Chapter 65 Vernacular and "popular language"

During the May Fourth Movement, advocating vernacular Chinese and opposing classical Chinese was Hu Shi's most proud career in his life.Throughout his life, he often regarded himself as a preacher of the vernacular and a guardian of the Dharma, and he always paid attention to the development and fate of the vernacular. When the Nanjing National Government was founded, Hu Shi sent a letter to Luo Shi because his student Luo Jialun became an official in the government, hoping that he would make a suggestion: "All orders, official documents, decrees, and treaties must be in Mandarin and punctuated by the government. Segmentation".He also hoped that Wu Zhihui, Cai Yuanpei, Chiang Kai-shek, Hu Hanmin and other dignitaries of the party and government would also help this matter. ①

But those who want people to ignore Hu Shi's statement, all official documents of the government and various newspapers are still full of classical Chinese and parallel prose.Hu Shi thought to himself, isn’t this even inferior to the Beiyang warlord government? In 1920, when Xu Shichang was president and Fu Yuefen was the head of education, they ordered the abolition of classical Chinese textbooks in elementary schools and replaced them with Mandarin textbooks.But newspapers and official documents still use ancient Chinese. If you have learned vernacular, you can’t read newspapers or apply it in society. Who would be eager to learn it? Therefore, Hu Shi always hoped that government documents and newspapers would use vernacular.After waiting for more than ten years, even the new government of the Kuomintang cannot be realized.He got a little angry, so he sharply criticized in the article "New Culture Movement and the Kuomintang":

The Kuomintang has been in power for nearly two years, and today we still have to read letters and telegrams in parallel prose, declarations in classical Chinese, daily newspapers in classical Chinese, and laws and decrees in classical Chinese!... Isn’t it even Xu Shichang that a revolutionary government can maintain the lifespan of parallel prose in classical Chinese? Doesn't Fu Yuefen even have the guts? At this point, we have to say that the Kuomintang represented by the National Government today is reactionary. ② In order to promote the vernacular, he did not hesitate to offend the "party-state" and give the Kuomintang a posthumous title of "reactionary", which shows how concerned and enthusiastic he is about the vernacular!

In May 1934, Wang Maozu, Xu Mengyin and others revisited the old tune of "reviving classical Chinese", advocating that primary and middle school students learn classical Chinese and opposing vernacular Chinese; they praised Huguang warlords He Jian and Chen Jitang for advocating respecting Confucius and reading scriptures. ".This is the so-called "Classical Chinese Movement in Primary and Secondary Schools". ③ The progressive cultural circles have severely criticized this obsession with ancient prose. "Independent Review" also published several articles such as Ren Shuyong's "Pleading for the Nationwide Primary School Students", Hu Shi's "The So-called "Classical Chinese Movement in Primary and Secondary Schools"" and "We Are Not Worthy of Reading the Classics Today".

④ After analyzing and refuting Wang and Xu's classical Chinese claims, Hu pointed out: I firmly believe that vernacular literature will inevitably continue to grow and develop, and I also firmly believe that the status of vernacular in society will increase day by day.Before the first-rate vernacular literature has completely established the standard national language, there will always be stubborn opposition from time to time.This obstinate opposition cannot be met entirely by "revolutions" by the government,— Although that can also accelerate the progress of educational tools—it must also rely on the increase of first-class vernacular literature.

As for reading scriptures, Hu Shi agreed with Fu Sinian's point of view, thinking that "although the Six Classics are half-understood and half-understood in the hands of experts", if they use these to teach children, the teachers are either confused or deceiving themselves.Therefore, "talking about reading scriptures today, or advocating reading scriptures in primary and secondary schools, are all ignorant talk, not worth laughing at by ordinary people." The so-called "Classical Chinese Movement in Primary and Secondary Schools" and the theory of reading scriptures were originally sinking, but after a little criticism from the progressive cultural circles, they sank again.The debate quickly turned into a discussion of "popular language".This is a continuation of the discussion on the popularization of literature and art on language issues.People promote popular language "in order to correct many shortcomings of vernacular literature"

; To achieve "the public can speak, understand, write smoothly, and understand", and also become "a language that the public is happy to speak, listen to, write, and read." ⑤ It can be seen that this discussion is for the sake of the public, and it has positive and constructive significance for promoting the combination of new literature and the general public.However, during the discussion, some people used "popular language" to deny "May 4th style vernacular" and wanted to discard vernacular and classical Chinese together. ⑥As a result, Lu Xun denounced him as a "dog talent", "Although it seems radical, it is actually disarming the enemy". ⑦Lu Xun believes that to promote popular language, we should write "more simple vernacular"; the key is that the author must be "one of the people" and "be able to do the cause of the people". ⑧

Hu Shi also participated in the discussion of Dazhongyu.In response to some people's erroneous tendency to oppose the popular language with the vernacular, he pointed out that "the popular language is not a special language other than the vernacular." ability".He said: Nowadays, many people who talk about popular language do not know how to speak popular language or do popular writing, so they blame the vernacular for not being popular.The vernacular is originally the language of the masses, and there is absolutely no reason why it cannot be returned to the masses.The writing written by literati today cannot be popularized simply because they have never thought of the existence of the public.Because they don’t have the public in mind, they misuse classical Chinese idioms and use many new terms that have never been analyzed; Lazy. … People like this who talk about the masses but have never cared for the masses in their hearts, even if they really want to "go to the people", they will not be able to learn to speak the popular language.

