Encyclopedia of India–China Cultural Contacts v2.c15.s2.t20.2

v2.c15.s2.t20.2

He was born into a wealthy family in Changsha, Hunan Province, on October 26, 1909 and was the youngest son of the family. He received strict traditional education as a child, and later received modern education at Yali High School, a US church school in Changsha. His father had wished him to go to the well-known Xiangya School of Medicine, but in 1926, the Northern Expedition was under way, he had to give up medicine and went to study history at Wuchang National Sun Yat-sen University. In the following summer, he left Wuhan for Shanghai to study at the Department of Western Literature of Fudan University, meanwhile, he also took literature and medicine courses at Nanking University, and studied German on his own. In May 1928, he met Lu Xun in a lecture at Fudan University and maintained contact with the latter from then on. In August 1929, Xu went to Germany to study at the Department of Philosophy of Heidelberg University, and he also took courses on literature and history of western arts at University of Berlin.