Writer's reputation lives on 85 years after death

Lu Xun's works occupy a bookshelf at the home of Hou Xiaotong, a Chinese-language teacher at a middle school in Beijing. Lu's essays and short stories are selected for textbooks, but primary and middle school students, many of whom are unable to understand the essential ideas of his work, are often required to recite entire passages written about a century ago in a style they find challenging. However, 140 years after his birth, Lu's name often features on social media platforms, as people love quoting him-falsely in numerous cases. In late February last year, Wu Yifan, who at the time was a 21-year-old finance student at Peking University, posted a video of a rap song he wrote based on 16 prose poems from Lu's Wild Grass collection. He became bored with being cooped up indoors, so he started rereading Wild Grass, which he had read many times since leaving middle school.