The culture that led to the founding of the Republic of China and that flourished immediately afterwards was informed by two main concerns: the weakness of the government in the face of pressure by Western powers, including the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, France, and Japan, and the seeming backwardness of the political system, which previously had held primacy over East Asia. It was this climate that led to the rapid changes and quick questioning of thousand year old traditions.
The abolition of the empire had an immediate effect on dress and customs: the largely Han population immediately cut off the queues that they had been forced to grow in submission to the overthrown Manchus whom they considered alien barbarian invaders. Sun Yat-sen popularized a new style of men's wear, featuring jacket and trousers instead of the pre-existing robes. Adapted from Japanese student wear, this style of dress became known as the Zhongshan suit (Zhongshan being Sun Yat-sen's given name in Chinese). Later, Mao Zedong's variant of the Zhongshan suit would become well known in the West as the Mao suit. Meanwhile, Madame Sun popularised the qipao as the standard female dress. At the same time, old practices such as footbinding, which Chinese had long known was viewed as backwards and unmodern by Westerners, were forbidden.
In the late 1910s and early 1920s, students and intellectuals began to challenge old customs in what became the New Cultural Movement. The era called for iconoclasm, the assertion of individuality, and the liberalization of society (such as through the abolition of arranged marriages). Universities began to incorporate western subjects into the curriculum and discussion of numerous philosophies such as communism and anarchism ensued. Notably, Lu Xun published his satire "Diary of a Madman" to challenge Confucianism, Ba Jin questioned the hierarchical family structure, and Hu Shih called for writing in Vernacular Chinese instead of Literary Chinese for mass appeal. The literary journal New Youth, edited by Chen Duxiu, promoted science and democracy. These changes, though affecting urban and upper class society, failed to reach the peasantry who remained mostly illiterate. Economic equality and gender equality became great concerns among intellectuals, students, and the general public. With the movement of people towards cities also came concern for such issues. Many young intellectuals became interested in communism and liberalism.
In the 1930s, Chiang Kai-shek launched the New Life Movement to promote traditional Confucian social ethics, while rejecting individualism and Western capitalistic values. It also aimed to build up morale in a nation that was besieged with corruption, factionalism, and opium addiction. Some goals included courtesy to neighbors, following rules set by the government, keeping streets clean, and conserving energy.
Literature Revolution The literature revolution (the vernacular language movement) happened in the late 1910 in China. It is the form of written Chinese based on the varieties of Chinese spoken throughout China. This was in contrast to Classical Chinese which was the written standard used during Imperial China up to the early twentieth century. It was encouraged to display a general dissatisfaction with the programmatic character and the tendency toward uniformity of some of the new literature. It was this movement that breathe the new style into the world of thought in China and build the basic of concept of the May Fourth Movement. Since the early 1920s, this modern vernacular form has been the standard style of writing for all speakers of all varieties of Chinese throughout mainland China, Malaysia, Singapore as well as Taiwan as the written form of modern standard Chinese which is commonly referred to the "Standard Written Chinese" or "Modern Written Chinese".
"The centuries-old three-way opposition between classical written Chinese, vernacular written Chinese, and vernacular spoken Chinese represents an instance of diglossia."
May Fourth Literature
The May Fourth Movement was an anti-imperialist, cultural, and political movement growing out of student participants in Beijing on 4 May 1919. Mainly university and high school students began the protest against the Chinese government's response to the Treaty of Versailles which allowed Japan to have territories in Shandong. The students were joined by others in the capital. The Chinese government and people had contributed to the Allied cause and expected the German Empire controlled areas of Shandong, especially the port of Tsingdao, to be returned to Chinese sovereignty given Germany's defeat by the Allied Powers. The Chinese diplomats at the Versailles Treaty appeared to have failed the popular will of the Chinese people since the Allied powers ignored them and allowed Japan to lay claim to German 'possessions' in China. Demonstrations accelerated against Japan and the outsider influence in China and gave new energy to the New Culture Movement. Dubbed the May Fourth movement, the next few years saw an upsurge of Chinese nationalism: a shift towards political mobilization and away from cultural activities, and a move towards populism rather than politics led by intellectual elites. As a result, many political and social leaders of the next revolutionary decades in China emerged.
Literature of the Thirties (1927-1937) This period is also included in 'May Fourth literature (Wusi wenxue)'. Most Chinese and Japanese scholars agreed that the young style of May Fourth period had declined by the late 1920s. Then it was replaced by 'mature' phase of literary creativity in the 1930s. The term 'literature in the thirty' are broadly referred to work published in the decade from 1927 to 1937.
