Prologue

Zhu An was brought up according to the norms that governed the lives of women of traditional well-to-do families: she was mild-tempered, good at embroidery and cooking, illiterate, and had small bound feet. Women like her were not meant to draw public attention. Yet Zhu An was repeatedly visited by newspaper reporters in her late middle-age, and her death in 1947 was reported in some detail in the newspapers. How this came about is not difficult to guess: women in historical China are mostly remembered because of the men with whom they were associated. In Zhu An's case the man was her husband Zhou Shuren (1881-1936), alias Lu Xun.

In her own lifetime Zhu An had been perceived by Lu Xun and those close to him as an unwanted gift,¹ a cumbersome inheritance² and a major source of his unhappiness. For decades after her death, she was a taboo subject in a People's Republic that all but deified her husband.³ This is an attempt to turn Zhu An into the subject of a narrative, thereby give voice to a generation of silent protagonists who lived through the most tumultuous changes in Chinese history. But to do so, we still have to read between the lines writings by and on her husband and his brothers.

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¹Lu Xun described her as a gift from his mother. See Xu Shoushang: Wangyou Lu Xun yinxiang ju, Shanghai: Emei, 1947, p. 60.

²Xu Guangping's letter to Lu Xun dated 22 November 1926, in Lu Xun and Xu Guangping, Lu Xun Jingsong tongxin ju, Changsha: Hunan remin chubanshe, 1984, p. 241.

³Xu Guangping was recognized as the only Mrs Lu Xun under the new order while Zhu An was considered an embarrassment in the great man's life. After 1979 information about Zhu An was published more freely. Her picture is now included in all Lu Xun museums.