ABSTRACT
Peasantry has been a constant concern for modern Chinese fiction writers. Traditionally, this social class has been enjoying a symbolically high status (lower than scholars but higher than artisans and merchants), but in reality it is often the opposite. Within the cultural climate of the May Fourth enlightenment during the late 1910s and early 1920s, writers shared an attitude towards the peasantry, which in Lu Xun’s words, is a mixture of compassion for their miserable sufferings and outrage with their submissive attitude and slave-mindedness. In his “Hometown” (Guxiang, 1921), Lu Xun describes how the narrator “I” is shocked upon seeing his childhood friend Runtu, a once lively, healthy and eloquent boy who now becomes numb, silent, superstitious and obedient. 1 The shock “I” experience therefore comes from not only the actual suffering created by the miserable living conditions Runtu has been going through, but also the spiritual and psychological barrenness he demonstrates. The “home-returning” for “I” thus is not a celebrated process to fulfill a nostalgic sentiment, but a traumatic encounter through which the urgency of enlightenment for the peasantry is highlighted.
