics during the period, and it is not clear whether he joined any of the revolutionary parties that were popular among Chinese expatriates in Japan at that time.
16.
Lu Xun experienced anti-Chinese racism, but was simultaneously disgusted with the behaviour of some Chinese who were living in Japan.
17.
Lu Xun's earliest surviving essays, written in Classical Chinese, were published while he was attending this school, and he published his first Chinese translations of famous and influential foreign novels, including Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea.
18.
Lu Xun generally found his studies at the school tedious and difficult, partially due to his imperfect Japanese.
19.
Lu Xun was about to be decapitated as a 'public example.
20.
Lu Xun began to read Nietzsche, and wrote a number of essays in the period that were influenced by his philosophy.
21.
Lu Xun married her, but they never had a romantic relationship.
22.
Lu Xun attempted to found a literary journal with his brother, New Life, but before its first publication its other writers and its financial backers all abandoned the project, and it failed.
23.
Lu Xun explained to an old friend that his activities were not "scholarship", but "a substitute for 'wine and women'".
24.
Lu Xun began to drink heavily, a habit he continued for the rest of his life.
25.
Lu Xun was hired in Nanjing, but then moved with the ministry to Beijing, where he lived from 1912 to 1926.
26.
Lu Xun collected and self-published an authoritative book on the work of an ancient poet, Ji Kang, and wrote A Brief History of Chinese Fiction, a work which, because traditional scholars had not valued fiction, had little precedent in China.
27.
Lu Xun was able to work part-time because he only worked at the Education Ministry three days a week for three hours a day.
28.
Lu Xun published a collection of prose poetry, Wild Grass.
29.
Lu Xun's first act in his position was to hire Xu as his "personal assistant", and to hire one of his old classmates from Japan, Xu Shoushang, as a lecturer.
30.
Lu Xun made contacts within the Kuomintang and the Chinese Communist Party through his students.
31.
Lu Xun's parents chose the name thinking that he could change it himself later, but he never did so.
32.
Lu Xun began to study and identify with Marxist political theory, made contact with local Communist Party members, and became involved in literary disputes with other leftist writers in the city.
33.
Lu Xun recovered somewhat, and wrote two essays in the fall reflecting on mortality.
34.
Dr Sudo, his physician, was summoned, and Lu Xun took injections to relieve the pain.
35.
In 1942, he quoted Lu out of context to tell his audience to be "a willing ox" like Lu Xun was, but told writers and artists who believed in freedom of expression that, because Communist areas were already liberated, they did not need to be like Lu Xun.
36.
Lu Xun particularly admired Nikolai Gogol and made a translation of Dead Souls.
37.
Lu Xun's books were and remain highly influential and popular today, both in China and internationally.
38.
Lu Xun's works appear in high school textbooks in both China and Japan.
39.
Lu Xun was among the early supporters of the Esperanto movement in China.
40.
Lu Xun wrote in a clear lucid style which was to influence many generations, in stories, prose poems and essays.
41.
Lu Xun's translations were important in a time when foreign literature was seldom read, and his literary criticisms remain acute and persuasively argued.
42.
The work of Lu Xun has received attention outside of China.
43.
Lu Xun wrote using both traditional Chinese conventions and 19th century European literary forms.
44.
Lu Xun's style has been described in equally broad terms, conveying both "sympathetic engagement" and "ironic detachment" at different moments.
45.
Lu Xun's essays are often very incisive in his societal commentary, and in his stories his mastery of the vernacular language and tone make some of his literary works hard to convey through translation.
46.
Lu Xun was a master of irony and satire and yet could write impressively direct prose.
47.
Lu Xun produced harsh criticism of social problems in China, particularly in his analysis of the "Chinese national character".
48.
Lu Xun was sometimes called a "champion of common humanity".
49.
Lu Xun felt that the Xinhai Revolution of 1911 had been a failure.