Born during the decline of the Qing, Lu Xun would go on to be one of China's most important modern writers for his literary efforts to cure the body China. Today, Lu Xun's Former Residence (Lǔ Xùn Gùjū, 鲁迅故居) is part of a number of sites, alongside Lu Xun's former school (Sānwèi Shū Wū, 三味书屋), Lu Xun's Ancestral Home and Lu Xun Memorial Hall, forming a block named the Lu Xun Native Place (Lǔ Xùn Gùlǐ Fēngjǐng Qū, 鲁迅故里风景区).

The residence preserves the traditional Zhejiang garden compound trappings Lu Xun grew up in while the Lu Xun Memorial Hall (Lǔ Xùn Jìniànguǎn, 鲁迅纪念馆) takes the journey on to the author's later exploits with manuscripts and personal effects from his later life. Lu Xun's Ancestral Home (Lǔ Xùn Zǔjū, 鲁迅祖居) housed his ancestors until they moved into what is today called Lu Xun's Former Residence before the author's birth. Signage is in English and copies of Lu Xun's works are also available translated into English.

Lu Xun seemed unlikely to follow the path he did, growing up behind the walls of his successful Shaoxing family's beautiful compound, until tragedy struck. His grandfather was sentenced to death for bribery and between stress and legal costs, his father took up drinking heavily and became ill. After the death of his father following the failure of a number of obscure traditional medicines, Lu Xun chose to help modernize China by going to Nanjing, and later Japan, to study Western medicine.

Lu Xun's path would take another turn after he realized physical medicine wouldn't cure the social ails he saw after being shown a slide of a Chinese prisoner executed for spying during the Russo-Japanese War in front of a crowd of unsympathetic Chinese gathered to "watch the spectacle."

Returning to China, Lu Xun began teaching and his writing took on the task of elevating China's vernacular literature. Previously, any Chinese literature taken seriously was written in an obscure classical form rather than in the style of the day's spoken Chinese, similar to the days when European literature was written in Latin rather than vernacular.

Short stories like "A Madman's Diary" and "The Story of Ah Q" used vernacular Chinese (with fictional introductions in classical Chinese) to expose the problems Lu Xun saw in Qing and post-Qing China of corrupt authority over an opportunistic and subservient populace. Reference to the character Ah Q would later become byword for ails of Chinese society Lu Xun despised.

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