Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-s2hrs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-09T15:57:57.507Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Middle County Radicalism: The May Fourth Movement in Hangzhou*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Wen-hsin Yeh
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The May Fourth Movement of 1919 occupies a special position in scholars’ consideration of modern China as a result of the convergence of two sets of historical constructions. In China, according to official textbooks explaining the rise of the People's Republic that were first promulgated by the new socialist state in the 1950s, 1919 was identified as the very moment of origin when cultural iconoclasm was joined to a political activism of the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal struggle: the watershed affecting the flow of all subsequent revolutionary history. In the West, as presented in Chow Tse-tsung's highly influential 1964 volume, May Fourth was singled out as the time of patriotic awakening reached as a result of intellectual exposure to such Western liberal values as science, democracy, liberty and individualism. The May Fourth Movement has since been characterized variously as a response to Western liberal influence; as a product of education abroad in Japan, Europe or America; as an awakening to the call of international Bolshevism; and as an evaluative rejection of traditional Confucianism as the primary source of authority. Whether liberal or revolutionary, these intellectual developments were then seen as the inspiration for a unified national political movement that spread outward from Beijing and Shanghai into the provinces.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 140 , December 1994 , pp. 903 - 925
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. Tse-Tsung, Chow, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964)Google Scholar, passim.

2. See, for example, Li Zehou's attempt to reconceptualize modern Chinese intellectual history in Zhongguo jindai sixiang shilun (Essays in Modern Chinese Intellectual History) (Beijing, 1979), which considers the significance of intellectual changes from Hong Xiuquan (1840s) to Lu Xun (1930s). For Li's re-evaluation of the legacy of the May Fourth Movement and the place of intellectuals in modern Chinese society, see especially pp. 450–471. Li Zehou's reflections on the 70th anniversary of the May Fourth Movement can be found in his essay collection, Zou wo ziji de lu (Following a Path of My Own) (Taipei: Fengyun shidai chuban gongsi, 1990), especially pp. 525–540, 541–565, 566–581. Li Zehou, bom in 1930, is widely regarded as contemporary China's most prominent thinker and philosopher. For reflections on the May Fourth Movement offered by a younger generation of Chinese thinkers, see Yang, Gan, “A few problems in the cultural discussions of the 1980s,” in Gan, Yang (ed.), Zhongguo dangdai wenhua yishi (Contemporary Chinese Cultural Consciousness) (Taipei: Fengyun shidai chuban gongsi, 1990), pp. 9–50.Google Scholar Gan Yang was born in 1952. On the “unfinished” quality of the May Fourth as a cultural campaign, see Ying-Shih, Yü, “May Fourth: an unfinished cultural movement,” in his Wenhua pinglun yu Zhongguo qinghuai (Cultural Commentary and Chinese Sentiments) (Taipei: Yunchen, 1988), pp. 65–72.Google Scholar Many of the problems exposed by the May Fourth Movement, as Vera Schwarcz notes, remained unresolved in “People's China.” For much of the seven decades between 1919 and 1989, Chinese intellectuals “held on to the allegory of May Fourth as a means of keeping alive the spirit of criticism and of chastising those who would consign it to the past.” See Schwarcz, Vera, The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), pp. 240–302.Google Scholar The quotation is from p. 241.

3. Chow Tse-tsung characterizes this split as a division between sociopolitical activism and cultural activism. See Chow, The May Fourth Movement, pp. 215–253. Vera Schwarcz, in The Chinese Enlightenment, draws a distinction between the political versus the cultural agenda of the May Fourth Movement, and describes the subversion of the latter by the former.

4. Several important studies have appeared recently that redirected attention to the complexity of the radical intellectual scene in the first Republican decades, and disputed the centrality of Mao and the Chinese Communist Party in modern Chinese historical narratives. Arif Dirlik, in two substantial volumes, The Origins of Chinese Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989) and Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), “decentres” Communism by drawing attention to the strong presence of anarchism in early modern Chinese radical culture. Van De Ven, Hans, in From Friend to Comrade: The Founding of the Chinese Communist Party, 1920–1927 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991)Google Scholar, disputes the significance of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921 by showing that radical intellectuals did not transform themselves into “instant Bolsheviks” with the creation of the national Party apparatus. Also on anarchism, Peter Zarrow draws attention to the connections between Neo-Confucianism and Chinese Communism in Anarchism and Chinese Political Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). On the formation of Maoism in a later period, Fogel, Joshua, in Ai Ssu-ch'i's Contribution to the Development of Chinese Marxism (Cambridge, MA: Council on East Asian Studies Publications, Harvard University Press, 1987)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, breaks down the image of Mao as an intellectual giant by showing that “the Thought of Mao Zedong” was in fact a composite text that included major contributions by Ai Siqi and Chen Boda in the 1930s.

