scholarly journals A Space for Their Voices: (Un)apologies for Translation in the May Fourth Journal New Tide

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Jia Ye
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
May Fourth ◽  
Chinese Intellectuals

The study argues that translation in the frame space of the student journal New Tide (新潮 1919-22), was a mode of writing that legitimated the new-versus-old polarity in the May Fourth discourse. The analysis focuses on two sets of translation marginalia. One set presents the translators’ habitual apologies for the imperfection of their works. In contrast, the other set of materials shows unapologetic appropriations of foreign sources, which reveal the use of translation for the dual purposes of criticising the students’ concurrent traditional-minded Chinese intellectuals, and of validating – hence canonizing – the tenets of May Fourth.

The Power of Position: Beijing University, Intellectuals and Chinese Political Culture 1898–1929. By Timothy B. Weston. [Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 2004. xiv+325 pp. $60.00; £39.95. ISBN 0-520-23767-6.]

2004 ◽  
Vol 179 ◽  
pp. 841-843
Author(s):  
Benjamin A. Elman
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
May Fourth Movement ◽  
New Culture Movement ◽  
Fourth Movement ◽  
May Fourth ◽  
Chinese Intellectuals ◽  
The University ◽  
Chinese Political Culture ◽  
The May Fourth Movement

Timothy Weston's study of Beijing University (hereafter, “Beida”) spotlights how modern Chinese intellectuals positioned themselves politically and socially in the early 20th century. Weston relies on the Beida archives, dailies, journals, and many other sources, to make four contributions. First, Beida's early history shows how literati humanists repositioned themselves during a period of great uncertainty. New style intellectuals had influence because they mastered Western and classical learning. Secondly, Beida's complex history did not break sharply with the past. Earlier accounts of the May Fourth movement obscure the efforts of intellectuals since 1898 to redefine their role. Weston suggests that May Fourth amplified a continuing progression of new and old ways of doing things. Thirdly, political tensions emerged when the university increasingly radicalized after 1911. No more than 20 per cent of Beida students were involved in the New Culture movement. A strong conservative undertow continually challenged radical agendas. Often we hear only the voices of the latter. Finally, Weston assesses Beida's history in light of how the May Fourth movement played out in different locations. In the 1920s, Shanghai replaced Beijing as the leading venue for urban China's cultural and intellectual leaders. Beijing increasingly lost status under warlordism, and the Nationalist shift of the capital to Nanjing refocused Chinese intellectual life on the Chang (Yangtze) delta.

scholarly journals The Other Vernacular: Commoner Knowledge Culture Circa 1919

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joan Judge
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Cultural Layer ◽  
May Fourth Movement ◽  
Linguistic Form ◽  
Vernacular Language ◽  
Fourth Movement ◽  
Knowledge Culture ◽  
The People ◽  
Mass Politics ◽  
May Fourth

This essay complicates our understanding of the May Fourth Movement of the late 19teens by isolating a layer of culture that was integral to the era but largely forgotten in later scholarship. This cultural layer of discourse and practice intersected with two of the Movement’s most iconic projects – connecting with “the people” and establishing a vernacular language. This view from the cultural margins helps us excavate the less known byways and potentialities of what has come down to us as an epochal history. It further leads us to question the inevitability of established historical trajectories: from May Fourth populism to the mass politics of the PRC, from the vernacular movement to the linguistic form that stabilized to become baihua.

Past as future: The discourse of Chuantong in twentiethcentury China1

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-186
Author(s):  
Pi Li
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Supply And Demand ◽  
The Other ◽  
Market Forces ◽  
New Wave ◽  
May Fourth Movement ◽  
New Era ◽  
Fourth Movement ◽  
Chinese Intellectuals ◽  
The One

Abstract This article discusses the approaches of Chinese intellectuals and artists to tradition throughout the twentieth century. Tradition in China is understood, on the one hand, as a notion born in a framework constructed by twentieth-century Chinese intellectuals and their realm of senses and concept of time, on the other hand as a notion driven by modernity and capitalism to anchor a work of art to a distinguishable point of time. Hence, the article will first review a series of debates on old and new culture that have taken place since the May Fourth Movement. It will then move on to discuss how contemporary artists made peace with tradition since the '85 New Wave, a new era when artists are also subject to market forces of supply and demand.

Enlightenment and Unity: Language Reformism in Late Qing China

2001 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 469-493 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. K. CHENG
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Chinese Language ◽  
Modern China ◽  
New Culture Movement ◽  
Language Reform ◽  
Late Qing ◽  
Late Qing China ◽  
May Fourth ◽  
Chinese Intellectuals

The movement to create a phonetic script for the Chinese language was arguably one of the most arresting and exciting engagements in modern China. While generations of Chinese intellectuals tirelessly applied themselves to sorting out the linguistic technicalities in devising a Chinese phonetic system, what made language reform—or, depending on the perspective taken, revolution—historically so intriguing was that it had been a fiercely contested domain where a fascinating array of ideological positions was staked and contended. As John de Francis has observed, there had always been ‘a significant correlation between attitudes toward social change and attitudes toward linguistic reform in China’. Indeed, Qian Xuantong insisted at the height of the May Fourth New Culture Movement that to destroy Confucianism, one must ‘first dispose of the Chinese language’, whereas the Communist-led latinization movement of the 1930s, for its part, was meant to create a medium for the emergence of a true proletarian culture.

