Lu Xun

Lu Xun or Lu Hsün (both: l`shün`), 1881–1936, Chinese writer, pen name of Chou Shu-jen. In 1902, he traveled to Japan on a government scholarship, eventually enrolling at Sendai Medical School. Troubled by what he saw as China's spiritual malaise, he soon abandoned medicine to pursue literature. He returned to China, where he published translations of Western works and held a post in the ministry of education. During the period 1918–26, he wrote 25 highly influential stories in vernacular Chinese. His works include "The Diary of a Madman" (1918), written in the voice of a man believing he is held captive by cannibals; "The True Story of Ah Q" (1921–22), the chronicle of a peasant who views personal failure as success even up to his execution, exposing the elitism of the 1911 republican revolution and a tendency to ignore grim realities; and "The New Year's Sacrifice" (1924), which portrays oppression of women. From 1926, Lu wrote satirical essays and served as head of the League of Leftwing Writers.

Bibliography

See translations by G. and H. Yang (4 vol., 1956–60) and W. A. Lyell (1990); studies by T. A. Hsia (1968), W. A. Lyell (1976), V. I. Semanov (1980), and L. O. Lee (1987).

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Lu Xun

 or Lu Hsün orig. Zhou Shuren

(born Sept. 25, 1881, Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, China—died Oct. 19, 1936, Shanghai) Chinese writer. He became associated with the nascent Chinese literary movement in 1918 (part of the larger May Fourth Movement), when he published his short story “Diary of a Madman,” a condemnation of traditional Confucian culture and the first Western-style story written wholly in Chinese. Though best known for his fiction, he was also a master of the prose essay, a vehicle he used especially late in life. He never joined the Communist Party himself, but he recruited many of his countrymen to communism and came to be considered a revolutionary hero.