A few trifles about Lu Xun and the charioteer

A few trifles about Lu Xun and the charioteer

In old China in the early 20th century, rickshaw pullers, as a part of the lower class, suffered discrimination and oppression. Even a university professor said, "If a poem describes a puller, it is dirty poetry." But it was at this time that Lu Xun wrote his heart-shaking book A Small Thing. This novel, published at the end of 1919, makes people feel the power of noble personality: I suddenly felt a strange feeling, that his dusty shadow, suddenly tall, and bigger and bigger, we must look up to see......

There may be some fiction in this novel, but in fact, there were many common and touching stories between Lu Xun and the charioteer. According to Lu Xun's diary:

February 8, 1913: "When I went to the ministry in the morning, the driver accidentally placed a rubber hose on the ground, and three men, who looked like patrol officers and regular clothes, attacked it randomly. All the seasonal human beings are like wild dogs. How regrettable!". Lu Xun felt the injustice of the world, distorted human nature, the law of the jungle, unreasonable can be said, its anger overflow in words.

May 2, 1915, "The charioteer's clothes are shabby, and one yuan".

May 17, 1916: "Returned from work in the afternoon, the coupon was caught in the car, and the driver returned it with 1 yuan";

March 25, 1923: "Went to the Confucian Temple at dawn as a deacon. On the way back, the car fell and two teeth fell off ". The incident is not described in the diary, but it is recalled in the article From Beard to Teeth: "It was very cold, so I wore a heavy coat and my gloved hands were in my pockets. The coachman, I believe, was drowsy, delirious... Fell over himself and threw me out of the cart. I had my hand in my pocket and couldn't touch it, so of course, I had to kiss the Earth Mother at the expense of my front teeth." Lu Xun's words were quiet and silent, without any intention of reproach. And this kind of thing is not unique, on August 7, 1912, "On the way back to the apartment in the afternoon, the car servant fell to the ground, left and right knee slight injury". Lu Xun only played it down. The reason why Lu Xun later brought up the "falling car and falling teeth" was actually to clarify the facts about the rumors about his lack of teeth, to fight back against the rumors and slander.

In the late 1920s, when the new means of transportation, trams, and buses, began to develop in China, many rickshaw pullers were left without a living. In Beijing, thousands of rickshaw pullers organized riots and took to the streets to destroy streetcars, which were brutally suppressed by the authorities and many of them were killed. Lu Xun, in a letter to Zhang Tingqian on November 8, 1929, said indignantly: "The recent riot of pullers is the riot of the unemployed, and it is only a matter of time before they turn into bandits."

It was a hot summer day in Shanghai. The asphalt roads were burning, and rickshaw pullers' throats were parched, and sometimes they couldn't even speak. Lu Xun and Uchiyama Wanzao agreed to set up a tea bucket in front of the bookstore for rickshaw pullers and others to drink at any time for free. This is also recorded in Lu Xun's diary: On May 9, 1935, "Give a bag of tea to Mr. Uchiyama for tea delivery".

In My Uncle Lu Xun, Zhou Ye wrote about another incident in Lu Xun's later years: on a cold evening when the north wind was howling, Zhou Jianren and his three families went to visit Lu Xun's house. Not far from Lu Xun's house, they saw a rickshaw man sitting on the ground moaning. It turned out that he was pulling the rickshaw in his bare feet, and accidentally stepped on the glass. The glass piece stuck into the bottom of his foot, dripping with blood and unbearable pain, and he could not go home. Zhou Jianren asked about the situation and hurried to Lu Xun's house. In a short time, they came out with medicine and gauze. "They helped the cart driver onto the cart, one squatting and one half kneeling. My father took tweezers to pick out broken glass pieces for the cart driver, and my uncle brought boric acid water to clean him up. They medicated him and bandaged him." Lu Xun also gave the unknown driver some money, told him to stay at home for a few more days, and gave him the rest of the medicine and bandages.

These events between Lu Xun and the charioteer were only trivial things in Lu Xun's great life, but they could also reflect Lu Xun's simple and deep love for the lower class people.