Su Xuelin
When it comes to the "talented women" of the Republic of China period, many people will think of Lin Huiyin, Lu Xiaoman, Lü Bicheng, Zhang Ailing, etc., they are all new women who dare to break through the feudal cage and desire freedom.
In that era of talented women, there was another woman who also had a heavy makeup in China's modern history, and she was Su Xuelin.
Unlike Lin Huiyin and others, Su Xuelin is well known not for her articles and academic research, but because she scolded Lu Xun for his "life's work."
Although many talented women have an uninhibited personality, looking back at the talented and beautiful people of the entire Republic of China era, there are few people like Su Xuelin who are "two-faced and three-knife".
In fact, before Lu Xun's death in 1936, Su Xuelin was not like this.
In 1897, Su Xuelin was born in Zhejiang province of a family of scholars, in that era when the wisdom of the people was not opened, the word "shuxiang" was only for men in the family, and for women, only "no talent is virtue".
Su Xuelin, who grew up in a large family of feudal etiquette, was forced to wrap his feet by his grandmother since he was a child, and unlike most women who silently accepted their fate, Su Xuelin became more and more "rebellious" as he grew older.
Seeing that her brothers in the family all went to the academy to study, Su Xuelin's heart also wanted to move, and she was eager to read and understand the outside world as a young girl.
Su Xuelin's ideas undoubtedly contradicted the concept of the feudal family, and under the obstruction of the elders in the family, the 15-year-old began a difficult struggle.
In order to be able to enter the school, Su Xuelin did not hesitate to fight with hunger strikes, at first, her resistance did not attract the attention of her family, in the face of her daughter's "nonsense", Su Father's attitude was to ignore it.
Su Xuelin (middle)
In Su's father's view, the farce of his daughter's hunger strike would soon end because of hunger, but what he did not expect was that Su Xuelin actually locked himself in the room and could not enter the water for three days.
Looking at his daughter, whose face was pale and almost fainted, Su's father had to make a compromise and promised her that she could first study in the private school set up by her grandfather's office.
Because she was a female student, the teacher never had any expectations and requirements for Su Xuelin, but Su Xuelin was very angry, not only familiar with the "Three Character Classic" and "Thousand Character Text", but also ranked among the best in every examination.
However, after more than a year of studying in the private school, the boys were admitted to the outside school, and Su Xuelin had to drop out of school and return home, this year she was 17 years old.
Su Xuelin (front row, first from right)
I thought that after satisfying her daughter's wish to attend a private school, she would return home to live in peace, but not long after, Su Xuelin repeated the same trick and made a fuss about going to the academy.
At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the people, most of the schools were not allowed to enroll women, and the existence of women's schools was even rarer, and in the face of the daughter's old tune, Su Father did not have such good patience this time.
Su Father believes that it is because of his connivance with his daughter that she is becoming more and more willful, and if she is not strictly disciplined, she may make jokes in the future, and even entrust the matchmaker to find a marriage match for her.
Hearing that her father was going to marry herself out, Su Xuelin cried urgently, she knew that once she married, she would live a life of blindness and darkness, and this was the last thing she wanted to see.
I have to say that Su Xuelin is a very strong woman, after communicating with her father many times without success, in order to resist the family's arrangement, Su Xuelin resolutely picked up scissors and crossed her neck to force her to die.
Seeing that his daughter's neck had been scratched with a blood mark, at the moment of life and death, Su's father had no other choice but to agree to Su Xuelin's request to apply for the academy.
In this way, Su Xuelin was admitted to the Anhui Provincial Junior Girls' Normal School with excellent results.
In a later letter to a friend, Su Xuelin once said: "I would rather die than live a mediocre life of a lifetime of husband and son and not understanding the world." ”
After studying at the Girls' Normal School for a year, Su Xuelin was admitted to the Beijing Women's Higher Normal School with excellent results and began her literary career.
Beijing Women's Higher Normal School
The outbreak of the May Fourth Movement brought new vitality to Su Xuelin, who had just entered the university, and she had already scorned the feudal Three Principles and found spiritual faith.
During this period, Su Xuelin began to accept advanced Western ideas, experimented with vernacular writing, and published current affairs comments in progressive journals, and soon became a prominent figure on campus.
In addition to the impact of the new culture on her, the celebrities who worked in various universities in Beijing also had a huge impact on Su Xuelin's writing.
