only depressed him further, for he found, as did the villagers of Wei in "Our Story of Ah Q," that things were much the same as they had always been except in name. The worst of it was that his experience in Tokyo and Shao-hsing had made him aware of his own limitations and convinced him that he was not one of those born leaders "at whose call people gathered like clouds."
In 1912 he accepted a post as counsellor in the Ministry of Education in the Provisional Government at Nanking and went to Peking in the same year when the seat of the government was transferred to the latter city. There in a secluded room in the Guild House of his native Chekiang he sought escape and forgetfulness in China's past. The Chinese scholar in him asserted itself and for the next five or six years he occupied himself in reading and literary research and in collecting and transcribing rubbings of ancient monuments. Lusin was always modest and self-deprecatory about these literary efforts, though his achievements were considerable and included the first and so far still the best history of Chinese fiction. He called this preoccupation his own form of opium smoking.
In 1918, however, he was awakened out of his "opium dreams" and dragged from seclusion by his friend Ch'ien Hsuan-t'ung, who was actively associated with Hu Shih and Ch'en Tu-hsiu on the New Youth which launched the literary revolution. Lusin's mood and the skepticism with which he viewed the prospects of the movement can best be told in his own words.
