Reasons for Tumult.

Yet others, like Lu Hsun, understood in all their tremendous significance the forces that were destroying the old and building up the new China. Others again. In impassioned verse, merely gave expression to the tumult in their hearts, that reflected the uncertainties of an epoch of change. But basic in all different schools and tendencies was the urge to a realistic understanding of the world, the urge to build up a Chinese mind that would be able to analyse correctly the complex phenomena of contemporary life and make decisions in accordance with scientific truth.

Until us late as 1917. Chinese literature was dominated by writings In the Wen Ven style—the language of the literati trained in the ways of thought and expression of the Confucian classics. The Wen Yen style was abstruse, full of classical allusions that were understandable only by the initiated æsthetes. The Pal Hwa literature used by novelists and storytellers was in the everyday language of the people and was generally despised by the literati.

The new Chinese bourgeois intelligentsia played the role of literary pioneers, numerous works were written, and translations made, and by 1920 Pal Hwa writing was officially accepted by the Republican Government.