Lu Xinhua: Scars of Six Decades

(CNA, Beijing, May 18, Reporter: Chang Shu-ling) The young people who experienced the Cultural Revolution have grown old, and perhaps fewer people know what "scar literature" is. This type of literature, which exposed the various wounds brought by the Cultural Revolution, such as distorted humanity and family tragedies, once appeared openly in newspapers and magazines after the revolution ended. However, it gradually faded away within a few years because the causes of the scars could not withstand deep investigation and analysis. Nevertheless, as a product of its time, scar literature remains a landmark existence, another form of historical material for understanding the Cultural Revolution. The name "scar literature" originated from the short story "Scar." One morning in 1978, Lu Xinhua, a first-year student in the Chinese Department at Fudan University in Shanghai, was awakened by footsteps outside his door. When he went out, he saw a crowd in the hallway, all gathered around the class wall newspaper. Some female students were wiping away tears. The content on the wall newspaper was precisely the novel "Scar" that Lu Xinhua had submitted to his classmates a few days earlier. The novel's plot is about a young woman, Wang Xiaohua, who actively participated in the Cultural Revolution. When her mother was labeled a traitor, Wang Xiaohua decided to draw a clear line and leave home. Nine years later, her mother's case was exonerated, and she decided to return, but it was too late. When she rushed to the hospital, her mother was already a cold corpse. "Scar" caused a sensation at Fudan University, and the Chinese Department's teachers and students held a discussion session about it, with both supporting and critical opinions. Lu Xinhua later said that the literary analysis classes at the university greatly helped his creation. At that time, a teacher quoted Xu Shoushang's commentary on Lu Xun's short story "Blessing": "The tragedy of the world is not that the wolf ate Ah Mao, but that feudal etiquette devoured Xianglin's wife." This immediately made Lu Xinhua think: the greatest damage of the Cultural Revolution to Chinese society was not pushing the national economy to the brink of collapse, but inflicting permanent, unhealable scars on everyone's body and heart. Thus, he began to outline a family tragedy caused by political movements between two generations. On August 11, 1978, "Scar," revised according to editorial suggestions, was published on a full page of the Wenhui Bao's supplement. That day's newspaper was specially printed with 1.8 million copies, and reader letters flew like snowflakes from all over China to the Fudan Chinese Department. ● Scar Literature Was Destined to Be Short-Lived In December 2025, 71-year-old Lu Xinhua was interviewed by a CNA reporter in Shanghai. Forty-seven years have passed, and he is still writing, traveling between the US and China. The English version of his new work "Wú Lòu" (No Leak) won the silver award at the Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards, which recognizes outstanding works from independent and university presses. The experiences of the Cultural Revolution, Chinese culture, and contemporary Chinese social issues are all nutrients for his creation. Despite his works defining an era, behind this glamour, he says that scar literature was destined to be short-lived. This is because as scar literature developed, it would expose not just the "Gang of Four," but the entire system, the entire structure. Therefore, scar literature gradually disappeared. Chen Sihe, a professor at Fudan University's Chinese Department, defines scar literature as follows: The characteristic of scar literature is its concentrated firepower in exposing the disasters of the Cultural Revolution; it is a literature of "accusation," accusing the Cultural Revolution of the disasters it brought to China. Anger, despair, and protest were the main contents of this ideological trend. But Chinese society has not yet emerged from the shackles and shadows of ideology. At that time, some people wrote articles like "On Goethe and Morality-Lacking," fiercely criticizing "scar literature" in mainstream media, arguing that works exposing the dark side of society were essentially "immoral" literature. For safety, some works of scar literature at the time would still emphasize positive characters, a tactic known as "minor criticism, major help." Even after "Scar" was publicly published and attracted national attention, it was difficult to publish such works. They had to go through various kinds of censorship and castration. Lu Xinhua, already famous, still encountered such situations, let alone ordinary people. "The whole society still had a deep-rooted, stubborn mechanism that resisted criticism of the era and society." ● Different Understandings of Revolution Between Father and Son In the novel "Scar," the heartbroken mother is powerless in the face of her resolute daughter. In reality, Lu Xinhua and his father also had inconsistent positions on "revolution." Lu Xinhua often argued with his father. "He couldn't stand my 'sentimental petty-bourgeois thoughts' and 'Western ideas.' In fact, he couldn't stand many of the normal human things from our past. My grades were good, and my essays were good, but my father would actually say things like: 'I only need his ideology to be good.'" Lu Xinhua's father was a soldier from an orphan background, with "deep bitterness and hatred," which he believes might have made him more receptive to the education of class hatred. But no matter how much one believed in the Party, one would feel confused amidst frequent political struggles. During the Lushan Conference in 1959, then-Minister of Defense Peng Dehuai was labeled an "anti-Party clique" for criticizing Mao Zedong. At that time, Lu Xinhua's father, as a confidential staff officer responsible for translating classified telegrams, was shocked to read the notice. A great marshal and hero had become the head of an anti-Party clique overnight. Lu's father passed away in 2009. Lu Xinhua believes that in his later years, his father had some understanding and awareness of certain situations, "but he wouldn't say it; he couldn't admit he was wrong in front of his son." In 1976, when the most important