How Not to Have Nostalgia for the Future: A Reading of Lu Xun’s “Hometown”

Abstract

This essay rereads Lu Xun’s 1921 story, “Hometown,” by focusing on its nostalgic character. Against the background of a modernizing historical moment in China, the story is about a city-dweller intellectual coming back to his homeland, only to find that nothing there corresponds to his somewhat nostalgic and romantic expectations. For a long period, students of modern Chinese literature have read this story either as a critique of the feudal Chinese culture whose vestige still loomed large in rural areas at the time, or as a literary representation of Lu Xun’s hesitation toward the belief in progress embraced by those who passionately participated the cultural movement. Through a rereading of this text I argue that, instead of shedding a critical light on the economically and culturally backward rural China, here represented by the “homeland” of the protagonist, or showing his hesitation toward the New Cultural Movement, Lu Xun’s narrative of “returning home” indicates how the political radicality of the movement points toward a hope beyond program and calculation.