Therefore, Hu Shi believes that those who advocate popular language "should first train themselves to write articles that most people can understand and understand."It is necessary to consider both the literate public and the illiterate public.To achieve "Use a word, don't forget the public; make a sentence, don't forget the public; use a metaphor, don't forget the public. The result of this training is naturally the public language." ⑨Hu Shi’s views criticize current malpractices and are deeply pertinent; he also attributes popular language to the author’s sense of responsibility to the public and ideological and emotional issues, which are undoubtedly very practical and profound, and are quite similar to Lu Xun’s views.In terms of culture, Hu Shi still had a little democratic spirit after all.

① Letter from Hu Shi to Luo Jialun (draft), contained in "Hu Shi's Correspondence and Selected Letters", Beijing Zhonghua Book Company, 1979 edition, Volume 1, pp. 502-503.The letter was not dated, but was written around 1928. ②This article was written on November 29, 1929, and was originally published in the joint issue of Volume 2, No. 6 and No. 7 of "New Moon"; it was later included in "Human Rights Essays", published by Shanghai Xinyue Bookstore in February 1930. ③Wang Maozu's "Forbidden to Learn Classical Chinese and Compulsory Reading of Classics", "Classical Chinese Movement in Primary and Secondary Schools", and Xu Mengyin's "Confession of the Youth of the Baihua School", etc., were respectively published in Nanjing "Times Gonglun" No. 110, 114, and 117.

④ Ren Shuyong's article, contained in "Independent Review" No. 109.Hu Shi's articles, originally published in "Independent Review" Nos. 109 and 146, were later included in the first volume of "Recent Works on Hu Shi's Studies", published by Shanghai Commercial Press in December 1935. ⑤Refer to Chen Zizhan's "Classical Chinese - Vernacular - Popular Language", Chen Wangdao's "On the Construction of Popular Chinese Literature", Tao Zhixing's "The Road to the Popular Chinese Movement", respectively published in "Shen Bao? Free Talk" June 18 and 19, 1934 Day, July 4th. ⑥During the discussion on the issue of popular language, "Shenbao Tanyan" published Gurfo's "Declaration on the Controversy between Classical Chinese and Vernacular Chinese" on June 26, 28, and 30, 1934, and Jiawei's "History Will Repeat Itself" ", Bai Xi's "Classical Chinese, Vernacular, Popular Language", and "Evening News? Torch" published Nilu's "Criticism of the Popular Language Problem" on July 6.These articles believe that "'Baihua' is lurking with feudal evil spirits, and contains the poison of imperialism"; and said that "to promote the construction of popular languages ​​at present, it is inevitable to completely abandon classical Chinese and vernacular." Qu Qiubai confuses the relationship between the reform of writing and the revolution in literature in his articles such as "Long Live the Scholars", "Practical Problems of Popular Literature and Art in the Commonwealth of China", and "Problems of Popular Literature and Art", and unilaterally emphasizes that only the abolition of Chinese characters and the use of alphabetic writing have been implemented. The "literary revolution" can be regarded as the real realization of the literary revolution, and only then can there be truly popular literature and art.Starting from this formalist point of view, Qu Qiubai almost completely negated the May Fourth Literary Revolution and the achievements of new literature after the May Fourth Movement.He said that "this literary revolution... is almost equal to white leather", "it has failed, because it has not fulfilled its task, and has produced a new vernacular that is neither a donkey nor a horse"; he described the new vernacular as a new literature. A kind of "musle literature of 'no war, no peace, no people, no ghosts, neither present nor ancient—neither a donkey nor a horse'".Qu Qiubai's point of view is in essence just a development of the formalist theory in the May 4th Literary Revolution from the "Left" side. ⑦ See Lu Xun's letter to Cao Juren on July 29, 1934, and letter to Xu Maoyong on August 3 of the same year, see "The Complete Works of Lu Xun", Beijing People's Literature Publishing House, 1981 edition, volume 12, pages 495-496, and 500. ⑧Refer to Lu Xun's "Answer to Mr. Cao Juren's Letter" and "Mr. Wai Tan" (11), contained in "The Complete Works of Lu Xun" Volume 6, pages 76-78, 101-102. ⑨ "Where is the popular language?"