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The Luxun Native Place is a must-go site in Shaoxing. [Photo/VCG]

Shaoxing in East China's Zhejiang province will celebrate the 140th birthday of Lu Xun (1881-1936), one of the most influential Chinese writers, on Sept 25.

Thirty winners of the annual Lu Xun Literature Award will tour Shaoxing and introduce their works.

From Sept 15 to 30, operas themed on Lu Xun's classics will be staged at Shaoxing Grand Theater.

A poster of an opera adapted form A Madman's Diary, one of Lu Xun's classics. [Photo/zjol.com.cn]

This year also marks the 100th anniversary of the launch of Lu Xun's My Old Home, a classic novel featured in literature textbooks in China, Japan, and South Korean.

Experts from the three countries will gather in Shaoxing on Sept 25 and hold a banquet depicted in My Old Home.

A dish depicted in My Old Home. [Photo/zjol.com.cn]

Lu Xun was the pen name of Zhou Shuren, a famous Chinese writer, thinker and revolutionary. He was a leading figure of modern Chinese literature.

Zhou was born into a large and wealthy family in Shaoxing, 1881. He eventually left Shaoxing to receive a Western-style education in Jiangsu province's capital, Nanjing. He departed from there to study Western medicine in Japan in 1902.

His ambition to become a physician changed after he saw a documentary one day after classes at his medical school. He gave up his medical studies in Japan in his 20s after realizing that it was more important to spiritually enlighten his compatriots rather than to cure their physical diseases. 

Through his works, the master of irony produced harsh criticism of social problems in China.