Reading Round-Up: December 3, 2009

1. We’ve discussed Lu Xun quite a lot lately, and more great Lu Xun-related stories keep coming our way. At Inside-Out China, Xujun Eberlein writes about her own memories of reading Lu Xun as a high-school student during the 1970s. Eberlein also comments on Lu Xun’s work as a translator, as well as the fact that “His scathing style was extensively mimicked by the Red Guards for faction fighting during the Cultural Revolution, a consequence he wouldn’t have dreamed of.” A diary kept by Chinese writer Lin Yutang between 1929 and 1932 has just come to light, and provides insight into the antipathy between Lin and Lu Xun. Two China Beatniks in dialogue: Rana Mitter interviews Julia Lovell, translator of a new edition of Lu Xun’s fiction. (Their conversation comes at minute 36 in the broadcast, and the link will only be online for another four days.) 2. Shanghaiist directed our attention to this Newsweek story by Duncan Hewitt on the “great leap backward” of China’s women during the past few decades: While Beijing has officially promoted gender equality ever since Chairman Mao proclaimed that women “hold up half the sky,” implementation of this ideal has proved patchy. In its early decades, the Chinese Communist Party did make significant improvements in women’s lives—granting them the right to divorce and to work on an equal footing with men, and offering greater educational opportunities than those found in most other developing countries