Wholeness and individuality: Revisiting the New Culture Movement,as symbolized by May Fourth

Abstract

The May Fourth New Culture Movement was a “convergent historical movement,” as well as a movement with a central purport and an intrinsic wholeness. The image of a homogeneous May Fourth formed unintentionally, and was also constructed by contemporaries and later generations. By examining the connections between the 1911 Revolution and the New Culture Movement from a more macroscopic perspective, exploring whether the latter was in fact a response to external impact or a self-awakening, observing how the debate over new versus old in the early Republican era developed to the point of a “culture” war, how the two-sided efforts for radical reforms reconciled destruction and construction, the interaction between the student movement and the New Culture Movement, and other aspects, thus examining the legacy of the New Culture Movement via perceptions in the post–May Fourth era, we can see that May Fourth has become a symbol of the New Culture Movement.