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Copyright of New Perspectives in Translation Studies is the property of New Perspectives in Translation Studies Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article revisits Xu Zhimo's 徐志摩 (1897-1931) first speech, "Art and Life," at Tsing Hua College after he returned to China, arguing that the English text is an important document of May Fourth anti-enlightenment. This is based on three observations. First, Xu's speech engaged the May Fourth Movement as a period of awakening (juewu 覺悟) by addressing the problem of Chinese life and expressing his voice on the eve of "The Debate Between Science and Metaphysics" (ke xuan lunzhan 科玄論戰), a new idealism with humanity as its creed and art as its religion. Second, the Tsing Hua speech marks the beginning of Xu as a May Fourth poet. His romantic journey, known for its spiritual adventures, has its roots in a transcultural life-outlook critique and embodies his search for a new national soul. His socio-cultural critique of China and its national character, his demonic poetry, his Icarian passion for transcendence, even his conception of the "revolution of the soul"—all can be traced back to this speech. Third, the speech was Xu's romantic declaration as well as the development of his "big dream of serving China." His romantic self was rooted in the sage-hero complex he had developed since childhood, his eagerness to live out "a rediscovered national soul." It therefore reveals Xu's entanglement with Confucian tradition, suggesting that the transcultural hybridity of "the romantic generation" is a topic for further study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among modern Chinese female writers and translators, Bing Xin is considered an elite pioneer and leader of the May Fourth/New Culture Movement. Through a sentimental and feminist writing style, she showcases her own voice and distinctive features. With anti-patriarchal philosophy and creative literary rhetoric, Bing Xin's translation of literature reflects femininity and globality. Her seminal translated work《园丁集》 (Yuan Ding Ji or Yuan Ding Collected Poems), the Chinese translation of the poetry collection The Gardener by Rabindranath Tagore, is a product of appreciation and appropriation, as well as rewriting and recreation. Using case study as a research methodology and the method of textual analysis and commentary of Bing Xin's translated sources in comparison with primary sources from Tagore's work, this project focuses on how Bing Xin applies typical feminist translation strategies in certain excerpts from The Gardener, serving as a reflection of her feminist consciousness as well as a correction of the potentially unintended patriarchal tendencies of Tagore. By commenting on her translation tactics and their effects and implications, this paper traces Bing Xin's endeavour to fight the subordinated status of women and of the translation. It aims to contribute to both gender studies and critique on translation theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this brief but wide-ranging conversation, Liu Zaifu and late philosopher Li Zehou discuss the nature and history of individualism in China. Was there individualism in China before the reformers of the late nineteenth century encountered French and English Enlightenment philosophers? Is Daoism a sort of individualism native to China, or is it something different? What is good about individualism, and what is bad about it? What are the proper limitations to the individual? Much of this discussion centers around Lu Xun, his brother Zhou Zuoren, and the May Fourth movement, which is contrasted with later periods of the twentieth century in China. This dialogue first appeared in the 1995 book Farewell Revolution (Gaobie geming). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The student protest in Peking (Beijing) on May 4, 1919, was one of the most influential events in modern Chinese political and cultural history. This study examines how the North China Herald covered the event in the immediate two months after it occurred. It examines the history of this famous English press in treaty-port Shanghai and highlights its semi-colonial nature. The North China Herald treated the Chinese students with a mixture of sympathy and suspicion, and counted on US and UK alliances to rescue China from its own weakness and from Japanese imperialism. The Herald's coverage was influenced by its awareness of the rise of Chinese nationalism that would inevitably challenge the colonial and semi-colonial presence of the West in China, including the paper itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how Chinese Communist Party (CCP) policies to transform social and family structures gave women work opportunities but did not relieve them of their duties at home. Topics discussed include information on May Fourth movement during the 1910s and 1920s as first feminist movement; CCP's goal of changing perceptions of women-work which reflect freedom from gender inequalities; and role of Zhang Yun, a chair of the Shanghai Women's Federation, as a rightist in China.

