Ah-Q The Real Story Journal Ah, Ah-Q.

. In addition to all the common themes of Lu Xuns works, from criticisms of Chinas established social and cultural structures to the loner and the crowd, from the self-destructive and violent tendencies of the Chinese person to the advocacy for science and technology to better the future of China, Lu Xun has demonstrated an uncanny precognition in this work. Published in December of 1921, this story predicts the events yet to unfold over the course of Chinas revolution and political change with almost disturbing accuracy. To wit: Ah-Q the character, with his name which could be anyones and his mannerisms which Lu Xun saw in miniature in the hearts and minds of all his countrymen, represents China and her people, or at least her spirit. Therefore, the events that occur around Ah-Q and the actions that he himself takes can be seen to represent the events occurring in and to China as well as the collective actions taken by the country. In this way, the events of Chapters 2 and 3, A Brief Account of His Victories, describes the treatment that China withstood at the hands of its own failing dynastic system during the Qing period and the various foreign powers who divided China into their own markets of opportunism. The illustration on page 120 is particularly poignant in this regard: the Chinese dandy dressed as a westerner abusing the poor, ignorant Ah-Q encapsulates the Boxer Rebellion of 1899-1901. Ah-Q here embodies the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, starting the fight against the much more powerful dandy, here the imperialist powers and those Chinese citizens who supported them. Chapter 6, From Dynastic Revival to the Fading Days of Empire, wherein Ah-Q performs petty crimes off camera and gains himself a nice new vest, highlights the lawlessness and struggle of the innumerable factions and warlords squabbling for pieces of China, and the subsequent rise of the KMT in 1919. Chapters 7 and 8 truly show this foresight from Lu Xun however, as the aforementioned occurrences took place prior to the publishing of this story. In those chapters, the incompetent rebellion and Ah-Qs involvement in it, characterized by his complete ignorance as to what is actually happening or even how to rebel, predicts with scary accuracy the events of the fanaticism and mania surrounding Chairman Mao, and especially his most colossal mistakes: the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward.