Lu Xun and Contemporary Chinese Literature

In a famous article written in 1928 when the Left-wing writers of the Sun and Creation Societies were criticising Lu Xun for being behind the times, Qian Xingcun (A Ying) asserted that the age of Ah Q was already past. Fifty years later Chen Baichen's dramatization of Ah Q Zhengzhuan, which was staged in 1981 as part of the Lu Xun centenary celebrations, ends with the narrator declaring that although Ah Q had no women it was not true that he would have no descendants, because his line would continue for generations to come. It is, of course, possible to reconcile these two apparently contradictory statements. Qian Xingcun was referring to the fact that the peasant masses were becoming politically organized, having played an important role in the revolutionary movements of those years. He did not claim that people like Ah Q no longer existed. Chen Baichen, on the other hand, was referring to the Ah Q mentality which still lives on in people's minds, long after Ah Q himself has been executed. He did not see this mentality as the dominant force in society. Nevertheless there have been striking changes of attitude towards Ah Q in recent years. Since the end of the Cultural Revolution it has been generally recognized that the Ah Q mentality is still a force in China which is holding back attempts at modernization and that many other aspects of the Chinese traditional society and culture which Lu Xun criticized in his stories and essays have still not been eradicated 45 years after his death.