On the morning of July 19, 1923, at No. 11 Badaowan, Beijing, a middle-aged man was sitting in his room reading a newspaper. At that moment, the door of the room was suddenly pushed open, and a man of medium stature, wearing glasses and a beard, broke in. He saw that the man had not yet arrived to speak. The man who broke in threw a letter in his hand with a “snap” on the table and turned away.
Who are these two people? These two people are not others but the famous literary writer Lu Xun and his brother Zhou Zuoren in the Chinese literary world. The letter from Zhou Zuoren to Lu Xun also became a Dear John letter. Since that day, the two brothers have broken up and even reached the point of a big fight, to the point of old age and not communicating with each other. What does that farewell letter say? What exactly caused siblings and close relatives from childhood to adulthood to cause such trouble?
According to later records, we learned of the content of the letter, which read: “Mr. Lu Xun, I only learned about it yesterday, but there is no need to say anything about the past… Please do not come back to the backyard in the future. There is nothing else I wish you peace of mind and self-respect. I will become a person on July 18th
As a party involved, Lu Xun already felt the tough attitude of his second brother Zhou Zuoren at the beginning of reading the letter. When he read the sentence “Please don’t come back to the backyard”, Lu Xun suddenly realized that his younger brother was going his own way, and this letter was a letter of friendship. As for the matter mentioned in the letter, Lu Xun, who was the party involved, immediately looked confused. He didn’t understand what his younger brother Zhou Zuoren was referring to as “past events”, and he wanted to figure it out.
After reading this letter of separation, Lu Xun sent someone to the backyard to invite Zhou Zuoren to his room to explain the reasons behind it. However, after waiting all afternoon, Lu Xun still did not wait for the arrival of his second brother. Lu Xun, who wanted to understand the matter, waited for Zhou Zuoren at the gate of the courtyard the next day, but what came was not an explanation, but Zhou Zuoren’s cold eyes and disdain, and a cold “hum”.
Before this incident, the Zhou family had their meals together in the backyard of Zhou Zuo’s house. Five days before the incident, Lu Xun wrote in his diary, “It was the night when he ate in his own room and prepared his own dish, which can be recorded.” From this, it can be felt that something must have happened in the Zhou family, which ultimately led to the breakup of the two brothers.
A week after the incident, Lu Xun used the borrowed 800 yuan to move out of the Zhou family and moved into No. 61 West Brick Tower Hutong in Beijing. As Lu Xun moved away from his home, the news of the discord between the Zhou brothers spread quickly in Beijing. Because the Zhou brothers’ position in the literary world is extraordinary, their family affairs have become an influential cultural event. However, Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren have been unwilling to talk about this matter to others, which makes it more complicated and confusing. The photo shows a group photo of Lu Xun and his family.
The discord between the Zhou brothers did not end because Lu Xun moved out, but became more and more serious. On June 11, 1924, Lu Xun returned to Badaowan Hutong to pick up books and some of his other belongings, but was unexpectedly cursed and beaten by Zhou Zuoren and his wife, Japanese Nobuko Yu. According to records, at that time, Zhou Zuoren held a censer and threw it at Lu Xun, while Lu Xun also picked up a tile and smashed it without showing any weakness.
There is not much record in Lu Xun’s diary about the “estrangement incident” between the two brothers, while Zhou Zuoren wrote in “Memoirs of Zhitang: 141: Indiscriminate Explanation (Part 2)”: “I have never publicly mentioned that incident, and it has been and will be the same in the past. In my diary, on July 17th, I used scissors to cut out the original written text
Later, Yu Dafu wrote in an article: “According to Feng Ju’s judgment, they thought that the discord between their brothers was completely a misunderstanding between the two. Zhou Zuoren’s Japanese wife even said that Lu Xun had disrespected her.” Zhou Zuoren’s Japanese wife once told Zhangchuan Island that Lu Xun was teasing her and listening to the windows of their house. However, according to Zhangchuan Island’s recollection, there were soil ditches outside the windows of the houses in the backyard of Badao Bay, and flowers were planted, People cannot approach. From this, it can be seen that Zhou Zuoren’s wife’s words are purely fabricated and fabricated.
Since the “break of friendship letter” and the fight, the relationship between the two brothers has never eased, and Zhou Zuoren’s hatred towards Lu Xun continued until his death. On October 19, 1936, at the age of 55, Lu Xun passed away at home. At that time, Zhou Zuoren was giving a class to his students. When he heard the news of Lu Xun’s death, he slowly closed his book and walked out of the classroom in a daze. During the Anti Japanese War, Zhou Zuoren became a “cultural traitor” until his death in 1967.