The radicalism of the May Fourth Era (c.1915-1927) - part Republican, part Communist - reached something of apogee in 1969, a significant moment in the Cultural Revolution. The Fourth of May 1919 comes a third of the way through China’s modern story, which many historians and commentators date from the end of the Second Opium War and the beginning of Qing-dynasty reforms around 1860. The quiet gathering was a solemn reminder of a forlorn past and a soulful appeal to the future. Perhaps it was also the most significant public commemoration of the Spirit of May Fourth, one untainted by Communist folderol. The second is a participant-observer’s account of an act of defiance and principled protest in the Chinese capital on 28 April 2019 when a group of Tsinghua alumni and scholars paid their respects at the Wang Guowei Commemorative Stele 王國維紀念碑 on the campus of Tsinghua University (for our earlier account of this event, see ‘The Two Scholars Who Haunt Tsinghua University’, China Heritage, 28 April, 2019 and for an alternative record of the events of 28 April, see Yan Huai 閻淮, ‘Rashomon & Growing Pains at Tsinghua University’, China Heritage, ).įor a few hours on that day, the Wang Stele became something of a miniature Tiananmen and, for a moment, the spirit of principled patriotic protest flickered. In the first we reconsider the ways that May Fourth, the iconic date-moment of 5.4 五四, has been remembered, reinvented and corralled over the past century. I had been a student in the People’s Republic for just a little over six months, but I was already learning that a revolutionary culture that celebrated youthful enthusiasm was overshadowed both by the past and by the Old Men and the Old Women of a Communist Party who saw themselves as the embodiment of China’s twentieth-century Zeitgeist. Biological attrition long since removed those wraiths from the historical stage, but in a myriad of ways - personal, intellectual, professional, emotional - I’ve spent the past forty-five years in the thrall of the contending spirits of May Fourth.īelow we offer two accounts related to the spirit of conscientious objection, outspoken protest and principled defiance. I was given a well-meaning lecture on the subject on the train from Beijing to Shanghai on, my twenty-first birthday. What then is the abiding Spirit of May Fourth 五四精神? It is something that I have been hearing about, and discussed, for my whole adult life. Every year since the student-led protest movement of 1989, the weeks leading up to 4 May have been a time of heightened political anxiety.
It commemorates the progressive, anti-imperialist student activists who, in 1919, led a national movement to protest against the unfair treatment of the Republic of China at the Versailles Peace Conference. It is ostensibly a time to celebrate the enthusiasm and independent spirit of youth. The Fourth of May marks China’s annual National Youth Day 五四青年節. As we noted in ‘May Fourth at Ninety-nine’, published in China Heritage on :
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