Lǔ Xùn Museum 鲁迅博物馆
阜成们内宫门口二条19号
Part of A Better Guide to Běijīng’s coverage of West of the Imperial City
Lǔ Xùn (the pen name of Zhōu Shùrén, 周树人, 1881–1936) is a contender for the title of China’s greatest modern writer and has the extremely rare distinction of being both approved of by the Party and genuinely popular with the public. His work is read almost as often by educated young people today as the more recent wave of hard-boiled writers dealing with the underside of city life, such as Wáng Shuò.
Part of the May Fourth group of writers who looked to wake up China following the demonstrations for reform in 1919, Lǔ Xùn developed sympathy for communism as he realized how the revolution had made little difference to the lives of ordinary people, but he avoided dancing to the Stalinist tune and representing nothing but class struggle.
Much of his work contains scathing criticism of the Chinese character and puts the blame for the failures of the 1911 revolution squarely on the Chinese themselves.
To the foreign reader some of Lǔ Xùn’s work and especially his powerful short stories at first seem simply Kafka-esque, but his heroes, often incomprehending victims of their circumstances, stand for the state of the nation as a whole, and the struggles of life are pungently and quite unforgettably depicted. In perhaps his best-known work, The Story of Ah Q
(阿Q正传, Ā Q Zhèngzhuàn), the hapless Q is merely a symbol of China’s peasant population, and it makes the point repeated in other works that the 1911 revolution merely saw the exchange of one set of scoundrels for another. The original manuscript is on display here. Lǔ Xùn was perhaps fortunate to die with his sympathy for the communist cause intact, before he would be forced to say the same thing about the revolution of 1949. Many young people today read him as doing precisely that, and in late 2015, the ‘Zhào family members’ (赵家人) or just ‘the Zhaos’ became a popular on-line reference to China’s rich and powerful — those who slap others around to keep them in line as civil examination graduate Zhào does Ah Q in Lǔ Xùn’s story.
One of his most oft-quoted passages is from the preface to Call to Arms (呐喊, Nàhǎn, also translated as Cheering from the Sidelines and Battle Cry), in which he recounts his response to a request that he should begin to write:
Imagine an iron house without windows, absolutely indestructible, with many people fast asleep inside who will soon die of suffocation. But you know that since they will die in their sleep, they will not feel the pain of death. 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?
Lǔ Xùn was born to a land-owning family of scholar-gentry in Shàoxīng, Zhèjiāng Province, his grandfather having gained the jìnshì (进士) degree, the highest level of imperial examination (so his name ought to be found on a stele at the Confucius Temple). But while Lǔ Xùn was still a child his grandfather was implicated in a scandal concerning the administration of imperial examinations and fell ill. The family fell on hard times, the boy frequently having to take family possessions to the pawn shop so as to afford medicine for his father. The bitterness of increasing poverty informed his later writing.
The museum’s refreshingly frank labels contain appropriately what are among the most literate English explanations at any museum in China, e.g. ‘Although the 1911 revolution brought about the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1912, Lǔ Xùn was deeply disappointed by the vicissitudes of local politics and corruption of officials.’
The museum’s contents include illustrations from Lǔ’s books, photographs, copies of his notes, calligraphic work, and diverse artefacts connected with his life displayed in date order. There are photographs of him on his death bed, and of his coffin, draped with a white banner carrying the characters for ‘The Soul of the Nation’.
His bedroom study in Shànghǎi is recreated in one corner, and there’s a model of the hútòng in this area at the time of the Jiāqìng emperor, as well as models of various houses where he lived, including his home in Běijīng from 1912 to 1926, which still stands just to the west of the exhibition hall. It’s a single-courtyard house, with pomegranate trees in the courtyard, its tables and chairs draped in plastic, and with a small well behind it. In one room hangs a picture of the Shàoxīng Huìguǎn (Guildhall — see Joining the Club).
A basement bookshop has limited copies of selections of Lǔ Xùn’s short stories in English but doesn’t seem interested in stocking the volumes anyone might have heard of. Another book shop on the west side has a larger selection of translations but at heavily marked-up prices.
▶ Lǔ Xùn Bówùguǎn, north up a hútòng at the west end of Fùchéng Mén Nèi Dàjiē, t 6616 4080, www.luxunmuseum.com.cn, 9am–3.30pm, closed Mon. Free. nb passport required. m Fù Chéng Mén (Line 2) exit B. b to 阜成门内: 金融界2专线, 13, 42, 61 101电车, 102 电车, 103电车, 121, 409, 423, 456, 490, 603, 604, 612, 685, 714.
One of Lǔ Xùn’s best-known characters, the intellectual bum Kǒng Yǐjǐ, is commemorated in restaurants of the same name serving the food and wine mentioned in the story as well as many other subtle dishes from northern Zhèjiāng. See Eating Out.
Small and simple noodle restaurants line the hútòng leading to the museum, there are various bakeries and snack stalls on the short walk east from the Fùchéng Mén subway, and you can continue east to the White Dagoba Temple, the Temple of Ancient Monarchs, and the Guǎngjì Sì.
Next in West of the Imperial City: Altar of the Moon
Previously: Stupa, Dagoba, Chorten, or Pagoda? (story)
Main Index of A Better Guide to Beijing.
For discussion of China travel, see The Oriental-List.
