Background
Lu Wenfu was born on March 23, 1927 in Taixing, Jiangsu, China. Being kept under the thoughtful and careful love of his mother, Lu spent a peaceful childhood.
陆文夫
Lu Wenfu was born on March 23, 1927 in Taixing, Jiangsu, China. Being kept under the thoughtful and careful love of his mother, Lu spent a peaceful childhood.
When 6 years old, Lu Wenfu went to an old-style school, where his teacher was impressed by his interest in reading and gave him a formal name Wenfu (which means literary and culture), in the hope of him becoming a litterateur. During the Second Sino-Japanese War, Lu finished primary and secondary school in Taixing.
In 1945 he went to live with relatives in Suzhou for recuperation and studied in Suzhou High School. After graduation, he was admitted into two universities in Shanghai. But his family couldn't afford the school tuition and other expenses. So he transferred to the Subei Liberated Area, where he was assigned to Huazhong University to study Marxism. After graduating from the Huazhong University in Yancheng, Lu took part in the Chinese Communist Revolution in northern Jiangsu.
In 1949 Lu Wenfu returned to Suzhou and became a reporter of New Suzhou Report (now renamed as Suzhou Daily). In 1955 he started the first period of his over 50 years' writing career. Two years later Lu became a member of Literary Federation of Jiangsu. In 1957 he joined Gao Xiaosheng (高晓声, 20th century author) and some others to found the magazine The Explorers (Tanqiuzhe, 探求者).
It came under great attack by the Communist leadership, for what Lu was denounced as a Rightist during the Great Leap Forward. He was soon sentenced to a machine tool plant as an apprentice in Suzhou. During the three years as a mechanic, Lu was awarded the honor of "Excellent Apprentice", "Advanced Worker" and "Crackerjack at Technical Innovations". As a result, he was deemed reformed and was allowed to write again. Nevertheless, with the Cultural Revolution breaking out in 1966, Lu was denounced once again and was sent to the fields for reeducation through labor until 1976. After the Cultural Revolution ended with Mao Zedong's death in 1976, Lu returned to Suzhou in November, 1978, at the age of 50.
In December, 1978, Lu became the managing editor of Suzhou magazine. It's during the Deng Xiaoping reform era that he started his second career as a writer. The works reflected on the unsettled and thought-provoking memories of modern history. Shortly after the novel Gourmet was published in 1988, Lu opened a restaurant, The Old Suzhou Gourmet House, serving exquisite, traditional Suzhou cuisine, as a way to realize his ideal of good food. Therefore, Lu Wenfu was known in Chinese literary circles for his catering business, as an authentic gourmet both in name and fact.
On July 9, 2005, Lu Wenfu died of emphysema, at the age of 78.