The Definition of Modern and Contemporary Chinese Literature
The very English word “modern” has two distinctive meanings when used in the description of Chinese history. It refers both to the period from 1840—1918 and the period from 1919—1949. Normally modern Chinese literature refers to that in the second period of time. From 1949, contemporary Chinese literature came into existence.
The Influence of Social Movements on Literature
With the development of the New Culture Movement and the victorious October Revolution in Russia in 1917, new thoughts refreshed the literary field. Writers tried to approach the public with more oral works as well as the literary association. After the Republican Revolution (1911), authors turned away from the classical modes of composition, and many writers (notably Hu Shi and Lu Xun) advocated writing in vernacular. Translations of Western books frequently appeared in China, and the novelists of the Republican period were greatly influenced by European writers. Women writers grew equally prominent during these decades.
Lu Xun: A Pioneer of Modern Chinese Literature
Lu Xun was the pen name of Zhou Shuren, one of China’s most famous fiction authors, poets, and essayists. He is considered by many to be the father of modern Chinese literature because he was the first serious author to use modern colloquial language.
The beginning of Lu Xun’s writing career coincided with the beginning of the May 4th Movement—a social and patriotic movement of mostly young intellectuals who were determined to modernize China by importing and adapting Western ideas, literary theories, and medical practices. Through his writing, which was extremely critical of Chinese tradition and strongly advocated modernization, Lu Xun became one of the leaders of this movement.
His first short story, A Madman’s Diary, made a huge splash in China’s literary world when it was published in 1918 for its use of colloquial language juxtaposed with the stilted, hard-to-read classical language. The story also turned heads for its extremely critical take on China’s dependence on tradition, which Lu Xun uses metaphors to compare to cannibalism.
A short, satirical novella called The True Story of Ah-Q was published a few years later. In this work, Lu Xun condemns the Chinese psyche through the titular character Ah-Q, a bumbling peasant who constantly considers himself superior to others even as he is relentlessly humiliated and ultimately executed by them. This characterization was on-the-nose enough that the phrase “the Ah-Q spirit” remains widely-used even today, nearly 100 years after the story was first published.
Widely recognized as one of China’s best and most influential authors, Lu Xun remains strikingly relevant to modern China. His socially-critical work is still widely read and discussed in China and references to his stories, characters, and essays abound in everyday speech as well as academia.
