"May Fourth" — A Colossal Trap in China's Historical Development!

2006/5/7 23:00:07

When the upstarts of the "May Fourth" movement were lapping up the leftover spittle of their Western masters, those very Western masters were engaged in the first great war in world history — that was the fine fruit their Western masters had produced. When the "May Fourth" crowd was blowing their trumpets about "democracy" and "science" while tearing down the "House of Confucius," the post-World War I West had already begun a thorough re-examination of so-called "democracy" and "science." Later, when Wittgenstein was single-handedly challenging language and Heidegger was playing games with Being, what were the "May Fourth" movement's two famous chess players, Lu Xun and Hu Shi, up to?

Scientific skepticism must first and foremost be skepticism of science itself—yet the so-called scientific spirit of the "May Fourth" movement was premised on an absence of skepticism toward science, premised on the notion that Western winds would blow away Eastern ones, premised on cursing one's ancestors and claiming thieves as fathers. The "May Fourth" movement simply exchanged its own treasures for other people's "democracy" and "science" garbage, and the fools who hustled this swap actually became idols — upstarts who gained fame they never deserved. The farcical mode of muddling together East and West that the "May Fourth" clique inaugurated has been infinitely replicated ever since. Hu Shi's research on Chan Buddhism is merely the most debased version of this mode.

Even by the standards of book-thieves, looking back a hundred years later — could any single one of these prodigals measure up to Wang Yangming? May I ask: in this so-called New Culture enlightenment, who was worthy of comparison with Shakespeare or Goethe in their own respective enlightenments? When Kafka was exploring the dimensions of language outside the Castle and Joyce was collaborating with Ulysses to launch new mythological experiments, the generals of the New Culture were using script that had been violated by Japanese invaders to corrupt the most perfect language in the world — Chinese (the majority of so-called Western concepts in early vernacular Chinese actually came from Japanese translations). Even without applying the standards of Du Fu or Su Dongpo, which one of this crop of so-called New Culture generals could measure up to Wang Fuzhi? Look at the standards set by these "May Fourth" upstarts, and it's not hard to understand the long-standing flourishing of garbage culture and garbage literati.

The "May Fourth" movement has long since become a colossal trap in China's historical development. Without breaking free from the "May Fourth" prison, the glory of Chinese civilization will never return. From a cultural perspective, the so-called "May Fourth" movement was the greatest farce in China's five-thousand-year history — more harmful than the Qin book-burnings or the literary inquisitions of the Qing dynasty. At this moment when Western winds blow fierce, this point is especially critical!