CHI 331---001
Name: Hui Yao
Date: 10/08/2013
Thought Enlightenment of Modern China
Napoleon once said: “China is a sleeping
lion. The sleeping lion also a lion. It also can let people feel frightening
and daunting.”In 1840, because of the decadent feudal landlord regime of Qing dynasty and the use of self-fettered policy, it became a foreigner’s eyesore. Especially, because of the event of Lin Zexu Humen smoke, British government decided to invade China with the real purpose which is to open the Chinese market and to smuggle opium to China in order to reverse the Sino-British trade deficit. Based on those factors, the British Empire used gunboats to open the door of ancient China. From that, China had begun a semi-colonial and semi-feudal nation and started been forced to sign a series of unequal treaties. For China, it is a very humiliating part of its history. In 1900, in order to suppress the boxer uprising and maintain their profits in China, those imperialists and colonists sieged the International Legations. And in 1901, the signed of “Boxer Protocol” Agreement marks that the features of semi-colonial and semi-feudal society in China had become more significant. At that time, China is in the need of a person who can change the decayed and humiliating situation. Finally, in 1911, Sun Zhongshan led the bourgeois democratic revolution---Xinhai Revolution. This is the first time in the history of Chinese anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolutionary of bourgeois democratic revolution. It ended the China’s feudal monarchy system which last for more than two thousand years and it established the bourgeois democratic republic. The themes of the democratic republic appealed and evoked Chinese people’s feeling deeply and challenged the imperialist colonial rules. Even though the Xinhai revolution is a failure, China started to get on a correct way to development their economics, education, and armed forces. After Xinhai revolution, Chinese society had become more a capitalism. Especially in 1915, the New Culture Movement began. It brought hope to China.
This movement started on September 15, 1915. Because of the failure of the revolution, some advanced intellectuals recognized that they must carry out the ideological revolution which could save China. So there was a man named Chen Duxiu, he, his partner Lu Xun, and other people were in Shanghai worked together to establish a magazine named “Youth Journal”. It made China began to have the Thought Liberation Movement. In the pro-phase of the movement, they advocated science and democracy and against ignorance and despotism; advocated the new morality, against the old moral; advocated the new literature, against the old literature. It seems very easy to implement, but at that time, people did not understand the meaning of the new theory. For example, when the Qing Dynasty was overthrow, the new government forced the Chinese men to cut off their braid. But at that time, people still kept their traditional ideology, if someone forces them to cut off the hair, they would resist or commit suicide. So, this is a very difficult period of thought liberation.
The climax of the new culture movement emerged on the May 4th, 1919. The development of this movement attracted many young people, especially young students who were under the banner of anti-imperialist and anti-feudal, and prepared a thorough anti-imperialist and anti-feudal political struggle. The May 4th movement is divided into two parts which relate to thought liberation and cultural movement respectively. The culture movement have a very important position. The writers who were on behalf of the literature were Lu Xun, Hu Shi, Cai Yuanpei, etc. They against the feudal ideology and the darkness of the society through writing some novels. And thus they encouraged people to learn new ideas and they wanted to wake up people’s mind. For example, Lu Xun wrote the China's first vernacular-writing novel---- << A madman’s Diary>>. In this diary, he mainly talked about that at that time in China, people “ate” each other. There is no kindness, no care about each other, and no respect among people. Children carried the adult’s thought and became an “eater” of strange people. Their thought was very unimaginable. Lu Xun felt so fear and helpless. In a society full of people eating, if you are not careful enough, you would be eaten. The novel ended by “Save the children ......” it is Lu Xun’s inner disappointment. He called for help, and he hoped that children would not become callous in this eat people’s society. When Lu Xun’s journal was published on the “New Youth” magazine, it caused a great sensation. Moreover, some author like Rou Shi and Tian Han, they called for freedom and equality by writing people’s unfortunate marriage under the feudal marriage system. In Rou Shi novel “A slave Mother”, which focused on depicting an oppressed, battered and abused the poor image of women – Ch’un-pao’s mother. Forced by life, she had to leave 5-year-old son, and her husband sold her to another village and made her married with a landlord to become a born son’s tool. She is a commodity and a tool. She is a slave. This is a typical situation of the feudal system with humanities under the oppression of fiction. This leads people to look forward for free love. On this literature movement, Hu Shi thought that the vernacular writing has a free style as the language of the new literature, so that people could inject new content and new ideas.
So the New Culture Movement spread the democracy and scientific thought, weakened the dominance of the feudal thought, and promoted the development of China's natural science and made people, especially young people’s, thoughts get unprecedented free. The May 4th Movement is an unprecedented thought liberation, and enlightenment. But the cultural movement was limited in intellectual community. There were many advantages of the new culture movement and there are some radicals with perceptions of eastern and western culture. There are absolute tendencies to either eastern or western culture. This phenomenon affected the society significantly afterward. The May 4th movement is the beginning of China into the new democracy, it is like a dazzling star to Guide us forward.