5. Kuo-Chi, Li, Zhongguo xiandaihua de quyu yanjiu – Min-Zhe-Tai-diqu, 1860–1916 (A Regional Study of China's Modernization: The Fujian-Zhejiang-Taiwan Region, 1860–1916) (Taipei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindaishi yanjiusuo, 1982), pp. 146–47, 149.Google Scholar

6. Ibid. pp. 152–53; Qiyun, Zhang, Zhejiang sheng shidi jiyao (Historical Geography of Zhejiang Province) (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1925), pp. 68–70.Google Scholar

7. Li Kuo-chi, Zhongguo xiandaihua de quyu yanjiu, p. 441.

8. Ibid. pp. 217–18; Rankin, Mary, Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China: Zhejiang Province, 1865–1911 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986)Google Scholar, passim.

9. Xuexiao, Zhejiang Shengli Diyi Shifan (ed.), Zhejiang shengli diyi zhongxuexiao tongxue lu (Student Roster of the Zhejiang Provincial First Teachers’ College) (Hangzhou, 1923), pp. 58, 60.Google Scholar

10. Yicheng, Ruan, “Yicheng zizhuan nianpu ji zishu” (“Yicheng's chronological autobiography”), Zhongshan xueshu wenhuajikan (Sun Yat-sen Bulletin of Scholarship and Culture), No. 10 (1972), p. 639.Google Scholar

11. Xuexiao, Zhejiang Shengli Diyi Shifan (ed.), Zhejiang shengli diyi shifan xuexiao lu (Zhejiang Provincial First Teacher's College Alumni Roster) (Hangzhou, 1915)Google Scholar, passim.

12. These counties as a group fall into the categories of “outer core” and “inner peripheries” in the macro-regional systems of G. William Skinner and R. Keith Schoppa. See Schoppa, R. Keith, Chinese Elites and Political Change: Zhejiang Province in the Early Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 95–127.Google Scholar

13. Xuexiao, Zhejiang Shengli Diyi Shifan (ed.), Zhejiang shengli diyi shifan xuexiao xiaoyou huizhi (Zhejiang Provincial First Teachers’ College Alumni Digest) (Hangzhou, 1917), Vol. 2, pp. 67–72.Google Scholar

14. Ibid.

15. Evidence obtained from the Jinhua area shows that similar differences in fee structure existed between the Seventh Teachers’ College and the Seventh Middle School of Jinhua Prefecture in the 1910s, with comparable sociological differentiations. See Jiaju, Qian, “Wo yu Wu Han” (“Wu Han and I”), Zhuanji wenxue (Biographical Literature), Vol. 57, No. 2 (August 1990), pp. 35–37.Google Scholar

16. Alumni Digest, p. 2.

17. Yicheng, Ruan, Minguo Ruan Xunbo xiansheng Xingcun nianpu (Chronological Biography of Mr Ruan Xingcun (Xunbo) of the Republican Period) (Taipei: Taiwan Commercial Press, 1979), pp. 25, 27, 31–32, 38, 44–46.Google Scholar

18. Jiaoyanshi, Zhonggong Zhejiang Shengwei Dangxiao Dangshi (ed.), Wu si yundong zai Zhejiang (The May Fourth Movement in Zhejiang) (Hangzhou: Renmin chubanshe, 1979), pp. 2–6.Google Scholar

19. Rankin, Mary, Early Chinese Revolutionaries: Radical Intellectuals in Shanghai and Chekiang, 1902–1911 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), p. 141.CrossRefGoogle ScholarTides of Zhejiang was published in Japan in 1903.

20. Sixteen of these journals appeared in Hangzhou. Of the remainder, three were published in Shaoxing, two in Huzhou, one in Ningbo, and perhaps two in Yongjia. The place of publication for the remaining two is unknown. Wu si yundong zai Zhejiang, p. 96.

21. Of a total of 26, the publication dates of 17 are known. Ten of these 17 were published between October 1919 and March 1920.

22. Wu si yundong zai Zhejiang, p. 96.

23. Ruan Yicheng, Autobiography, p. 648.

24. Ibid.

25. Ibid. p. 649.

26. Ibid.

27. Ibid.

28. Cao Juren, Wo yu wo de shijie (I and My World) (Hong Kong: Sanyu tushu gongsi, 1972), p. 141.

29. Ruan Yicheng, Autobiography, p. 651.

30. Ruan Yicheng, Autobiography, pp. 650–51.

31. Daoxue referred specifically to the Neo-Confucian teaching of the Zhu Xi School of which Jinhua, where Shi Cuntong came from, was a major centre in the Southern Song and Yuan period. There is a rich body of scholarly literature on the subject. For the most recent study, see Bol, Peter, “This Culture of Ours”: Intellectual Transitions in T'ang and Sung China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), pp. 300–342.Google Scholar

32. Cuntong, Shi, “Huitou kan ershier nian lai de wo” (“Looking back to my life of the past 22 years”), Minguo ribao (Republican Daily), 22 September 1920, p. 3.Google Scholar

33. On Yan Fu's translation work and intellectual influence, see Schwartz's, Benjamin classic study, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1964)Google Scholar, passim.

