Writer Lu Xun’s childhood home offers inspiration

Lu Xun's Old Abode, the childhood residence of Chinese literary pioneer Lu Xun in Shaoxing, Zhejiang province, is a hot spot for Chinese tourists, especially parents who bring their children to inspire them.[Photo by Xing Yi/China Daily]

Upon entering, I strolled along a cobblestone street flanked by a narrow canal. Black-tent boats bobbed languidly between two stone bridges.

Snippets of conversation that caught my ear as I wondered among old houses and parlors referenced characters from Lu Xun's works, such as Ah Q and Run Tu. Indeed, voices of people of all ages and accents speak in ways that give voice to the reality that Lu Xun remains an ingrained fixture in the Chinese consciousness.

Lu Xun is the pen name of Zhou Shuren, who was born into a large and wealthy family in Shaoxing. The first courtyard I encountered was the Zhou family's home. But the death of Lu Xun's father brought the family into decline, forging hardships in the author's early years.

His parents valued education. So Lu Xun spent most of his youth at the San Wei Study across the street, where a prestigious teacher instructed him in Chinese classics.

The name San Wei, which literally translates as "three flavors", refers to comparisons of different types of reading to different types of foodstuffs.

Confucian classics are like rice. History books are like dishes. And literature is like sauce and seasoning.

The combination of these comprises the recipe for traditional Chinese education.

It was in this strict learning environment where Lu Xun came to master a solid understanding of the Chinese classics. His desk remains in the same place he used it in the classroom.

Parents often bring their children to inspire them and remind them of the importance of meticulous study and hard work.

It was after hours of hitting the books each day that Lu Xun would unwind in Baicao Garden in his backyard.

I later visited a museum dedicated to the literary master down the street.

Lu Xun eventually left Shaoxing to receive a Western-style education in Jiangsu province's capital, Nanjing. He departed from there to study Western medicine in Japan in 1902.

His ambition to become a physician changed after he saw a documentary one day after classes at his medical school.