Editing Lu Xun (section)

=== Early life ===
[[File:绍兴鲁迅故居.jpg|thumb|180px|Childhood residence of Lu Xun in Shaoxing|left]]

Lu Xun was born in [[Shaoxing]], Zhejiang. As was common before the 20th century, Lu used several names. His birth name was "Zhou Zhangshou" ({{zh|t=周樟壽}}). His [[courtesy name]] was "Yushan" ({{zhi|t=豫山}}), which he later changed to "Yucai" ({{zhi|t=豫才}}). In 1898, before he went to the Jiangnan Naval Academy, he took the given name "Shuren" ({{zhi|t=樹人}}), which figuratively means "to be an educated man".<ref>{{cite book|author=Zhou Zuoren|author-link=Zhou Zuoren|script-title=zh:魯迅的青年時代|trans-title=Lu Xun's youth|isbn=978-7-5434-4391-4|publisher=Hebei Education Press|year=2002}}</ref> The name "Lu Xun", by which he is most well known internationally, was a [[pen name]] chosen upon the initial publishing of his story "Diary of a Madman" in 1918.<ref>Kowallis 10</ref>

By the time Lu Xun was born, the Zhou family had been prosperous for centuries, and had become wealthy through landowning, pawnbroking, and by having several family members promoted to government positions. His paternal grandfather, Zhou Fuqing, was appointed to the Imperial [[Hanlin Academy]] in Beijing, the highest position possible for aspiring civil servants at that time.

Zhou's mother was a member of the same landed gentry class as Lu Xun's father, from a slightly smaller town in the countryside (Anqiaotou, Zhejiang; a part of [[Tongxiang]]). Because formal education was not considered socially appropriate for girls,{{citation needed|date=March 2020}} she had not received any education, but she still taught herself how to read and write. The surname Lu ({{zhi|c=[[魯]]}}) was the same as his mother's.<ref>Kowallis 11–12</ref>

Lu's early education was based on the [[Confucian classics]], in which he studied poetry, history, and philosophy—subjects which, he later reflected, were neither useful nor interesting to him. Instead, he enjoyed folk stories and opera, including the mythological narratives of the ''[[Classic of Mountains and Seas]]'' and the ghost stories told to him by a servant when he was a child.<ref name="DEL">Denton "Early Life"</ref>

By the time Lu was born, his family's prosperity had already been declining. His father, Zhou Boyi, had been successful at passing the [[Tongsheng|county-level imperial examinations]], the route to wealth and social success in imperial China, but was unsuccessful in writing the more competitive provincial-level examinations (the ''[[juren]]'' exam). In 1893 Zhou Boyi was discovered attempting to bribe an examination official. Lu Xun's grandfather was implicated, and was arrested and sentenced to beheading for his son's crime. The sentence was later commuted, and he was imprisoned in [[Hangzhou]] instead.

After the affair, Zhou Boyi was stripped of his position in the government and forbidden to ever again write the civil service examinations.<ref name="DEL" /> The Zhou family only prevented Lu's grandfather from being executed through regular, expensive bribes to authorities, until he was finally released in 1901.<ref name="Lovell xv">Lovell 2009 xv</ref>

After the family's attempt at bribery was discovered, Zhou Boyi engaged in heavy drinking and opium use and his health declined. Local Chinese doctors attempted to cure him through a series of expensive quack prescriptions, including monogamous crickets, sugar cane that had survived frost three times, ink, and the skin from a drum. Despite these expensive treatments, Zhou Boyi died of an asthma attack in 1896, at the age of 35.<ref name="Lovell xv" /> He might have suffered from [[dropsy]].<ref name="DEL" />

[[File:LuXun - youth.jpg|thumb|180px|Lu Xun in his youth|left]]