Researches In Linshu's Dropping Behind

In the history of Chinese contemporary literature, Linshu has long been considered asone of the back-to-the-ancients group, severely criticized and reviled because of his struggle against the May 4 New Culture Camp. Since the 1990s, people have begun to affirm his contribution to Chinese New literature and his commendable patriotism, but still consider his ideas in the period of May 4th, conservative and out-dated. That has been an impassable barrier in present research of Linshu. From the point of view of culturology, considering the historical course of society of Chinese modern times and cultural changes, this essay tries to clarify that Linshu stuck to cultural conservatism, that is, struck to Chinese national culture standard and absorbed the beneficial factors from western culture in order to realize the modernization of traditional culture, which naturally had its own rationality. This article holds that the May 4th period is an important historical one when the trend of thought in cultural conservatism in Chinese society conducted a public and decisive engagement against the trend of cultural radicalism and the latter obtained the cultural discourse supremacy. In the May 4th New Culture Camp, the relationship between Chinese and Western culture was changed from the space one in which each had its features to ancient- times-modern-times time relationship. Under the revolutionary thought pattern that something was either A or B, they denied Chinese traditional culture, attempting to replace it with western values in order to construct Chinese new culture. So they looked on all the people who held Chinese culture standard as old liners, back-to-the-ancients liners and feudal apologists. In order to promote the new culture movement and the advancement of literature revolution, the May 4th New Cultural intellectuals were looking forward to their enemies with the purpose of contributing to the fierce ideological debate. They took a fancy to Linshu and Yanfu, who both had a high reputation in cultural circles and adhered to cultural conservatism. Yanfu ignored all sorts of challenges created by the May 4th New Cultural intellectuals while one year later, Linshu couldn't bear keeping silent any more, came out boldly to engage in abusing each other with the New Culture Camp, thus causing the profound debate on New and Old. According to the myth, the words that they would repulse the feudal back-to-the-ancients group's furious counterattack, it was New that defeated Old. In essence, Linshu's disastrous defeat was a tragedy in the course of Chinese traditional culture's changing in modern society.