Many literary figures, including Li Dazhao, Hu Shi, and Zhou Zuoren, were once Su Xuelin's teachers, but the one who had the greatest influence on her and was also her most respected was Lu Xun.
It cannot be denied that Lu Xun was a banner of the new cultural movement at that time, and his "Diary of a Madman" was the first vernacular novel in China, and its far-reaching influence on Chinese culture is self-evident.
Lu Xun
Su Xuelin regarded Lu Xun as an idol, and whenever Lu Xun's class, she always came to the classroom two hours in advance, just so that she could occupy the front seat and be closer to the idol.
Su Xuelin's obsession with Lu Xun is not only this, every time Lu Xun has a new article published, she will always buy a publication to read first, after reading it, she feels that it is not addictive, and she has to copy it again to be satisfied.
Before each article published, Su Xuelin would also send a copy to Lu Xun, and Lu Xun received a mountain of letters from readers every day, and few could reply, but Su Xuelin still insisted on doing so.
After sending dozens of letters for Lu Xun, Su Xuelin finally got Lu Xun's reply, although it was only a few suggestions for revising the article, which also made her excited.
Later, Su Xuelin even framed Lu Xun's letter to the master who framed the painting, hung it on the wall of the school room all day long, and had to look at it several times a day.
Sometimes, Su Xuelin would also pluck up the courage to run to Lu Xun at the end of class, first bow deeply, and then ask Mr. Li to give advice for his article.
In the face of such a humble and respectful student, Lu Xun would often stop to help her look at it a few times, and whenever he pointed out to her, Su Xuelin would keep it in mind.
After graduation, Su Xuelin joined the student movement in France without her family, and in order to prevent her family from obstructing, she did not inform her family until the day before she left for France.
As for the reason why Su Xuelin went abroad for further study, in addition to being influenced by the new cultural trend and the national salvation movement, it is more that she has ambitions that ordinary people cannot reach.
Whoever worships a person often longs to become that kind of person, and in Su Xuelin's view, if life can be known to the world like Lu Xun and Hu Shi, it will not be worthwhile to come to this world for a while.
And Lu Xun, Hu Shi and other great literary heroes have had a period of study abroad experience, including Lin Huiyin, Lü Bicheng and other talented women and celebrities have also studied in Europe.
At that time, Su Xuelin's heart thought that going abroad for further study was a gilded opportunity before she became famous, how could she give up?
But unlike her idols, after Su Xuelin came to France, she often fell ill due to the unsatisfactory water and soil, which more or less affected her studies and made her feel anxious.
At the same time, an even more ironic news made her mood sink to the bottom.
During Su Xuelin's stay in France, her father set a marriage for her at home, which was not a huge joke for Su Xuelin, who had accepted new cultural ideas for many years and was in France.
Desperately fighting against his family, studying, and finally going abroad for further study, is it difficult to achieve the life of a husband and godson with a husband he has never met after returning to China?
Su Xuelin repeatedly wrote to her father to ask for the cancellation of the marriage contract, but she was severely reprimanded by her father, and her mother fell ill because of this.
Qiong Yao (left) and Su Xuelin (right)
In the eyes of their parents, women who are still unmarried in their early 20s will find it difficult to marry again in the future, and they are also thinking about their daughter's happiness.
The world is often like this, one report after another.
At the beginning, Su Xuelin was forced to die in exchange for the road to study, and now her mother is also forced to marry by death, out of filial piety to her mother, Su Xuelin had to recognize this family affair, fortunately, the other party is also a literati.
Although Su Xuelin is a new woman, in the depths of her soul, there is no new trend like her self-righteousness, perhaps just a yearning for an "idol" life.
On the issue of marriage and family, she is still somewhat bound by traditional concepts, which she herself is afraid that she herself is not clearly aware of.
After returning to China, Su Xuelin and her husband Zhang Baoling, who had never met, were married in Suzhou, but on the condition that Su Xuelin asked her husband to support her in teaching at the school.
Su Xuelin and Zhang Baoling
In this way, through the introduction, Su Xuelin became a classical poetry teacher at Soochow University, and during this period, Su Xuelin did not give up literary creation.
During his teaching at Soochow University, Su Xuelin occasionally met Lu Xun, who came to give a lecture as a guest, and although he was also a school teacher, in front of Lu Xun, Su Xuelin still regarded himself as a "student".
