| Although researches of Chinese modern drama have made great achievement on the collecting of historical documents, the combing of historical facts and the study of playwrights and their works, the deep and sharp theoretical thinking and text analysis caused by everyday life critical theory was rarely put forward. Therefore, this study does not aim at studying the historical facts of the20th century Chinese modern drama and its integrity, but analyzing the dialectical imaginative relationship shown in Chinese modern drama and everyday life under concrete historical context and the great background of modernity from the aspect of everyday life critical theory. On the one hand, this study reveals the process of accepting modernity as an important part of everyday life and admitting its value by the roles in the drama and playwrights; on the other hand, it indicates that this process is also an important part in China's modernization process, and the everyday life presented in the drama constructs people's imagination and identity to the real everyday life. Moreover, the everyday life itself is an existence which is full of dialectical meaning because of its trivialness seen from some critics on the one hand and its subversive side on the other hand.In all the literature genres, drama has the closest relationship with everyday life. This statement can be fully proved by Chinese modern drama which was born in city directly in the background of modernity and firstly played the modern everyday life out. Since then, the relationship between Chinese drama and everyday life was elaborated like love hate intertwined and brinkmanship under two powerful words of "enlightenment" and "revolution" in the20th Century, and many modern classic dramas were born in that period. Therefore, it is necessary, meaningful and valuable to discuss this relationship. This article aims at studying the representative plays in different specific historical period:"May4th Movement" period, left-wing period, Yanan period,"17years'Age", the Great Cultural Revolution and the time after that, and develops its discussion under the two clues of "horizontal transcendence" and "vertical transcendence" from everyday life theory. The full article is divided into six parts:The part of introduction mainly argues the necessity and possibility of the selected title. Firstly, it tells the reasons why the everyday life critical theory was chosen as the basis of methodology and why the Chinese drama was chosen as research object, and expounds the theoretical basis of their interrelationship. Secondly, it summarizes the research condition on the selected subject at home and abroad, points out the theoretical starting point and research basis. Finally, it illustrates the theoretical and practical meaning of this study and the logical structure of the full text.The second part (Chapter One) is the theoretical background which puts forward the reason why everyday life can be seen as a theoretical issue. This part is subdivided into three small parts: firstly, it points out the crisis and symptoms of everyday life as a problem of modernity from the overall, and combs the theoretical viewpoints of some western thinkers like Angle Schiller, Hegel, Martin Heidegger, Webb, Simmel, Henry Lefebvre, etc. from the aspects of the accomplished facts of modernity, the expansion of enlightenment words and the reflection to modernity from post-modernity. Secondly, it tries to propose a new research idea to study everyday life critical theory, that is, the "horizontal transcendence" and "vertical transcendence" of everyday life, and demonstrates its possibility with the theory of many thinkers. Thirdly, seen the Chinese context from the aspect of everyday life critical theory, in the20th Century China was also experiencing the great changes of modernity and the profound transformation of everyday life. So it is possible to investigate the imagination and change to everyday life of the20th Century's Chinese literature from some certain important historical nodes. For instance, the start of everyday life domain by the "May4th Movement" writers, the radical imagination of everyday life from left-wing scholars, the colonization of everyday life by politics after the founding of new China, the addicted state to everyday life after the Great Cultural Revolution, etc.The third part (Chapter Two) begins to bring the everyday life critical theory into the study of Chinese modern drama. It is subdivided into three parts. First of all, it is the investigation of the cultural identity of early Chinese modern drama. Through analyzing the materiality during the process of urbanization and its characterization to everyday life, the author points out that Chinese modern drama has owned a natural cultural characteristic in the early years since it was born, namely "it is born in the city and it represents everyday life". Next, the emphasis on the art practice of anti-everyday, the politicization, deeper division in class and revolutionization, and the subordination from art to politics caused by the constriction of political power during the long period between left-wing and the Great Cultural Revolution was the typical characteristic of drama practice in that period. In the last part, the author indicates that after the Great Cultural Revolution, under the historical situation of city everyday life's reemerge, whether the modernist explore play that is far away from everyday life representing the position of elites in the1980s or the popular culture phenomenon that is close to everyday life representing the position of the public in the1990s, although there were still considerable number of playwrights keeping high creative enthusiasm, they could not stop Chinese drama from being driven into the fate of declination.The fourth and the fifth part are the main body of the paper which intend to interpret and analyze some modern plays in detail. Chapter Three investigates this plays from the "vertical transcendence" of everyday life critical theory, chooses the "Nora play" represented by Hu Shih's "The Juvenizer" in the period of "May4th Movement", Tsao Yu's "Sunrise" in the1930s, the socialist education play represented by Cong Shen's "Never Forget" in "17years'Age" and the revolutionary model opera represented by "The White Haired Girl" in the period of the Great Cultural Revolution respectively as analyzing objects. In these plays, facing the boring and mechanical repeated everyday life, the playwrights or the protagonists always try to search an imaginary or aesthetic utopia beyond everyday life, and establish a kind of hierarchical relationship:the lower-level everyday life is continuously overcome and went beyond by higher-level concept. Chapter Four investigates plays within the clue of "horizontal transcendence". It selects the comedy in the period of "May4th Movement" represented by Ding Xilin's "A Hornet", Xia Yan's "Under the Roofs of Shanghai" in the1930s and Lao She's "Teahouse" in the "17years'age" as objects. Unlike the idea of "vertical transcendence", the playwrights and protagonists do not search political, aesthetic or artistic transcendence out of everyday life, but make effort to discover the positive side of everyday life itself, trying to find the possibility of aesthetic transcendence of resistance in it. Like Ding Xilin's narrative art, common people's resistant art in Shanghai lanes and the strong nostalgia emotion shown in "Teahouse", etc.The sixth part is the remaining discussion which explores the everyday life experience in modern drama and its construction of modernity from the macro level. On the one hand, the expansion of scientific words and material words lead to the tediousness of everyday life since the20th Century; on the other hand, Chinese special historical context caused a long-time suppression to people's material desires from revolutionary modernity in everyday life. Meanwhile, Chinese modern drama has been continuously working towards the imagination and construction of modern national country since its birth. These are all important dimensions to measure the modernity of modern drama.
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