What is the difference between ancient history and modern history in China

In the study of modern Chinese literature, there is a problem that is becoming more and more visible, that is, there are different understandings of the concept of "modern Chinese literature". When I taught the course "History of Modern Chinese Literature" at the Chinese Department of Peking University, I organized a discussion among the students, and almost every one of them had his or her own point of view. In the usual Chinese context, history since 1840 has been divided into three major stages: 1840-1919 is "modern", 1919-1949 is "modern", and 1949 to date is "contemporary". Modern" from 1919-1949, and "Contemporary" from 1949 to the present. Taking this as a reference, "Modern Chinese Literature" is basically the literature that corresponds to the modern history of China. At present, most academics adopt the teaching/research framework of the period from 1917 to 1949. It is often referred to as "Thirty Years of Modern Literature". However, the use of the concept of "modern literature" in this way has increasingly encountered various complex problems. In non-Chinese-speaking academic circles abroad, it is difficult to distinguish semantically between "modern", "modernization" and "contemporary". For example, in Japan, "modernization" is called "modernization". In Japan, for example, "modernization" is called "modernization". In China, in general, "modern" and "contemporary" are synonyms, and only those who have specialized in the history of modern and contemporary literature can distinguish between these two concepts. Therefore, there are more and more questions about the scope of modern literature. Especially with the advent of the 21st century, this problem has become more prominent. When we say "modern", we do not mean "now", but half a century ago. This has caused us much inconvenience. Therefore, it is necessary for us to clean up this category. However, when we try to clean up the concept of "modern literature", we realize the complexity of the problem. One of the most crucial problems is that the concept of "modern" has multiple meanings. It is not only a concept of time, but also a concept of value. For example, it is now 2004, but we can say that Europe is more "modern" than Africa, and we can also say that something is very "modern". Thus, the understanding of modern literature is not only a difference in time, but also a difference in space. Let us list and briefly comment on each of them. In terms of time, there is first of all the question of the upper and lower limits of "modern literature". There are many different views on the upper limit of "modern literature". The first is the year 1919, and the point of demarcation is the "May Fourth" Movement. The reason is that literature and politics should be consistent, and that the May Fourth Movement renewed Chinese culture as a whole, so the nature of Chinese literature certainly underwent a qualitative change. This kind of viewpoint is rare in the modern Chinese literature research community, but many people outside of scholars think this way, especially in secondary school language textbooks are taught this way. When I taught modern literature to first-year college students, I asked them on the first day when modern literature began, and they all said 1919. This view is clear in its thinking, with the disadvantage of being too simplistic, because it actually still goes back to the Literary Revolution of 1917 and the New Youth of 1915. The second is 1917, with the dividing point being the Literary Revolution, on the grounds of the independence of literature, emphasizing the determination of the time period from the thread of literature's own development. The current university teaching system basically adopts this ceiling. But this is tantamount to saying that modern literature is only new literature, and it ignores the development line of popular literature. The third is 1911 or 1912, and the point of division is the Xinhai Revolution and the establishment of the Republic of China. The rationale is that modern literature should be the literature of a modern democratic country, where the emperor was overthrown before there was really a spiritual space for the individual. This is also linking literature to politics. In terms of the development of popular literature, this upper limit is rather a demarcation point. But from the point of view of literary movement, the significance of this year is not particularly prominent. The fourth is 1898, and the dividing point is the Hundred Days' Reform, on the grounds that ideological change is an intrinsic motive for literary change. Some scholars at Peking University have taken 1898 as the starting point for their conception of "twentieth-century Chinese literature". Mr. Xie Coronation presided over the "Hundred Years of Literature", selecting more than a dozen years for sub-writing, and the first book was written by Mr. Xie Coronation himself. 1898, the predecessor of Peking University, was founded, which is a beginning in the history of modern education. The fifth is 1840, the division point is the Opium War. The rationale is that there is no separate meaning of "modern" between ancient and modern times. This is actually merging modern literature into modern literature. Modern literature has always been the weak link in teaching, and it is also the hot spot of research in recent years. The sixth is the opinion of Zhou Zuoren and others, who believe that modern literature began in the Ming Dynasty, on the grounds of the liberation of individuality and the awakening of man. This view cannot be realized in teaching, but can only be regarded as an academic reference opinion. There is not much disagreement about the lower limit of "modern literature". The first is the year 1949. This is both the orthodox and the majority view, and the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 ushered in a new phase of history for Chinese literature. However, some different views have emerged in recent years, on the grounds that there were no significant events in 1949 from the point of view of literature itself. The second view is that the "Cultural Revolution" ended in 1976, and since the new period, it has been "contemporary literature". According to this view, the literature of the 50's and 70's was basically a continuation of the literature of the liberated areas, which should belong to "modern literature", and it was only after the Cultural Revolution that the so-called "revolutionary" new stage of history was entered. The third view is Mao Zedong's 1942 Speech at the Yan'an Literary and Artistic Symposium, which argues that the previous literature was dominated by the spirit of the May Fourth Movement, and that thereafter it entered a new phase of contemporary literature centered on the ideology of the ****-producing party. The last one is to advocate that there should be no distinction between modern and contemporary, and to break the lower limit and call it 20th century Chinese literature in general. This idea has had a great impact, and many scholars have actually carried out studies that straddle the "modern" and "contemporary" lines. However, this idea has also been questioned by some scholars, who believe that it ignores many differences that should be emphasized, and that the actual phases of twentieth-century Chinese literature cannot be avoided. Spatially speaking, the meaning of "modern literature" has undergone many changes in scope. From the 1950s, when Mr. Wang Yao and others pioneered the discipline, "modern literature" has long referred to a new literature with the proletariat at its core and with the participation of other classes. Therefore, various versions of the history of modern literature have been written.