Introduction: Re-Engaging and Re-Generating the May Fourth

Perhaps because it was a time when China's political, cultural, and social forces appeared to reject the past and embrace Western intellectual and political trends, our fascination with the New Culture movement (ca. 1915–1923) never seems to end. For more than eight decades, scholars have continually reinterpreted this period of roughly eight years surrounding the May Fourth demonstrations of 1919.¹ From one perspective, its aspirations are inspirational and its achievements significant: Marxism, socialism, parliamentarianism and ideals of liberty, equality, and fraternity were introduced to the intellectuals all at once in a pell-mell fashion. Hu Shi (胡適 1891–1962), armed with the ideals of Darwinism and pragmatism, galvanized the literary world by proposing eight modifications to the writing of Chinese literature in the vernacular. In the four hundred plus essays and editorial pieces Chen Duxiu (陳獨秀 1879–1942) contributed to the journal New Youth (新 青年 Xin qingnian), he called on readers to destroy decrepit Confucian ways of thinking and to acquire "a new body, a new personality, a new country, a new society, a new family, and a new race […] [in order] to face a brave new world."² It was a heady time when "new" was good and "old" was bad. Study societies, lecture groups, work-study programs, and clubs of every genre mushroomed overnight, and dissolved just as quickly. The potential for transformation seemed limitless.

Over time, however, scholars have re-examined the literature of this period, and have restored to visibility positions much maligned among the glamorous New Youth radicals. Recent historiography suggests that a longer historical view provides essential context for understanding this period. With this in mind a symposium, "Across and Beyond: the Regeneration of May Fourth Scholarship From Transnational and Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives," was held at Rice University in 2010 to bring together scholars at the forefront of revising our historical understanding of the May Fourth period.

To be sure, contributors to New Youth did set the tone for this era. Its publisher, Chen Duxiu wrote profusely on the need for ethical transformation of the people in order to save the country.³ Scholars generally assumed that Chen avoided overt political discussions in the pages of New Youth in order to devote full attention to the cultural reformation of the people, and that he later created Weekly Critic (每 評論 Meizhou Pinglun) with Li Dazhao (李大釗 1888–1927) as a forum for political discussions. In his contribution to this symposium, however, Wang Hui questions the reason why the May Fourth intellectuals resorted to engaging cultural issues to discuss politics. Stating that "culture and politics are both fundamental attributes of human life," and that "there is no inherent distinction between the two," Wang focuses on the famous debate between Chen and Du Yaquan (杜亞泉 1873–1933) of Eastern Miscellany (東方雜誌 Dongfang zazhi) on Eastern and Western civilizations. Du, well versed in the natural sciences and other Western literature, questioned the cultural heritage of the Chinese civilization at a time when China was threatened with increasing fragmentation. He vehemently disagreed with Chen's uncritical celebration of the West, especially his high praise of French contributions to the world—"human rights, biological evolution, and socialism,"⁴—at a time when many thoughtful Chinese became disillusioned with Western democracy in the wake of World War I. As a result, Du introduced the paradigms of "old and new thinking" and "tranquil and active civilization" into the debate. Chen responded with a call for the political and moral awakening of the people. At that moment, Wang argues, the political discourse was injected into the cultural arena, and the May Fourth intellectuals forged a "culture that is completely separated from politics but which can recreate politics."

Coming at the Du-Chen civilizational debate from a different perspective, Leigh Jenco considers how each of these two intellectuals conceptualized history, and how each brought his particular understanding to designing a view of China's future transformation. Jenco argues that Du and Chen treated ideas as moving through time and space, a concept unavailable to earlier thinkers such as Yan Fu (嚴復 1854–1921), who saw society governed by unchanging universal law [gongli], Zhang Zhidong...