34. Cuntong, Shi, “Huitou kan ershier nian lai de wo”; Binran, Fu, “Wu si qianhou” (“May Fourth before and after”), Wu siyundong huiyi lu (Recollections of the May Fourth Movement) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue chuban she, 1979), Vol. 2, pp. 745–46Google Scholar; Ge, Maochun, Jiang, Jun and Li, Xingzhi (eds.), Wuzhengfuzhuyi sixiang ziliao xuan (Sections of Sources in Anarchist Thought) (Beijing: Beijing University Press, 1984), Vol. 2, p. 953.Google Scholar

35. “Cock-crow” is a somewhat awkward translation of Huiming, a term alluding to two lines in the Book of Odes (Shijing): Feng yu ru hui, ji ming bu yi. These lines are rendered “All's dark amid the wind and rain, ceaselessly the cock's clear voice” by James Legge, and “The wind and rain make it like darkness, the cocks crow unceasingly,” by Bernhard Karlgren. Hui refers to the darkness amid the wind and rain. Ming refers to the cock's crow. Huiming is thus no mere “cock-crow,” but a crowing cock at a stormy daybreak. See Legge, James, The Book of Poetry: Chinese Text with English Translation (New York: Paragon Reprint, 1967), p. 99Google Scholar, and Karlgren, Bernhard, The Book of Odes: Chinese Text, Transcription and Translation (Stockholm: Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, 1950), p. 58.Google Scholar

36. On Liu Shifu (Sifu), see Krebs, Edward S., “Liu Ssu-fu and Chinese Anarchism, 1905–1915,” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, 1977Google Scholar; Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution, pp. 124—133; Zarrow, Anarchism and Chinese Political Culture, pp. 212–17.

37. Maochun, Ge et al., Wuzhengfuzhuyi sixiang ziliao xuan, Vol. 2, p. 950Google Scholar; Dirlik, ibid p. 174.

38. Ge Maochun, ibid Vol. 2, pp. 952–53; Dirlik, ibid p. 175.

39. Dirlik, ibid p. 117.

40. Shen Zhongjiu (1887–1968) left for Shanghai in the early 1920s, and emerged, in 1924, as the editor of the anarchist journal Free Man (Ziyou ren). He served in 1927 as a chief editor of another anarchist weekly, Revolution (Geming). Thereafter he served in the secretariat of the Fujian and the Taiwan provincial governments between 1934 and 1947. He was an editor with the Zhonghua Bookstore and the Pinmin Bookstore in the 1950s. He was also a member of the Shanghai Office of Literature and History (Wenshi guan). He died in April 1968. Clearly a figure of considerable importance behind the scene at critical historical moments, including the 28 February 1947 Incident in Taiwan, Shen's life story, however, remains quite sketchy. Ge Maochun etal., Wuzhengfuzhuyi sixiang ziliao xuan, Vol. 2, p. 761.

41. Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution, p. 155.

42. Shi Cuntong, “Huitou kan ershier nian lai de wo.”

43. Ibid.

44. Ruan Yicheng, Autobiography, p. 650; Zhonggong zhongyang ma en lie si zhuzuo Yanjiushi, Bianyi Ju (ed.), Wu si shiqi qikan jieshao (Introduction to Periodicals of the May Fourth Period) (Beijing: Shenghuo, dushu, xinzhi sanlian shudian, 1978), Vol. 2, pp. 434–35.Google Scholar

45. Ruan Yicheng, Autobiography, p. 651; Xia Yan, “Tide of May Fourth,” p. 356; Weixiong, Ni, “Zhejiang xinchao de huiyi” (“Remembering Zhejiang New Tide”), Wu si yundong huiyi lu (Recollections of the May Fourth Movement) (Beijing: Zhongguo shehui kexue yuan chuban she, 1979), pp. 737–38.Google Scholar

46. Ruan Yicheng, Autobiography, pp. 651, 653.

47. Shen Duanxian, the future “tsar of Chinese drama,” was put in charge of the journal's subscription list, while Ruan Yicheng was replaced as business correspondent by First Teachers College student Huang Zongfan. Yan, Xia, “Dang Wu si langchao chongdao Zhejiang de shihou” (“When the tide of May Fourth rushed ashore in Zhejiang”), in Zhejiang yishi fengchao (Student Disturbance at the Zhejiang First Teachers College) (Hangzhou, 1990), p. 358Google Scholar; Ruan Yicheng, Autobiography, p. 653.

