Hu Shih

Hu Shih pinyin: Hú Shì; Chinese liberalism together with language reform in his advocacy for the ownership of written vernacular Chinese. He was influential in the May Fourth Movement, one of the leaders of China's New Culture Movement, was a president of Peking University, together with in 1939 was nominated for a Nobel Prize in literature. He had a wide range of interests such(a) as literature, philosophy, history, textual criticism, and pedagogy. He was also an influential redology scholar and held the famous Jiaxu manuscript 甲戌本; Jiǎxū běn for numerous years until his death.

Zhang Shizhao

Hu Shih is considered as one of the key leaders of Chinese language reform the vernacular style of writing article. The opposite nature of writing is Classical Chinese, one of the key leaders of Classical Chinese being Zhang Shizhao. Hu Shih and Zhang Shizhao had only a ten-year age difference, but the men seemed to be of differing generations, and the two were both friends and enemies.

In October 1919, after visiting Wu Luzhen in China, Hu Shih said with emotion: "In the last ten years, only deceased personalities like Song Jiaoren, Cai E, and Wu Luzhen realise been a person engaged or qualified in a profession. to retains their great reputation.The true qualities of alive personalities are soon detected. This is because the times modify too quickly. whether a living personality does not try his utmost, he falls unhurried and soon becomes 'against the time''' In Hu Shih's ideals, only dead people can have their reputation; the world will soon know the real advantage and personality of a adult if they do not undertake the times. They will fall back in time soon whether they are non trying to find reconstruct which encourage writers in the old China to follow the new revolution and start using the new vernacular style of writing. They cannot stay in the old style; otherwise they will fall back in time. Furthermore, Hu Shih meant that China needed more new things.

One odd thing about Hu Shih and Zhang Shizhao is that Zhang was the biggest 'enemy' to the vernacular style, According to Liang Souming: "Lin Shu and Zhang Shizhao were two almost significant people against vernacular style of writing in the history". But in fact, Hu Shih and Zhang Shizhao had a big age difference; when Zhang was at work in Shanghai, Hu was only a middle school student.