political group of the Cultural Revolution, the "Gang of Four," fell, Lu Xinhua felt "liberated." "In my struggle with my father, I found that I was not wrong in many aspects, but he was. He was too deeply poisoned by the ultra-leftist ideology of the Gang of Four." He wanted to express these thoughts through writing, which was one of the reasons for writing "Scar." After "Scar" was published, his father was both happy and worried for his son. People in mainland China had been through constant political movements since 1949. At that time, some believed that the situation was hard to predict, and one might have to wait ten years to see. Perhaps the situation would reverse, and Lu Xinhua would have to go to prison. ● Life Turned Around with the Resumption of the College Entrance Exam Lu Xinhua was born in 1954 and was 24 when he wrote "Scar." The university students of that year were relatively old because the college entrance exam (known as "gaokao" in China) had been abolished during the Cultural Revolution and was not reinstated until the end of 1977. That winter, about 5.7 million junior and senior high school students from 11 cohorts between 1966 and 1977 walked into the examination halls together. Lu Xinhua's classmate, Li Hui, later recalled in an article the scene of walking into the examination hall in the cold weather of December 1977, "Probably very few people were clearly aware that they were walking not just into simple examination halls, but into a turning point of great historical significance" (from "Me and the Eighties," China Publishing House). Li Hui said that the significance of resuming the gaokao was actually to restore due respect for modern human civilization, allowing a China that had fallen into chaos and near-madness to have a minimum degree of realistic sobriety. Another of their classmates, Chen Sihe, a professor in the Chinese Department at Fudan University, said in a dialogue with Lu Xinhua: "Scar literature is mainly constituted by the fate of our generation. You and I are the very few lucky ones of this generation; we entered Fudan University and thus changed our destiny. But the vast majority of our peers were not so lucky; their entire futures were ruined by the 'Cultural Revolution' and the 'Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside' movement. They were deprived of the right to study, work, live normally, and freely choose their life paths, all because they naively believed the lies fabricated by that era." ("How Can One Bear to See: New Scars Added to the Old") Going to university was only the first step in returning to a normal social life. Subsequently, China underwent reform and opening up. Of the generation that experienced the Cultural Revolution, only a few received the dividends of the era, going abroad to study or into business—lifestyles unimaginable in the first 30-plus years of the PRC. Lu Xinhua went abroad to study in 1986, earning a Master of Arts in Literature from UCLA. He was also once called "the first Chinese intellectual to go into business," but he himself says the real "first person" was someone else. After resigning from Wenhui Bao, Lu Xinhua founded his own company. The idea at the time was that he had experienced being a worker, peasant, soldier, and student, but not business. From a writing perspective, he needed to understand the thoughts of this group of people, so he wanted to experience it. "After experiencing it, I found that I couldn't continue, because cheating and deception are inevitable in business activities. Even if you don't cheat, you have to guard against others cheating you, which is impossible to fully prevent," Lu Xinhua recalled of his years running a company in Shenzhen, saying that since it was for the experience, he later resigned. In 2011, Lu Xinhua wrote a long philosophical essay, "Wealth is Like Water." At that time, problems like corruption and food safety were very serious in Chinese society. He said: "The obsession with and greed for wealth is another scar of our time." ● Why Are We Still Discussing the Cultural Revolution? The Cultural Revolution subverted the existing bureaucratic system, leading to perverse measures such as students beating teachers, rebel workers taking over management, intellectuals being sent to "cowsheds," and universities suspending classes and admissions (from 1970, admission was based on recommendation by class status for "worker-peasant-soldier students"). Why could these policies, which seem absurd today, exist? Lu Xinhua believes that the Cultural Revolution has genes from Chinese culture. He cites the Neo-Confucianism of Cheng-Zhu school's "preserve heavenly principles, extinguish human desires" as an example. He points out that this emphasis on the spiritual and demanding that the common people give up material desires is similar to Mao Zedong's proposals of "struggle against selfishness and criticize revisionism," "better to have socialist weeds than capitalist seedlings," and "restrict bourgeois legal rights." These sound noble but are in fact against human nature, used to limit people's rights, and resulted in humanitarian disasters. The "heavenly principle" that was preserved became "Mao Zedong Thought, Marxism-Leninism." In 2004, he published the novel "The Forbidden Woman," a story about a sterile woman whose reproductive system, under the long-term effect of "extinguishing human desires," gradually formed a "great dam," equivalent to a blocked channel for survival. This symbolizes that there is also a "great dam" in Chinese culture, blocking the country's pace of advancing with the times. Half a century has passed since the end of the Cultural Revolution. Are there still unanswered questions? Lu Xinhua says, "Judging from the two cognitions of the Cultural Revolution in society—one being a 'catastrophe' and the other a 'painstaking exploration'—the reckoning with the Cultural Revolution is definitely not thorough. At least, there are attempts for the Cultural Revolution ideology to make a comeback. But for the Cultural Revolution to truly be restored would certainly be very difficult. Because that would be a reaction against civilization, a move against the tide of history. The result would likely be nothing more than another short-lived 'Zhang Xun Restoration.'" (Editor: Chu Chien-ling) 1150518