[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.) Moreover,important continuities marked not just the ideas, but also the organizingstrategies of the May Fourth protestors.Much of the shift from late Qing toMay Fourth consciousness reflected what teachers passed on to theirstudents.By 1919 Beida was staffed with many men who had been anti-Qingrevolutionaries including its president, Cai Yuanpei.Western historians have sometimes found Chinese nationalism, like allnationalisms, prone to xenophobia a matter of ignorance and reactionrather than the pride of a people in itself.In this view, imperialism, nomatter how brutal, is cosmopolitan in that it inevitably links and influencesdifferent civilizations.However, in the 1920s it is Chinese nationalism thatlooks cosmopolitan.The student and merchant nationalists were educated,reasonable, knowledgeable about the world, interested in universal valuesand ideals, and spoke the language of progress and enlightenment.It isWestern and Japanese imperialism that appears narrow-minded, ignorant,and racist, and still relying on the gunboat, not on reason.It is important toremember that imperialism was not merely a set of abstract questions aboutthe economic impact of cotton imports or the British American TobaccoCompany.Rather, it was a lived experience.In the countryside, missionaries had become notorious for interfering inlawsuits and other disputes between neighbors especially if one party wasChristian and the other not.Many ordinary Chinese would have beenfamiliar with numerous stories such as the following.14 In 1902 two Britishmissionaries settled in Chenzhou, in western Hunan, and established achurch and a hospital.A cholera epidemic spread and people said themissionaries housekeeper had put white powder in the town well.A crowdof two thousand assembled to accuse her and the missionaries of poisoningthe well, and events escalated to the point the two missionaries were beatento death.The British consulate in Hankou then demanded that the commu-nity and local officials be punished.They even demanded that afourteen-year-old waiter be executed after he was seen kicking one of thecorpses.The Qing dismissed its officials and arrested three hundred people.Ten were executed, and others died in jail.In the cities, the ubiquitous presence of foreign soldiers and sailors, oftenout for a good time, led to numerous disputes.If Chinese were killed in adrunken brawl, the foreign perpetrators would be punished but lightly and abit of compensation given to the deceased s family.In Shanghai in 1904, forexample, two drunken Russian sailors hired rickshaws to take them back totheir boats.When one of the rickshaw pullers demanded his fare, one of thesailors lost his temper, grabbed an adze from a nearby carpenter and, 160 Nationalism and revolution, 1919 37instead of killing the rickshaw puller, crushed the skull of a passing pedes-trian.15 The Russian authorities, insisting on their extraterritorial rights,tried the case themselves.Remarkably, they found the sailor guilty of quiteaccidental negligent homicide, since he killed someone other than theintended victim, and he was sentenced to four years hard labor.Such incidents only multiplied as the years went on, and all sorts ofdifferent political groups found common cause in anti-imperialism.NoShanghai park really boasted a sign saying No dogs or Chinese, but thatmost Chinese had no trouble believing that such a sign existed shows theirunderstanding of imperialism as a lived experience.(Some parks howeverdid prohibit Chinese, except for servants accompanying their employers.)The point here is that the popularity of the May Fourth movement and therespect given students had everything to do with imperialism.The move-ment brought political and policy questions once reserved for elitediscussion into popular urban discourse.The students managed not only toshake the government, but also to introduce China to a new kind of politics.Street politics also expanded the old political world dominated by literati,warlords, administrators, and professional politicians.The May Fourthmovement might be compared to the petition drive organized by KangYouwei in 1895.Simply by moving political considerations into wider view,both acted as radicalizing forces.Kang turned to fellow literati.The MayFourth self-consciously turned to the people. In 1919, even Kang by nowgenerally conservative praised the students, noting that No real publicopinion or real people s rights have been seen in China in the eight yearssince the establishment of the Republic in 1912; if they exist today, it is dueto the students actions in this incident. 16 The excitement and danger in1919 were far greater than in the relatively sedate protest of 1895; rumorsvariously had soldiers mowing down students on the streets and moving tooverthrow the government with their student allies.But as young literatidemanded to be heard in 1895, so the idea of citizenship was seized in 1919.Fifteen-year-old girls claimed the right to discuss policy and to speak in thename of the nation.Public speech was a right, not a privilege.The students were not always in harmony, of course, and continued mili-tancy through June lost them the support of teachers who wanted classes toresume.None the less, in China s major cities, students took to streetpreaching; this was a highly organized movement of reaching out to theurban populace [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