One of the major legacies of the May Fourth Movement (1919) is the literature produced at the time, and within that canon the emergence of huaju (spoken drama) occupies an important position. As China's most prominent playwright of the twentieth century, Cao Yu published important plays, most notably Thunderstorm, Sunrise, and Peking Man, which feature some of spoken drama's most successful female characters. In light of the theory of literary event, this article intends to analyze those female protagonists with reference to Nora's departure, and to explore the power of social criticism embodied in their struggles to win freedom and independence. As young female intellectuals, these women undergo difficult experiences and end up with different endings. Reconsidered as pieces of political commentary, Cao Yu's plays reflect the legacy of the May Fourth Movement, that is, the idea that literature is an event that has power to act and intervene into reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes issues associated with the study of modern Chinese literature. Topics discussed include how writers of the May Fourth period used fiction to champion an ideology based on democracy and greater equality within Chinese society, specific modernist and selfreflexive techniques in May Fourth literature and countertradition in modern literature.

The influence of war and the military on the politics of Republican China has become a prominent emphasis of scholarship. Three recent books display the multiple ways in which conflict, particularly against Japan, shaped both Republican China and its successor, the People's Republic of China, highlighting—among other insights—the significance of contingency. This essay discusses the following works. Kwong Chi Man. War and Geopolitics in Interwar Manchuria: Zhang Zuolin and the Fengtian Clique during the Northern Expedition. Studies on Modern East Asian History. Leiden: Brill, 2017. 327 pp. $119.00 (cloth). | Hans van de Ven. China at War: Triumph and Tragedy in the Emergence of the New China. London: Profile Books, 2017; repr. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018. 352 pp. $35.00 (cloth). | Peter Worthing. General He Yingqin: The Rise and Fall of Nationalist China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 316 pp. $110.00 (cloth), $31.99 (paper). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese Union Version (CUV) has been the most widely used Chinese translation of the Bible since its publication in 1919 and remains a de facto "Authorized Version" for millions of Chinese Protestants. The 100th anniversary of the Union Version is a fitting occasion to reflect upon its history, reception, and future. These reflections will naturally involve consideration of Bible translation into Chinese and Bible translation more generally, including its limitations. The Union Version will be discussed in relation both to previous Chinese translations and to others published over the past 100 years. The ultimate purpose of this article is to enable clear thinking about the future of the Union Version and future Chinese Bible translations that will inevitably arise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses several articles published within issue on topics related to the May Fourth Movement that was an anti-imperialist, cultural, and political movement which grew out of student protests in Beijing, China on May 4, 1919.

"May Fourth" has long been considered a turning point for modern China, resulting in continuous heated discussion on the topic since the 1920s. These discussions not only reexamine culture but also have political intent. Many recent scholars have discussed the "ideologization" of May Fourth from the perspective of "memory politics." They argue that "May Fourth discourse" was not only used to understand and recapture the past, but also to help one's own cherished values occupy a core position in modern Chinese history, thus using historical interpretation to create a compass for China's future that conforms to historical tides. From the four great philosophies of modern China, the Nationalists and Communists have incorporated May Fourth into the "Three People's Principles" and "New Democracy," respectively. Liberals held up democracy and science as a need for China's future, and made efforts to propagate and practice democracy in Hong Kong and Taiwan after 1949. As for New Confucians who had continuously criticized May Fourth for being anti-tradition, they supported traditional values but also believed that democracy and science were a "priority and necessity for China's cultural development," and hoped to use the spirit behind this ideal. They along with liberals criticized the Nationalist and Communist autocracy for departing from May Fourth ideals, and especially noted how May Fourth created fertile ground for the rise and expansion of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), "resulting in the growth of the Communist Party," and the Nationalist government's move to Taiwan. After 1949, Chiang Kai-shek (蔣介石) and the Guomindang (GMD) Nationalist Party he led primarily assessed the May Fourth Movement by synthesizing the views of the liberals and New Confucians. They highlighted the slogans of saving the nation, ethics, democracy, and science to promote ethical education and "national spirit education" as top-priority cultural policies. The focus of this article is to examine how liberals and New Confucians used the topic of May Fourth to criticize the CCP and GMD in Hong Kong and Taiwanese political commentary magazines during the 1950s (approximately 1949–1960). It also explores how the GMD synthesized liberal and New Confucian views to lay out their own position. This discourse shows how May Fourth had diverse interpretations under the context of conflict between the liberals and the New Confucians as well as Nationalists and Communists. The criticism of the ideologization