Lu XUN'S LAUGH was bright and cheerful—it came from his heart. Whenever someone said something funny, he laughed so hard he couldn't even hold a cigarette. Sometimes his laughing ended in a fit of coughing.

Lu Xun walked with a light, nimble step, and my clearest memory is of seeing him put on his hat and walk out the door, left foot fIrst, without a thought for anything else.

Lu Xun didn't pay much attention to styles of attire; he would say: "I don't even notice other people's clothes …"

Once, when he was recovering from an illness, Lu Xun was having a smoke in his reclining chair next to an open window. I was there in an outlandish bright red blouse with puffy sleeves.
Lu Xun said: "This muggy weather is typical for the rainy season." He pushed the cigarette farther into his ivory cigarette holder and changed the subject.

Xu Xiansheng was busy with her housework, running back and forth, and she, to0, took no notice of my clothes.

"Zhou Xiansheng," I asked, "how do you like what I'm wearing?"

He glanced over at me. "I don't …" After a moment be added: "You're wearing the wrong color skirt. It's not that the blouse isn't attractive—all colors are attractive—but with a red blouse you should wear either a red or a black skirt. Brown's no good. The colors clash. Have you ever seen a foreign woman wearing a green skirt with a purple blouse, or a white blouse over a red skirt? …" He looked at me from his reclining chair then said: "Now, your skirt is brown, and it's a plaid design, which makes the blouse look unattractive.

"… thin people shouldn't wear black, and heavy people shouldn't wear white. A woman with long legs ought to wear black shoes, but a woman with short legs should wear white ones … a stout woman shouldn't wear checks, but that's at least better than horizontal stripes. A woman wearing horizontal stripes looks even broader than she really is. Women like that should wear vertical stripes to make them look taller."

That day Lu Xun was in an expansive mood, and he even criticized some low boots I had worn, saying that they were military boots. According to him, the small loops in front and back were for hooking onto pantcuffs.

"Zhou Xiansheng," I said, "1 wore those boots for a long time, so why didn't you say anything before? Why bring it up now, when I'm not wearing them any longer? I've got new ones now." "That's why I'm telling you now. If I'd said something while you were wearing them, you'd have stopped."

We were going out for "dinner that evening, so I asked Xu Xiansheng to give me a piece of cotton or satin material to tie up my hair. She brought out three pieces: one beige, one green and one that was the color of a peach. We chose beige. Then just for fun she took the peach-colored one and put it in my hair, saying grandly: "Oh, that's nice! That's just beautiful!"

I couldn't have been more pleased, so, with a coy little display of elegance, I waited for Lu Xun to look my way. Lu Xun glanced over with a stern look on his face, his eyelids lowered a bit as he fixed his gaze on us.

"Don't make her up like that …"

Xu Xiansheng was a little embarrassed, and I immediately felt somewhat deflated.

……