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Lu Xun For the leading general under the Kingdom of Wu during the Three Kingdoms era in ancient China, see Lu Xun (Three Kingdoms).), has been considered one of the most influential Chinese writers of the 20th century and the founder of modern (白话 báihuà), or vernacular genre. Highly influential in 20th century Chinese history, he discredited Confucian values and denounced Chinese society as a cannibalistic one. His literary works exerted a substantial influence on the May Fourth Movement, when the Chinese nation underwent a political and literary transformation. He was also a noted translator and helped introduce Chinese to the international literary circle.

table , literally, "to nurture a person". His family was well-educated and of the gentry class, yet somehow the family ended up being poor by the time he was born. His father's chronic illness and death in his adolescence persuaded Zhou to take up medical science. Distrusting traditional Chinese medicine (which in his time was often practiced by charlatans), he set out to study Westernized medicine in Tohoku High Medical Institute (nowadays part of Tohoku University) in Sendai, Japan.

Lu Xun, in a widely known account, later explained why he consciously gave up the pursuit of a medical career. One day after class, one of his Japanese instructors showed a lantern slide which documented an imminent public execution of an alleged Chinese spy by Japanese soldiers, surrounded by his Chinese compatriots. Lu Xun was shocked by the apathy of the Chinese at the execution and decided that it was more important to cure his compatriots of their spiritual ills rather than their physical diseases. Quitting his studies and returning to China in 1909, he became a lecturer in the Peking University and began writing.

In May 1918, he used his pen name for the first time and published the first major baihua short story, ), which was to become one of his two most famed works. With its criticism of many old Chinese traditions and family rules, it became a cornerstone of the New Culture Movement or May Fourth Movement. Another of his well-known longer stories, , published 1927). Lu Xun also wrote some of the stories to be published in his second short story collection ), a comprehensive overview of Chinese fiction and one of the landmark pieces of twentieth-century Chinese literary criticism.

His other important works include volumes of translations — notably from Russian (he particularly admired Nikolai Gogol and made a translation of ), and many other works such as prose essays, which number around 20 volumes or more. As a left-wing writer, Lu played an important role in the history of Chinese literature. His books were and remain highly influential and popular even today, particularly amongst youths. Lu Xun's works also appear in high school textbooks in Japan. He is known to Japanese by the name Rojin (ロジン in Katakana or 魯迅 in Kanji).

Lu Xun was also the editor of several left-wing magazines such as (萌芽, Meng Ya). He was the brother of another important Chinese political figure and essayist Zhou Zuoren (周作人). Though highly sympathetic of the Chinese Communist movement, Lu Xun never joined the Chinese Communist Party. Because of his leanings, and of the role his works played in the subsequent history of the People's Republic of China, Lu Xun's works were banned in Taiwan until late 1980s. He was among the early supporters of the Esperanto movement in China.

is wry, often incisive and sardonic in his societal commentary. His mastery of the vernacular language, coupled with his expertise with tone -- often refusing to occupy any easy position, using linguistic virtuosity as his shield -- make some of his works (like ) virtually untranslatable. Lu Xun's importance to modern Chinese literature lies in the fact that he contributed significantly to every modern literary genre except to the novel during his lifetime.

Lu Xun, termed "chief commander of China's modern cultural revolution" by translators Xianyi and Gladys Yang (to the entire revolution from traditional Chinese culture to Chinese modernity from the second decade of the 20th century to the Communist period), is typically regarded as the most influential Chinese writer who was associated with the May Fourth Movement. He produced harsh criticism of social problems in China, particularly in his analysis of the "Chinese national character." He has often been considered to have had leftist leanings. Called by some a "champion of common humanity," he helped bring many fellow writers to support communist thought, though he never took the step of actually joining the Communist Party.