of May Fourth in recent years is actually an important turning point in the scholarly study of May Fourth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Individualism" was one of the most important philosophical trends in the May Fourth era, heavily influencing youths seeking personal liberation and independence. However, not long after the May Fourth Movement, positive associations with individualism gradually receded. Compared with devotion to "nation" or "society," the quest for individual independence was repeatedly criticized as almost synonymous with "selfish." There were two reasons for this: first was opposition stemming from a traditional Chinese respect for collectivism; second was that individualism had become the theoretical basis for private capitalist production following the First World War and its founding values were coming under increased scrutiny. As the Second World War unfolded, the fight for survival benefitted the promotion of collectivist values and the idea of social organisms. Individualism declined and eventually became supplanted by a heavily politicized form of collectivism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a continuation of "Advent of the Age of Isms," which primarily discusses a period teeming with various "isms" (主義 zhuyi). During this time, there were in fact a number of figures who held overtly or covertly opposing attitudes, in both cases giving rise to a phenomenon of fragmentation and asystematicness. Whether consisting of negative responses to the new political theory of "isms," this "remedy for all ills," or of piecemeal, asystematic criticism, the phenomenon itself served as a foil to the colossal intellectual forces of the Age of "Ismization." This article offers a preliminary discussion of this phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The May Fourth New Culture Movement was a "convergent historical movement," as well as a movement with a central purport and an intrinsic wholeness. The image of a homogeneous May Fourth formed unintentionally, and was also constructed by contemporaries and later generations. By examining the connections between the 1911 Revolution and the New Culture Movement from a more macroscopic perspective, exploring whether the latter was in fact a response to external impact or a self-awakening, observing how the debate over new versus old in the early Republican era developed to the point of a "culture" war, how the two-sided efforts for radical reforms reconciled destruction and construction, the interaction between the student movement and the New Culture Movement, and other aspects, thus examining the legacy of the New Culture Movement via perceptions in the post–May Fourth era, we can see that May Fourth has become a symbol of the New Culture Movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The March First Movement and the May Fourth Movement are like mirrors reflecting each other's relationship. This article uses the concept of "simultaneity" in global history to reevaluate the significance of both events in world history. It also examines the differences exhibited by the simultaneity of the two events from the perspective of an "interconnected East Asia." After entering the world-system, imperial Japan, semi-colonial China, and colonial Korea occupied different positions within its hierarchical structure. Here we need to pay attention to the status-diverse but mutually influential conditions in East Asia. To see through the complexity of (semi)colonial modernity and find the inherent opportunities to overcome modernity, it is useful to analyze the "double project" of adapting to modernity and overcoming modernity. Since the 1920s, the two events have been continually reinterpreted in the vein of socio-historical changes. The question of how to remember the two is not only a historical question but also a practical question for the present. Now is truly the methodological turning point in exploring and reinterpreting the two events. The author will use the terms "March First Revolution" and "May Fourth Revolution" in an attempt to tackle this issue. The mass gatherings that took place during March First and May Fourth provide sufficient evidence to support the use of "revolution" to describe them. Although March First and May Fourth are part of two respective histories of Korea and China, at the same time they are part of East Asia's and the world's interconnected history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits intellectual and literary trends in the few years preceding the launch of the New Culture Movement. Focusing on translations of texts dating from 1912 to 1915, this study explores how a group of writers usually considered conservative ventured to question the reliance of the individual on political structures that underpinned the then prevailing intellectual framework. I argue that these texts competed through literary means and preceded the claim of self-awareness forcibly voiced by New Culture activists in 1915 by achieving what I call a turn to the intimate. Reassessing the necessity to translate these texts as we celebrate this year the centenary of May Fourth Movement, this approach seeks to resurrect the long-forgotten but thriving literary and intellectual context from which the New Culture Movement's ideas sprouted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is next to impossible to write today, now, in this fraught historical moment about the May Fourth Movement and its centenary with anything other than sheer astonishment—still!