Script Crisis and Literary Modernity in China, 1916-1958 Zhong Yurou
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Script Crisis and Literary Modernity in China, 1916-1958 Zhong Yurou Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 2014 © 2014 Yurou Zhong All rights reserved ABSTRACT Script Crisis and Literary Modernity in China, 1916-1958 Yurou Zhong This dissertation examines the modern Chinese script crisis in twentieth-century China. It situates the Chinese script crisis within the modern phenomenon of phonocentrism – the systematic privileging of speech over writing. It depicts the Chinese experience as an integral part of a worldwide crisis of non-alphabetic scripts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It places the crisis of Chinese characters at the center of the making of modern Chinese language, literature, and culture. It investigates how the script crisis and the ensuing script revolution intersect with significant historical processes such as the Chinese engagement in the two World Wars, national and international education movements, the Communist revolution, and national salvation. Since the late nineteenth century, the Chinese writing system began to be targeted as the roadblock to literacy, science and democracy. Chinese and foreign scholars took the abolition of Chinese script to be the condition of modernity. A script revolution was launched as the Chinese response to the script crisis. This dissertation traces the beginning of the crisis to 1916, when Chao Yuen Ren published his English article “The Problem of the Chinese Language,” sweeping away all theoretical oppositions to alphabetizing the Chinese script. This was followed by two major movements dedicated to the task of eradicating Chinese characters: First, the Chinese Romanization Movement spearheaded by a group of Chinese and international scholars which was quickly endorsed by the Guomingdang (GMD) Nationalist government in the 1920s; Second, the dissident Chinese Latinization Movement initiated in the Soviet Union and championed by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the 1930s. This crisis was brought to an abrupt end in 1958, when Zhou Enlai, the first premier of the People’s Republic of China, relegated the Romanization system pinyin to an official auxiliary status, secondary to Chinese characters, thus concluding the half-century struggle between the Chinese script and the alphabet. The final containment of the script crisis was partly a political decision of the new socialist state, and partly the result of the use of “baihua.” The multivalent term baihua— plain speech, vernacular, and a colloquialized written language—enabled an unlikely reconciliation between the phonocentric dreams of a Chinese alphabet and a character- based Chinese national language and literature. This alternative solution to the script crisis, which grew from within the Chinese script, was rehearsed in the first modern Chinese anti-illiteracy program in France during the Great War. The solution was consolidated as a colloquialized written Chinese became the staple of modern Chinese literary writing. The negotiated baihua—imprinted profoundly by the phonocentric- biased discourse—on the one hand registers the historical reality of the modern Chinese writing as a written language; on the other, it keeps alive the phonocentric dreams of modern China. CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iii INTRODUCTION 1 Chapter 1 25 Combatting Illiteracy The First Chinese Mass Literacy Program in the Great War Chapter 2 77 The Quest of Universalism The Chinese Romanization Movement, Gwoyeu Romatzyh, and Visible Speech Chapter 3 138 Mimetic Writing and The Chinese Latinization Movement Chapter 4 198 War, “Yutiwen,” and the New Chinese Mass Education Movement EPILOGUE 258 BIBLIOGRAPHY 270 i LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1.1 WWI Monument in Baudricourt Square, Paris 72 Figure 1.2 A laborer’s envelope 73 Figure 1.3 Fu Xingsan’s article 74 Figure 1.4 People’s Thousand Characters (1923) 75 Figure 1.5 “Blindness” 76 Figure 2.1 New Phonographs of the National Language (1924) 133 Figure 2.2 Speech melody of the four tones of yi 134 Figure 2.3 Ziffersystem notation 134 Figure 2.4 Five-line music staff notation 134 Figure 2.5 Sound spectrograph machine 135 Figure 2.6 Working mechanism of sound spectrograph 136 Figure 2.7 “Visible Speech” 136 Figure 2.8 Spectrographic images 137 Figure 3.1 Mao’s dedication to Sin Wenz 196 Figure 3.2 The Old Testament (1902) and The New Testament (1882) 197 Figure 3.3 “Sin Iok” (The New Testament) and “Kū-Iok” (The Old Testament) 197 Figure 4.1 The least frequently used characters in yutiwen 254 Figure 4.2 The most frequently used characters in yutiwen 255 Figure 4.3 Elementary school activities in China in 1924 256 Figure 4.4 Tao Xingzhi in Chongqing in 1945 257 Figure 5.1 “National Form” of the Chinese script 269 Figure 5.2 Five different scripts on a one hundred RMB Bill 269 ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am deeply