The New-Culture Movement in China

Abstract

MORE significant than the revolution of 1911, and perhaps more fundamental than the one now in progress, is the cultural renaissance that has been stirring China for the past ten years. On January 1, 1917, Dr. Hu Shih laid before his countrymen the well-known eight principles that may be said to have started the nation-wide movement for abandoning the ancient classical style and giving literary standing to the vernacular. Those principles were commonplace enough. They urged, among other things, that literary men should write as they speak, that they should henceforth avoid the use of complicated and obsolete ideographs, imitative and pedantic phraseology, and recondite classical allusions-in short, should definitely refrain from those forms of literary acrobatism that for two thousand years had more or less marred the scholarly writing. Dr. Hu had discovered literary evidence which indisputably proved that just as Latin was already a dead language when Cicero wrote it, so also as early as 120 B.C. the Chinese classical style was unintelligible to minor officials. It had been perpetuated for two millennia longer, only because it was the style demanded by the examination system and because this method of written communication, being intelligible over all China, at least had the virtue of uniting the Chinese people, whereas the differences in dialect served only to keep them apart. ARGUMENTS FOR PLAIN LITERARY STYLE