As The "Other" Local—an Interpretation Of The Formation Of May Fourth Local Narrative

“Local” is an ancient motif, which is a long-standing theme in the “Rural China”,and describing the local work has been focused since ancient times. However,before20thcentury, traditional China did not explicitly regard village as a culturalspace, the long river of the desert, smoke in the setting sun, the breeze rain, springflower and autumn moon, among all the literature which is so natural, so like lifeitself. In other words, among the literature did not appear another different culturalspace, and people cannot detect the presence of the frame according to the content ofthe framework outside. Traditional Chinese society is a high degree of integration ofnative society, in the absence of modern civilization——before the rise of the city,which does not matter to the countryside. Because everything define their own withother reference, and the missing of “the other” will inevitably lead to the fuzzy of “theself”. Only when the modernization as the representative of urban culture began toappear, the rural experience and local culture be highlighted, which produce thenative literature of modern meanings.The early1920s, it is the difficult beginning of the period of transition from atraditional agricultural country to a modern civilization, and the traditional closedpattern was broken, and China entered a modern context of “self-the other”interactive competition, this statute of the history which makes the generation andconstruction May Fourth local literature be in a dual mode of “self-the other”. In thisreference to other process, the historical context of May Fourth local literature, thedemands of the times, and characterization of lineage and cultural psychology areshowing a more complex meaning with their experience and explore.Because of special historical situation in twentieth century, the generation anddevelopment of May Fourth local literature is closely linked to the process of theRural China’s modern transformation. Since the early20thcentury, the native Chinesewas living in the domestic and foreign invasion, many intellectuals of that age, whomostly was born and grew up in the countryside, and finally study abroad or a city, under this kind of background, they start focusing more on their own side of the localin the west modern civilization enlightenment and reference, and in order toimagination and thinking the problem of Rural China’s modernization development.China’s modernity has an “internal edge” property. On one hand, the long-term poormakes local China has a desires and aspirations of modernity in rapidly wealthy andpowerful；and on the other hand, at the same time of the Western powers in theaggression against China, it also take the modern concepts into China in fact, forcingChina to accept modern baptism passively. Therefore, at the same time of theintellectuals in the pursuit of modernity process, they also reflect and criticize themodernity, so face the local, the intellectuals also produced two kinds of state ofmind：enlightenment narrative and romantic narrative. In actually, behind this twokinds of attitude in fact is two different way of thinking about the process of China’shistory modernization, in this kind of thinking, local became the starting point andexperimental field of China’s modernity.