I purchased three books when I was at the Lu Xun Museum in Shanghai some weeks ago. When I was in Shanghai I also spotted his tomb in the surrounding gardens.
Lu Xun is one of the most famous of the modern Chinese writers with works such as 'The Story of Ah Q' (1921) and 'Call to Arms' (1922). He has sometimes been denoted as the father of modern Chinese literature. I wonder if he is at all familiar to readers today. Perhaps, only of those with a strong Chinese education or a Chinese cultural persuasion. Well...
Anyhow, I have only read a translated 'The Story of Ah Q' (1921) some years ago and I think the situations depicted will just as easily fit into modern society, whether Chinese, Singaporean or any other society for that matter.
A receipt from the Lu Xun Museum for three books.
I bought three books, one of which is about Lu Xun's life, while the other is a collection of short stories and the last, something in the longer form, 'Call to Arms'.
Is Lu Xun a communist or a left-leaning patriot? (or nationalist but I don't mean the Kuomintang) While the communists would claim in his writing that he has written communist tracts and attended their meetings, others would claim that he is a patriot who had sympathies for the commies as the commies were the only ones at that point in time* who appear capable of resolving the social injustices in the Chinese society then. From what I have read and seen, I think he is a true-blue Marxist.
Thus, if you are of a leftist inclination or are perhaps a progressive, Lu Xun may just be the writer as he writes indignantly of the social injustices, the backwardness of Chinese society in the 1920s and the aggression of the facist states in the 1930s.
In case you are wondering, no, I'm not a commie mutant traitor. Citizens, stay alert! Keep your lasers handy!
*1920s-1930s.
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