Yu Dafu

Author: Yu Dafu; edited by Xiao Guanhong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2001-01-01
Features: Uncle Yu Dafu was one of the founders of the New Literature Movement alongside Lu Xun, Guo Moruo, and Mao Dun. In the 1930s, while in Shanghai, Yu Dafu once told the American writer Agnes Smedley, "I am not a fighter, but only a writer," and he also said, "Only those who can say 'to betray one's principles is worse than dying of hunger' and actually live up to it are true literary figures." Uncle Yu Dafu was one of the founders of the May Fourth New Literature Movement alongside Lu Xun, Guo Moruo, and Mao Dun. However, after the country was liberated, he published only a thin collection of works in 1952. In literary classrooms, when his name was mentioned, he was often dismissed as a "decadent" writer with a wave of the hand, and his books were rarely found in libraries. As a result, until the early 1980s, middle-aged and young people under the age of 45 were largely unaware of who Yu Dafu was.