China’s best-known modern writer, Lu Xun, made his name a century ago as a coruscating critic of traditional Confucian culture, foreign bullying and the grandiose pieties of Chinese despots old and new.

一个世纪前，中国最著名的现代作家鲁迅以其对传统儒家文化、外国列强欺凌以及中国历代专制统治者冠冕堂皇的道德说教的犀利批判而声名鹊起。

Today, in his hometown, Shaoxing, a prosperous city in eastern China laced with canals, the writer has transformed from a fiery anti-establishment rebel into a cuddly Communist Party mascot. His prickly character and sharp views have been smoothed as flat as the refrigerator magnets sold across town as souvenir tributes to him.

如今，在他的故乡绍兴——中国东部一座富裕的水乡城市——这位作家已从一个反体制的激烈叛逆者转变为可爱的共产党吉祥物。他原本棱角分明的性格和犀利的观点已被打磨得如同全城各处作为纪念品出售的鲁迅冰箱贴一样光滑扁平。

鲁迅原本棱角分明的性格和犀利的观点已被打磨得如同全城各处作为纪念品出售的鲁迅冰箱贴一样光滑扁平。旅游区里一幅纪念鲁迅的壁画。

Shortly before his death in 1936, Lu Xun wrote that “when the Chinese suspect someone of being a potential troublemaker, they always resort to one of two methods: they crush him, or they hoist him on a pedestal.”

1936年去世前不久，鲁迅曾写道：“中国的人们，遇见带有会使自己不安的朕兆的人物，向来就用两样法：将他压下去，或者将他捧起来。”

Hoisted atop a giant pedestal by Mao Zedong, who in 1940 declared the writer “a hero without parallel in our history,” Lu Xun (pronounced Loo SHWUN) has stood for decades at the center of China’s most expansive literary-political cult.

1940年，毛泽东称鲁迅是“空前的民族英雄”，将他捧上了神坛。几十年来，鲁迅一直屹立在中国最庞大的文学政治崇拜的中心。

Mao’s preferred version of Lu Xun as an iconoclastic enemy of stale orthodoxies, however, has been cast aside in recent years to make way for a tamer, cheerier version — one that’s more in tune with the drive by China’s current leader, Xi Jinping, to promote national pride by celebrating the “glorious achievements” of the country’s past. As such, the author has become something of a case study in the Communist Party’s efforts to repackage China’s complex history to serve its official narrative.

然而，毛泽东推崇的那个作为陈腐教条反叛者的鲁迅近年来已被搁置一旁，取而代之的是一个更温顺、更欢快的版本。这个新形象更符合中国现任领导人习近平的路线——通过歌颂国家过去的“光辉成就”来激发民族自豪感。因此，这位作家已成为中国共产党努力重新包装中国的复杂历史、为官方叙事服务的典型案例。

Under Mr. Xi, the authorities have cracked down hard on negativity, punishing bloggers and online influencers for demonstrating “excessively pessimistic sentiment” — something that Lu Xun himself often displayed.

在习近平领导下，当局严厉打击负面情绪，惩处那些“恶意挑动负面情绪”的博主和网络红人——而这种情绪恰恰是鲁迅本人经常表现出来的。

No longer portrayed by the Communist Party as an irascible rebel, the writer is now represented as a cute Disney-style cartoon character, the stone streets around his childhood home dotted with big fiberglass dolls bearing his likeness.

共产党不再将这位作家描绘成一个脾气暴躁的反叛者，而是将他塑造成可爱的迪士尼风格卡通形象，在他儿时故居周边的石板路上，点缀着许多以他为原型的巨大玻璃钢人偶。

At Lu Xun’s boyhood school in Shaoxing, which he once recalled as a place of such mind-numbing tedium that he wanted his teacher to “fall ill and — ideally — die,” he is remembered on a sign outside as a “diligent and reflective learner” who eagerly soaked up what he was told in the classroom.