48. Zhang, Yunhou, et al. (eds.), Wu si shiqi de shetuan (Societal Associations during the May Fourth Period) (Beijing: Shenghuo, dushu, xinzhi sanlian shudian, 1979), Vol. 3, pp. 124–27.Google Scholar

49. Ibid. p. 125.

50. For a fine discussion of the Mencian concept of liangzhi (mind) in Neo-Confucian philosophy, see Metgzer, Thomas A., Escape from Predicament: Neo-Confucianism and China's Evolving Political Culture (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), especially pp. 82–134.Google Scholar Metgzer discusses “the good cosmic force as a given” in Neo-Confucianism-a beneficient, transcendent cosmic force that was seen to impinge on the naturally given mind and shape the world outside organically. On linkages between this cosmic optimism and Chinese anarchism, see Zarrow, Anarchism and Chinese Political Culture, p. 71.

51. Zhang Yunhou et al., Wu si shiqi de shetuan, Vol. 3, p. 125.

52. Ibid.

53. Ibid. p. 126.

54. Zarrow, Anarchism and Chinese Political Culture, pp. 77—81.

55. Ibid. pp. 83–99.

56. Ruan Yicheng, Autobiography, p. 653; Jiayue, Yi and Dunwei, Luo, Zhongguo jiating wenti (Problems with Chinese Families) (Shanghai: Taid.ong shuju, 1924), pp. 145–46Google Scholar; May Fourth Periodicals, Vol. 2, No. 2, p. 888.

57. Hui, Zhonggong Zhejiang Shengwei Dangshi Ziliao Zhengji Yanjiu Weiyuan (ed.), Zhejiang yishi fengchao (Turbulence at the Zhejiang First Teachers’ College) (Hangzhou: Zhejiang daxue chuban she, 1990), pp. 353, 411.Google Scholar

58. Shi Cuntong, “Huitou kan ershier nian lai de wo.”

59. Xuanlu, Shen, “Hunjia wenti” (“Problems with getting married”), Xingqi pinglun (Weekend Review) No. 27 (7 December 1919), p. 2.Google Scholar

60. Shi Cuntong, “Huitou kan ershier nian lai de wo.”

61. Some of these short stories are available in English in The Complete Stories of Lu Xun, translated by Yang Xianyi and Gladys Yang (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1981).

62. Shi Cuntong, “Huitou kan ershier nian lai de wo.”

63. Ibid.

64. ibid

65. ibid

66. Ibid.

67. Wittgenstein, Ludwig, The Blue and Brown Books (New York: Harper and Row, 1958), p. 6.Google Scholar

68. Marx, Karl, A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (New York: International Publishers, 1970), p. 207.Google Scholar

69. Ibid. p. 206; Mitchell, W.J.T., Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 160–61.Google Scholar

70. Shi Cuntong, “Huitou kan ershier nian lai de wo.”

71. Ibid.

72. Lu Fangshang, “Wu si shiqi xuejie de xinjiu chongtu: Yi minguo jiunian de Zhejiang yishi fengchao wei li” (“Conflict between the old and the new in educational circles during the May Fourth: the case of Zhejiang First Teachers’ College of 1920”), paper presented at the Conference on Selected Topics in Republican History, 6–8 August 1992, Taipei, pp. 14–16.

73. Danshu, Jiang, “‘Feixiao’ yu Zhejiang diyi shifan de fan fengjian douzheng” (“ ‘Decry filial piety’ and the struggle against feudalism at Zhejiang's First Teachers’ College”), Wu siyundong huiyi lu, Vol. 2, p. 761Google Scholar; Turbulence at the First Teachers’ College, p. 329.

74. On Dai's political thinking, see Lestz, Michael E., “The meaning of revival: the Kuomintang ‘New Right’ and Party building in Republican China, 1925–1936,” Ph.D. thesis in History, Yale University, 1982.Google Scholar

75. On Shen Xuanlu as a radical land reformer, see Schoppa, R. Keith, “Contours of revolutionary change in a Chinese county: 1900–1950,” The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 51, No. 4 (November 1992), pp. 778, 780–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

76. Bergère, Marie-Claire, The Golden Age of the Chinese Bourgeoisie, 1911–1937 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 192.Google Scholar

77. Ibid.

78. Ibid.

79. Ibid. p. 83.