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.) Moreover,important continuities marked not just the ideas, but also the organizingstrategies of the May Fourth protestors.Much of the shift from late Qing toMay Fourth consciousness reflected what teachers passed on to theirstudents.By 1919 Beida was staffed with many men who had been anti-Qingrevolutionaries including its president, Cai Yuanpei.Western historians have sometimes found Chinese nationalism, like allnationalisms, prone to xenophobia a matter of ignorance and reactionrather than the pride of a people in itself.In this view, imperialism, nomatter how brutal, is cosmopolitan in that it inevitably links and influencesdifferent civilizations.However, in the 1920s it is Chinese nationalism thatlooks cosmopolitan.The student and merchant nationalists were educated,reasonable, knowledgeable about the world, interested in universal valuesand ideals, and spoke the language of progress and enlightenment.It isWestern and Japanese imperialism that appears narrow-minded, ignorant,and racist, and still relying on the gunboat, not on reason.It is important toremember that imperialism was not merely a set of abstract questions aboutthe economic impact of cotton imports or the British American TobaccoCompany.Rather, it was a lived experience.In the countryside, missionaries had become notorious for interfering inlawsuits and other disputes between neighbors especially if one party wasChristian and the other not.Many ordinary Chinese would have beenfamiliar with numerous stories such as the following.14 In 1902 two Britishmissionaries settled in Chenzhou, in western Hunan, and established achurch and a hospital.A cholera epidemic spread and people said themissionaries housekeeper had put white powder in the town well.A crowdof two thousand assembled to accuse her and the missionaries of poisoningthe well, and events escalated to the point the two missionaries were beatento death.The British consulate in Hankou then demanded that the commu-nity and local officials be punished.They even demanded that afourteen-year-old waiter be executed after he was seen kicking one of thecorpses.The Qing dismissed its officials and arrested three hundred people.Ten were executed, and others died in jail.In the cities, the ubiquitous presence of foreign soldiers and sailors, oftenout for a good time, led to numerous disputes.If Chinese were killed in adrunken brawl, the foreign perpetrators would be punished but lightly and abit of compensation given to the deceased s family.In Shanghai in 1904, forexample, two drunken Russian sailors hired rickshaws to take them back totheir boats.When one of the rickshaw pullers demanded his fare, one of thesailors lost his temper, grabbed an adze from a nearby carpenter and, 160 Nationalism and revolution, 1919 37instead of killing the rickshaw puller, crushed the skull of a passing pedes-trian.15 The Russian authorities, insisting on their extraterritorial rights,tried the case themselves.Remarkably, they found the sailor guilty of quiteaccidental negligent homicide, since he killed someone other than theintended victim, and he was sentenced to four years hard labor.Such incidents only multiplied as the years went on, and all sorts ofdifferent political groups found common cause in anti-imperialism.NoShanghai park really boasted a sign saying No dogs or Chinese, but thatmost Chinese had no trouble believing that such a sign existed shows theirunderstanding of imperialism as a lived experience.(Some parks howeverdid prohibit Chinese, except for servants accompanying their employers.)The point here is that the popularity of the May Fourth movement and therespect given students had everything to do with imperialism.The move-ment brought political and policy questions once reserved for elitediscussion into popular urban discourse.The students managed not only toshake the government, but also to introduce China to a new kind of politics.Street politics also expanded the old political world dominated by literati,warlords, administrators, and professional politicians.The May Fourthmovement might be compared to the petition drive organized by KangYouwei in 1895.Simply by moving political considerations into wider view,both acted as radicalizing forces.Kang turned to fellow literati.The MayFourth self-consciously turned to the people. In 1919, even Kang by nowgenerally conservative praised the students, noting that No real publicopinion or real people s rights have been seen in China in the eight yearssince the establishment of the Republic in 1912; if they exist today, it is dueto the students actions in this incident. 16 The excitement and danger in1919 were far greater than in the relatively sedate protest of 1895; rumorsvariously had soldiers mowing down students on the streets and moving tooverthrow the government with their student allies.But as young literatidemanded to be heard in 1895, so the idea of citizenship was seized in 1919.Fifteen-year-old girls claimed the right to discuss policy and to speak in thename of the nation.Public speech was a right, not a privilege.The students were not always in harmony, of course, and continued mili-tancy through June lost them the support of teachers who wanted classes toresume.None the less, in China s major cities, students took to streetpreaching; this was a highly organized movement of reaching out to theurban populace [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]