在绍兴的鲁迅童年求学旧址——他曾回忆说那里枯燥得令人昏昏欲睡，甚至希望老师“生病，最好是死掉”——但如今，校外的一块牌子将他誉为“勤奋好学的学生”，渴望吸收课堂上讲授的一切。

Across the road, the facade of a Lu Xun museum has been plastered with one of Mr. Xi’s favorite slogans aimed at young people: “Inherit the Red Gene and Promote Patriotism.”

马路对面，鲁迅纪念馆的建筑立面上贴着习近平最喜欢的一句面向青年的口号：“传承红色基因，弘扬爱国主义。”

And in another possible step by officials to revise the author’s image, a big Lu Xun memorial complex in Shaoxing has been closed since the end of last year for “repairs,” as has an even larger complex in Shanghai.

此外，官方似乎还在采取其他举措重塑这位作家的形象：绍兴的一座大型鲁迅纪念综合体自去年年底以来一直因“维修”而关闭，上海的一处更大规模的建筑群也是如此。

绍兴鲁迅母校附近运河上的观光船。

Lu Xun was born Zhou Shuren in 1881 into a scholar-gentry family that had fallen on hard times. He adopted the pseudonym to publish his first major work, “Diary of a Madman,” the first modern short story written in vernacular Chinese, in 1918.

鲁迅原名周树人，1881年出生于一个没落的士绅家庭。1918年，他使用鲁迅这一笔名发表了首部重要作品《狂人日记》，这是中国第一篇用白话文创作的现代短篇小说。

The story’s protagonist, convinced that Confucian tradition encouraged cannibalism, is driven mad by the idea that he had been “living all these years in a place where for 4,000 years they have been eating human flesh.”

故事的主人公确信儒家传统鼓励吃人，并因意识到自己多年来一直生活在一个“四千年来时时吃人的地方”而发疯。

That dark reading of China’s history sits uneasily with Mr. Xi’s “China Dream,” a program of “national rejuvenation” that largely blames foreigners for the country’s past problems and exalts Chinese tradition.

这种对中国历史的阴暗解读与习近平的“中国梦”显得格格不入。后者的“民族复兴”计划在很大程度上将国家过去的问题归咎于外国人，并推崇中国传统。

Hostile to “historical nihilism” — code for any version of history that besmirches the party or China — Mr. Xi has created what Geremie Barmé, an Australian Sinologist who studied in China during the Mao era, calls an “empire of tedium,” a cheery chloroformed calm in which even grumpy troublemakers like Lu Xun are made to smile and fall into line.

习近平对“历史虚无主义”—— 即任何有损党或中国形象的历史叙述——持敌对态度，他所营造的氛围被曾在毛泽东时代留学中国的澳大利亚汉学家白杰明(Geremie Barmé)称为“沉闷帝国”——一种愉悦的、被麻醉后的平静。在这样的氛围之下，即使是像鲁迅这样脾气古怪的麻烦制造者，也要被迫面带微笑，乖乖就范。

But even before Mr. Xi came to power, Lu Xun’s mordant pessimism had drawn flak from some nationalist intellectuals who accused him of channeling colonial-era missionary stereotypes of China as backward and cruel.

但甚至在习近平上台之前，鲁迅辛辣的悲观主义就已遭到一些民族主义知识分子的抨击，他们指责他沿袭了殖民时期传教士对中国落后、残忍的刻板印象。

旅游区展出一张鲁迅与家人的珍贵合影。鲁镇的田园风光，这是一个以鲁迅笔下人物为主题的文学主题公园。

His grandson, Zhou Lingfei, dismissed this as a “serious misreading” of Lu Xun’s works. He declined to be interviewed in person, but said, in a written response to questions, that his grandfather’s “aim was to help the Chinese people stand up and rise above their circumstances, not to blindly copy the West or pander to prejudice.”

