Lu Xun (Chinese: 魯迅; pinyin: Lǔ Xùn, [lù ɕŷn]; 25 September 1881 – 19 October 1936), pen name of Zhou Shuren, born Zhou Zhangshou, was a Chinese writer. A leading figure of modern Chinese literature, he wrote in both vernacular and literary Chinese as a novelist, literary critic, essayist, poet, translator and political commentator, known for his sharp, satirical style and critical reflections on Chinese history and culture.
Lu Xun was born into a declining family of landlords and scholar-officials in Shaoxing, Zhejiang, and was the elder brother of Zhou Zuoren. Although he initially aspired to sit for the imperial examination, his family's declining fortunes led him to attend government-funded schools established under the Self-Strengthening Movement, where he was introduced to Western science and thought. In 1904, he enrolled at the Sendai Medical College in Japan, but left medicine to pursue literature. Financial difficulties forced his return to China, where he taught at various schools and colleges before taking a position at the Ministry of Education of the Beiyang government.
Lu Xun pioneered the New Culture Movement by publishing the first novel in vernacular Chinese, Diary of a Madman, in 1918. He gained prominence through his political writings in La Jeunesse following the May Fourth Movement in 1919. From the late 1920s onward, Lu Xun became increasingly engaged with Marxist thought and leftist politics. In the 1930s, he maintained a close but fraught relationship with the League of Left-Wing Writers. His works have been canonized in the People's Republic of China owing to Mao Zedong's high regard for him.
Lu Xun was born in Shaoxing, Zhejiang. His birth name was "Zhou Zhangshou" (Chinese: 周樟壽). His courtesy name was "Yushan" (豫山), which he later changed to "Yucai" (豫才). In 1898, before he went to the Jiangnan Naval Academy, he took the given name "Shuren" (樹人), which figuratively means "to be an educated man". The name "Lu Xun ", by which he is best known, was a pen name chosen upon the initial publishing of his story Diary of a Madman in 1918, with the surname Lu from his mother.
The Zhou family had been prosperous for centuries, and had become wealthy through landowning, pawnbroking, and by having several family members promoted to government positions. Lu Xun's paternal grandfather, Zhou Fuqing, was appointed to the Imperial Hanlin Academy in Beijing, the highest position possible for aspiring civil servants at that time. By the time Lu Xun was born, however, his family's prosperity had already been declining.
Lu Xun's father, Zhou Boyi, had been successful at passing the county-level imperial examinations, the route to wealth and social success in imperial China, but was unsuccessful in writing the more competitive provincial-level examinations. In 1893 he was discovered attempting to bribe an examination official. He was stripped of his position in the government and forbidden to ever again write the civil service examinations. Lu Xun's grandfather was also implicated, and was sentenced to beheading for his son's crime. The sentence was later commuted, and he was imprisoned in Hangzhou instead. The Zhou family only prevented Lu Xun's grandfather from being executed through regular, expensive bribes to authorities, until he was finally released in 1901.
After the family turmoil, Lu Xun's father engaged in heavy drinking and opium use and his health declined. Local doctors attempted to cure him through a series of expensive quack prescriptions, including monogamous crickets, sugar cane that had survived frost three times, ink, and the skin from a drum. He might have suffered from dropsy. He died of an asthma attack in 1896, at the age of 35.
Lu Xun's mother came from the same landed-gentry class as Lu Xun's father and was a native of Anqiaotou, a small rural town that is now part of Tongxiang, Zhejiang. Because formal education was not considered appropriate for girls, she received no schooling, but nevertheless taught herself to read and write.
Lu Xun's early education was based on the Confucian classics, in which he studied poetry, history, and philosophy—subjects which, he later reflected, were neither useful nor interesting to him. Instead, he enjoyed folk stories and opera, including the mythological narratives of the Classic of Mountains and Seas and the ghost stories told to him by a servant.
Lu Xun half-heartedly participated in the first, district-level civil service examination in 1898, but then abandoned pursuing a traditional Confucian education or career. He intended to study at a prestigious school, the Qiushi Academy (or Seeking Affirmation Academy) in Hangzhou, but was forced by his family's poverty to instead study at the Jiangnan Naval Academy, a tuition-free military school in Nanjing.
As a consequence of Lu Xun's decision to attend a military school specializing in Western education, his mother wept, he was instructed to change his name to avoid disgracing his family, and some of his relatives began to look down on him. Lu Xun attended the Jiangnan Naval Academy for half a year, and left after it became clear that he would be assigned to work in an engine room, below deck, which he considered degrading. He later wrote that he was dissatisfied with the quality of teaching at the academy.
After leaving the school, Lu Xun sat for the lowest level of the civil service exams, and finished 137th of 500. He intended to sit for the next-highest level, but became upset when one of his younger brothers died, and abandoned his plans.
Lu Xun transferred to the School of Mines and Railways affiliated to the Jiangnan Naval Academy in 1899, and graduated in 1902. The school exposed Lu Xun to foreign literature, philosophy, history, and science, and he studied English and German intensively. Some of the influential authors that he read during that period include T. H. Huxley, John Stuart Mill, Yan Fu, and Liang Qichao. His later social philosophy may have been influenced by several novels about social conflict that he read during the period, including Ivanhoe and Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Lu Xun did well at the school with relatively little effort, and occasionally experienced racism directed at him from resident Manchu bannermen. The racism he experienced may have influenced his later sense of Han Chinese nationalism. After graduating Lu Xun planned to become a doctor.
In 1902, Lu Xun left for Japan on a Qing government scholarship to pursue an education in Western medicine. After arriving in Japan he attended the Kobun Institute, a preparatory language school for Chinese students attending Japanese universities. After encouragement from a classmate, he cut off his queue that Han Chinese were obliged to wear at the time, and practiced jujutsu in his free time. He 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, such as the Tongmenghui. He experienced anti-Chinese racism, but was simultaneously disgusted with the behaviour of some Chinese who were living in Japan. His earliest surviving essays, written in literary Chinese, were published while he was attending this school, and he translated into Chinese some of the novels, including Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas.
In 1904, Lu Xun enrolled at the Sendai Medical School (now Tohoku University School of Medicine), but remained there for less than two years. He generally found his studies at the school tedious and difficult, partially due to his imperfect Japanese. While at medical school, he met Fujino Genkurō, initially his anatomy professor, who showed particular kindness toward Lu Xun, then the school’s only Chinese student. Because of Fujino’s mentorship, Lu Xun was accused by some classmates of receiving unfair assistance in examinations, including advance access to examination questions. Lu Xun later recalled his mentor affectionately in the essay “Mr. Fujino”, published in Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk. The essay became one of his best read works and has been included in school textbooks in both China and Japan.