Writer and revolutionary, born in Shaoxing, E China. He studied as a doctor, but by 1913 was professor of Chinese literature at the National Peking University and National Normal University for Women. In 1926 he became professor at Amoy University, and later dean of the College of Arts and Letters at Yixian University, Canton. His career as an author began with his famous short story, Diary of a Madman (1918), followed in 1921 by The True Story of Ah Q, his most successful book, translated into many languages. A revolutionary hero, he was posthumously adopted by the Chinese Communists as an exemplar of Socialist Realism. He is regarded by many as the outstanding 20th-c Chinese writer, comparable in status to Gorky. His stories have been filmed in China since the 1950s.
Lu Xun (Traditional Chinese: 魯迅, Simplified Chinese: 鲁迅, pinyin: Lǔ Xùn) or Lu Hsün (Wade-Giles) (September 25, 1881 – October 19, 1936), the pen name of Zhou Shuren (Traditional Chinese: 周樹人, Simplified Chinese: 周树人, pinyin: Zhōu Shùrén), has been considered one of the most influential Chinese writers of the 20th century and the founder of modern baihua (白话 báihuà), or vernacular, literature. Highly influential in 20th century Chinese history, his literary works exerted a substantial influence after the May Fourth Movement.
Life
Early life
Born in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, Lu Xun was first named Zhou Zhangshu and later renamed Shuren, literally, "to nurture a person". Distrusting traditional Chinese medicine (which in his time was often practiced by charlatans), he set out to study Westernized medicine in Tohoku High Medical Institute (nowadays part of Tohoku University) in Sendai, Japan. Lu Xun was shocked by the apathy of the Chinese at the execution and decided that it was more important to cure his compatriots of their spiritual ills rather than their physical diseases.
Career
In May 1918, he used his pen name for the first time and published the first major baihua short story, Kuangren Riji (狂人日记, A Madman's Diary), which was to become one of his two most famed works. With its criticism of many old Chinese traditions and family rules, it became a cornerstone of the May Fourth Movement. Lu Xun also wrote some of the stories to be published in his second short story collection Pang Huang (彷徨, Wandering) in 1926. In 1930 Lu Xun published Zhongguo Xiaoshuo Lüeshi (中国小说略史, A Concise History of Chinese Fiction), a comprehensive overview of Chinese fiction and one of the landmark pieces of twentieth-century Chinese literary criticism.
His other important works include volumes of translations — notably from Russian (he particularly admired Nikolai Gogol and made a translation of Dead Souls, and his own first story is inspired by Gogol) — discursive writings like Re Feng (热风, Hot Wind), and many other works such as prose essays, which number around 20 volumes or more. As a left-wing writer, Lu played an important role in the history of Chinese literature. Though highly sympathetic of the Chinese Communist movement, Lu Xun never joined the Communist Party of China. Because of his leanings, and of the role his works played in the subsequent history of the People's Republic of China, Lu Xun's works were banned in Taiwan until late 1980s. Lu Xun's importance to modern Chinese literature lies in the fact that he contributed significantly to every modern literary genre except the novel during his lifetime.
Thought
Lu Xun, hailed as "commander of China's cultural revolution" by Mao Zedong, is typically regarded as the most influential Chinese writer who was associated with the May Fourth Movement.
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