In February 1917, Hu Shi of Columbia University in the United States wanted to advocate the abolition of wenwen and the use of vernacular literature in society, when it was five years after the end of the Qing Dynasty, but he discovered that the warlord wanted to restore in the Forbidden City, although it ended quickly, but many Chinese students who learned new ideas began to reflect.
At this time, China's economy is backward, the people's lives are all problems, foreigners are even more wanton on the land of China, Puyi also established a pseudo-Manchukuo with the support of the Japanese, such a social status quo, so that the students of Guangdong University think that the problem of solving the problem of the poor and weak people of the Chinese is not to overthrow which emperor, but that there is a problem in our culture. At that time, there was a wave of literary reform in society, the main leader was Liu Bannong, who was born in a family of intellectuals in Jiangsu, who could write poetry at the age of six, and taught at his alma mater at the age of 20.
At that time, the rise of the vernacular movement gradually introduced Western languages to China, especially English was the most fashionable, "he" in English is male, "she" is female. In China's literary concept, "he" refers to all things of men and women, so it is very inconvenient to understand from the perspective of Chinese, and then Liu Bannong began to make difficulties for one thing, that is, how to use Chinese characters to express women? At this time, many literati began to give him ideas, and some people said that they could use "Yi".
Because "Yi" already has the meaning of women in the concept of chinese characters, but Liu Bannong believes that "Yi" is not the best word to replace women, he proposed to use "she" to replace the third person of women, and also marked the pronunciation out, in fact, "she" has appeared in ancient China, but many people do not understand this word, especially the majority of women in society, at that time many feudal ideas in our country have a great collision with Western thought, women also gradually realized" Equality between men and women" So Liu Bannong was attacked by many conservatives for a long time because of this matter, and was also chased and scolded by unmarried women for three years.
But later Liu Bannong went to the University of London to study languages, noticed the controversy caused by "she", and later he also published an article on this issue to express his views, and later he also wrote a famous vernacular poem "Teach Me How not to miss her", which was also praised by the majority of women friends.