The Cult of "Love and Eugenics" in May Fourth Movement Discourse

"Great Teacher, Democracy! Great Teacher, Science!" This was indeed an appropriate slogan for the expression of the political climate of the May Fourth movement of 1919, following the establishment of Republican China, the culmination of the formation of the modern Chinese state. But it was in the stirrings of a new cultural movement that slightly preceded the May Fourth movement, not in the arena of politics, where the cultural foundations for a new "imagined community" were being laid. In the inaugural issue of New Youth (1915), a magazine that symbolized the spirit of the times, founding editor Chen Duxiu expressed that spirit in his now famous mission statement calling not for "a critique of current politics" but for "the reform and cultivation of the thought of our youth." This idea was given radical expression in the phrase "Sacred Labor, Sacred Love."

The ideology of "disdain for physical labor," deeply ingrained in the minds of the elite intelligentsia who valued "labor of the mind" over that of the body, had long been cultivated as part of the intellectual tradition based on Confucian texts. In reaction to this, interest in the cultivation of the body, literally through "labor of the body," grew and was linked to a more democratic notion of "sacred labor" and the call for "pan-laborism." It was in this spirit that anarchist Li Shizeng and others went to France to continue their studies while also working, something that had not been possible before. Even if such projects were eventually to be used as a means to educate and control the people as members of the communal body of the state, the domain of literary culture had clearly been liberated from the exclusive control of a particular class and gender—that is, male intellectuals. This was also linked to the systematization of schools for the purpose of spreading education, which began after the abolition of the imperial examination system in the late Qing. The advent of print media and the establishment of the educational system made possible the development of a more widespread readership that included women.

In addition, phrases such as "the people" and the "reform of the thought of youth" were used in a call for moral revolution, especially a critique of the patriarchal household system. This direct challenge from the perspective of gender was also given expression in the phrase "sacred love." While groping for new forms of modern, "romantic love," a freer notion of marriage based on romantic love and disdain for the constraints of the "household" linked to Confucian ethics was being sought. New cooperatives based on "Work and Study" were formed by young people who aimed to embody the spirit of "sacred labor"; these cooperatives also sought to create a new "topos of love" in experimental communes where freer relationships were possible.¹ Thus these communes aimed to realize the "sacredness" of the two terms labor and love. An analysis of magazines published at the time clearly illustrates these developments.

For example, in the late Qing, Minbao (People's Journal), the journal of the revolutionary alliance that sought to bring about the Revolution of 1911, printed only stiff, political tracts and was very prohibitive and masculinist in tone; topics such as home, love, or women and children rarely appeared in it. In Republican China, there was a complete change, and in place of their formal arguments on the state, such journals began actively to take up topics like marriage, the home, sexuality, hygiene, and health. As Kazuko Ono has shown, "If we compare the newspapers and magazines of the May Fourth movement period, which contain theses on the family in almost every issue, to the journal Minbao of only ten years earlier, we can only be greatly surprised by the great gap between them."²

It becomes clear that we must reexamine the issues that arise...