Lu Xun's nickname, Ah Zhang, was born on the same day as The King of Stove

◎ Cheng Jian

"Sending stoves" is a traditional custom on the mainland, also known as "sacrificial stoves". According to folklore, The King of Stove was the god of supervision sent by the Jade Emperor to each household, and on the twenty-fourth day of the lunar month, he wanted to go to heaven to report on the good and evil of this family in the past year, as the basis for the blessings and misfortunes of the upper realm. Therefore, on the twenty-third or twenty-fourth day of the lunar month, every household should light incense, lay down sacrifices, and set off firecrackers to "send the stove", in order to ask the king of the stove to say more beautiful words in front of the Jade Emperor, "good words are passed on to heaven, and bad words are thrown aside." Lu Xun once described the situation of sending a stove in his novel "Blessings": "The gray-white heavy evening clouds emit flashes from time to time, followed by a dull sound, which is a firecracker for sending a stove..."

Lu Xun's second brother Zhou Zuoren later recalled in the article "Sacrifice Stove": "That night, the family came to pray, it seemed very solemn, Chinese New Year's Eve also had to take the stove, the same to worship once, but it was sandwiched between the worship of the statue, so I didn't feel anything." ”

According to legend, the "head of the family" Zao Wangye was born on the third day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar. There is a folk song that says: "King Stove, whose original surname is Zhang, rides a horse, carries a gun, says good things in heaven, and descends to the netherworld with auspiciousness." "Versions vary from place to place, and the content is much the same. King Stove is one of the gods closest to the people of the world, and the legends about him are obviously tinged with vulgarity.

On September 25, 1881, Lu Xun was born in the Zhou family of Xintaimen, Dongchangfangkou, Huiji County, Shaoxing Province. The Zhou family was a scholar, Lu Xun's grandfather Zhou Jiefu was born into the Jinshi, and was hand-picked by the Hanlin Yuan Shu Jishi; his father Zhou Boyi was a xiucai. Lu Xun's birthday, according to the lunar calendar, coincided with the birthday of The Stove King. Lu Xun's nickname was "Ah Zhang", and because he was a Shou character in the family tree, his grandfather gave him the big name Zhangshou. "Camphor" is harmonized with "Zhang", which is related to his birth on the same day as The King of Stove. The grandfather's intention is also very clear, that is, to pray for the "Nine Heavenly Commandery Orders of the Eastern Kitchen Stove King" to protect the eldest grandson to ward off evil and grow up safely.

On February 11, 1901, the 23rd day of the lunar month of gengzi, Lu Xun, who was studying in Nanjing, returned to Shaoxing during winter vacation, five years after his father's death, and his grandfather was still in prison for the science field fraud case. It was a night of heavy snow and cold, and Lu Xun, as the eldest brother, led his second and third brothers to send the stove together (the sacrifice of the stove prince is generally limited to men - the so-called "men do not worship the moon, women do not sacrifice the stove"). Shaoxing followed the custom of sacrificing yellow sheep to the stove, according to the Book of Later Han, when Emperor Xuan of Han, a man named Yin Zifang used the yellow sheep to sacrifice the god of stove, so he became rich, so later generations followed this method. However, when Lu Xun was a teenager, he fell into a trap, and the offering for the stove was only a chicken and a plate of gum candy, and as for incense candles, he also had to pawn clothes to buy, let alone take yellow sheep to offer. So Lu Xun sighed and wrote a poem "Gengzi Sending stove is a matter": "Only chicken gum tooth candy, canonical clothes for petal incense." There is no long thing in the house, there are few yellow sheep! ”

This instant poem truly records the economic situation of Lu Xun's family at that time, and expresses resentment and injustice in light humor. Lu Xun resolutely rejected feudal superstitions, but he did not oppose traditional customs, because it contained the aspirations of the lower classes for a better life.

Because of this, on February 5, 1926, on the occasion of the folk stove delivery day, Lu Xun was far away from his homeland and in Beijing, although he did not prepare offerings for sacrifice, he wrote a "Long Pen on the Day of Sending Stoves". He recalled the scene of delivering stoves in his hometown when he was a teenager, and recalled the gum candy made of malt boiled and wrapped in bamboo leaves: "On the day of the ascension of the stove king, there was a kind of sugar sold on the street, the size of a mandarin, and we also had this thing, but it was flat, like a thick little flapjack. That's the so-called 'gum tooth dumpling'. The original intention was to invite Zaojun to eat, sticking to his teeth, so that he could not adjust his mouth and learn his tongue, and said bad things to the Jade Emperor. ”

Lu Xun believes that ghosts and gods also distinguish between good and evil, and vesta is different from the plague god and fire god, and is relatively honest and generous, but the vesta god is often bribed or even teased, and he has to choose good words when he enjoys the sacrifice. Lu Xun wrote: "Sitting and listening to the sound of firecrackers near and far, I know that Mr. Zaojun is going to heaven one after another, telling the Jade Emperor bad things about his owner, but he probably didn't say it at last, otherwise, Chinese must be even more upside down than it is now." The text also humorously takes a stroke: people are so teasing the stove king, "but it is also strange to say that the stove king has not yet realized it." ”

Sending stoves is a kind of blessing activity that people are accustomed to, and Lu Xun's poems on sending stoves reflect his complex state of mind at different times, and also reflect his profound thinking on social life.