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Since 1911, the life of the Republican Chinese has undergone a transformation, perhaps unique in history. The civilization of ancient China was like a great river running quietly through a valley of virgin mountains. There had been vicissitudes, but nothing had affected any change in its course. It had been left alone until the end of the last century when this river, against its will, encountered the ocean of world culture. Terrific turmoil resulted, which became swollen into tumultuous rapids known as the Literary Revolution. The collapse of the Manchu Empire was almost immediately followed by the abandonment of the age-hallowed classical style. The vernacular was adopted in its stead. Before that, the only official and academic language in use was couched in the classical style. No one could hope to pass the imperial examinations, the only stepping-stone to any decent career, without being steeped in this style. But the classical was immeasurably different from the spoken language. It usually took a good quarter of a lifetime to master its rudiments. Hence, it was almost inaccessible to the man-in-the-street. This fact alone was insufferable to the Republican Chinese. It meant that the great masses of China had scant prospect of education in any near future, while the Republic urgently needed the support of intelligent citizens. It meant that China would have to sail on in picturesque junks while others kept fortifying ever new types of powerful guns on board their battleships. No science had a chance of development if the people were to be perpetually tethered to the white elephant. Threatened by a neighbour that was being rapidly modernized, the young Chinese reacted sensibly rather than sentimentally.
But the new style was not only more sensible. Being colloquial, it was more expressive and spontaneous. Republican sentiment was truly overflowing. Quite apart from aesthetic and linguistic considerations, the fact that this innovation answered the demands of the young Chinese sufficiently justified its existence. The revolt actually began in 1917 and reached its climax in the Students' Movement of May 4, 1919. In the same year, about four hundred newspapers and magazines appeared in this new style. In the following year, the Ministry of Education decreed that the vernacular was to be adopted in all text-books for elementary schools. This overwhelmingly successful reform has been proudly called the Chinese Renaissance. In so far as it was an attempt to democratize the written language as a result of individual awakening, it was a Renaissance—and the first in five thousand years!
Many people think that the introduction of scientific inventions from the West changed the outlook of China. But the translation of Western literature in a broad sense, from Rousseau, Mill, Darwin, Spencer to Bertrand Russell, actually had more positive influence on the reforms. They taught Chinese intellectuals Science and Democracy: they revealed the basic rights of human beings. The overthrow of the imperial regime was a crowning success of political emancipation. The literary revolt was a refusal to copy the models of the ancients. In the words of Dr. Hu Shih, every age should have its own literature. The three principles expounded by the forerunners as aims of the movement were:
1. To destroy the painted, powdered and obsequious literature of the aristocratic few and to create the plain, simple and expressive literature of the people.
2. To destroy the stereotyped and monotonous literature of classicism and to create the fresh and sincere literature of realism.
3. To destroy the pedantic, unintelligible and obscurantist literature of the hermit and the recluse and to create the plain speaking and popular literature of a living society.
Why was China, a country with a glorious cultural background, living in proud seclusion from the rest of the world until the last century, so ready to succumb to such drastic changes? As a people, we are by no means free from bigotry. Only half a century ago, we still chose to sign sheaves of unequal treaties rather than face the stark realities of the world situation. But the nineteenth century had become a nightmare to us. It was a period filled with humiliation from abroad and corruption at home, accompanied by poverty, illiteracy, contagious diseases, all the poisons of a decayed empire. The foreign powers were all sharpening their carving knives. It was like treading on thin ice, not only the great empire but all its inhabitants were ready to sink into oblivion. The young Chinese were appalled by the fates of India and Korea. History was marching with unfaltering steps. Aware of the impending danger, they naturally grew impatient with traditions that bound the feet of their women and bent the backs of their men. Social conventions established and tolerated since the days of the Yellow Emperor were suddenly challenged. An unprecedented upheaval, political, social and cultural, took place. The new literature led, reflected and recorded this upheaval.
Yet it should be borne in mind that this "new" style was in fact not new. It was just the age-old mother tongue of the people, from mandarin to country maid. Except for a corner of the southeastern coast, it has always been spoken by the bulk of the population. Actually from the tenth century on, a great body of magnificent literature had been written in this style, such as some of the Yü-lu of the Sung Dynasty, and certainly all our best novels. What Dr. Hu Shih, the leader of the movement, and his followers fought for was orthodoxy. And this was by no means easily achieved.
The triumph of the vernacular was not unchallenged. The diehard Lin Ch'in-nan wrote violent diatribes, from a satire, in which he maliciously caricatured Dr. Hu and other reformers, to a number of indignant letters. He wrote to the late Ts'ai Yuan-pei, then President of Peking University and guardian angel to the new movement, warning him that "it is against the natural course of human affairs to let expediency override the fundamental. There are advantages in Western civilization, but let us not inflict ourselves with its vices." Wang Ching-hsüan, another old scholar, compared the young Chinese to fickle women who cast away their husbands as soon as they meet new lovers. He accused the reformers of servility because of their adoption of Western punctuation. But the actual pressure came from conservatives who once or twice got control of the Peking government. Under various pretexts they banned several new books, such as the Collected Essays of Hu Shih in 1924. Again, by exploiting "entrance examinations" either for civil service or for college, they tried to impose the classical style on the younger generation.
Hundreds of novels and thousands of poems and essays have been written in this democratic style in the last twenty-five years. They have eloquently shown its capacity to express all shades of human sentiment and to depict everything on earth, from a waterfall to the tremulous legs of an insect. The Chinese still love to see ancient scrolls of the Yangtse Gorges or pines spreading from dizzy crags on sacred T'aishan. But to-day there are motorboats steaming up the Yangtse and aeroplanes over T'aishan. While appreciating ancient scrolls, they realize the necessity of this more adequate medium to depict modern China. Hence, this living language has become the natural channel of contemporary Chinese writers. Twenty-five years is of course too brief a period for hasty critical verdicts. Contemporary Chinese literature is a sapling still in growth. Here, I shall attempt to give an account of this sapling.