In this blog post, we will examine Lu Xun’s literary transformation—through which he sought to awaken the ailing spirit of the Chinese people—and the satire found in his masterpiece, ‘The True Story of Ah Q’.
Lu Xun’s Transformation and the Birth of ‘A Cry’
Lu Xun (1881–1936) grew up in affluence as a child in a family of minor landowners belonging to the literati class. However, when he was thirteen, his father fell ill, and the family’s fortunes began to decline. Although he frequented pawnshops and pharmacies in an effort to procure medicine for his father, the herbal ingredients prescribed by the doctor were beyond the young Lu Xun’s ability to obtain. As his father’s illness worsened, he passed away. Through this experience, Lu Xun came to believe that patients could not be properly treated with flawed methods, leading him to reject traditional medicine and take an interest in Western medicine.
At the age of twenty-three, Lu Xun enrolled in a medical college in Sendai, Japan. In a microbiology class, the professor used a magic lantern to demonstrate the shapes of microorganisms; whenever there was spare time, he would occasionally screen footage related to the Russo-Japanese War, which was underway at the time. One scene from that film left a deep impression on Lu Xun’s mind. It was a scene in which a Chinese man, accused of being a Russian spy, was arrested by Japanese soldiers and beheaded, while a crowd of Chinese onlookers stood around him with blank stares. Lu Xun felt humiliation and shame at that moment, and came to a painful realization: “No matter how physically strong they may be, an ignorant people can only become worthless sacrificial lambs for the crowd or mere spectators.” He concluded that healing a sick mind was more urgent than treating physical illness, so he abandoned medicine and turned to literature.
Lu Xun, who sought to reform the national spirit through literature, advocated for a literary movement and attempted to launch the magazine ‘New Life’ with like-minded students studying abroad, but the project fell through, making him keenly aware of the gap between his ideals and reality. During a period of despair following the failure of the Xinhai Revolution (1911), he spent his days copying epitaphs; however, when the New Culture Movement (1917) began, he started writing in earnest at the urging of his friend Chen Xuantong.
Lu Xun began writing with a small hope: “In a windowless, unbreakable iron room, people are fast asleep; before long, they will suffocate to death. I must wake up the few who are still conscious—even if I have to scream—to save them.” The result of this accumulated effort was his first collection of short stories, ‘Cries’ (1923). At the time, China was in political turmoil and economic ruin due to frequent invasions by European powers, yet it remained mired in a sense of “Chinese exceptionalism.” To awaken the Chinese people from this state, Lu Xun took up his spear and stepped forward as a warrior, and ‘Cries’ was his sharp voice intended to rouse the Chinese people trapped in that windowless iron room. This collection includes ‘The Diary of a Madman’ and ‘The True Story of Ah Q’, which vividly capture his memories of the apathetic Chinese masses, as well as ‘Kong Yiji’, ‘The Story of a Strand of Hair’, and ‘Medicine’.
The Plot and Biting Satire of ‘The True Story of Ah Q’
‘The True Story of Ah Q’ is Lu Xun’s only novella, serialized in the Beijing newspaper ‘Chenbao’ from 1921 to 1922, and it was the first modern Chinese novel to be translated and introduced abroad. Set in the village of Weizhuang around the time of the Xinhai Revolution, the story follows the life of A Q, a day laborer who does not even know his exact surname or given name. The title itself is ironic, and the content is satirical.
A Q is a day laborer with no home who lives at the village shrine, Togu Temple. Despite being looked down upon by the villagers, he prides himself on being a perfect person who used to live well and was a hard worker. The secret to his maintaining this attitude was his own unique method of turning defeat into victory—namely, the “method of spiritual victory,” in which he used self-deception to interpret situations in his favor whenever he faced insults and humiliation.
When local thugs teased him about the scar from a boil on his head and beat him, he would make up the excuse that “my son hit me,” blame the state of the world, and let it go. When the beatings grew severe, he would belittle himself by saying, “I am a worm,” considering himself the master of self-contempt, and would instead become intoxicated with a sense of victory. This was a scathing critique of the plight of the Chinese people, who, trapped in hollow heroism and helpless defeatism, fail to see reality clearly and live immersed in self-satisfaction.
On one occasion, he underestimated Wang Shuyan—whom he had always looked down on—and attacked him, only to be mercilessly beaten; he then vented his desire for revenge on a man posing as a Westerner whom he called a “fake Westerner,” only to be beaten himself. That “fake Westerner” had attended a Western-style school and, after studying in Japan, refused to wear a queue—an act that caused his mother to weep bitterly and his wife to attempt to throw herself into a well three times. This passage vividly illustrates the reality of that era in China, where studying Western affairs was considered tantamount to selling one’s soul to Western civilization, leading to humiliation and ostracism.
Overcome by a series of defeats, Ah Q engages in sexual mischief—such as stroking a young nun’s hair and pinching her cheeks—which leads to a scandal. He also demands to sleep with the mother of Ms. Wu, a young widow and maid in the Zhao household, only to be beaten and driven out by the family. Due to these unexpected incidents, Ah Q loses his job, heads into the city, and eventually returns to the village.
Amidst this, the whirlwind of revolution sweeps through the village. Seeing that Old Zhao and the villagers fear the Revolutionary Party, A-Q concludes that the revolution must be a good thing and attempts to join them. He believes the revolution will be achieved through superficial changes—such as cutting off his queue—or by currying favor with those in power, and takes action accordingly, only to be rejected. In the story, the revolution manifests itself through actions such as tying up the queue, smashing ancestral tablets, and looting property—which demonstrates that it was a revolution in name only, lacking any true transformation. Through this satire of the revolution’s falseness, Lu Xun’s despair and critical consciousness are revealed.
Ultimately, Ah Q is dragged to the magistrate’s office on charges of looting the Zhao family’s house and is forced to kneel before the crowd. When he shows no sign of obeying the command to “stand up,” those around him mock him, calling it a “slave mentality.” This scene vividly illustrates how Ah Q, having been dominated by wealth and power his entire life, has finally internalized that slave mentality to the extreme.
A-Q substitutes a circle for his signature to admit guilt, is paraded through the streets, and meets a tragic and unjust death. Even at that very moment, his “method of spiritual victory” remains alive. While there are times in life when such a strategy is necessary, A-Q employed it consistently and without exception. Faced with insults and beatings, he feels neither shame nor anger; he does not reflect on the causes of his unjust reality; instead, he either quickly forgets his humiliating past or reinterprets it as a personal victory, taking pleasure in it. Therefore, the “method of mental victory” is a kind of slave mentality that fails to face reality and instead seeks self-comfort through self-justification; within this mindset, there is no room for the will to reform reality. This narrative bitingly satirizes the reality of the Chinese people, who were mired in a sense of “Chinese superiority” even amid the threats of imperialist powers.
As A-Q is paraded through the streets on a cart, he sees the gaze of starving wolves in the eyes of the onlookers within the city walls. The onlookers are hollow beings who complain that a firing squad is less entertaining than beheading, grumbling that A Q’s execution offers no spectacle. The gaze of these onlookers—who disregard the truth of the matter and fixate solely on spectacle—tears at A Q’s soul. This scene evokes the onlookers Lu Xun saw in a magic lantern show during his time studying abroad. It is significant that when “The True Story of Ah Q” was published, it prompted many people to suspect that it might be aimed at them and led them to engage in self-reflection. This fictional narrative is more than sufficient for us to reflect on our own lives.
