This paper studies East Asia's reception of modernity, using Japan's mediating role in China's encounter with the West as a point of departure to explore what may result from the subsumption of the particular under the universal. How Japan influenced China in opening up horizons for modern literature will be examined at length. The True Story of Ah Q by Lu Xun (1881-1936) will be chosen to illustrate a translation-like situation China might have found itself in as it observed Japan shifting to the West for reference. I will use, in particular, the slides show incident in Lu Xun's student days at the Sendai Medical School to show how modern Chinese literature arose out of the vantage point of being at the intersection between Japan and the West in their engagement with modernity.