—over the number of different sorts of people in China who organized themselves at that time, and who, in the extended process of self-organization, articulated—however inchoately and sometimes even incoherently—an intellectual and activist program of resistance and opposition to the corrupt domestic governmental systems, global institutions, local organizations, and specific individuals who were betraying the very principles of democracy and sovereignty that were supposed to be upheld. The betrayal of democratic and sovereign principles was part of an ongoing process of the elaboration of an establishment political position exercised by and through the wished-for domination of political and economic possibility by the powerful and by those who strove for power. As that process of imperialist-colonial expansion along with anti-democratic state-formation and sociocultural hegemonizing—sometimes in tandem with one another, and sometimes separately—became ever more evident, an increasingly vocal opposition posed itself as an active political force and not merely as a detached or abstract form of remonstrance. Through their activist political interventions and in the ensuing contingent realization of an incipient mass movement—incomplete, urban-based, and often elitist, to be sure—a new political consciousness and a new political discourse arose: a consciousness and discourse of the possibilities of and in mass mobilization, of a political practice of mass democracy. The May Fourth Movement, in its temporal proximity to and political juxtaposition with the Korean and Indian movements of the same year, and in the political space created by the ongoing revolution in Russia, helped constitute a world historical moment. That protracted moment can be seen as the inflection of the forces of global capitalism and imperialism into modern historical consciousness and political activism in China, as elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dissemination of Marxism in May Fourth China has always been a heated topic among Chinese historians, and the perspective of social history has influenced this issue over the last 20 years. Current opinion tends to regard the spread of Marxism as a rebellion of marginalized intellectuals against the whole establishment while the cultural elite tried to return to the center of society. Nevertheless, I argue that the dissemination of Marxism in the May Fourth period relied heavily on the existing cultural hierarchy and that a three-tiered configuration began to form among intellectuals that was dominated by top-down rather than bottom-up flow of knowledge of Marxism. The farewell to existing authority had to wait until these intellectuals gradually transformed themselves into revolutionaries after 1922. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individualization, localization, and memorialization characterize scholarly study of the May Fourth movement in the last 20 years. The recent Chinese historiography of May Fourth exhibits a growing interest in the study of individuals within the movement, a shift of focus from Beijing to other cities and regions, and a rising interest in how the movement has been remembered, commemorated, and narrated over different historical periods and in different locations. These three characteristics are not entirely novel, but over the past two decades they have intensified to a degree that we can identify them as marking new trends in Chinese scholarship on the May Fourth movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that the conservative/radical polarity by which we classify May Fourth intellectuals originated in the New Youth group's polemical stratagem of depicting the intellectual landscape in terms of a "New Culturalists vs. the rest" divide. In this stratagem, those who later became "the conservatives" were lumped together for dissenting from the New Culture movement and largely defined by who they were not. Historiographically, the establishment of this polarity scheme sidelined alternative mappings of the intellectual scene. Drawing on the case of the Critical Review (1922–1933)—a journal of "cultural conservatism"—and its polemics against the New Culture, this essay explores one such alternative mapping that grouped "conservative" thinker Liang Shuming (1893–1988) with the New Culturalists. Taking this paradigm as one of many that existed before the mid-1920s, the essay discusses the juxtaposition of multiple schemes of grouping as a strategy for superseding the polarity mode of classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1939, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders designated May 4 "National Youth Day," emphasizing its patriotic legacy. Subsequently, the CCP adapted May Fourth spirit to its political agenda and to historical changes. This article examines how the CCP's May Fourth public commemorations constructed a linkage between May Fourth and youth as historical and political agents in CCP discourse and discusses meanings of youth articulated in commemorative articles and editorials from 1939 to the early People's Republic. May Fourth commemoration became a site for articulation of a youth discourse that inherited the spirit of national salvation/rejuvenation and of concrete political action and evolved in response to changing sociohistorical circumstances. In 1939, youth received attention as a new force against Japan. With the creation of the socialist state, youth assumed unprecedented significance as children of New China, symbols of a new beginning, and privileged agents of socialist transformation and modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Republican China, new dictionaries promoted several aspects of the project to make Chinese culture compatible with science and to introduce democratic ideas. As inexpensive reference works, dictionaries also embodied the modernist principle that rational, secular knowledge could be made broadly available. As a result, new dictionaries both recorded and helped to define an emerging sense of Chinese national and scientific modernity during the May Fourth era. As part of the project of "scientization," they contributed to fundamental and wide-ranging cultural change. In addition, for the two largest publishers of Republican China, dictionaries proved to