Baihua, Guanhua, Fangyan and the May Fourth Reading of Rulin waishi
by SHANG Wei
No other pre-modern Chinese novel occupies more important a position than Rulin waishi (by Wu Jingzi, 1701-54) does in the May Fourth scholars' advocacy of "baihua literature (vernacular literature)." Hu Shi (1891-1962) and Chen Duxiu, the leading scholars of the May Fourth movement, highly praised Rulin waishi for its adept use of baihua. Qian Xuantong recommended it as the standard textbook of guoyu (the national language) and ranked it above other novels, including Honglou meng. He declared that the emergence of Rulin waishi marked the era in which baihua literature had completely established itself. In a similar effort to canonize the works of vernacular literature, Zhang Mingfei asserted that no other pre-modern novel better represents what he deemed to be "pure baihua (chuncui zhi baihua)" than does Rulin waishi.
Before we ask why these scholars believed Rulin waishi to be the precise specimen of baihua literature, we have to question their definition and conceptualization of baihua. For the term baihua in reference to the vernacular did not come into wide use until the first decade of the twentieth century, and it was Hu Shi and other May Fourth scholars who elaborated the term and gave it historical, cultural, and ideological significance. Since the May Fourth scholars are themselves conscious participants in the making of discourse and history, there is no reason for us to take baihua as an uninterrogated concept in our own studies of pre-modern Chinese literature. Instead, we should ask: How did the May Fourth scholars redefine baihua through their interpretation of such pre-modern novels as Rulin waishi? Surely, they often misinterpreted the novel, but what concerns me is their overall agenda about baihua and baihua literature. In the combative tone typical of the discourse of the time, May Fourth scholars often described Chinese literary history in terms of the struggle between classical (wenyan) and vernacular (baihua) literatures. Setting up a dichotomy of baihua and wenyan, they define baihua as a written language based on the spoken language used by "the people (renmin)," thereby granting it the qualities they are eager to promote -- authenticity and the sense of immediacy. More specifically, baihua represents two things they find essential to the "progressive culture" they support: first, baihua is the people's language as opposed to wenyan, the language of the official elite; second, it is "a living language (huo de yuyan)" involved in daily communications and thus stands in a remarkable contrast with wenyan as "a dead language (si de yuyan)," which one learns only from books and through memorization.
The May Fourth scholars' reading of Rulin waishi is extended from this preconceived agenda and is thus largely predictable. Granted, their approach toward Rulin waishi is not entirely groundless, for unlike previous novels Rulin waishi reduces the use of verse and parallel prose to the minimum, and classical phrases can only occasionally be seen in the speech of the elite characters. It is perhaps for this reason that some May Fourthscholars asserted that Rulin waishi represents what they called pure baihua. But how can baihua be pure, if it has its roots in "low" or non-elite culture as the May Fourth scholars would like us to believe? Furthermore, does baihua carry any inherent and coherent ideological import? For instance, does Wu Jingzi's use of baihua in Rulin waishi allow him to transcend the limitations of his social class in his critique of the civil service examination system, Confucian ritualism, and official elite culture? Although the May Fourth scholars do not attribute all the qualities they see in Rulin waishi to its use of the vernacular language, they do argue that Rulin waishi represents certain revolutionary ideas that can rarely be found in classical literature....