New_Culture

=New Culture Movement= The New Culture Movement ( 新文化运动 // Xīn Wénhuà Yùndòng //) was born with the founding of Chen Duxiu's journal //New Youth// in 1915. The journal urged youth "to exert [their] intellect, discard resolutely the old and the rotten, regard them as enemies," and to be progressive, open to change, democratic, and scientific. //New Youth// was widely circulated, written in the vernacular, and it allowed students to discuss issues related to these ideals. Major themes of discussion included women's rights, egalitarianism, pacifism, science, and the problems of Confucianism. The movement adopted the vernacular, or //baihua//, as its main mode of expression, since classical Chinese was seen by its supporters as constricting and elitist. Essays and fiction were written in the vernacular and published by //New Youth//, and students and university teachers used this forum to form a plan for China's modernization. This intellectual movement involved debates between a wide variety of ideas, taking place in study groups, literary organization, publishing organizations, and university classrooms, and using scholarly texts from all over the world as material to form new beliefs. Foreign influences had a great effect on the writing of Lu Xun, Mao Dun, Lao She, and other New Culture authors, and the ideas that came out of this intellectual revolution played a large part in the May 4th Movement.

Work cited
Schoppa, R. Keith. // The Columbia Guide to Modern Chinese History //. New York: Columbia UP, 2000: 64-67.