Encountering Lu Xun (Record of a Speech at Peking University)

Author: Qian Liqun
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2003-08-01
Features: Our generation experienced (Lu Xun) through the Cultural Revolution. Before that, we couldn’t understand. After going through that disaster and reaching a state of despair, we finally found and met him. My most recent encounter with, however, was during this serious illness, when I also had a life experience of despair. In a sense, this course is a life record of this encounter. This may just be the experience of our generation. I don’t know how your generation will meet—when, in what moment, and through what way.
In the past two decades, Qian Liqun’s "Studies on (Lu Xun)" has been a popular elective course at Peking University, cherished by students who have entered and left the campus, generation after generation. Unlike academic research, which seeks emotional detachment, he chooses to pour his heart into it. When feeling the struggles of life and the burdens of reality, he always turns to for answers. As a result, his interpretation of transcends the boundaries of knowledge and academia: his classroom is a place where lives console each other, minds speak to minds, and ideas collide.
This book is a transcript of Qian Liqun’s "Last Lecture" before leaving the Peking University lecture platform. Qian Liqun attempts to place back into the historical scene and era, conducting a close reading of his life journey, intellectual development, and literary works. The faint, hoarse voice of Qian Liqun, echoing between these pages and words, connects the no longer mythical, the historical statue, with the young students in the classroom under the long spring sunlight. It was in 2001, the year of Qian Liqun’s "Swan’s Final Song."