be popular and profitable titles that supplied vital revenue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although May Fourth has received an extraordinary amount of scholarly attention for decades, its contours and periodization remain blurred and contested. This article suggests that the significance of May Fourth resides in the ways in which it established a fundamentally new template for student led social movements that fused novel notions of progress with older ones of remonstrance, thus achieving transcendence in public performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the early translations published in New Youth, a leading periodical of the New Culture movement in China. While extant research mostly focuses on this journal's iconoclastic and radical arguments that prepared the way for the May Fourth movement in 1919, this article examines the period before Chen Duxiu, founder of New Youth, raised the banner of literary revolution. By interrogating the concealed history of the relay translations of fiction published in New Youth, especially Chen Gu's translations of Turgenev's novellas, this article unfolds the various approaches Chinese translators took in presenting Western culture, which sometimes involved unexpected processes of localization due to Japanese mediation. Specifically, I argue that the early translations in New Youth formed an interstitial space of hybridity where writers negotiated among different visions of transcultural syntheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article talks about May Fourth Movement of 1919, students being in detention, being loyal to Marxism, committing to the cause of the workers, fighting for national sovereignty and boycotting classes, markets and holding strikes.

"Youth and the Countryside" by Li Dazhao is a pivotal text that initiated the "Going to the People" movement in China. Scholars have long focused either on its similarity with Russian populism or on its impact on Chinese Communist revolution later on. This paper attempts to situate the essay in its historical context and to delineate the process how the countryside as a problem emerged in Li Dazhao's thinking. In "Youth and the Countryside," the rural problem is closely associated with Li's reflections on youth problems. Accordingly, the emergence of the countryside as a problem can only be possible after Li formed an understanding of class issues through his concept of "common people." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In her article "Revisiting Seventeen-Year Literature' (1949-1966) in China from a Neocolonial Perspective" Tian Zhang surveys the "Seventeen-Year Literature" (1949-1966) from a neocolonial perspective. It reviews the internal and external factors of anxiety faced by Chinese during the period of seventeen years since the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949. The seventeen years witnessed a stress on and flourishing of the proletarian socialist literature of the people, by the people and for the people. The seventeen-year literature, on its way to smashing the old system, represents the trend of Chinese literature of the time and the extension of the May Fourth Movement in 1919 and the left-wing literature of the 1930s. It made a significant contribution to claiming Chineseness, heightening the salience of national identity, consolidating government centrality, and enhancing cultural tradition through its narrative patterns of history, ideology and everyday life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cartesian philosophy has had a profound influence on modern Chinese intellectuals since the mid 19th century. After the May Fourth Movement, there have been many Chinese scholars who worked immensely on Cartesian philosophy and conducted fruitful research including translations, biographies, monographs, and a large number of papers. The examination of mind/body has been one of the most important philosophic issues and also a fundamental truth-searching of the various great thinkers, from Confucius and Socrates to many later Eastern and Western philosophers. There are certain similarities and distinctions between Confucian ‘mind/body’ and Cartesian ‘mind/body’. As a super country with the highest population in the world, the studies of Cartesian philosophy in China have been very inadequate; it should be more prosperous and successful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rabindranath Tagore's visit to China in 1924 was a milestone in the May Fourth Movement's envisioning of modern literature as a vehicle for social transformation. Moving beyond interpretations of the visit as a political failure, this article locates the reception of Tagore's ideal of Eastern spirituality within the larger climate of literary production, specifically in new poetry. Through close reading of poems by Xu Zhimo and Bing Xin, this article argues that Tagore's ideas were fundamental for the development of poetry as an interpersonal medium that both portrays and effects social bonds. This understanding developed as Chinese poets and literary critics engaged with Tagore's critique of Western materialism and his positioning of Asian religious sensibilities in contrast to Western materialism. Tagore's view promoted literature as a medium connecting religion, the individual, and the universe. In this sense, though Tagore's pan-Asianism failed as a viable political project, it carried powerful resonance in the arena of modern Chinese literature. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article offers brief profile of author Lao She and discusses his work in book "Rickshaw Boy" and play "Teahouse (Act 3)" depicting life of urban Chinese women Topics include his fighting against individualism and lack of attention to the poor resulted in May Fourth Movement; struggle faced by people living in 20th century China; and lack of possibilities faced by urban Chinese women.

