Abstract: This paper takes an interdisciplinary perspective and tries to present an anthropological reflection on the stories in Lu Xun's Old Tales Retold. For Lu Xun, the stories were important, especially the old stories in the ancient classics, and he creatively rewrote the classical stories to get across what he wanted to convey. In his rewriting, Lu Xun combined materials from many classics so as to make the retold stories take on artistic features of creative stories. Lu Xun's Old Tales Retold merged well into the development of fiction writing in Chinese literary history, which evolved from the antique myth and tale, the pre-Qin fables, the legendary tales of the Tang and Song Dynasties, the novel of Ming and Qing Dynasties to the modern times. Lu Xun's Old Tales Retold was written in the style of legendary story and he experimented in characterization, plot, diction, and narrative time-space sequence in narrative. From the perspective of meaning gestation, Old Tales Retold shows unique textual features which lead to the opening up of the interpretative horizon, the expanding of the audience to all ages, and multiple dimensions of signification. These methods of meaning gestation are essentially postmodern in nature. By way of these methods, Lu Xun demonstrated in Old Tales Retold that story- telling and listening (writing and reading) is an inbuilt desire in human beings and that story has always been the vehicle for man's need for meaning.

Key words: Old Tales Retold, story, anthropology, postmodern, methods of meaning gestation