Lu Xun was a leading and influential figure in modern Chinese literature. A pioneer in the May Fourth Movement-inspired new literature of the early 1900s, he specialized in the short story, endowing this genre with new form and content. Chairman Mao Zedong in The Culture of New Democracy,

Lu Xun was the major leader in the Chinese cultural revolution. He was not only a great writer but a great thinker and a great revolutionist. . . . Lu Xun breached and stormed the enemy citadel; on the cultural front he was the bravest and most correct, the firmest, the most loyal and the most ardent national hero, a hero without parallel in our history. The road he took was the very road of China’s new national culture.

And,

Since the May Fourth Movement, China has produced an entirely new and vigorous cultural force … And Lu Hsün was the greatest and bravest standard-bearer of this new cultural army … The direction of Lu Hsün is the direction of the new Chinese culture.

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