Calligraphy piece by Lu Xun [Photo/Beijing Times]

A rarely seen calligraphy of modern literati Lu Xun (1881-1936) sold for 3.05 million yuan ($477,000) at a Beijing auction on Saturday.

The hand-written piece has only verses and 16 characters. It aroused heated bidding in the salesroom of Council International Auction. The final price means that every character Lu wrote fetched about 190,000 yuan, an auction record for the author's calligraphy.

Lu Xun wrote the piece to Shimizu Yasuzo (1891—1988), a Japanese educator and Catholic missionary. He came to China in 1917 and founded a girl's school in Beijing in 1920, the now famous Chen Jinglun Middle School.

Yasuzo befriended many Chinese authors and scholars, including Lu Xun and his brother Zhou Zuoren.

In the verses, Lu Xun criticized people whose inside and outside are in disagreement and those who are demoralized. The words mark his signature style of being sarcastic and thought provoking.

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