Those looking for China’s national spirit won’t find it in Xi Jinping’s writing. But the works of Lu Xun offer a homegrown example that contemporary Chinese can follow as the country writes a script for its next act.
Listen to SupChina editor-at-large and Sinica podcast host Kaiser Kuo read this article.
On May 4, 1919, China’s first mass student demonstration took place in front of Tiananmen Gate in Beijing to protest a stinging humiliation: The Versailles Treaty, marking the end of World War I, had just decreed that China was to hand over German concessionary rights in Shandong Province to Imperial Japan even though China had supplied personnel to the Allied Forces in Europe. Furious, marching students sought to rescue China from both its weak and ineffectual warlord government and foreign exploitation, and their efforts ushered in a fresh sense of national purpose and optimism. Some looked to “save the nation” (救国) through “Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy” while others turned to the promise of Marxist revolution.
But, as most activists looked outward to reorder their society and government, Lu Xun — a 30-year-old writer — also looked inward, naming an
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