Following World War I, and what many perceived as China's unfair treatment in the Treaty of Versailles, numerous Chinese intellectuals joined the influential May Fourth Movement (1919–1932) to protest social and cultural conditions in their country, and promoted study abroad in France through the Work-Study Scheme (or “Diligent Work-Frugal Study” movement) as a means to acquire technical skills like engineering while learning to strengthen China politically. Through participation therein, they began to view revolutionary France as a wellspring for inspiring political reform within Republican China (1912–1949). Sheng Cheng (1899–1996) was one such patriotic student who called for revolutionary change in his society, and in his writings connected China's contemporary political struggles with France's own revolutionary past. A nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) supporter traveling to France for this initiative, Sheng joined theSociété Franco-Chinoise d'Éducation, and staying there for ten years wrote and lectured as a public intellectual. The article examines Sheng's writing of personal history to engage in political activism, and in particular, his key work, the allegoricalMa Mère, in the wider context of the interwar period Franco-Chinese relations and the heritage of the French Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The May Fourth Movement is most often understood as a precursor to the China that emerged under the rule of Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party. In this essay, Mizoguchi presents an alternative reading of May Fourth, one envisioned by Liang Shuming as more deeply rooted in Chinese tradition than the heavily Marxian, class-based May Fourth later positioned as the forebear of the Cultural Revolution. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An introduction is presented which the editor discusses several articles published within issue on topics including sociological analysis of the intellectual network that facilitated the spread of Marxism; structural and impersonal themes in modern history; and history of May Fourth movement.

Copyright of Humanitas Taiwanica is the property of National Taiwan University, Humanitas Taiwanica and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article presents a character study and the history of Chinese poet Xu Zhimo and her role in shaping the history of the country, particularly through the May Fourth Movement that began in 1919.

The article discusses the study of Chinese folklore which highlights the development of its academic discipline towards maturity. Topics discussed include the folk song studies movement (FSM) that rose during the May Fourth era, the cultural awakening of the New Culture Movement (NCM) during the country's insecurity and crisis, and the use of folklore as a political instrument.

This article establishes melodrama as a contextually and culturally conditioned subject, by drawing attention to Chinese melodrama films produced during the 1920s and 1930s – a period in which moral, social and political issues seemed to be most urgent and problematic. It begins with a clarification of the term ‘melodrama’ and then focuses on cinematic constructions of the family within Chinese melodrama films. Derived from the notion of Chinese family that is firmly anchored in two relationships – the individual and the family, as well as the nation and the family – the article examines how melodrama films of this period engaged with issues related to China's modernisation, such as changing family relationships and the inevitable conflict between China and Western powers. The article concludes by suggesting that the popularity of melodrama films in the 1920s and 1930s marked the growing maturity of China's narrative cinema, and therefore challenges an assumption that early Chinese cinema completely conformed to the established pattern of Hollywood cinema. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Western and Chinese scholarship on Wang Mingdao has with good reason focused exclusively on the apologetic aspect of Wang's ministry, his polemics against modernist theology and his resistance to the Chinese Communist regime in the 1950s. Yet a significant, albeit smaller, portion of his writings and preaching emphasised practical Christian living. In Wang Mingdao Wenku, a seven-volume collection of Wang's sermons and writings, there are a total of twenty-one articles, sermons or allegorical stories dealing specifically with women, marriage or family relations: six from the 1930s, fourteen from the 1940s and one from 1950. They span Wang's most productive years, and some deal with issues specific to China's dramatic social changes in the Republican era, such as concubinage, widowhood and women's fashion. Many of these profound changes, especially changes in gender relations, were advanced by the May Fourth Movement. One sees in Wang's writings and sermons on marriage, women and family relations a concrete example of the indigenisation of Christianity