The New Year's Sacrifice

by Lu Xun

In case of necessity one could use veiled allusions, but unfortunately I did not know how to, so although questions kept rising to the tip of my tongue, I had to bite them back. From his solemn expression I suddenly suspected that he looked on me as choosing not earlier nor later but just this time to come and trouble him, and that I was also a bad character; therefore to set his mind at rest I told him at once that I intended to leave Luchen the next day and go back to the city.

Genres: China

48 pages, Paperback

First published March 25, 1924

About the author

Lu Xun (鲁迅) or Lu Hsün (Wade-Giles), was the pen name of Zhou Shuren (September 25, 1881 – October 19, 1936), a leading figure of modern Chinese literature. Writing in Vernacular Chinese as well as Classical Chinese, Lu Xun was a novelist, editor, translator, literary critic, essayist, and poet. In the 1930s he became the titular head of the League of Left-Wing Writers in Shanghai.


For the Traditional Chinese profile: here.
For the Simplified Chinese profile: 鲁迅

Reviews

[Vladys Kovsky · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite a remarkable short story.
Lu Xun was one of the first writers to adopt modern Chinese. It looks like he was using modernist techniques as well. Clear use of unreliable narrator is well ahead of his time. New Year Sacrifice may imply not just a specific tradition but refer to the woman herself.

[liya · Rating 4 out of 5]

the way women were (and still kind of are) treated in china sucks. like what do you mean a woman is literally just a form of currency for men’s shenanigans? :|

xun did a great job highlighting these unethical practices. a forward thinker for his time.

[kyphion · Rating 3 out of 5]

i think in this moment, i don't particularly understand the role of the narrator nor the practice of the sacrifice (at least, not to the fullest extent intended) in the greater context of the story. i do think Xun did a great job of packing in a lot of nuance about gender roles and expectations in chinese society in such a short story.

what i drew as the strongest theme was Hsiang Lin's Wife being viewed as less than human. parts of the story even reminded me of slave stories.
- Hsiang Lin's Wife has no name, and nobody cares to ask her what it is. thus, she is only ever referred to by her relationship to a man, even long after that relationship no longer exists.
- people do not believe her when she says she did fight back when she was taken away to be married off to the man in the mountains, effectively victim blaming and having no sympathy for this woman.
- people treat her even worse after she loses her husband and her child, and eventually grow irritated of her retelling the story and begin to mock her. no one even refutes her idea that she is stupid/responsible for her son's death. if they don't mock her, they are just greatly unsettled by her for really no apparent/valid reason, when all she does is just exist.
- she progressively devolves in confidence and security in all aspects of her life the longer she lives. her mistress/master won't allow her to help prepare for the sacrifice, worried that just her being the way she is will ruin the sacrifice and that the ancestors wouldn't accept the sacrifice. although, as aforementioned, i don't feel that i understand the significance of the sacrifice to the fullest extent, i can understand how dejected Hsiang Lin's Wife would feel for being seen in this way.

thank god this is fiction because it made me really sad, but at the same time, if this is how women were(are?) culturally treated in china during this time, i still am really sad. it's horrible