Whenever she saw her idol, she would pay a respectful salute, and in today's words, Su Xuelin was Lu Xun's "fan", and Lu Xun also had great respect for this former student.
In 1928, Su Xuelin's first collection of essays, "Green Sky", was published, and she sent this book to Lu Xun for the first time, and specially wrote on the title page: "Mr. Lu Xun taught the right student Su Xuelin to give it to him."
In the various publications that followed, Su Xuelin was also a loyal follower of Lu Xun's thought, and every article published must have words of praise for Lu Xun.
It can be said that after returning to China, Su Xuelin's admiration for Lu Xun was even worse than before.
"Lu Xun is a titan in the Chinese literary world, enough to occupy half of the history of world literature"; "The articles created by Lu Xun during the May Fourth Movement are enough to make him stand at the top of the Chinese literary world forever."
This kind of praise full of flattery is filled with Su Xuelin's articles, and it has also won her a title of "Lu Xun's disciple" in the eyes of the world.
However, in addition to flattering Lu Xun to win the eyes of the world, Su Xuelin's achievements in literature have always been tepid, which is very different from her goal of becoming a celebrity.
However, talent and reputation cannot be obtained through hard work alone, and the efforts and knowledge of famous artists such as Lu Xun and Hu Shi cannot be denied, but they are also indispensable to their talent for planning for words.
Su Xuelin, who felt that he had never met himself, had to create while continuing to dip the light of his mentor as a "disciple of Lu Xun".
However, all this seems to have changed after October 19, 1936, when Lu Xun died, and the whole country was in mourning.
What the people of the world never expected was that when the whole country was shouting "Lu Xun's spirit will last forever", Su Xuelin, as a "disciple of Lu Xun", suddenly raised the banner of "anti-Lu".
Since the ancient literati were light, when Lu Xun was alive, many literary celebrities had a verbal dispute with Lu Xun because of their different views.
And Lu Xun is worthy of being an evergreen tree in the literary world, and between pen and ink, he dismisses the world's doubts one by one, showing everyone's demeanor.
Although the voices opposing Lu Xun during his lifetime were endless, including Hu Shi, Lin Yutang, Liang Shiqiu, Shen Congwen, Yu Dafu, Chen Xiying, and others, they all confronted Lu Xun tit-for-tat.
But these people are also frank gentlemen, after Lu Xun's death, no one took the opportunity to "take revenge", but instead issued eulogies to commemorate this literary giant.
Hu shi
In such a social environment, Su Xuelin's "anti-Lu" voice is particularly harsh, and once became the focus of attention in the domestic literary circles.
Su Xuelin's insults against Lu Xun began with a letter she wrote to Cai Yuanpei, the president of Peking University, in which she strongly opposed Cai Yuanpei's joining Lu Xun's funeral committee.
Subsequently, thousands of words were sprinkled, describing Lu Xun as a narrow-minded, jealous and unscrupulous villain who attacked dissidents and dressed as beasts.
For Lu Xun's articles, Su Xuelin also changed the previous admiration and pursuit, believing that Lu Xun's essay novels were useless, and the pathological description of the inferior nature of the Chinese people affected the physical and mental health of Chinese youth.
He even used words such as "calamity to the country and the people", "blind eyes must repay", "finger mulberry scolding", "sinister and poisonous", and other words to criticize Lu Xun.
When Cai Yuanpei received Su Xuelin's letter, he was confused for a while, he and Su Xuelin had no contact on weekdays, why would he write such a letter to himself at this time?
Although there are many questions, Cai Yuanpei is very dissatisfied with Su Xuelin's slander of Lu Xun, in his view, Lu Xun is a democratic fighter of the new cultural revolution and deserves to be respected by the people.
Seeing that Cai Yuanpei did not reply to himself, Su Xuelin actually published the letter in the newspaper intact and named it "On Lu Xun's Book with Mr. Cai Xiaomin", which caused an uproar in society.
After the article was published, even the literati who had had festivals with Lu Xun in the past could not look at it, especially Hu Shi, who felt that Su Xuelin's evaluation was unfair, and mentioned behind people's backs, lacking gentlemanly demeanor.
To this end, Hu Shi specially wrote to his former student, refuting her comments about Lu Xun in the article, and suggesting that Su Xuelin should treat Lu Xun objectively and fairly.