鲁迅的孙子周令飞驳斥这是对鲁迅作品的“严重误读”。他拒绝了面对面的采访，但在书面回复中表示，祖父的“目标是帮助中国人民站起来，超越他们自身的处境，而不是盲目模仿西方或迎合偏见”。

The study of Lu Xun has been part of China’s national school curriculum for decades, though the list of his mandatory texts has been periodically pruned to keep up with shifting political winds. Gone since the Chinese army’s 1989 assault on Tiananmen Square, for example, is “In Memory of Miss Liu Hezhen,” a rage-filled essay he wrote to mourn the death of a student protester shot by government troops in Beijing in 1926.

几十年来，鲁迅研究一直是中国国家学校课程的一部分，尽管为了顺应政治风向的变化，他的必读作品清单不时会被修改。例如，自1989年中国军队镇压天安门事件以来，鲁迅那篇义愤填膺的散文《纪念刘和珍君》便从课本中消失了。这篇文章是他为悼念1926年在北京被政府军枪杀的一名学生抗议者而写的。

Also omitted from study is Lu Xun’s observation to the American journalist Edgar Snow about the 1912 collapse of China’s last imperial dynasty: “Before the revolution we were slaves. And now we are the slaves of ex-slaves.”

同样被剔出教学范畴的还有鲁迅向美国记者埃德加·斯诺谈及对1912年满清王朝崩塌后的观察：“我觉得革命以前，我是做奴隶；革命以后不多久，就受了奴隶的骗，变成他们的奴隶了。”

Though hailed by Mao as the “saint of modern China” and a “true Marxist and thorough materialist,” Lu Xun never joined the Communist Party or considered himself a Marxist. He was tormented during the last, illness-plagued period of his life by overbearing party commissars who hijacked a group of left-wing writers that he nominally led, pressuring him to abandon his individualistic ways and embrace “proletarian literature.”

尽管鲁迅被毛泽东赞誉为“现代中国的圣人”，称他“是真正的马克思主义者，是彻底的唯物主义者”，但鲁迅从未加入共产党，也不认为自己是马克思主义者。在生命的最后阶段，他深受疾病困扰，受到权力过大的党内文官的排挤。这些人接管了他名义上领导的一群左翼作家，向他施压，要求他放弃个人主义风格，拥护“无产阶级文学”。

作家雕像旁的一块石碑上镌刻着“民族魂”。几十年来，鲁迅的研究一直是中国国家学校课程的一部分，尽管其必读作品清单会随着政治风向的变化而定期进行调整。

Opposed to Chiang Kai-shek, China’s Nationalist leader from 1928 until 1949, Lu Xun did mentor many young, Communist-inclined writers in the 1920s and ’30s. But his closest disciples, who included the poet and literary theorist Hu Feng, suffered terrible persecution after Mao took power in 1949.

虽然鲁迅反对1928年至1949年间的中国国民党领袖蒋介石，在20世纪二三十年代提携了许多倾向共产主义的年轻作家，但他最亲近的弟子们在1949年毛泽东掌权后却遭受了惨烈的迫害，包括诗人、文艺理论家胡风。

Most foreign scholars and many liberal-minded Chinese believe that Lu Xun would have faced the same fate had he lived long enough to see Communist Party rule. He most likely would have fled China, possibly for Japan, where he had studied medicine as a young man and had many close friends, Mr. Barmé said.

大多数外国学者和许多思想开明的中国人都相信，如果鲁迅活得足够久，能亲眼看到共产党的统治，他也会面临同样的命运。白杰明认为，他很可能会逃离中国，或许前往日本——他年轻时曾在那里学医，并有许多挚友。

In a book published in 2001, a time of relative openness, Lu Xun’s since-deceased son, Zhou Haiying, reported that even Mao had once acknowledged that the writer “would either have gone silent or gone to jail” if he had been alive after the 1949 Communist victory. The book attributed Mao’s remark to a Chinese official and translator who said he had heard it at a private meeting between the Chinese leader and Shanghai intellectuals in 1957.

