My Old Home
After twenty years away the narrator comes back in midwinter to sell the family house and take his mother to the city, and finds the rooms stripped and a neighbour helping herself to the fittings. Word is sent to Runtu, the farm boy who once described trapping birds and guarding melons at night, and the man who arrives is grey, chapped and addresses him as master. Among the most anthologised stories in modern Chinese, and Lu Xun's plainest account of what the old order cost those who upheld it.
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- 60% · 10 shared
- 58% · 11 shared