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The New Literature Group

Can you imagine that in old China, people spoke colloquial Chinese, but wrote in a completely different, more difficult and allusive Chinese language? Writing was once considered a great privilege; it could even be a ticket to power and fortune if one passed the imperial examinations. Supposedly, only through a strict classical education could people understand the meaning of poems or essays. The tradition lasted for thousands of years until the Qing Dynasty, which began in 1644, was overthrown in 1911. But long before the Qing’s demise, many young intellectuals had mounted a fierce attack on cultural traditions that they believed were holding China back in its contacts with the wider world. They ended up abandoning old fashioned literary language and began writing in the common vernacular of everyday life. They called their writing “the new literature,” to distinguish it from the classical Chinese writing style.

The New Literature Group is a collection of portrait studies of major intellectuals of the new literature movement.

“They brought fundamental changes to Chinese writing,” said the author. What's more, some of them went beyond literature to influence the course of China’s history as well. Chen Duxiu, for example, studied in Japan and came back to propose drastic intellectual revaluations to rejuvenate the nation. He later became a founder of the Communist Party of China. Another famous character is Xu Zhimo, who studied in England, returned to establish an aristocratic poetry society with his rich friends.

“It was a time when the West had great influence on the East,” the book said. Almost all important intellectuals of the New Literature Movement had studied overseas. They brought back all kinds of philosophical thoughts, political theories, and scientific methods. People were so eager to cure the disease of the old weak China, that some even advocated such dramatic moves as completely throwing away Chinese characters and adopting Roman letters and spellings instead. Among all the events mentioned in the book, a trip to explore Xinjiang in 1927 is most striking. It was the first time that Chinese scholars stepped out of their studies engage in field research. It marked the beginning of modern archaeology in China.

The New Literature Group（《在民国》）

By Sun Yu（孙郁）

Zhejiang People's Publishing House (浙江人民出版社) January 2008, 28 yuan