在2001年（一个相对开放的时期）出版的一本书中，鲁迅已故的儿子周海婴曾披露，毛泽东本人也承认，如果鲁迅在1949年后还活着，“要么是关在牢里还要写，要么他识大体不做声”。书中称毛泽东的这段话是由一位中国官员兼翻译披露，该官员称这是他在1957年毛泽东与上海知识分子的私人会面中亲耳所闻。

Party historians insisted in 2018 that Mao never said any such thing, citing the “untrue rumor” as an example of why China must commit to a “long and arduous struggle against historical nihilism.”

2018年，党史学家坚称毛泽东从未说过这样的话，并引用这个“以讹传讹”作为中国必须致力于“反对历史虚无主义的持久战”的例子。

这位天生爱唱反调的作家已从共产主义革命的烈焰象征蜕变为惹人喜爱的吉祥物。鲁镇的一家礼品店，游客可以在这里购买以鲁迅为主题的冰淇淋、面条和开衫等商品。

On the edge of a lake in Shaoxing, a literary theme park called Lu Town has recreated the settings of Lu Xun’s best-known stories. A stone inscription next to a statue of the writer at the entrance celebrates him as “the soul of China.” Stalls hawk Lu Xun-themed ice cream, noodles, cardigans and knickknacks.

在绍兴的一个湖边，一个名为“鲁镇”的文学主题公园再现了鲁迅最知名故事中的场景。入口处鲁迅雕像旁的一段石刻赞美他是“民族魂”。摊位上兜售着以鲁迅为主题的冰淇淋、面条、开衫和各式小玩意。

Lu Xun’s grandson, Mr. Zhou, said he welcomed the park’s “initial intention” — getting young people to engage with a long-dead author whose idiosyncratic prose, a mix of classical and modern Chinese, is often hard to understand — but “firmly opposes excessive commercialization and cheap entertainment.”

鲁迅的孙子周令飞表示，他赞同该园区的“初衷”——引导年轻人接触这位早已故去的作家，其半文半白的独特文风往往晦涩难懂——但他“坚决反对过度商业化和低俗娱乐”。

“The True Story of Ah-Q,” a biting satire that ends with the execution of its main character, is played for laughs in a small theater in Lu Town that stages five short shows a day.

《阿Q正传》是一部尖锐的讽刺小说，以主人公被处决告终，但在鲁镇的一家小剧院里，这部作品却被演绎成了闹剧，每天上演五场。

旅游区一家商店里，作家身着其标志性毛衣的剪影。

A character created by Lu Xun in 1921 as a craven Chinese Everyman, the original Ah-Q cuts a pathetic figure, groveling to the authorities while bullying the powerless.

鲁迅在1921年创作的这个人物是一个懦弱的中国普通人形象；原作中的阿Q是一个可悲的角色，一面对权贵摇尾乞怜，一面欺凌弱者。

The Shaoxing theme park has turned this bleak story into slapstick comedy. During one recent show, the postal worker-turned-actor who plays Ah-Q hammed it up onstage and, afterward, posed for selfies with Chinese tourists. Lu Xun, the actor said, “was writing about a very different time” when China was still poor and weak, and needed to be reminded that the flaws of people like Ah-Q were to blame.

绍兴的主题公园将这个凄凉的故事改成了滑稽喜剧。在最近的一场演出中，扮演阿Q的是一名邮递员转行的演员，他在台上卖力表演，在演出结束后与中国游客合影。这位演员说，鲁迅“写的是一个非常不同的时代”，那时中国还贫穷落后，需要被提醒，阿Q这类人的缺陷是导致贫弱的原因。

Today, he added, those shameful times have passed and “Ah-Q is dead.”

他补充道，现如今，那些可耻的时代已经过去，“阿Q已经死了”。