Lu Xun and Liu Hezhen: tragic lovers?

This short comic strip takes the form of an erotic thriller. The heroine embarks on a politically-motivated assassination attempt against Duan Qirui, a general who is collaborating with the Japanese. Liu Hezhen's strike against Duan follows another assassin's failed attempt to seduce and kill him.

Lots of blood and borderline nudity may make some people uncomfortable, and the theme may be too much of a cliche for anyone who's seen Lust, Caution and similar films.

But readers who spent their schooling years in China will immediately recognize what the creator is trying to accomplish: a parody that tries to make fun of Lu Xun's classic essay In Memory of Miss Liu Hezhen.

The creator, a Chinese manga artist who uses the name Dekisugi Taro (出木杉太郎), is behind another series that plays on high-school nostalgia. His English Text Book of The People's Publishing House weaves Li Lei, Han Meimei, and other familiar characters from a series of Chinese English textbooks into original stories.

In Memory of Miss Liu Hezhen was written by the celebrated and revered Left-wing writer Lu Xun in 1926. For decades, it had been in high school textbooks, and there was quite a bit of controversy when education authorities decided to remove it in 2007. There was speculation that the article was junked in part because it might remind people of a similar incident that occurred in 1989.

On March 18, 1926, students in Beiping staged a demonstration to protest the Japanese navy opening fire on Chinese troops in Tianjin. When protesters gathered outside the residence of Duan Qirui, a warlord who was chief executive of the Republic of China at the time, to submit their petition, a shooting was ordered and forty-seven people died. Among them was 22-year-old Liu Hejun, a student activist campaigning for a boycott of Japanese goods and the expulsion of foreign ambassadors.

Duan was deposed after the massacre and died of natural causes in 1936. In the following comic, which presents him as a womanizing blood-thirsty devil far younger than sixty-one years old, his fate is rather different.

Yang Yinyu, another assassin in the comic, was indeed the university president, but she little resembled the noble figure depicted by the artist. The American-educated Yang actually opposed the protest.

The cartoon characters are far cries from their real life inspirations, and the playful reinterpretation of history serves only to entertain rather than educate its readers, yet the author does deserve credit for his imagination for a tumultuous tale of tragic love.

Cover: "In Memory of Miss Liu Hezhen," based on the work by Lu Xun / art by DEKISUGI Taro.

May 18, 1926. Beijing: The General's Residence
Duan Qirui: President of the Peking Women's Teacher's College...What are you doing here?
Yang Yinyu: Please stop your soldiers from killing my students!

Duan Qirui: What for?
(swoosh)

Meanwhile...
Soldiers: Hi, little girl. Look around you.
Liu Hezhen: How did this happen? Yang Dequn...Zhang Jingshu...
I'm the only one left. No one knows whether principal Yang is still alive. What should I do? Teacher....

Bald soldier: Stop sulking, girly. I will make you feel good....
(swash)
Duan Qirui: You....

Duan Qirui: Name? Age?
Liu Hezhen: Liu Hezhen. Twenty two.
Duan Qirui: So you're the the prettiest one in your college.
Still a virgin?
Now come with me.

Liu Hezhen: General, I beg you....
Duan Qirui: Say nothing. My army cannot...
...stop cooperating with the Japanese. Unless you kill me.
Liu Hezhen: Principal?!
Duan Qirui: But this woman already tried that.

Duan Qirui: I can spare your life. However...
You wretch!
(swash)

Lu Xun: Out of the way! Out of the way!
This sort of petition is nothing short of suicide!
(bang)

Liu Hezhen: I did it.
Lu Xun: Liu Hezhen, how could you be so foolish?
Liu Hezhen: Keep on... fighting....
Teacher, I love you.
Lu Xun: Noooooo!

Excerpted from "In Memory of Miss Liu Hezhen":

I really have nothing to say, though. I just feel that we are not living in the world of men. In a welter of more than forty young people's blood I can barely see, hear or breathe, so what can I say? We can make no long lament till after our pain is dulled. And the insidious talk of some so-called scholars since this incident has added to my sense of desolation. I am beyond indignation. I shall sup deeply of the dark desolation which is not of the world of men, and present my deepest grief to this world which is not of men, letting it delight in my pain. This shall be the poor offering of one still living before the shrine of the dead.

True fighters dare face the sorrows of humanity, and look unflinchingly at bloodshed. What sorrow and joy are theirs! But the Creator's common device for ordinary people is to let the passage of time wash away old traces, leaving only pale-red bloodstains and a vague pain; and he lets men live on ignobly amid these, to keep this quasi-human world going. When will such a state of affairs come to an end?

I could not bear to look at this cruel sight. Even more, I could not bear to hear these rumours. What else is there I can say? I understand why a dying race remains silent. Silence, silence! Unless we burst out, we shall perish in this silence!

Alas, I can say no more. But I have written this in memory of Miss Liu Hezhen.

In the aftermath of the deaths, wild speculations about the nature of the incident multiplied. In his emotionally-charged essay, Lu Xun dismissed the theories circulating among the intellectual class, writing "the insidious talk of some so-called scholars since this incident has added to my sense of desolation."

Although Lu Xun was not explicit about what exactly the "insidious talk" was, evidence over the years has suggested that the demonstration was staged in concert with other political maneuverings involving Li Dazhao, the co-founder of the communist party. That Duan's resignation from office came only a month later seemed too convenient to be a coincidence.