in China, as this Chinese Christian leader wrestled with the implications of his Christian faith in a process complicated by China's encounter with Western modernity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses how "speech" became involved in and changed the tradition of Chinese writing, initiating the pattern of poetic production in vernacular prose. The May Fourth new literati experienced collective anxiety over losing their voice. They believed that writing should open up the system, reconfigure authority, and integrate the vernacular in order to obtain its voice, display vigor, and create poetic sentiment. With respect to social reformation, they regarded "speech" as an act of liberation. With respect to the literary revolution, they regarded it as a process of creating poetic language. Therefore speech, a daily behavior, suddenly became a ritual of revaluation, which produced the force necessary to stimulate the transformation of Chinese prose from classical to modern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article revisits the criticisms of “diaspora” by Wang Gungwu, Ien Ang, and Shu-mei Shih, and urges a return to the concept with an attention to temporality. Focusing on the story of Lim Boon Keng (1869–1957)—an Edinburgh-educated baba Chinese who led a Confucian revival in Singapore in the 1890s, clashed with May Fourth writer Lu Xun in China in the 1920s, and has been celebrated since the 1990s—this article argues that diaspora is less a collection of communities than a series of moments in which reconnections with a putative homeland take place. By considering how “diaspora moments” emerge and create actors, scholars may ask why and for whom essential ties become useful, and how the history of mass emigration foregrounds a contingent Chinese identity. Temporally inflected, diaspora is a process to reckon with a world in flux, hence a useful paradigm for analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The discussions revolving around the common subject of the New Culture Movement have experienced a complex and convoluted history, with a discursive domain ranging from the differentiation of new and old culture, to appeals for a scientific and democratic enlightenment, to the balancing of the cultural relationship between China and the West. The New Culture tends to be regarded as development in the direction of increasing rationality, liberality, and inclusiveness, in which the pursuit of an understanding between the Chinese and Western cultures is the only path by which Chinese civilization may gain future opportunities and development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the evolving connotations of the concept of “superstition” up to the establishment of “superstition studies,” in an examination of the process of secularization experienced by early modern Chinese thought under the impact of Western science. In traditional texts, the Chinese termmixin(迷信, literally “delusional beliefs”), modernly translated as“superstition,” carries diverse and variable meanings: aside from referring to the proper or improper content of ideas and beliefs,mixinalso has political connotations, broadly referring to beliefs or behaviors differing from the official rituals. On an ideological level, the traditional concept ofmixinrefers to a category of thought opposed to Confucian concepts such as the cosmology of Heaven, Earth, and Man, or the idea that “for a man to sacrifice to a spirit which does not belong to him is flattery.” In the late Qing Dynasty, as the idea of “superstition” as opposed to “science” was introduced via Japan, the traditional connotations ofmixinevaporated, and it merged with other neologisms. From the late Qing to the early Republic, the parameters of “superstition” were expanded to encompass anything at odds with “reason.” This was also a reflection of China’s shift from the “Classical Age” to the “Age of Science,” as Confucian concepts and scientific ideas successively served as the criteria for judging “superstition.” As of the present, a consensus has yet to be reached on how to distinguish between “religion” and “superstition.” This paper shall seek to clarify the connotations ofmixinor “superstition” in different contexts and their connection to the changing times, which may aid in understanding the complex facets of this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This essay links and analyzes the South Society of late Qing China with the May Fourth Movement of the modern period. It shows that when the founders of the South Society were first contemplating its establishment, they emphasized two points: first, nationalism and patriotism; and second, democracy and antifeudalism. The patriotic May Fourth Movement of the modern era was an extension of the patriotic and democratic sentiment developed in the late Qing period. The May Fourth Movement was both a "natural development" and an active refining of the ideas of pre-1911 student movements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]