The Concept of Rendaozhuyi in Late Qing and Early Republican China

Cultura ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 105-117
Author(s):  
Ke ZHANG
Keyword(s):  
Human Dignity ◽  
Great War ◽  
Republican China ◽  
Chinese Tradition ◽  
Late Qing ◽  
Republican Period ◽  
May Fourth ◽  
Early Republican ◽  
Chinese Intellectuals ◽  
The Great War

This paper examines the concept of Rendaozhuyi in Late Qing and Early Republican China. Appearing as early as 1903, Rendaozhuyi is the Chinese rendering of both humanism and humanitarianism. For the Chinese intellectuals during the Late Qing and Early Republican period, “rendao” itself represented a modern value of humanity and human dignity. In the wake of the Great War, Rendaozhuyi gained tremendous popularity among the May-Fourth scholars. Some of them held it up as a universal ideal and tool to critique Chinese tradition, while others respectfully disagreed, worrying it would undermine the collective morale of “strengthening the nation”. Finally, the late 1920s saw the rapid ebb of the discussions of Rendaozhuyi.

旅行，為了轉瞬即逝的希望：試析錢鍾書《圍城》中的旅行書寫

2021 ◽  
Vol 26 (26) ◽  
pp. 001-012
Author(s):  
蔣小虎 蔣小虎
Keyword(s):  
Travel Writing ◽  
Cultural Influence ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
Chinese Intellectuals ◽  
Fortress Besieged

<p>錢鍾書的《圍城》因其獨具一格的行文、諷刺和暗喻而聞名於世，該小說對中日戰爭初期的中國文人進行了辛辣且幽默的嘲諷及批評。然而，截至目前，學界鮮少討論錢鍾書在《圍城》中的旅行書寫。傳統上，旅行往往被視為是一個文化影響、發現他者及自我的過程；極端情形下，旅行甚至是征服的開始。本文認為，錢鍾書通過旅行的情節，揭露了人性的黑暗面，例如自大、虛偽、貪婪和算計，而這些陰暗面的存在無關種族、性別、階級、教育或地區。《圍城》的男主角方鴻漸本就是一個自卑且悲觀的人，經過數次旅行之後&mdash;&mdash;從歐洲到上海、從上海到湖南、從湖南回到上海，他的這些性格特徵愈發明顯。他的一生是由一個接一個的圍城所構成，而從此圍城到彼圍城的旅途給了他短暫的可以喘息的時間和空間，這些旅行也給了他轉瞬即逝的虛假希望，那便是，他在下一站將迎來更好的機遇。</p> <p>&nbsp;</p><p>Famous for its masterful diction, satire, and metaphor, Qian Zhongshu’s Fortress Besieged is a sharp, humorous, and sarcastic criticism of Chinese intellectuals at the beginning of the Sino-Japanese War. Until recently, scant attention was paid to Qian’s travel writing in this novel. Travel is traditionally considered a process of cultural influence, the discovery of the other and the self or, radically, the beginning of conquest. This essay argues that Qian adopts the plot of travel to display a bleak picture of humanity, filled with pretentiousness, hypocrisy, greed, and manipulation, the existence of which is not impacted by race, gender, class, education, or region. For the novel’s protagonist Fang Hongjian, his habitual low-esteem and pessimism become more explicit after his several trips from Europe to Shanghai, from Shanghai to Hunan, and from Hunan back to Shanghai. His life consists of besieged fortresses one after another. The journey from here to there gives him temporary space and time for breathing, as well as a false and fleeting hope that he will have better chances in the next stop.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p>

Chinese Literary Thought in Modern Times

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Der-wei Wang
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Textual Studies ◽  
Chinese Modernity ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Literary Thought ◽  
May Fourth ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

Theory has both enriched contemporary Chinese literary studies and generated discontent. Rather than uncritically embracing or rejecting theory, this chapter probes the discourse of Chinese literary thought in Chinese modernity as an engagement with Chinese traditions as well as modern Western theoretical practice. Contrary to the perception that the May Fourth era was a period of total antitraditionalism, intellectuals at the time appear to have been radical comparativists when analyzing foreign importations and traditional legacies. This chapter introduces three cases—the dictum ofshi yan zhi(“poetry is that which expresses what is intently on the mind”), the trope ofxing(“affective evocation”), and the dialogic ofshishi(“poetry as history”). By bringing literary thought to bear on theoretical engagement on one hand and textual studies on the other, we can reengage theory critically as a movement across cultures that shapes and is shaped by its different contexts.

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