Lu Xun's location in the prosperous and maddening foreigner-leased land and its cultural climate impels Lu Xun to make adaptations
in his writing. In terms of his essays, the following three changes can be shown: (1) the inner motivation of writing is shifted from being active to being passive; (2) the horizons of criticism in his essays are becoming narrower; (3) compared with his essays in the previous period, which are directed towards the whole traditional culture and regulations, the essays in the later period are targeted towards the evil behavior prevalent in the limited foreigner-leased land; hence, the former is grand narrative concerned about the anti-traditional agricultural culture while the latter is trifling and fragmented narrative concerned about anti-modern business culture.
Newly Adapted Stories by Lu Xun demonstrates two sharp contrasts between his early period of writing and his later period, which, obviously, results from the influence of the
leased-land culture. The wit, tragic and conscientious, in the three short stories in the early period comes from the affections inborn and inherent while the wit is comedic and slippery in the five short stories in the later period. The first three stories integrate more of the subjectivity while the later five stories are presented by "the other," thus lacking the enthusiastic participation of the individual lives.