indebted to many individuals and institutions for years of assistance and encouragement. First of all, I owe my greatest debt of gratitude to my advisor Lydia Liu. She has shaped and inspired my years at Columbia University with her unusual intellectual scope, theoretical acumen, and her uncompromising attention to writing. She has set the example of exemplary scholarship, which I could only hope to emulate. Shang Wei oversaw different stages of this project and remained a constant source of support and encouragement. His expertise in Ming and Qing baihua literature enriched my understanding of the linguistic materiality of its modern variation. Bao Weihong offered me unwavering support, both intellectual and emotional, throughout the years. Her remarkable knowledge in film and media studies has steered me toward a more rigorous engagement with the relationship between media and mass literacy. David Lurie challenged some of my basic assumptions and pushed me to conceptualize my whole project in a more coherently way. He has also taught me much about Japan and Japanese writing with extraordinary rigor and fine pedagogy, which have informed my own study of Chinese writing to no small measure. Rebecca Karl raised crucial questions about my historiographical approach, compelling me to define more carefully my historical problematique. Her home where our writing group convened will be remembered fondly as the Hengshan Hotel of the Upper West Side. I would also like to thank Li Tuo, whom I think of as an unofficial “sixth” member of my committee, for his erudition, vision, and stimulation. I am very grateful to the Social Science Research Council, Columbia University GSAS Travel Grant, and the Lane Cooper Foundation for funding the research and iii writing of this dissertation. In Cambridge, MA, Rulan Chao Pian welcomed me to her home and shared her memories of her father Chao Yuen Ren with me. At Berkeley, Andrew Jones generously hosted my archival research at the Bancroft Library. Reference librarians He Jianye, Susan Snyder, and David Kessler made my Berkeley library days delightful and productive. In Hong Kong, aside from facilitating my research at the Chung Chi Library of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Beidao treated me with hospitality, poetry, and free books. In the U. K., Richard Luckett showed me the wonders of the I. A. Richards Collection in the Old Library at the Magdalene College, University of Cambridge. Though materials regarding Basic English that I culled from Cambridge and the Institute of Education in London did not make their way into the present dissertation, they planted seeds for future work. For the Beijing leg of the research, I had the joy of returning to my alma mater – Tsinghua University. Ge Fei, Wang Zhongchen, and Wang Hui offered me brilliant feedback and urged me to rethink the epistemological implications of the script crisis. In Anhui, Yan Guizhong and Yu Rijin took care of me while I dug into the archives at the Tao Xingzhi Museum. I am also indebted to the staff and librarians at the Lu Xun Museum and the Chinese National Library in Beijing, as well as the Qu Qiubai Museum in Changzhou. I thank the following people for responding to and commenting on prospectus, chapter drafts, and presentations: Antje Budde, Brett de Bary, Linda Feng, Razan Francis, Arnika Fuhrmann, Marilyn Ivy, Thomas Keirstead, Cornelius Kubler, Greta Marchesi, Robin McNeal, Meng Liansu, Meng Yue, Jacques Neefs, Janet Poole, Naoki Sakai, Graham Sanders, Andre Schmid, Q.S. Tong, Wang Pin, and Wu Yiching. iv Sincere gratitude is due to the wonderful members of my two writing groups who tirelessly parsed through my unruly drafts and provided me with critical insights and warm encouragement: Robert Cole, Anatoly Detwyler, Arunabh Ghosh, Liza Lawrence, Jennifer Dorothy Lee, Andy Liu, Chelsea Schieder, Mi-ryong Shim, Nate Shockey, Brian Tsui, and Lorraine Wong. My fellow classmates and friends have made graduate school hospitable and stimulating. Chang Yi-hsiang, Sayaka Chatani, Nan Ma Hartmann, Lin Shing-ting, Liu Shao-Hua, Yan Zi, and Wu Minna treated me with good food, conversation, and company. Chen Buyun, Chen Kaijun, Sara Kile, and Greg Patterson demonstrated library camaraderie toward the end of our writing days together. Gal Gvili and Myra Sun, to whom I owe special thanks, made NYC a second home to me with their companionship and friendship. I am also grateful to the many able librarians at Columbia: Seangill Peter Bae, Sasho Donovan, Rich Jandovitz, Wang Chengzhi, and Zhang Rongxiang, without whom my days and nights at the C.V. Starr Library would not have been the same. I thank Wang Jing for his joyful presence, his belief in me, and for honoring “facta, non verba.” My gratitude to my parents—Rong Yueyu and Zhong Gang—is beyond words. They have selflessly tolerated my long absence from home, shared my joy in making discoveries, listened to my frustrations and complaints, and saw me through my last stage of dissertation completion with love and composure.