Modern, Contemporary, Present-Age Literature

The Opium War brought an end to China's seclusion from the outside world and caused it to progress to a new period in its history. With a crisis of politics, economy and culture, Lin Zexu introduced a more open literary creation. Founded on the Hundred Days' Movement, advocators called for a revolutionary style poetry and novel to prompt people to join in the political struggle. Another group of writers created novels to denounce the system that was the cause of so much dissatisfaction among the people. 

The contemporary period refers to the glorious thirty years from the May Fourth Movement in 1919 until the foundation of the Peoples' Republic of China in 1949. With the development of the New Culture Movement and the victorious October Revolution in Russia in 1917, new thoughts refreshed the literary field. They tried to approach the public with more oral and excellent works as well as the literary association.

Lu Xun, the harbinger and master of modern literature, composed the Madman's Diary, which is the first work set completely in exoteric language and which sharply revealed the essence of society. The True Story of Ah Q is considered to his finest novel and built up the image of spiritual anesthesia in both Chinese and world literature.

Lao She was skillful in utilizing the Peking dialect and Camel Xiangzi and the drama Tea House are his masterpieces which reflect the helplessness of the lower classes in the old China.

Bing Xin, a literary woman, is known for her morbidezza style of writing, so called as she wrote as though painting a picture with the finest and most tender detail. From her works you can get an insight of mother love and innocence.

Lin Yutang wrote many essays. After settling in America, he created the novel Moment in Peking, and won the nomination for the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Xu Zhimo, a much traveled lyric poet, expressed his feelings of longing for the days when he was at Cambridge University in his evocative poem Second Farewell to Cambridge. Breaking with many of the conventions of the poetic form he returned to them in his later works prior to his untimely death in an air accident in 1931.

There are also numerous great works that are too many to be listed here but it is hope that these notes will give you an appreciation of the diversity and breadth but from the above, you may see how diversiform they are.
 

Modern China's political arena, thriving economy and culture provides more freedom and an open atmosphere in which present day literature takes on a greater brilliance. Poems, essays, fiction and drama in a broad spectrum of themes and in many forms are quite popular. Newspapers, magazines, radio, and the Internet, all give writers of literature much scope for their exertions. Consequently, for their encouragement, there are literary prizes such as the Lu Xun Prize, Mao Dun Prize, Spring Prize, Feng Mu Prize, and Lao She Prize and more besides.

Should you wish to explore some of the works mentioned in this article, you will find them well represented on a wide variety of web sites on the Internet. Happy reading!