A Writing of Memories That Stop at "Amazed" EmotionsRereading Wu Chang Hui

As the shortest essay in Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk, Wu Chang Hui is in a bleak interpretive position today, and has been largely incorporated into Lu Xun's series of attacks on patriarchy, even as a footnote to his 1919 essay How Should We Be a Father. But if we come back to the text itself, we will find that Wu Chang Hui is more about the fun of the festival itself than about the strong values and arguments. The "amazed" elements, apart from the emotional theme inherited from the essay How Should We Be a Father, seem to lie at a diametrically different interpretation.