Early Poetry On The Trains To Imagine Time And Space (1917-1927)

After the Opium War,China came into the course of civilization modernization and modern-society-to-be when west industrial civilization swarmed into on a large scale. The people who lived in modern-society-to-be is like "Transition people" named by Daniel Lerner. "He looked into the 'future' while he looked back at the past. He just pulled out his feet from 'tradition', then he put feet to the 'modernity'.He always encountered 'value of embarrassment' because he lived in 'double value system'." The people who liked "transition people" faced identity difficult. Until now, the problem of identity difficult hadn't been solved. But, the solutions and experience predecessors explored to response modern-society-to-be are very helpful for our lives now. So, In this thesis I wanted to discuss outlook on space and time affected the train as the representative of west industrial civilization, and tried to find a kind of identity, through a starting point Chinese vernacular poems in one or two decades of last century.The whole thesis consists of three chapters. In first chapter, I introduced the process of how the train contact with real life and the world of imagination. In the second half of the nineteenth century, the train as the symbol of west industrial civilization was forced to bring into China , on the process of contest between rural China and industrialization west. At first, the train broke Chinese traditional life and the outlook of time and space in a hard-line stance. But, there was still much more work about changing the world of imagination to do before the train could affect the deep identify of Chinese.Luckily, the birth of Chinese vernacular poem took a possibility for the train which would enter the world of imagination comprehensively and effect. In the second chapter, that possibility came to true and the poet of Chinese vernacular poem expressed better. Chinese accept the train slowly and the train started effect the outlook of time and space in this process. On outlook of space, the train let people know there was another living space besides "land under heaven" and "hometown" (the main living space in rural China) The outlook of space which implied in the train tried to persuade Chinese who lived a pastoral life in familiar living environment and familiar people to believe that the identity of citizen like a stranger were noble and commercial order took the place of Presbyterian rule is progressive. Chinese should put citizen's Life as the basic way of life and maintain the commercial values. On the outlook of time, the train brought the machine time to Chinese who always believed the ecological time. The machine time made many Chinese living in modern-society-to-be began to believe the outlook of linear time turned from the outlook of cycle time, and viewed time as Objective existence commodity which could be commercialized and separated from things. Under the control of machine time, people became the slave of time, and the cost of Chinese living started to change from "sunset and income" just as Zong Baihua said, "the cost of living, the cost of machine".At last, we found that it was difficult to find unified outlook of time and space, but find a tendency that "the world" cooperated "the machine time" to promote modern-society-to-be China to industrial west when summarize the process of poets' imagination of train. But, in accordance with the logic of "The Need Theory"(Lucjan Malinowski) and "Polymorphic variations are the source of happiness"(Bertrand Russell), it was doubtful to develop as this one-way integration tendency in the multi-cultural coexistence of spatial and temporal. People should realize that getting the choice of gaining identity by choosing outlook of space and outlook of time determined by the need, especially the need of "happy life". So we can only have an farfetched conclusion: the poets' fantastic imagination of train in one or two decades of last century, bought a new choice of outlook of time and outlook of space for Chinese, and also increased in weight for Chinese happy life in modern-society-to-be.