The Study On Anhui Colloquial Periodical

In the late 19th century and early 20th century, the national crisis became more and more severe. It was urgent for the Chinese people in modern times to make the country strong, to defend against the imperial insults, and to save the nation from extinction. An advanced group of intellectuals realized the critical impact that the civilian's quality has on the national destiny of prosperity and decline. They put emphasis on inspiring people's mind in the national salvation movement and tried to enlighten people's thoughts in all ways, among which the most important one is to establish newspapers in the vernacular. In this period a great deal of well-known newspapers in the vernacular emerged. Anhui Colloquial Periodical was established by Duxiu Chen in 1904. In spite of its short time of one-and-a-half years, it has been proclaimed the fad in the time. It was so well-known all over the country that it became the bestseller among all the newspapers in the vernacular with an increase of the circulation of every issue from 1000 to 3000 in only half a year. In this way, Anhui Colloquial Periodical became the then most influential journals in the vernacular in China.Aiming at enlightening the Chinese people and saving China from subjugation, Anhui Colloquial Periodical met the demand of time and enlightened the thoughts of people in politics, economy, education and social customs. This paper intends to explore the Anhui Colloquial Periodical in the theme of Enlightenment, with the following sub-sections comprehensively and systematically studied, such as founded background, text and ideological content.The first section introduces the founded background of Anhui Colloquial Periodical. It discussed the historical founded background of Anhui Colloquial Periodical and their inter-impact from a macro perspective mainly from such three respects as the current situation under the New Deal at the end of the Qing Dynasty, the opening of people's wisdom, and the rise and development of vernacular newspaper. A more relaxed policy environment situation under the New Deal and the beginning and development of the trend of opening people's wisdom provide conditions and motivations to the emergency and development of vernacular journals at the end of the Qing Dynasty. Vernacular journals made a positive publicity and advocacy of the New Deal and opening people's wisdom. The two sides promoted each other in development.The second part is about the overview of Anhui Colloquial Periodical. It starts with the comment on the founder Chen's ideological evolution and the practice of running the journal. Second, it follows the analysis of the Enlightenment purpose embodied in the foreword to Anhui Colloquial Periodical in the respects of reasons, aim, readers and etc. Then it proves the purpose of running the newspaper as public enlightenment and salvation and survival of the nation by the statistical assessment of its main columns and contents; and illustrates the necessity of the enlightened purpose of the newspaper by analyzing the Anhui Colloquial Periodical colleagues'ideas and experiences. Finally, the paper has a brief analysis of the reasons for the widespread and stop of publication.The third to the fifth part mainly discusses Enlightenment of the Anhui Colloquial Periodical. In Chapter Three, it discusses the transformation of traditions in exposing and criticizing the feudal vulgar, disseminating science, protesting against superstition, and advocating improving drama. The first part of this chapter is on the marriage perspective of Anhui Colloquial Periodical. The second part discusses that taking science as a weapon, Anhui Colloquial Periodical exposed and criticized the feudal superstition thinking and behavior which impeded the progress of the society. The third part is about the perspective on drama. In Chapter Four, It reveals the political aspirations of Anhui Colloquial Periodical in exposing aggression, attacking corruption of the Qing Dynasty, and instilling the modern concept of state to people, it analyzes that under the situation of national peril and the rising trend of, Anhui Colloquial Periodical advocated saving the nation by developing industry and its indirect participation in the development of industry, it explores its education advocacy, puts forward its own perspectives on children education, women education, setting up new schools and carrying out national education in military. But the newspaper had no breakthrough in its advocacy of educational reform in comparison to the effective and comprehensive educational reform in terms of the New Deal of the Qing Dynasty. In Chapter Five, it comments that based on local affairs, Anhui Colloquial Periodical showed great concern to the Anhui mineral rights struggle, running schools and admonishing bad habits. This chapter is mainly to show the localism of Anhui Colloquial Periodical under the national perspective and highlight the newspaper's local characteristics.Anhui Colloquial Periodical is important as vernacular newspapers in the period of democratic revolution. Though the newspaper did not last very long, it was widely spread and influential. Therefore, in the concluding section, it attempts to summarize the features and successes of Anhui Colloquial Periodical. In my opinion, the achievements of the newspaper lies in its vivid language and style, the purpose of running with the times and the balance of both national and local perspectives. Anhui Colloquial Periodical successfully combined them into one unit, and had huge enlightenment and social impact, which was unachievable for many other journals. Just for this reason, Anhui Colloquial Periodical became one of "the most representative" vernacular newspapers in that period.