“NEW CULTURE” 新文化: REPUBLICAN CHINA'S OPPOSITION OR COMPLICITY WITH TRADITION?

By George Lowe

Abstract

The May Fourth Movement led to the emergence of a ‘New Culture’ 新文化 in direct opposition to traditional Chinese culture. The author argues that the movement incorporated the more general trend of an increasingly wide-ranging and popular public press and a growing culture of mass education that saw the dissemination of knowledge for the general public. The most prominent aspect of the May Fourth Movement was the revolution in language. Hu Shi strove to convince his intellectual peers of the importance of having a “living” language, “the spoken tongue of the people”, or bai-hua白話. In Hu’s thinking it should become the major form of literary expression, replacing Classical Chinese, which Hu referred to as “dead.”.

eginning with the May Fourth Movement (although some aspects may be traced a little further back than 1919), Republican China saw a ‘New Culture’ emerge, in direct opposition to traditional

Chinese culture. The whole movement included what contemporaries called the “Chinese Renaissance” (Hu Shi, 1934) and historians have termed the “Chinese enlightenment” (Schwarcz, 1986), related to the literary and intellectual aspects respectively. In addition to these elements, the New Culture Movement included an emerging urban culture that was centred around Shanghai, China’s rapidly growing metropolis. This incorporated the more general trend of an increasingly wide-ranging and popular public press and a growing culture of mass education that saw the dissemination of knowledge for the general public as desirable, even necessary for the advancement of the Chinese nation. All these facets together became a new cultural movement that was consciously anti-traditional and anti- confucianism and tied up in the “quest for modernity” (Lee, 1976) that was a theme throughout the Republican period in all aspects of culture.

Perhaps the earliest cultural movement which became part of this New Culture was the “Literary Renaissance or Revolution” (Hu Shi, 1934). Starting as a student in 1915 in Cornell, Hu strove to convince

This intellectual peers of the importance of having a “living” language, “the spoken tongue of the people”, or bai hu, as the national language for a modern nation. These were not exactly new ideas, as the importance of the vernacular and ideas about writing in it had been discussed and advocated by Qing intellectuals. However, what was “truly revolutionary” in Hu’s thinking was the assertion that it should become the major form of literary expression, replacing Classical Chinese, which Hu referred to as “dead.” (Lee, 1976) This conviction, which spread amongst the more radical intellectuals following May Fourth and Hu’s return to China to publish articles such as “Some Tentative Suggestions for the Reform of Chinese Literature” in New Youth, was arguably what facilitated the success of the movement. Hu certainly thought so, claiming that this “conscious and articulate” element of the literary revolution was crucial to its success and what primarily separated it from the efforts late Qing intellectuals who had also been interested in the potential of the vernacular. This conscious effort at establishing a new literary culture had its roots, Hu claimed, in Chinese literary history through the ages, which he saw as to “consist in a series of revolutions” from the commoners using the vernacular in opposition to elite “men of letters” using Classical Chinese. It was the conscious element described above that set this apart and was the reason for its “rapid success”, seen in the proliferation of “about 400 small periodicals...all of them published in the spoken language of the people” (Hu, 1999) across the country in 1919- 20. By 1922, all the primary and secondary textbooks were ordered to be translated into the vernacular and virtually of the new or popular journals were in the vernacular too, as publishing houses saw the growth of sales in the vernacular and thus “became enthusiastic over the new movement” (Hu, 1999). Thus we can see there was a fundamental revolution in giving China a “New Language” as “the effective medium for the development of the literature of a new China” (Hu, 1999), and the emergence of a modernist trend in Chinese literature can be seen as having its foundation in this. Thus Lu Xun, and many other of the great writers of this period began writing in the vernacular and expressing anti-traditionalist views, with Lu himself comparing Confucianism to cannibalism in an abstract plea for change and revolution.

This revolution in language, rather than being restricted to elite intellectual circles, was also important in the widening of intellectual culture and dissemination of literature and knowledge to the wider populace. This can be seen most obviously in the public arena of urban society in which a culture of modernity was developing through the Republican period, and through the actions of the Commercial Press in Shanghai in what has been termed the “enlightenment industry” (Lee, 1999). The Commercial Press began the production of elementary and secondary textbooks in 1903, and followed the changing political climate, reprinting books after the 1911 revolution as well as after the central government eventually authorised the use of the vernacular in textbooks in 1921 and 1922. The emergence of the vernacular as the national language was important in this aspect of the New Culture as Hu Shi had meant for it to be “an effective instrumentality for popular education” (Hu, 1934) and it did this, by allowing the proliferation of knowledge beyond those who could read Classical Chinese: a notoriously complex and difficult language not understood by the majority of the population and considered “dead” by many, including Hu. The main thrust of this mission to disseminate knowledge though came with the establishment of repositories by the Commercial Press with the ‘Eastern Repository’ and the ‘All-Comprehensive Repository’ set up in 1923 and 1929 respectively, with the latter being “nothing less than a modern library”, and “clearly intended for the task of inculcating new knowledge” (Lee, 1999). The contents of the libraries were modern, in the sense that they mainly eschewed Chinese classics for more relevant works to modern society, including foreign works of literature, science and the social sciences, as well as a whole section on “modern problems”, both those besetting China and the world more generally. A mail order system was set up in conjunction to allow teachers (or indeed any citizens) to set up private libraries which were widely advertised in pamphlets, allowing payments in installments, in order to reach as wide an audience as possible. This was all marketed at a growing public sphere and growing readership, with the editors’ stated objective of the repositories being to “inculcate in the general reading public the knowledge that is necessary for human life” (Lee, 1999) clearly reflective of this development of an educational culture, concerned with the dissemination of knowledge to wider circles. Whilst a more cynical view sees this as less an educational mission and simple capitalist enterprise from the Commercial Press in an increasingly commercialised urban Shanghai, regardless it still reflects the aforementioned growing public sphere and the effects of the enterprise on public knowledge must have been considerable, as the whole program continued for decades in a popular setting. A more important consideration must be taken into account when comparing rural and urban developments; in just the above example, the expanding popular press was clearly targeted at an urban readership which was itself developing in a specifically urban culture, the emergence of which is examined below.

