Wild Grass

This is an online reading experience of the Forward for a short story collection called “Wild Grass”by Lu Xun. Lu Xun was the father of Modern Chinese Literature and writes for the revolutionaries. His characteristic style is ironic, sardonic, elliptical, constrained and controlled. 

This article was written during the transition from Old China to New China. 

The wild grasses absorbed the flesh and blood of the dew, water and the dead. As a nourishment, it became part of the body of the wild grasses, so the dew, water and the flesh and blood of the dead disappeared. 

Dew, water, blood and flesh of the dead were all exist on the ground and with the ground. However, wild grasses were born from the ground, but hated of the ground, and wanted to grow away from the ground. 

Wild grasses were not liked by the ground, and they didn’t like the ground neither. 

However, as wild grass is the product of the ground, without the ground, there is no it. It has a very contradictory relationship with the ground: on the one hand, the ground gave birth to it; on the other hand, it was conceived by the ground, realized after awakening that it should be reactionary ground and revolutionary ground.

Lu Xun himself was born in old China. The old China raised and cultivated him, conveying him the basic concepts of world cognition. Influenced by Western Studies and awakening, he realized the sins of the old China and the sins of the intellectuals raised in the old China. He is critical, windy, dissolved (like wild grass), but not built, not enhanced and not grand (like a tree), just as wild grasses are to the ground. He regretted this state of existence, but he did not regret it. 

It's not true that wild grasses are positive and the world is negative. The world is indeed negative, but wild grasses are not "completely positive". Relating to Lu Xun's another short story Madman's Diary, the madman cannibal as well. He is neither positive nor negative? Instead, he was awakened and unwilling to continue to eat people with the world. He yearned for innocence but can’t get away with his own sin. So, he said such words as "save the child" after the noble spirit surged.

Therefore, Lu Xun was willing to die with this world, so that the fire can burn everything that is sinful, so that the children and grandchildren can live innocently and completely get rid of the bad habits of cannibalism.

After all, the Forward of Wild Grass is not a paean for the New China, but an elegy of the Old China.