In the face of Hu Shi's exhortation, Su Xuelin did not reply to Cai Yuanpei as he did, but directly published his reply to Hu Shi in the press, which once again caused a sensation in the academic community.
This letter, Su Xuelin named "On the Current Cultural Dynamics with Mr. Hu Shizhi", but there is still only one focus, that is, scolding Lu Xun.
Su Xuelin's scolding of Lu Xun was not impulsive, and in the year after Lu Xun's death, she published more than a dozen articles, all of which were written for Lu Xun.
What is even more jaw-dropping to the world is that Su Xuelin's scolding of Lu Xun has actually lasted for fifty years, what kind of hatred has made this former loyal fan resolutely rebel against the water?
Brushing aside the fog of history, there are roughly two speculations in later generations about the reason for Su Xuelin's "anti-Lu".
The first theory is that Su Xuelin was snubbed by Lu Xun, when Su Xuelin's "Green Sky" had just been published, and at a banquet for writers at the bookstore, Su Xuelin met his mentor Lu Xun.
Originally thought that with the relationship between teachers and students, Lu Xun would be more familiar with himself, and Su Xuelin, who saw Lu Xun, warmly greeted and held out his hand.
But Lu Xun did not shake her hand, but only nodded symbolically.
In full view of everyone, Su Xuelin had to drill his fist in embarrassment and withdraw his hand hanging in mid-air, Lu Xun's attitude made Su Xuelin feel a pang of insult, so he held a grudge.
Regarding this statement, in fact, Su Xuelin does not understand the character of Lu Xun, Lu Xun is a straight man, a lonely personality, never flattered, so it often makes people feel indifferent, in fact, there is no disrespect.
Fifty years of scolding for this is too much of a fuss.
The second theory is to avenge Hu Shi, when he was studying at the Beijing Women's Higher Normal School, Hu Shi once taught Su Xuelin, although it was only for a year, Su Xuelin still had great respect for Hu Shi.
At that time, although Hu Shi and Lu Xun were both leaders of the new cultural camp, there were huge differences in academic and political views, so the two did not write less articles to play in the air.
However, almost every time in the contest, Hu Shi was refuted to be complete, and he lost the battle, and out of respect for Hu Shi, Su Xuelin planned to "get angry" for Hu Shi.
However, even the famous Hu Shi was not Lu Xun's opponent, and Su Xuelin knew that his strength was even more likely to hit the stone with a pebble, and he could only dare to accuse him after Lu Xun's death.
It is also very strange to say that if Su Xuelin has such respect for Hu Shi, why has he been a "fan" of Lu Xun for so many years.
And in addition to the one-year teacher-student relationship, Hu Shi and Su Xuelin do not seem to have any other intersection, so this statement is also untenable.
In the author's opinion, Su Xuelin's "anti-Lu" behavior is completely a farce written and directed by himself, and the purpose is to make himself famous.
In fact, Su Xuelin's worship of Lu Xun before his death was not necessarily a pretense, at that time, Lu Xun was a clear banner in the literary world, whether it was articles or income, almost touched the ceiling of the literati.
Therefore, as a student, Su Xuelin has a cult of such a figure, which is beyond reproach, and she naturally yearns to become a figure like Lu Xun.
Although he also had works, in that era of famous artists, Su Xuelin could not get enough attention and recognition.
Therefore, Su Xuelin took advantage of Lu Xun's death to win the attention of the world for himself, including articles published in the name of Cai Yuanpei and Hu Shi.
Perhaps, there was hesitation before Su Xuelin made the decision to "oppose Lu", but the temptation of fame and fortune finally triumphed over morality.
On the eve of liberation in 1949, due to the denigration of the revolutionary hero Lu Xun, Su Xuelin, who could not gain a foothold on the mainland, had to flee to Taiwan with the Kuomintang.
However, Su Xuelin, who fled to Taiwan, was "blessed by misfortune" and was highly respected by the reactionary authorities for her attacks on lu Xun, the leader of the Left Alliance.
Therefore, Su Xuelin wrote again and continued to do her "cause" of attacking Lu Xun.
Until 1986, the 89-year-old Su Xuelin would scold Lu Xun from time to time in the article, at this time, 50 years had passed since Lu Xun's death.
Half a century of insults has made Su Xuelin get the world's attention as she wished, but I don't know what kind of evaluation she will get after she becomes famous by "cursing the dead"?