Quite likely some monkey once stood up and tried to walk on two legs, but many others protested, 'Our ancestors have always crawled. Then they bit him to death. A Doll's House'' was performed in China in the 1920's and had considerable influence in promoting the view among intellectuals that women should become more assertive and independent. Nora, the protagonist of the play, breaches all Confucian sensibilities by leaving her home as the play ends. Lu Xun approved of Nora's boldness, but in a 1923 address to a women's college, he asked what would happen to her after she left home.
Human beings have one great drawback, which is that they often become hungry.
To remedy this drawback, and to avoid making people puppets, the most important thing in society seems to be economic rights. These days, Lu Xun's writings inspire hope among Chinese intellectuals, but also a measure of despair. When I visited the southern island of Hainan late last year, a young restaurateur chatted with me about Lu Xun and the selections of his writings she had read at the university. That view is widespread among intellectuals, and is partly behind the Lu Xun renaissance. Perry Link, a China scholar at Princeton University, remembers that when he lived in China in 1979 and 1980, he was struck by how bitter some intellectuals were toward Lu Xun.