As Professor states in the lecture, the opening of revisiting the old place has some common points with the poem Line Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey as both of them express the feeling of nostalgia. Lu Xun finds that everything has changed during his revisit. “When I passed the gate of the school, I found that too had changed its name and appearance, which made me feel quite a stranger”. Not only does he feel strange to this city, he also feels strange when he encounters his old friend Lu Wei-fu in the wine shop. Revisiting is part of the central theme of the story since this is a story about how people have changed during the time after their dreams are defeated by the reality. Revisiting the old place also enables me (Lu Xun) to revisit my old classmate’s life.
First of all, Lu Xun and Lu Wei-fu has connection with each other because they are classmates and colleagues before. They play together when they are young to go to the temple and pull off the bread of the statue and they share their thoughts on revolutionizing China. This is just their physical connection from superficiality. In addition to that, they have the same spirit for revolution and the longing for a better life. Both of them are supporters of the New Culture Movement where they want to introduce western education system to China.
In the Wine Shop is like a monologue of Lu Wei-fu just like T.S. Eliot’s poem we read last time. I think the narrator shares very little about himself because Lu Wei-fu’s story can represent himself to some extent, and even can represent the majority of Chinese scholars at that time.
For the question of artificial flower that raised in the class, my own opinion is that artificial flower is considered as superior thing over real flower in the story. We can see that, China was very underdeveloped at that time and anything from industrialized world was put at superiority. In the text, sugar is something that can represent wealth because artificial sugar is very scarce. Some logic can be applied to the explanation of artificial flower. Another insight that I have (though may not be correct) is that Lu Wei-fu wants to step out his small city to embrace the bigger world. He also wants Ah Shun to do that. So he goes far away to Tsinan, a larger city, to buy flower for her. It’s like a sign to encourage her to have broaden horizon.
Thanks for responding to my question about the flowers. It seems to me important here that the girl yearns for artificial flowers that must be brought from far away while there are real red flowers blooming right outside (even in the snow.). To me this seems like a possible metaphor for the tension between westernization and nationalism. To my mind, real flowers (one’s native culture) are superior to artificial ones (foreign culture) – yet people need to be reminded that this is the case.