The literature of the thirties is a crucial period of modern Chinese literature. Writers of the thirties received sophisticated techniques and ideas from the May Fourth literature(1915-1921). The artistic insight came from the social and political crisis such as Japanese invasion in the North of China, Communist revolution and the imperialistic presence of the western powers. Writers in this period started to bond social issues, and politics in their literature. By the 1930s, literature was starting to move toward leftist ideas.
Before May Fourth incident, some groups of writers attempted to make a connection between literature, politics and revolution. In 1923, Deng Zhongxia and Yun Daiying, argued that literature should act like a tool to stimulate people's revolutionary mind. In 1924 and 1925, Jiang Guangci wrote two articles. The first one is 'proletarian revolution and culture'. The second one is ' contemporary Chinese society and revolutionary literature'. Both Guo Moruo and Yu Dafu referred to the term like 'proletarian spirit' and 'class struggle' in their 1923 article. In 1925, Lu Xun sponsored the publication of a translated text called Literary debates in Soviet Russia in Peking. Nonetheless, the isolated effort did not make much impact until the May Thirtieth incident(1925).
Guo Moruo was the first literary man who was involved in political field. His emotional and unrestrained language shows his passion through the article. He once said, ' From literary revolution to revolutionary literature'. This phase represented his ideal world and his strong emotion towards it. He represented the petty-bourgeois against bourgeois class. After some times, the class system started to fade and their ideology were no longer useful. He then tried to create class consciousness focusing on working and peasant class through his medium and make it accessible by everyone. The leftist debate was addressed which soon will be recognised by the public.
Guo Moruo stirred the leftist influence. Guo claimed to be different from Marxism in 1924 after reading the Marxist Kawakami Hajime. He wrote 'revolution and literature', an emotional essay. He defined revolution as the rebellion against the oppressor in different period of time. He seems to conclude that the newer the better. The revolutionary action will fulfil the need for mankind and change the social organization. As a result, he argued that a good and real literature should consisted of revolutionary ideas. Since revolution literature comes with the heaviest emotion of mankind, it is as the ' golden age of literature'.
Although there are many ideological debate during the early thirties, it does not contribute much to literary creativity. Some of the most creative leftist writers in the 1930s are Mao Dun, Lao She, Wu Zuxiang, Zhang Tianyi, Ba Jin, and Wen Yiduo. Their ideology were often expressed from their own analysis with artistic expression. The collective effort of the thirties is recognised as the literary 'renaissance' of fiction, poetry and drama. Before the Japanese invasion, those writers slowly settled on their own unique and matured styles of their works. Nonetheless, wars mark an end for more experimental techniques of modernistic poetry. Only dramas were popular during the war time for two purposes. Firstly, dramas acted as a tool for propaganda. The second purpose of drama acted as an escapist entertainment in Shanghai because the cities was occupied by the Japanese. The four new literary creations coming from the western world are essay, novel, modern verse, and spoken drama.
The Essay Essay is the form of writing that aim to present the doctrinal debates, social criticism, and cultural criticism in the most effective way. The outcome of ideological debate lead to the popularity of 'feuilleton' in foreign terms or 'miscellaneous essay'. From this medium of writing spread the new ideology to the people who can read.
Lu Xun, the outstanding essay writer of this period, made an attempt to write short essay form while he started writing short stories. His works were published in New Youth and Yu-ssu. He wrote with the vernacular language mixing with classical terms and idiom. His essays make a satire about the society. Utilitarian ideology was used as a mean for writing. His essay not only attacked the dark side of Chinese cultures and society, but also tried to pushed the idea of collective Chinese mind to readers. His work is not clearly seen as an essay if viewed by the Westerner's eyes because they are essay, prose, poetry, and short story all at once.
In the early 1930, he started to include more political issues in his writing. His writing stimulated the debate in the society. He himself thought that it is essential to move away from lyricism toward polemicism in order to gain political engagement. His satire became reproduced and imitated by other writers. As a result, the more shallow essays were produced and the essays were devalued. He then wrote a famous article called "The Crisis of Personal Essay" (1933).
"Diary of a Madman" is one of his most famous stories. He got the style from a Russian realist named Nikolay Gogol's tales. The story was told by the perspective of a man who see traditional Confucian culture as something unpleasant for the society. The debate about Confucian ideas was on the trend during this decade. The vernacular Chinese written in the story gain popularity and attention. This common language made the war for short story in the near future.
Zhou Zuoren, Lu Hsun's brother, uses essays as an alternative to prose writing. His style is similar to classical tradition namely Gong'an and Jing-line school which accentuate on personal expression. His prose is brief and elegant showing his balanced mentality. His popular essay included the "1981 Article". The essay can be categorised as a humanist literature. In other words, it is a literature against human instinct and human nature. Traditional Chinese customs was criticised. For example, the wife was bullied alive regarding the death of their husband.
Fiction