SOURCE: "Lu Hsün," in Life and Letters and the London Mercury, Vol. 61, No. 142, June, 1949, pp. 200-05.

In the following excerpt, Wang praises Lu Hsün as a stylist and satirist.

One must start from the point where Lu Hsün is invariably launched by his critics, namely, that he is a satirist. He could not choose but be one. He wrote his Ah Q and his 'miscellaneous essays' at a time when only satire could be effective. Satire is ever allied to surfeit; it thrusts open the inner corruption of a society at the very moment when the society has acquired, what with wigs and fine dress, wine and courtesans, a most civilized look. In the case of Lu Hsün' s China there was not even that surface glitter. A few lighthouses might be beaming decoratively on the eastern and southern coasts, a few railways might...