"Hu Shi, you have always advocated vernacular literature, but I don't think you are sincere", Huang Kan and Hu Shi began to struggle as soon as they met. Hu Shi asked him why, and Huang Kan pretended to be serious: "Your name is not right." You shouldn't call it 'Hu Shi', but 'Where to Go'." The "Hu Shi" of Wen Yanwen, translated into the big vernacular, is "where to go". After Huang Kan finished speaking, he was very proud and laughed at the sky.
In 1915, the New Culture Movement began. Huang Kan is a master of traditional Chinese studies, with a deep cultural foundation, but he is an old-fashioned faction and vigorously opposes the new culture. Hu Shi was the first to advocate the New Culture Movement, so he was very disgusted and ostracized by Huang Kan, and often spoke ill of him.
Huang Kan is 5 years older than Hu Shi, and his knowledge is indeed profound. Hu Shi was polite and elegant by nature, and although he was dissatisfied in his heart, he did not still treat it with disrespect and smiled. Unexpectedly, Huang Kan thought that Hu Shi was rational and constantly provocative.
In one class, Huang Kan praised the brevity of the text, for example: "If Hu Shi's wife dies, his family sends him a telegram, and the cable will certainly be very wordy." In the words of the text, only the four words 'wife bereavement and quick return' can be used, which can save a lot of telegraph costs."
After Hu Shi learned of this, he was determined not to back down. He preached the benefits of vernacular in class, tit-for-tat: "Who says that words save money?" A few days ago, a friend of the Executive Yuan wrote to me inviting me to take up a post in the Executive Yuan, but I did not want to engage in politics, so I took a telegram and refused. My telegrams are written in the vernacular, and students may wish to try them to see if your telegrams save money or my vernacular telegrams save money."
The students who were in favor of Wen Yanwen were not convinced, and they all shook their fists and were eager to try, and finally picked out a copy with the least number of words from it, the original text was like this: "Only shallow in learning, I am afraid that it is difficult to be competent, and I will not obey my orders."
Hu Shi smiled and said, "There are 12 words in total, but my vernacular text is only 5 words: 'Can't do it, thank you'." Thunderous applause rang out in the classroom. After this time, more and more young students supported the vernacular language.
In addition to the crepe crepe, it is not easy to understand, and there is a problem, that is, there is no punctuation. An article down, dense, no specially trained people, do not know how to read.
Zhang Deyi was a student of the first English class of the TongwenGuan at the end of the Qing Dynasty, and in 1868, he accompanied the Qing government delegation to visit Europe and worked as a group interpreter. During this time, he wrote a book called "Travels around Europe and America", which introduced Western-style punctuation.
Interestingly, Zhang did not intend to introduce punctuation into China, but to dismiss the Western practice of using punctuation. He felt that the use of punctuation in Western writing was purely superfluous, unnecessary, and full of irony between the lines.
Punctuation has also experienced many twists and turns in the middle from its introduction to its use. In 1916, Hu Shi published "On Sentence Reading and Text Symbols", which became the foundation of advocating new punctuation. In 1919, the Commercial Press published Hu Shi's Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy, which for the first time used the new punctuation mark.
Literary master Lin Qinnan is also a retro school, opposing new punctuation. He was a man of many talents, and had translated more than 150 foreign novels in mandarin, which was remarkable. When Lin Qinnan was translating, he was very stubborn and resolutely refused to use punctuation.
Western literature has punctuation, which makes Lin Qinnan also feel headaches. For example, when there was an ellipsis in the original text, he had to add four words after translating, "This language is not finished." The problem is that he refuses to add parentheses to this annotation. When the reader reads, he will be puzzled when he sees "this sentence is not finished": what is the matter if this is not finished?
In fact, the New Culture Movement was not limited to cultural reform, but an unprecedented emancipation of the mind. Although there were many twists and turns, in the end it was a victory.