A Madman's Diary

**Lu Xun's Founding Work of Modern Chinese Vernacular Fiction**

**Published in *New Youth* at the Dawn of the May Fourth Movement**

**Drawing on Gogol, Forging an Allegory Entirely China's Own**

**The Phrase "Cannibalism" That Reshaped 20th-Century Literature**

*"Save the children..." He wrote it as a diary. It read like a diagnosis of an entire civilization.*

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Published in 1918 in the monthly journal *New Youth*, Lu Xun's ***A Madman's Diary*** is widely regarded as the founding work of modern Chinese vernacular fiction. The story is framed as the diary of a "madman" suffering from persecution complex, preceded by a Classical Chinese prologue explaining that its author has since recovered and departed to await a government post—a framing device that seems designed to dismiss what follows as the ravings of a sick man.

It is not the ravings of a sick man. It is **a diagnosis of an entire cultural order**. Combing through ancient texts, the stares of his own clansmen, and his brother's meals, the madman uncovers murderous intent hidden beneath the Confucian virtues of benevolence and righteousness, until he can only cry out for children who have not yet learned to eat one another. **Personal madness becomes an indictment. The diagnosis outlives the diarist.**

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*\[Quote placeholder — let me know if you'd like a specific critic or writer quoted here\]* *—\[Author Name\], \[title/role\]*

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The birth of this story carried the sharp edge of Lu Xun's own turn from medicine to literature. Drawing on the form of **Nikolai Gogol's** story of the same name, read through Futabatei Shimei's Japanese translation, Lu Xun forged an entirely different allegory from China's own history and family ethics. Lu Xun himself later called the work "very naive and too hurried," but hoped it would break China's loneliness and summon more true creators. Scholar **C.T. Hsia** later admitted he had undervalued the story in his youth, while May Fourth thinker **Wu Yu** stated bluntly that Lu Xun had exposed the tricks of cannibals wearing the masks of Confucian morality—cementing "cannibalistic feudal morality" as the core image of the New Culture Movement's critique of tradition.

*The diary is only a few thousand words long.* *The phrase "cannibalism" has outlived every dynasty since.*