Lu aspired to take the imperial examinations, but due to his family's relative poverty he was forced to attend government-funded schools teaching "foreign education".

After the proclamation of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, his work received considerable acclaim from the Chinese government, with Mao Zedong being an admirer of Lu's writing throughout his life.

His paternal grandfather, Zhou Fuqing, was appointed to the Imperial Hanlin Academy in Beijing, the highest position possible for aspiring civil servants at that time.

Zhou's mother was a member of the same landed gentry class as Lu Xun's father, from a slightly smaller town in the countryside (Anqiaotou, Zhejiang; a part of Tongxiang).

Local Chinese doctors attempted to cure him through a series of expensive quack prescriptions, including monogamous crickets, sugar cane that had survived frost three times, ink, and the skin from a drum.

[4] Lu Xun half-heartedly participated in the first, district-level civil service examination in 1898,[6] but then abandoned pursuing a traditional Confucian education or career.

[7] As a consequence of Lu's decision to attend a military school specializing in Western education, his mother wept, he was instructed to change his name to avoid disgracing his family,[5] and some of his relatives began to look down on him.

Lu attended the Jiangnan Naval Academy for half a year, and left after it became clear that he would be assigned to work in an engine room, below deck, which he considered degrading.

Some of the influential authors that he read during that period include T. H. Huxley, John Stuart Mill, Yan Fu, and Liang Qichao.

After arriving in Tokyo he made sure that the Chinese embassy would not cancel his scholarship and registered at the local German Institute, but was not required to take classes there.

Between 1909 and 1911 he held a number of brief teaching positions at local colleges and secondary schools that he felt were unsatisfying, partly to support his brother Zuoren's studies in Japan.

[16] In February 1912, shortly after the Xinhai Revolution overthrew the Qing dynasty and was followed by the founding of the Republic of China, Lu gained a position at the national Ministry of Education.

[17] At first, his work consisted almost completely of copying books, but he was later appointed Section Head of the Social Education Division, and eventually to the position of Assistant Secretary.

[17] After Yuan Shikai declared himself the Emperor of China in 1915, Lu was briefly forced to participate in rituals honoring Confucius, which he ridiculed in his diaries.

He told Qian: "Imagine an iron house without windows, absolutely indestructible, with many people fast asleep inside who will soon die of suffocation.

Now if you cry aloud to wake a few of the lighter sleepers, making those unfortunate few suffer the agony of irrevocable death, do you think you are doing them a good turn?

[18]: 134–135 After the publication of "Diary of a Madman", the story was praised for its anti-traditionalism, its synthesis of Chinese and foreign conventions and ideas, and its skillful narration, and Lu became recognized as one of the leading writers of the New Culture Movement.

In 1925 he founded a journal, Wilderness, and established the "Weiming Society" in order to support young writers and encourage the translation of foreign literature into Chinese.

His greatest works, such as "Diary of a Madman" and Ah Q, exemplify this style of "peasant dirt literature" (Chinese: 乡土文学; pinyin: xiāngtǔ wénxué).

Later in 1926, when the warlord troops of Zhang Zuolin and Wu Peifu took over Beijing, Lu left northern China and fled to Xiamen.

[28] After moving to Shanghai, Lu rejected all regular teaching positions (though he sometimes gave guest lectures at different campuses), and for the first time was able to make a living solely as a professional writer, with a monthly income of roughly 500 yuan.

He began to study and identify with Marxist politics, made contact with local CCP members, and became involved in literary disputes with other leftist writers in the city.

"[25] Despite the unfavorable political climate, Lu Xun contributed regularly to a variety of periodicals in the 1930s, including Lin Yutang's humor magazine The Analects Fortnightly, and corresponded with writers in Japan as well as China.

The CCP requested that he write a novel about the communist revolution set in rural China, but he declined, citing his lack of background and understanding of the subject.

"[34] Shortly after Lu Xun's death, Mao Zedong called him "the saint of modern China", but used his legacy selectively to promote his own political goals.

After the People's Republic of China was established in 1949, CCP literary theorists portrayed his work as orthodox examples of communist literature, yet every one of Lu's close disciples from the 1930s was purged.

Lu Xun's two short story collections, Nahan (Call to Arms) and Panghuang (Wandering), are often acclaimed as classics of modern Chinese literature.

Lu Xun's translations were important at a time when foreign literature was seldom read, and his literary criticisms remain acute and persuasively argued.

Lu Xun was a master of irony and satire (as can be seen in "The True Story of Ah Q") and yet could also write impressively direct prose ("My Old Home", "A Little Incident").

"[53] The Lyrical Lu Xun: a Study of his Classical-style Verse—a book by Jon Eugene von Kowallis (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996) – includes a complete introduction to Lu Xun's poetry in the classical style, with Chinese characters, literal and verse translations, and a biographical introduction which summarizes his life in relation to his poetry.