The Zuozhuan 左传 (Zuo Qiuming’s Commentary on The Spring and Autumn Annals) marks the beginning of ancient Chinese narrative literature that involves such factors as plot (what to say), transition (how to say) and view-angle (who says). In fact, this “story plotting” can be traced back to the Zuozhuan in which historical facts are arranged into plots by revealing the cause-effect relationship between them. Such a characteristic tendency is due to the impact from the dao 道 (tao) in either Confucianism or Taoism. For it is expected to expose the developmental process of events in terms of its historical background and plausible causality. That is why the dao of causality and reasonability thematically threads through the process of the entire plot. Moreover, ancient Chinese narrative literature is affected by the sense of time sequence as part of agricultural civilization, and therefore features chronological story-telling. Noticeably in the Zuozhuan, the structure of narration is reflected in the chronological order of specific year, season, month and date. This symbolizes the approach to the minor in view of the great peculiar of Chinese culture. The leading narrator in the Zuozhuan is the official historian whose standpoint is swinging between “the real” and “the fictional”, “the outspoken” and “the suggestive.”

The complex space of cities exerted a profound and far-reaching influence on traditional Chinese fiction writing. Starting from the description of city spaces, particularly urban landmarks, as the backdrop for stories and ranging through the urban political culture of political struggles, power symbols, the selection of talent, and festivals and carnivals to the daily life of city dwellers with their dreams of prosperity, legendary love stories and inner yearning for justice , the cities of traditional Chinese fiction offer us a picture that goes far beyond the merely geographic to show political and cultural indicators and the content s of daily life. Such descriptions created vivid and distinct city images that in turn became the common life experience and cultural imagination of urban dwellers and offered a common cultural identity and standpoint for those living in the same city.

Wang Yangming’s theory of mind serves as the pre-condition for the rise of the Chinese popular novel. Wang’s theory helps to change the traditional ideal of despising the popular novels and encourages the scholars to get involved in the creation and criticism of this fictional art. Wang’s theory also provides the theoretical basis for the novelists to record the town talks of the common people. In addition, with the influence of Wang’s theory, the emphasis of the novel shifts from the story-telling to the character-portrayal.

A group of illustrious women were introduced into China from the West in late Qing with Western learning spreading to the East, which presented an extraordinarily huge challenge to the traditional Chinese female ideal. The search for new exemplary women was actually in correspondence with the rising tide of women’s social education during that historical period. By interweaving the development of new education with the establishment of new exemplary women, the essay will explore the great diversity of women exemplars of late Qing in China emerging from an optional introduction of notable women from the West and the reevaluation of traditional women role models in China. The study will be carried out through the close-readings of seven biographies of famous Chinese and Western women published at that time and several biographical sketches carried in the columns of biography in Beijing nübao 北京 女报 (Beijing Women’s Newspaper) and Nüzi shijie 女子世界 (Women’s World) issued respectively in Beijing and Shanghai.

The New Literature (xin wenxue 新文学), can be dated to modern China of the 19th century, when missionaries from the West wrote their own poems, essays and stories in a sort of European-styled vernacular Chinese known as the ouhua baihua 欧化白话 (Europeanized vernacular written language), different from the gu baihua 古白话 (“old” or antique vernacular). Western missionaries were part of the language modernization campaigns during the Late Qing and the May Fourth Movement (1919). They also participated in the New Fiction (xin xiaoshuo 新小说) and National Salvation by Literature (wenxue jiuguo lun 文学救国论) movements and exerted considerable influence upon modern Chinese literature. Their contribution used to be ignored or underestimated by a restricted perspective of inquiry, which should have been corrected by now.

The image of an “audible China” is one opposed to the traditional China’s as “voiceless.” Not only does it refer to the survival of modern Chinese out of the abandoned Classical Chinese, it also provides a new means to examine modern China’s cultural transformation and development in terms of “voice.” This essay will discuss mainly how speech, one of “the three best tools for spreading civilization,” together with newspapers and magazines and schools, contributes to the success of the Vernacular Chinese Movement (Baihuawen yundong 白话文运动, CE 1917–1919) and the innovation in modern Chinese writing (including Chinese academic writing style).