Call to Arms is a collection of revolutionary Chinese writer Lu Xun’s most famous and most important short stories. Featuring “A Madman’s Diary,” a scathing attack of traditional Confucian civilization and “The True Story of Ah Q,” a poignant satire about the hypocrisy of Chinese national character and the first work written entirely in the Chinese vernacular. Together this collection exposes a contradictory legacy of cosmopolitan independence, polemical fractiousness, and anxious patriotism that continues to resonate in Chinese intellectual life today.
Lu Xun book Call to Arms
Lu Xun studied medicine before he became a writer. Once he saw on a film a Chinese being executed by Japanese while many other Chinese were watching this "spectacular event". This made him feel that saving the "souls" of people is more important than saving their bodies.
Source: From the preface of his work Na Han (Call to Arms) (1922)
“Chinese medicine lies, whether purposefully or not.”
Lu Xun book Call to Arms
Source: From the preface of his work Na Han (Call to Arms) (1922)
