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Lu Xun half-heartedly participated in the first, district-level civil service examination in , [ 6 ] but then abandoned pursuing a traditional Confucian education or career. As a consequence of Lu'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, [ 5 ] and some of his relatives began to look down on him.
Lu 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. After leaving the school, Lu sat for the lowest level of the civil service exams, and finished th of 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 another government-funded school, the " School of Mines and Railways", and graduated from that school in The school was Lu's first exposure 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.
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. He did very 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.
Zawen lu xun biography
In , Lu Xun left for Japan on a Qing government scholarship to pursue an education in foreign 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 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 Seas. In , Lu began studying at the Sendai Medical Academy in northern Honshu , 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. Because of their friendship Lu was accused by his classmates of receiving special assistance from Fujino.
The essay has since become one of his most widely renowned works, and is read in the Chinese middle school curriculum. Fujino later reciprocated Lu's respect in an obituary written for Lu after his death in Lantern slides used in the classroom also featured news items. At the time, I hadn't seen any of my fellow Chinese in a long time, but one day some of them showed up in a slide.
One, with his hands tied behind him, was in the middle of the picture; the others were gathered around him. Physically, they were as strong and healthy as anyone could ask, but their expressions revealed all too clearly that spiritually they were calloused and numb. According to the caption, the Chinese whose hands were bound had been spying on the Japanese military for the Russians.
He was about to be decapitated as a 'public example. In March , Lu Xun abruptly and secretly terminated his pursuit of the degree and left college. At the time he told no one. After arriving in Tokyo he made sure that the Chinese embassy would not cancel his scholarship and registered at the local German Institute, but was not required to take classes there.
He began to read Nietzsche , and wrote a number of essays in the period that were influenced by his philosophy. In June , Lu's mother heard a rumor that he had married a Japanese girl and had a child with her, and feigned illness as a pretext to ask Lu to return home, where she would then force him to take part in an arranged marriage she had agreed to several years before.
Despite that fact, Lu took care of her material needs for the rest of his life. After returning to Japan he took informal classes in literature and history, published several essays in student-run journals, [ 13 ] and in he briefly took Russian lessons. He 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.
In Lu and his brother published their translations of Western fiction, including Edgar Allan Poe, [ 14 ] as Tales from Abroad , but the book sold only 41 copies of the 1, copies that were printed. The publication failed for many reasons: it was only sold in Tokyo, which did not have a large Chinese population, and in a single silk shop in Shanghai.
Additionally, Lu wrote in Literary Chinese, which was very difficult for ordinary people to read. Lu intended to study in Germany in , but did not have sufficient funds, and was forced to return home. Between and he held a number of brief teaching positions at local colleges and secondary schools that he felt were unsatisfying, partly to support his brother Zuoren's studies in Japan.
Lu spent these years in traditional Chinese literary pursuits: collecting old books, researching pre-modern Chinese fiction, reconstructing ancient tombstone inscriptions, [ 16 ] and compiling the history of his native town, Shaoxing. He explained to an old friend that his activities were not "scholarship", but "a substitute for 'wine and women'".
In his personal letters he expressed disappointment about his own failure, China's political situation, and his family's continuing impoverishment.
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In he returned to Japan to retrieve his brother, Zuoren, so that Zuoren could help with the family finances. Zuoren wanted to remain in Japan to study French, but Lu wrote that "French He encouraged another one of his brothers, Jianren, to become a botanist. In he wrote his first short story, Nostalgia , but he was so disappointed with it that he threw it away.
Zuoren saved it, and had it successfully published two years later under his own name.
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In February , shortly after the Xinhai Revolution overthrew the Qing dynasty and was followed by the founding of the Republic of China , Lu gained a position at the national Ministry of Education. He was hired in Nanjing, but then moved with the ministry to Beijing, where he lived from to Two of his major accomplishments in office were the renovation and expansion of the National Library of China in Beijing, the establishment of the Natural History Museum, and the establishment of the Library of Popular Literature.
Between and he was a member of an ineffectual censorship committee, informally studied Buddhist sutras , lectured on fine arts, wrote and self-published a book on the history of Shaoxing, and edited and self-published a collection of folk stories from the Tang and Song dynasties. In , an old friend of Lu's, Qian Xuantong, invited Lu to write for New Youth , a radical populist literary magazine that had recently been founded by Chen Duxiu , which also inspired a great number of younger writers such as Mao Dun.
At first Lu was skeptical that his writing could serve any social purpose. He told Qian: "Imagine an iron house without windows, absolutely indestructible, with many people fast asleep inside who will soon die of suffocation. But you know since they will die in their sleep, they will not feel the pain of death.
Zawen lu xun biography wife: Lu Xun stopped writing fiction and devoted himself to writing satiric critical essays (zawen), which he used as a form of political protest. In he became the nominal leader of the League of Left-Wing Writers.
Now if you cry aloud to wake a few of the lighter sleepers, making those unfortunate few suffer the agony of irrevocable death, do you think you are doing them a good turn? Lu recounted the conversation in his short story collection, Call to Arms. After the publication of "Diary of a Madman", the story was praised for its anti-traditionalism, its synthesis of Chinese and foreign conventions and ideas, and its skillful narration, and Lu became recognized as one of the leading writers of the New Culture Movement.
These stories were collected and re-published in Nahan " Outcry " in In , Lu moved his family from Shaoxing to a large compound in Beijing, [ 15 ] where he lived with his mother, his two brothers, and their Japanese wives. This living arrangement lasted until , when Lu had a falling out with his brother, Zuoren, after which Lu moved with his wife and mother to a separate house.
Neither Lu nor Zuoren ever publicly explained the reason for their disagreement, but Zuoren's wife later accused Lu of making sexual advances towards her. After the falling out with Zuoren, Lu became depressed. In , Lu began to lecture part-time at several colleges, including Peking University , Beijing Normal University , and Beijing Women's College, where he taught traditional fiction and literary theory.
He was able to work part-time because he only worked at the Education Ministry three days a week for three hours a day. In he lost his front teeth in a rickshaw accident, and in he developed the first symptoms of tuberculosis. In he founded a journal, Wilderness , and established the "Weiming Society" in order to support young writers and encourage the translation of foreign literature into Chinese.
In the 20 years after the revolution there was a flowering of literary activity with dozens of journals. The goal was to reform the Chinese language to make universal education possible.
Lu Xun was an active participant. The language is fresh and direct. The subjects are country peasants. In , Lu began what may have been his first meaningful romantic relationship, with one of his students at the Beijing Women's College, Xu Guangping. The protests degenerated into a massacre , in which two of Lu's students from Beijing Women's College were killed.
Among people deceased in , Lu Xun ranks 8. Among people born in China , Lu Xun ranks 42 out of 1, Among writers born in China , Lu Xun ranks 3. Before him are Li Bai , and Du Fu Detailed and informative biography useful for scholars and accessible to general readers. No footnotes. Shijiazhuang, China: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, Biography with extensive literary analysis.
Wufa zhimian de rensheng. Taibei: Yeqiang, Informative biography accessible to a broad readership that departs from the canonized image of Lu Xun as revolutionary hero. Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page.
Lu xun biography china
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Username Please enter your Username. Password Please enter your Password. He continued to contribute to the literary scene by translating Russian literature and writing satirical essays. Lu Xun's role in the establishment of the Chinese Republic and his literary contributions made him a prominent figure in Chinese history. However, his works were banned in Taiwan until due to his involvement in the Republic's history.
In , Lu Xun was diagnosed with tuberculosis, which severely affected his lungs. He passed away on October 19, Lu Xun Chinese writer Date of Birth: