The building in which he attended classes each morning are imbedded with signs of tradition; rows of desks where members of the Zhou (Lu Xun is a pen-name; his original last name is Zhou) family studied together, a hierarchical system of office study arrangement (with the Master and Lu Xun's tutor, Shou Jingwu, holding a study and bedroom attached by a private corridor), and a series of canals and gardens that evoke classical literary lifestyles. There's also the sanwei Study, or the study of "three flavors," a reference to the richness that thinkers such as Confucius believed would emerge through diligent reading. Lu Xun's early education reflected that history—he was trained in Confucian classics and traditional poetry.

The "three-flavors study" in Lu Xun's ancestral home [Photo/Jacob Pagano]

It was perhaps out of his experience in this tradition-laden space that Lu Xun decided China needed not only a different literary sensibility, but a refashioned language in which to convey it.

Lu Xun began charting a life outside of this world from an early age, and studying at a several universities in Hangzhou, before moving abroad to Japan and Germany, and eventually returning to China. His family's own financial and legal misfortunes often led him to take up teaching jobs and study traditional Chinese works, yet throughout the 1920s he published journals and essays that spoke to a radically new sensibility.

Indeed, even in his childhood, he often focused on study outside the core curriculum of classical Chinese, including folklore and mythology. He often studied with a servant in the house outside of class time, and the tales she told him would later become formative parts of his prose works.

Of the many plaques in the residence, one tells us that  Luxun was often late to class and he was thus asked to carve the character "早," or "early," onto his desk as a reminder of promptness. I bumped into someone while reading the paragraph, and we joked about the mandate. Then, the museumgoer looked up and said, "He wasn't late, he was just listening to a different voice."

The moment was not unlike one of Xun's own stories, where small insights seem to hum like incisive commentaries. That Lu Xun found such voices, and recorded them for us in ways that spread through history, makes him not only one of the great writers, but one whom we surely should listen to today. And not just in quotidian moments, but also when we ponder the existential questions he crafted so lucidly.

Luxun in his ancestral home (below), and (above) an excerpt from an essay by Cai Yuanpei that considers the origins of religions, which was formative in Lu Xun's own writing. [Photo/Jacob Pagano]

Jacob Pagano is a writer and reporter. He has worked as an assistant producer for the In Contrast podcast at New England Public Radio, lived and reported in China, and written for publications including The Oxford Culture Review, The Oxford Review of Books, and The Mainichi Daily newspaper.