Zhou Zuoren

Born in Shaoxing, Zhejiang, he was educated at the Jiangnan Naval Academy as a teenager. Following the steps of his brother Lu Xun, he left for Japan to pursue his studies in 1906. During his stint in Japan, he began studying Ancient Greek, with the aim of translating the Gospels into Classical Chinese, and attended lectures on Chinese philology by scholar-revolutionary Zhang Binglin at Rikkyo University, although he was supposed to study civil engineering there. He returned to China in 1911, with his Japanese wife, and began to teach in different institutions.

Writing essays in vernacular Chinese for the influential magazine La Jeunesse, Zhou was a key figure in the May Fourth Movement as well as the New Culture Movement. He was an advocate of literary reform. In a 1918 article, he called for a "humanist literature" in which "any custom or rule that goes against human instincts and nature should be rejected or rectified". As examples, he cited children sacrificing themselves for their parents and wives being buried alive to accompany their dead husbands. Zhou's ideal literature was both democratic and individualistic. On the other hand, Zhou made a distinction between "democratic" and "popular" literature. Common people may understand the latter, but not the former. This implies a difference between common people and the elite.[1] Zhou condemned elite traditional performances like the Beijing opera. He called it "disgusting," "nauseating," "pretentious" and referred to the singing as "a weird inhuman sound."[2]

His short essays, with their refreshing style, won him many readers up to the present day. An avid reader, he called his studies "miscellanies", and penned an essay titled "My Miscellaneous Studies" (我的雜學). He was particularly interested in folklore, anthropology and natural history. One of his favorite writers was Havelock Ellis. He was also a prolific translator, producing translations of classical Greek and classical Japanese literatures. Most of his translations are pioneering, which include a collection of Greek mimes, Sappho's lyrics, Euripides' tragedies, Kojiki, Shikitei Sanba's Ukiyoburo, Sei Shōnagon's Makura no Sōshi and a collection of Kyogen. He considered his translation of Lucian's Dialogues, which he finished late in his life, as his greatest literary achievement. He was also the first one to translate (from English) the story Ali Baba into Chinese (known as Xianü Nu 俠女奴). During the 1930s he was also a regular contributor to Lin Yutang's humor magazine The Analects Fortnightly and wrote extensively about China's traditions of humor, satire, parody, and joking, even compiling a collection of Jokes from the Bitter Tea Studio (Kucha'an xiaohua ji).[3] He became chancellor of Beijing University in 1939.

In 1945, after the Second Sino-Japanese War, Zhou was arrested for treason by the Nationalist government of Chiang Kai-shek, stemming from his alleged collaboration with the Wang Jingwei government during the Japanese occupation of north China. Zhou was sentenced to 14 years in Nanjing Prison, but was released in 1949 by the Communist government after a pardon. Later that year he returned to Beijing. He continued to write and translate, but published his works under pseudonyms. He died during the Cultural Revolution. During the first decades of the People's Republic of China, Zhou Zuoren's writings were not widely available to readers due to his alleged collaboration. Only during the relatively liberal 1980s did his works become available again. The Chinese scholar Qian Liqun 錢理群 in 2001 published an extensive biography of Zhou Zuoren entitled "Biography of Zhou Zuoren" 周作人传.