1881-1936. Writer of The Story of Ah Q and Diary of a Madman. Key proponent of the left-wing intellectual movement in 1910s and 1920s, e.g. the May Fourth Movement. Typically regarded as the forefather of modern Chinese literature, along with Shen Congwen.
The concept of the 'crowd', passive and voyeuristic and letting things happen, is an important notion to his work and his conception of the Chinese psyche. Lu Xun himself was deeply moved and outraged when he watched a documentary footage of executions under Japanese rule and saw the numbed stupor of the Chinese crowds watching. At that time he gave up a career in medicine to become a writer, with the intention to jolt the audiences out of such a stupor. Apathetic crowds appear often in his work, notably in The Story of Ah Q.
Metaphor of the 'iron house' for China... windowless prison where most are asleep but for an enlightened few...
The Story of Ah Q, and the character of Ah Q himself, are extremely influential archetypes, in many films. For example, Huang Jianxin's The Black Cannon Incident, Jia Zhangke's Xiao Wu,...
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