Since then Ch'tl had

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Since then Ch'tl had

remained apparently unwavered in this conviction; as the policy-maker of the League, therefore, he was chiefly concerned with the reform of the existing lan¬guage and literature. To him both the language and the literature were too Westernized and difficult for the masses, much too steeped in petty-bourgeois sensibility to reflect the (rue revolutionary spirit. Since the aim of literature is propa¬ganda. and since (he objccrive of propaganda is to reach as large an audience as possible, Ch'u was willing (o reverse (he (rend of Wes(ern-slan(ed pai-hua literature toward a popular mode of writing making able use of (he many forms of folk entenainment. Following his initial discussion of the problem the year earlier, he agitated in for a la-chung wrn-i or literature for the masses:The revolutionary vanguard must not detach itself from the masses to indulge in i(s conceit that it could ac¬complish singly "its heroic and sublime enterprises." To maintain in general that new content calls for new forms, that it is up to the masses to raise (heir level of art appreciation but not up to the writer to lower his standards to meet the masses, is to assume the arrogance of a "great writer"! The revolutionary literature for the masses must begin with the utilization of the advantages of the old forms—the kinds of fiction, poetry, and drama (O which (he masses arc accus(omcd—and then gradually introduce new elements, so that, as the masses arc get¬ting used to this new an. the an level of both writers and readers will be raised. In its formal aspects (he old folk an has (wo advantages: its close alliance wi(h (he oral literary tradition and its simple and plain methods of narrarion and cxposirion. The revolutionary litera¬ture for (he masses should heed (he importance of these two advantages."It would lie advisable, Ch'u Ch'iu-pai goes 011 to say, for the writer to appropriate the techniques of comic strip artists and teahouse storytellers, to experiment in the varied forms of traditional regional drama. (In the subsequent debate on ia-chung wcu-i, Su Wen birkenstock outlet observed caustically that no writer could hope to become a Tolstoy or Flaubert by drawing comic strips; with complete self-possession. Lit Hsiin retorted the Chinese language and culture. Thus Ch'ien HsQan-t'ung argues:To abolish Confucianism and annihilate Taoism, the only way is to store up all the Chinese books in a library and leave them there. Why? Because nine hun¬dred ninety-nine out of every thousand books are either Confucian or Taoist in outlook. The Chinese language has been the language of Confucian morality and Taoist superstition. . . . Such a language is absolutely unfit for the new era of the twentieth century. Let me boldly repeat my manifesto: to the end that China may not perish and may become a civilized nation of the twentieth century, the basic task is to abolish Con¬fucianism and annihilate Taoism. But the destruction of the Chinese written language, which has served as the repository of Confucian morality and Taoist super¬stition, is a prerequisite for the accomplishment of this task.Hu Shih must have been made very uncomfortable in the presence of such thoroughgoing birkenstock shoes radicalism: in reply to Ch'ien Hsiian-t'ung, he could only point to the infeasibility of the proposal and direct Ch'ien"s attention to more urgent practical problems. But Hu's prestige was not sufficient to deter all discussion of the subject. Even his favorite student, Fu Ssu-nien—later a distinguished scholar and educator but at that time the editor of the undergraduate magazine. The Renaissance—wrote in support of Ch'ien Hsdan-t'ung: "Moreover, the Chinese language has this special defect: its deeply rooted barbaric character. The invention of ideo¬grams being a matter of barbaric antiquity, birkenstock Sandals it cannot be helped that the language has remained barbaric. Can one not be ashamed of its being in continuous use in modem times?" 7 As if the Chinese language were unique in being traceable to barbaric antiquity!In spite of their apparently successful collaboration,that comic strip art may not producc a Tolstoy or Flaubert, but it contains the possibilities of a Michelangelo or da Vinci.)The creation of a ta-chung wen-i dearly calls for language reform. To Ch'ii Ch'iu-pai, the current pai-hua is as bad as wen-yen: riddled with Europeanized vocabulary and syntax, it lias become the vehicle of capitalist ideas and senti¬ments and the monopoly of the new intellectuals. (One must remember in this connection that Ch'icn Hsiian-t'ung had objected only to the Confucian and Taoist connota¬tions of the Chinese language.) Ch'U therefore speaks hope¬fully of p'u-l'ung-hua or common vernacular (the kind of debased Mandarin intelligible to large segments of the popu¬lation) as the medium for the mass literature. To those who objected to p'u-t'ung-hua as at best a linguistic fiction, in view of the multiplicity of Chinese dialects, Ch'ii was also equipped with an answer. During his second stay in Russia, he had attended the conferences of Soviet linguists engaged in devising an alphabetized script for Chinese residents in Siberia. When he returned to China, he brought back with him the Soviet system of Latinizing Chinese, known as Latinxua.1 In his essays on ta-chung wen-i, therefore,