Former Residence of Lu Xun

Located near Fuchengmen in the northwestern part of Beijing, the Lu Xun Museum in Beijing is a memorial of historical celebrities. The museum, built in October 1956, takes up an area of 12,000 square meters, of which 1,000 square meters is for the basic display of Lu Xun’s life. The museum boasts a collection of 21,842 pieces of cultural relics, of which 1,290 are of the first class. The main exhibits include manuscripts, letters, journals, photographs and other personal objects. The most important exhibits on display are the scroll Self-Mockery Poem that Lu Xun sent to Liu Yazi as a gift and Liu Yazi later sent to Mao Zedong, more than 2,200 pages of Lu Xun’s notes to ancient books, Lu Xun’s collection of over 140,000 books, and some stone-engraving paintings of the Han Dynasty (206BC-220AD), more than 6,000 pieces of rubbings of the past dynasties collected by him, and so on. The museum is split into two sections — Lu Xun’s former residence where he lived from 1924-1926, and a large exhibition hall. Lu Xun’s former residence is a cultural site under the protection of Beijing government, and is an important part of the museum. It was officially opened to the public in 1949. The exhibition hall features the basic display of Lu Xun’s life, which displays Lu Xun’s contributions to the undertaking of modern revolutionary literature, the new woodcut movement and the modern thoughts and cultures in his lifetime. Publications of the museum include Manuscripts of Lu Xun and the Catalogue of His Books, Chinese Modern Woodcarvings Collected by Lu Xun, Photos of Lu Xun’s Life, Lu Xun Museum, and 100 Anniversary of Lu Xun’s Birth, etc. Lu Xun (1881-1936) was regarded as the founder of modern Chinese writing and was a revered scholar and teacher. He played an important role of the anti-imperialist May the Fourth Movement in 1919, and his greatest legacy was leading the revolution of simplified Chinese script.