How Lu Xun became a Marxist: Conversations with Yuan Liangjun

Abstract

After thirty years, we are beginning to talk again. The “we” has changed during these three decades. Western sinologists with experience in pre-1949 China and senior Chinese intellectuals whose major research was accomplished in the 1950s are markedly absent in this first round of renewed communication. Instead, a novel and delicate exchange is just beginning in Chinese universities, where we now have a chance to live and work for a prolonged period of time. The participants in this exchange are American students whose knowledge of China has been shaped by the isolation of the Cold War and middle-aged Chinese survivors of the Cultural Revolution. The scope of our talks is limited. We lack shared memories and are burdened by mutual ignorance. Still, our conversations matter not only because, through these conversations, we have an opportunity to learn anew. This possibility, however, will materialize only if we can acknowledge our mutual preconceptions and only if we are patient with (rather than bristle against) the halting pace of the intellectual emancipation underway in Chinese academic circles today.