Volume 2：The Wind off Grass-blades (1895-1921)

Throughout the history of the development of Chinese culture from the end of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century to 1949, it was generally divided into two different historical periods with the May Fourth Movement as the dividing line. Before the May Fourth Movement, the basic situation of Chinese culture was that after the First Sino-Japanese War, the bourgeois cultural movement developed, and a new cultural system of the bourgeoisie gradually formed. The theory of evolution, the theory of natural right, the republic thoughts of bourgeoisie and other thoughts became the guiding ideology of every field of the new culture. And the respective department of new culture also served to promote democracy, freedom and equality. At this time, the cultural front was mainly the struggle between the new bourgeois culture and the old feudal culture. After the May Fourth Movement, due to changes in the international and domestic situation, due to the wide spread of Marxism and the emergence of the Chinese proletariat and its political parties on the political stage, the Chinese cultural pattern changed. The new-democratic culture led by the proletariat communism, in conjunction with the bourgeois-democratic culture, launched a violent attack on the imperialist and feudal culture.

An overview of the development of Chinese literature in this historical period can be summarized as the development from literary revolution to revolutionary literature. The overall trend was that with the bourgeoisie and the proletariat successively ascending the stage of history, the bourgeoisie

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democratic literature that served anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism, and proletarian revolution literature that served the proletarian revolution achieved great development. Finally, after the founding of the CPC, the dominant position of proletarian revolutionary literature was gradually established, showing a distinct revolutionary and fighting character.

The economy and politics of the Chinese society were the source of the ideology and culture of this period. The basic contradictions of the semi-colonial and semi-feudal society were the fundamental national conditions of China at that time, which restricted the theme, structure, nature, content, and characteristics of the Chinese culture at that time.

The failure of the First Sino-Japanese War declared the bankruptcy of the Self-Strengthening Movement, and the reformists followed, promoting the political and cultural reforms of the bourgeoisie, but failed to save China. The Xinhai Revolution overthrew the Qing Dynasty, ended thousands of years of autocratic monarchy, and made the concept of democracy and republic deeply rooted in the hearts of the people. In the early years of the Republic of China, the idea of democracy and republic was publicized, Western learning was introduced in large numbers, the number of new schools doubled, there were more than 500 kinds of newspapers and periodicals, and the number of political parties and associations also soared to more than 300. But because the fruits of the revolution were stolen by Yuan Shikai, the Republic of China existed in name only. In order to restore the monarchy, Yuan Shikai commenced his retrogressive move respecting Confucianism; Kang Youwei and others established a Confucian church, asserting that “although the national system has changed, the traditional ethics have not”, which led to a rampant counterattack of the old feudal culture. In September 1915, Chen Duxiu founded Youth Magazine in Shanghai (renamed New Youth in the second volume), raised the banner of democracy and science, and launched a new campaign aimed at updating national culture and shaping a new national cultural movement. In the same

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year, Ren Hongjun and others founded the journal Science, and the Chinese Science Society and the Institute of Geological Survey were also established, which promoted the deepening of the Chinese New Culture Movement in the field of natural sciences. At the same time, the East-West cultural debate was in full swing.

During this period, the bourgeoisie played a very important role in leading the cultural change, and trained a large number of advanced intellectuals standing at the forefront of the era and shouted on behalf of the Chinese nation for China. However, they weren’t powerful enough to defeat the reactionary alliance between imperialist culture and Chinese feudal culture. Like its political revolution, the Chinese bourgeois cultural revolution was never completed. The characteristics of this period were: in response to the political restoration and the struggle with it, the fight between bourgeois culture and feudal culture was intensified; the people learned that the reform in ideology was crucial in social reform from the Xinhai Revolution, so a new cultural movement aimed at ideological innovation was to be launched.

The May Fourth Movement pushed the cultural reform to a climax and formed an unprecedented trend of ideological emancipation. After the May Fourth Movement, with the wide spread of Marxism and the establishment of the CPC, a new cultural force emerged in China. Chinese Communists Li Dazhao, Chen Duxiu, Mao Zedong, Li Da, Qu Qiubai, and other early Marxists were active on the ideological and cultural fronts. Various trends of thought and theories in the West came one after another, and rapidly expanded to various disciplines; education reform, literary revolution, social etiquette reform, and other movements started in-depth development. During this period, the debate between Eastern and Western cultures, the debate between old and new ideological trends, and the debate between Marxism and anti-Marxist ideological trends continued to be staged, and there was a situation of contention among a hundred schools of thought in the literary world. The characteristics of this period were: the May Fourth Movement stimulated the promotion of the patriotic spirit of the whole nation; Marxism was widely spread in the struggle; the united front of the new culture began to be divided, and some of the pioneers of the new culture raised the banner of “socialist culture”; in terms of the main types of culture and their development trends, the new-democratic culture led by the proletariat represented the direction of the new culture of the Chinese nation; the democratic culture of the bourgeoisie, as a part of the new culture, went on resistance against imperialism and feudalism to promote the society forth.

After 1924, the realization of the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party and the rise of the national revolution made political and ideological problems more prominent. With the help of the Comintern and the CPC, Sun Yat-sen reorganized the Kuomintang and put forward the three major policies of “joining Russia, cooperating with the Communist Party, and assisting farmers and workers.” He developed the old Three Principles of the People into the new Three Principles of the People; the CPC endeavored to combine Marxism and Leninism with the Chinese revolutionary practice to form the inchoate and basic idea of the new-democratic revolution. At that time, communism and the Three Principles of the People formed a united front, jointly carried out the propaganda of the national revolution, jointly opposed the political and cultural ideas of imperialism, jointly opposed the feudal education, the feudal literature, and the classical Chinese, and advocated the new literature and vernacular with anti-imperialist and anti-feudalism as the content; at the same time, they struggled against reactionary ideas such as Dai-Ji-Taoism and nationalism. The characteristics of this period were: the Three Principles of the People were reborn, and the socialist and democratic ideas were on the rise.

After the failure of the Great Revolution in 1927, the Kuomintang implemented the White Terror. The Kuomintang and the Communist Party faced a serious confrontation, and various social forces continued to differentiate and combine, which made the social and political ideology extremely complicated. The Chinese Communists, represented by Mao Zedong, founded the theory of the Chinese revolutionary road, and the Chiang Kai-shek clique promoted the feudal comprador dictatorship. Facing the military and cultural “encirclement and suppression” of the Kuomintang reactionaries, the CPC led the deepening of two kinds of revolutions—the rural revolution and the cultural revolution, and led left-wing cultural groups (such as the League of Left-Wing Writers, the China Social Scientists Union, etc.).

This book mainly discusses the historical period from the end of the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895 to the founding of the CPC in 1921, the process of the introduction of Marxism into China, its integration with the Chinese literature and art, and its development. And it analyzes the factors that created the red literature and art, including politics, ideology, class, and so on. To track the tortuous process of red literature and art in line with the times and historical requirements enables people to have a clearer understanding of the history of red literature and art, so as to better understand the role and meaning of red literature and art.