When he was 13 years old, his grandfather, who used to be an official in the capital, was jailed for imperial examination fraud, and after that his father suffered from a long term illness, which eventually led to his death, and the family lost its fortune, so the house was sold. The change of family had a profound impact on the young Lu Xun. He was the eldest son of the family, with a weak mother and young siblings, he had to bear the heavy burden of life together with his mother. This was the end of his innocent and lively childhood, and he experienced the difficulties of life and the coldness and warmth of the world prematurely. He often took the doctor's prescription for his father to the pharmacy to get medicine, and took things to the pawnshop to sell. In the good times, the surrounding people are with a kind of envy look at him as a small "son of a", the words contained in the cordiality, eyes showing warmth. Since his family became poor, the attitude of the surrounding people have changed: the words are cool, the eyes are cold, good friends do not talk to him, with a look of contempt on his face. This change in the attitudes of the people around him left a deep impression on Lu Xun's mind, and was a great blow to his young heart, which made him feel that in China at that time, there was a lack of sincere sympathy and love between people. People looked at things with "snobbish eyes". Years later, Lu Xun also said very sadly: "Who has fallen into poverty from a well-off family, I think in this way, probably can see the true face of the world." (The Scream preface) His maternal grandmother's family was in the countryside, which gave him the opportunity to come into contact with and understand the life of peasants. Especially around the time his grandfather was imprisoned, he had to take refuge with relatives in the countryside and lived there for a long time. There, he became friends with rural children, playing with them, rowing with them, watching plays with them, and sometimes "stealing" beans from their fields to cook and eat. Between them, there was no mutual discrimination and hatred, but mutual care and love. Throughout his life, Lu Xun remembered and depicted this simple and sincere relationship with the rural children as the best relationship between human beings.
Major Evaluations
Lu Xun was the main general of the Chinese cultural revolution, not only a great writer, but also a great thinker and a great revolutionary. Lu Xun's bones are the hardest of all, and he does not have the slightest slavishness or pandering, which is the most valuable character of the colonial and semi-colonial people. Lu Xun is the most correct, courageous, resolute, faithful and enthusiastic unprecedented national hero who charged at the enemy on the cultural front on behalf of the majority of the whole nation. Lu Xun's direction is the direction of the new culture of the Chinese nation, the direction of new life.
--From the Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Volume 2, page 698, published in June 1991 by People's Publishing House.
Lu Xun's value in China, as far as I can see, is to be considered the first class of Chinese saints. Confucius is the saint of feudal society, Lu Xun is the saint of modern China.
-- Excerpted from the Collected Works of Mao Zedong, vol. 2, p. 43, published in December 1993 by the People's Publishing House.