◆By MANFIELD ZHU

　　Once a time a commentator said that there had been three greatest genius scholars in China. One is Confucius(551BC- 479BC) well known as the Chinese Sage, another is poet Li Po(701-762) as a Divine Poet of China, and still another is Lu Xun(1881- 1936) as a General Commander of the Chinese Literature. Approximately every other 1300-years, one of them was born consecutively.

　　Lu Xun was well known for his great works such as A Madman's Diary, Kung I-chi, Medicine, My Old Home, and especially, The True Story of Ah Q. Almost everyone used to think his "pen is mightier than a sword", but not so many people know some detailed information about his love or his romantic stories.

　　Lu Xun's mother was much more concerned about his marriage as she was told a young lady kept him company along the street in Tokyo, Japan. His mother took a fancy to one of girls in Lu Xun's hometown, Shaoxing, Zhejiang Province. Her whole name was Zhu Ann at age of 24 in 1906 (Zhu is her family name. Zhu is before her own name in Chinese way). The girl behaved very well with good disposition and she treated everyone in good manners. Mother asked Lu Xun to return home from Japan immediately by making a pretext that she had been seriously sick.

　　However, Lu Xun found his mother healthy and happy to meet him. It's July 26, 1906 that Lu Xun was forced to accept his mother's "gift" and got married with Zhu Ann. According to the traditional customs, Lu Xun greeted the wedding sedan, showing his love to his bride and then with Zhu Ann did obeisance to their ancestor... Although they shared the bridal chamber, still Lu Xun had kept awake for the whole night and 4 days later he went to Japan again by ship. Recalling what happened to him, Lu Xun said: "Marrying Zhu Ann means accepting my mother's unexpected gift, that means my mother took a fancy to her as her daughter-in-law, but as for love, I don't know. However, I could take good care of her and earn a living for her."

　　Every day Zhu Ann was cooking, washing or cleaning, sewing and serving for her mother-in-law carefully. She had repeated the same daily household job till she was 50 years old. But to her surprise, she saw a picture that Lu Xun got married with his student Xu Guangping. Zhu Ann was absolutely disappointed and bitterly said: "As a great scholar, Mr. Lu was not good with me presumably due to my doing something wrong. If I served for him very well and took good care of him, he might be good with me one day. I seemed to be a snail climbing up from the bottom of the wall, and I thought I might get to the top of the wall. But now I had no courage and effort to fool myself for it's no use for me doing so again." However, she was not a jealous woman. She tolerated Lu Xun's new choice and still showed her love to Mr. Lu and Mrs. Xu with their son. She firmly said: "I belong to Lu's family whenever I live; I'll be a ghost of Lu's in hell whenever I die."

　　Miss Xu Guangping was 17 years younger than her teacher Lu Xun. As a student of Beiping [Peking, Beijing] Normal School (for girl-students), Xu had begun joining Lu Xun's private life since 1923. At that time Lu Xun seemed to be raunchy in appearance but clear in his teaching, deep in his thinking. She started to show her love by writing letters. At least Lu Xun and she had written and exchanged more than 135 letters in all from November 3, 1925 through June, 1929. Eventually, he made his final decision that he "could love... " after his careful consideration of Xu's indirect suggestion of love.

　　It's an interesting thing to read her first letter published in public. Lu Xun answered her first letter, calling her "Brother Guangping" at the very beginning of his letter, which puzzled Miss Xu, and she asked Lu "why you called me in this way" when she wrote the second letter to him.

　　"Usually I would like to take my student or my old or new friends contacting with me lately as my "Brother" which is a little bit sweeter than their first name. "This is my own term only I know," wrote Lu Xun.

　　In her first letter, Miss Xu complained and criticized something unreasonable happened at the campus and finally she asked Lu a question "Is there any way to put some sweet into bitter medicine that will absolutely not be bitter? "

　　Years later, Xu told her first love story to Lu Xun. She told him that her father decided her to marry Gentleman Ma's son when she was born just in three days while her father shared dinner with Gentleman Ma by cheering up to make such an engagement instead of herself. And her first true love was Li Xiaohui studying at Peking University. Xu once said that the young guy was "enthusiastic, chivalrous, smart, honest, upright, intelligent and hard-working". She had been stubborn to fall in deep love with him at her age of 19, and firmly refused to marry Gentleman Ma' son. However, her first true love, Li Xiaohui suffered from scarlatina and died young as he would be graduated a semester later. Xu was extremely regretted that his disease originated from his visiting her while Xu was first suffering from such scarlatina.

　　It's clear that Xu told Lu Xun about her true love story on purpose, and she wanted to express such an idea that "All happy families resemble one another, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way. "(Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina)

　　Lu Xun and Xu Guangping had worked and lived along together for 13 years until he passed away on October 19,1936. The couple had loved each other, helped each other and learnt from each other, which was one of the most important reasons that Lu Xun had great contributions to China and all over the world.

　　People used to think that Lu Xun was a hard-boned man. He never stopped sharpening his pen and he was so dauntless and unyielding to expose and reveal all the enemies' ugly manners. His pen was mightier than any sword holding in his opponents and foes. As his serious disease promised that he had no time enough to complete what he wanted to do or write, he left a piece of paper entitled Death. "As I got fever, reminding one of the European ceremonies before one is going to die, which the dying man will be asked to forgive the other(s) or to be forgiven by the other(s). How many opponents and foes I have! If I were asked the same question, what would I like to answer? I think over it for a little while, I decide to answer: Let them hate me forever, but no one will be forgiven. "

　　Lu Xun had not compromised with any enemy. However, his heart was not like a stone; his mind was full of love. He loved all the common people with good intentions, but at the same time, he would like to point out their shortcomings in detail in his articles. Lu Xun's love and hate were clearly demarcated.

　　Lu Xun had written 61 poems in classical style. So far we could conclude that he was not only a great writer but a true poet. Lu Xun seemed to be a perfect alloy in nature, being made up with hard metal and soft one, and also like an iron tree with hard leaves but tender flowers. So we love Lu Xun both with his sharp pen and with his romantic love story.