Customer Reviews

The Complete Stories of Lu Xun

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I don't know if this edition is the same one I have. I bought mine in BeiJing when I was a student at the BeiJing language school. But the thing I know for sure if one wants to see real Chinese culture one has to read Lu Xun. Lu Xun had been a medical student in Japan when the Japanese had invaded China and set up the puppet state of ManChuKuo. He had to try to fit in with the Japanese or they would beat him. He was in the cinema and news reals of the war in China where being shown. Part of the news real was films of the Japanese cutting off the heads of Chinese. Lu Xun was deeply moved by this. Not by the Japanese cutting off the heads but rather by the crowd of Chinese that were watching. For the crowd this was entertainment. Lu Xun asked himself "How can I heal a man's body when his soul is sick?" This drove him to be a writer not a doctor. He wrote short stories and magazine articles to hold up a mirror to the Chinese people so they could see themselves. Lu Xun was the major force in the revolution much more then Mao or Chang Kai. It was Lu Xun that moved the people towards change! So if you want to look at the soul of the Chinese you have to read Lu Xun.

As an example I had just read a Lu Xun story about the cheapness of human life in China. I had flown into Guilin from ShangHai. The very next plane from ShangHai flew into the mountain killing a couple hundred people. The only thing the manager of the hotel could talk about was all the empty rooms he now had.

Things haven't changed all that much. Just as one doing business in Japan needs to read Miyamoto Musashi's "The Book of Five Rings" if one is going to do business with China one must read Lu Xun.