Shanghai was also the centre for the more general development of an urban culture of modernity, which was centred on the popular press. This was part of a solution to the problem of popularizing modernity in China; intellectuals pondered on the concept of modernity and anti-traditional ideas, but the more superficial culture of modernity developed with the aid of a popular press in Shanghai and other urban centres (Lee, 1999). ‘The Young Companion’, a pictorial journal begun in 1926, is an example of this. On the cover of each issue, there was a modern woman (in modern dress/surroundings and with a modern demeanour) leading the reader in, and connected by theme to a series of images within the magazine itself, many of them about women and displaying the variety of modern clothing on the market suited for different seasons and environments, different ages and women of different social classes, characteristics that are the hallmarks of a modern fashion industry. There was no such occupation as a fashion model in Republican China, yet the idea of advertising different fashions of dress can be seen as indicative of the broadening of the lives of urban middle and upper class women (Lee, 1999). Yet despite this, the women were also generally posed in different rooms of the home with emphasis on interior decoration and the standardisation of a typical middle class home. This was clearly not simply a conservative retreat from the feminism of the May Fourth period though, as the women were placed in new roles in a modern family, including aspects of a new bourgeois lifestyle, including the notion of the domestic space as open to public discussion and standardisation now. This importation, but also appropriation of Western ideas of modern culture is also exemplified in the concentration of advertisements in such journals on health and hygiene. Colgate, Fab, Quaker oats and other Western companies had advertisements in the newspapers of Shanghai, emphasising Western standards of hygiene and health as important to the wellbeing of the nation and the nourishment of its youth (Lee, 1999). But more than simply products was imported from the West; American-style beauty contests, including those for babies, were sponsored by ‘The Young Companion’. Also, the steady increase in the level of nude content in this pictorial magazine through the 1930s can be seen in this context of importing Western norms and standards, overriding traditionally Chinese taboos. However, there had been vulgar journals in the ‘pleasure quarters’ of the market (a growing number at this time) and there is evidence that The Young Companion tried to retain its respectability in this climate. The idea of a “healthy and beautiful body” (Lee, 1999) was that behind such displays of nudity and them themselves must be put in the context of a whole magazine devoted to other themes. The rapid growth of calendar posters too reflects the Western influence on popular urban culture in Shanghai, but appropriated for Chinese society. The date is displayed in both the Western style and the traditional Chinese form, with the latter imposed over the former, with special emphasis on rituals and festivals falling at particular times in this traditional calendrical system still being retained. As in the West, the covers of these were dominated by a “portrait of a lady in modern dress” and Lee has pointed to innovative styles used in painting, in terms of brushwork and colour (Lee, 1999). Thus we may see this increasing tendency of displaying the female body as just one part of an emerging, diverse public discourse related to a new urban conception of modernity, which was itself strongly influenced by a Western conception.

In conclusion, there was a definitively ‘New Culture’ emerging in the Republican period, centring on a literary, linguistic revolution and changing attitudes to knowledge, within an emergent and fast-developing urban culture. Western influences had some effect on all these aspects. Even in the literary revolution Hu Shi cited the development of Western vernacular languages in Europe as his inspiration and evidence that it was the key for a modern literature, and Chinese writers were influenced by modernist writing from 19th century Europe. There were perhaps more obvious influences and importations involved in the development of urban culture, that of Shanghai being analysed above. Also in intellectual culture and trends of intellectual thinking, students and writers imported Western ideas, translated Western plays (Dora, a character from Ibsen’s play ‘The Doll House’ becoming a key symbol for women’s emancipation). However, they were very focused in their appropriation of these and application of them to consciously strive against traditional Chinese culture and social institutions. Ultimately, it was this anti-traditionalism, which tied the various and diverse facets of the New Culture together as a movement, and turned it into an important cultural phenomenon in Republican China.

References

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Hu Shih, Chinese Renaissance: The Haskell Lectures, 1933. Chicago. 1934. Print.

Lee, Leo, “Literary Trends 1: The Quest for Modernity, 1895–1927,” in John K. Fairbank et al., ed., Cambridge History of China. Cambridge. 15 vols. 1976. Print.

Lee, Leo. Shanghai Modern: The Flowering of a New Urban Culture in China,1930–1945. Cambridge. 1999. Print.

Lu Xun, “Diary of a madman,” in Harold Isaacs, (ed.), Straw Sandals. Cambridge. 1974. Print.

Schwarcz, Vera. The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and The Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919. Berkeley. 1986. Print.

Spence, Jonathan. The Search for Modern China. New York. 1999.