A Historical Review of the Discourse of the Local in Twentieth-Century China

CHAPTER ONE

A HISTORICAL REVIEW OF THE DISCOURSE OF THE LOCAL IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY CHINA

Introduction

The term fangyan has been variously defined as referring to a living, vernacular, or oral language; regional speech; mother tongue; folk language; vulgar slang; or the rural or provincial patois of the illiterate masses. It was an integral part of major literary movements and intellectual debates: the phonetic script reform and the national language movement that began in the late Qing period; the national literature movement, including the folk culture movement in the May Fourth era; the discussion on mass language and the Latinized New Writing movement in the 1930s; and the debate on “national forms” during the period of the Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). Through a critical reading of both primary and secondary materials, this chapter reviews these historical debates and discussions on fangyan and explores the discourse of the local in the nation-building pro- cess in twentieth-century China. It examines how Chinese intellectuals conceived of the role of local language in the construction of national language, national literature, and the modern nation-state. How was local language, with its own multiplicity, heterogeneity, and hierarchy, associated with and simultaneously dissociated from this historical project? What did Chinese intellectuals project the relationship between the diverse local languages and a single, unified national language would be? Would building and promoting a national language mean the abolishment of diversity, or would the promotion of local languages threaten national unity? Can the irreconcilable be reconciled, and if so, how? What theo- ries, hypotheses, and practices did Chinese intellectuals come up with to address the dialectical relationship within this dualism? In the first section, I examine the late Qing intellectual Lao Naixuan’s “Simplified Script” system, which was designed to represent four major local-language areas, and Zhang Taiyan’s scholarly book New Dialect, which Zhang himself regarded as the most groundbreaking work on the subject since Yang Xiong’s 扬雄 pioneering survey Dialect (Fangyan), composed during the Eastern Han dynasty (25 AD–220 AD). Viewing the 20 chapter one promotion of dialect scripts and the unification of the Chinese language as a “seemingly antagonistic but actually mutually complicit” (xiangfan er shi xiangcheng 相反而实相成) relationship, Lao endeavored to imple- ment his systematically designed dialectal scripts in the south in order to achieve the goal of national unification through the propagation of Beijing Mandarin. While Lao was mainly concerned with a pedagogical approach, Zhang offered a more theoretical view on dialect in relation to a unified Chinese language. By exploring the original etymological characters of the dialects, Zhang attempted to prove that synchronic regional variations were in fact diachronically homogenous and unified. He emphasized the historical unity of Chinese linguistic diversity, and more fundamentally, the unity of the Chinese culture and nation. As the leading figure of the National Essence (guocui 国粹) movement, Zhang argued that regional dialect was, without mediation, linked with the intransigent part of the Chinese essence, and further implied that local language was associated with the discourse of anti-Confucianism, thus making a connection with the May Fourth era of the early twentieth century. In the second section, I discuss Hu Shi, Qian Xuantong, Liu Bannong (Liu Fu 刘复), Zhou Zuoren, and other prominent May Fourth intellectuals’ arguments on dialect and dialect literature in the baihua vernacular movement, including the folk song collection movement, which greatly promoted modern Chinese dialectology. Treating dialect as a living vernacular language, in contrast to the dead classical language, the May Fourth intellectuals ascribed much significance and importance to dialects and dialect literature, including folk songs. Yet, on the premise that a literary, written, vernacular language was needed, Hu Shi and other literary reformers focused more on a dialect’s vocabulary than its pronuncia- tion in their enrichment of the new national language and its literature. The diverse dialect sounds were still subordinate to the imperative of nationalization in the official National Language Romanization system (Guoyu Luomazi/Gwoyeu Romatzyh 国语罗马字, henceforth GR), which was based on Beijing Mandarin and stressed national unity through script uniformity. In the third section, I survey the mass language (dazhongyu 大众语) discussion of 1934 and the Latinized New Writing (Ladinghua Xin Wenzi / Latinxua Sin Wenz 拉丁化新文字) movement of the 1930s, which advo- cated the creation of separate scripts for separate dialects. I examine the ambivalent attitudes of Qu Qiubai, Lu Xun, and other leftist intellectuals towards dialect, dialectal Latinization, and dialect literature, and thus I try to provide a more balanced, revisionist perspective on some long-held