Kuo Ting-yee on the New Culture and May Fourth Movements

Part 2 of 2

Listen to the audio narration of this translation of Kuo Ting-yee’s Outline History of China, Chapter 14, above.

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This week, I’m continuing with the second part of Chapter 14 of my paternal grandfather Kuo Ting-Yee’s book Outline History of Modern China 《近代中国史纲》, an important work still taught as a history textbook in universities around Greater China. The chapter, titled 在革命 and which I’ve translated as “Again, Revolution,” focuses on the New Culture and May Fourth period, beginning in about 1914. This section will give readers a good sense of why his books — especially those covering the Republican Period — were banned on both sides of the Taiwan Strait for many decades after 1949, and were only taught in Hong Kong. It also gives a good sense of why I’m so drawn to the period — why I find such heroism and romance in that tumultuous time. My grandfather’s sympathies are easily discernible: It’s clear that he understands how the exigencies of the day, the optimism around the October Revolution in Russia, and the support for socialism by Western philosophers greatly admired by the May Fourth intellectuals, especially Bertrand Russell, would have made Marxism and even Bolshevism so popular within the Chinese intelligentsia after May 4th, 1919, but his heart is clearly with the moderates and gradualists — Hu Shi rather than Chen Duxiu, and Chen Duxiu over Li Dazhao. (Interestingly, Kuo Ting-yee is buried in the same Beijing cemetery as Li Dazhao is — Wan’an Cemetery, just inside the northwest corner of the Fifth Ring Road).

There are extensive footnotes in this section, which I’ve translated and are worth looking at, especially where the editors of influential magazines are listed. If you know your Republican history, it reads like a who’s-who.

I’ve skipped Section Three, as it includes long lists of production numbers in various industries, but I’ve translated it and if you’re interested, let me know and I can send along my translation of that section.

– Kaiser

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(Part One) (1915-1924)

Section Four: The Expansion of the May Fourth Movement

With the Great War at an end and the peace conference about to begin, China, listed among the victorious nations, was filled with joy. The intellectuals were particularly elated. Schools nationwide took a three-day holiday to celebrate the victory of the Allies. There were processions with lanterns, streets full of banners, the noise of drums and music, cheers that reached the skies, and songs about the clouds dispersing to reveal the blue sky. They dismantled the exoneration stele erected by the German minister Clemens von Ketteler and replaced it with a "Victory of Justice" monument. Cai Yuanpei, the president of Peking University, and professors at the university held a meeting featuring speeches highlighting four significant meanings of the celebration: the destruction of dark authoritarianism and the development of bright mutual assistance; the elimination of the conspiracy faction and the growth of the justice faction; the end of arbitrary authoritarianism and the development of democracy; and the elimination of racial prejudice and the development of universal brotherhood.