page_title: Chen Hengzhe
section_title: Role in the New Culture Movement and later career
hierarchical_section_title: Chen Hengzhe / Life and education / Role in the New Culture Movement and later career
caption_attribution_description: English: Chen Hengzhe and her husband Ren Hongjun Peking University Alumni - date has to be before 1965 to be copyright free and she is not in her 70s in this pic - guess 55 but prob b4
context_page_description: Chen Hengzhe, pen name Sophia H. Z. Chen, was a pioneering writer in modern vernacular Chinese literature, a leader in the New Culture Movement, and the first female professor at a Chinese university.
context_section_description: The trip to Cornell in 1916 to meet her future husband and Hu Shih was a turning point for her. When the group of friends was drenched in a sudden downpour while rowing on Lake Cayuga, Ren composed a long poem in classical Chinese which Hu criticized for using "dead phrases of three thousand years ago" for such an everyday event. Chen and Hu took part in a "great pen war" over the use of classical Chinese. Chen's short story "One Day," based on college life at Vassar, was published in Chinese Students' Quarterly, and is known as the first short story in modern vernacular Chinese.
  Hu a leader in the heated debates about establishing the new Chinese literature, wrote in the forward to her 1928 collection, entitled Raindrops:
  In July and August of 1916, I had the most heated discussions about literature with Mei Renzhu [(梅光迪)Mei Guangdi]. She would not participate in this pen and ink warfare. But she sympathized with my ideas and gave me encouragement. She was my earliest comrade.
  When we were discussing the new literature, Sophia was already writing in vernacular Chinese. “One Day” was the earliest work during those preliminary discussions about the literature revolution. "Raindrops" was also the earliest creative work during the "New Youth (Xin Qingnian)" period. After 1917, Sophia authored many vernacular poems. We should think about the conditions of that time regarding the new literature, think about when Lu Xun published his "A Madman's Diary," think about how few writers were using vernacular. We then can understand the proper place in the history of our new literature movement for these short stories by Sophia."
  Returning to China in 1920, she taught Western history at Peking University. After she married Ren Hongjun in 1920, she worked for a time at Commercial Press. During this time, she published essays in key New Culture journals and the first textbook of western history. In 1932, she was one of eight founders, along with Hu, of the magazine of literary and political commentary, Duli Pinglun (Independent Critic), which published articles of a Western liberal orientation.
  When her husband was made president of Sichuan University in 1935, she taught there briefly. But her critical essays in Duli Pinglun on Sichuan made her unwelcome, and she returned to Peking, only to flee at the onset of the war in 1937 to Shanghai, then Hong Kong, Kunming, and eventually Chongqing, the wartime capital. She grew disillusioned with the Nationalist government, and she and her husband remained in Shanghai after the Communist victory in 1949. Her husband died in 1961, and she, after much abuse during the Cultural Revolution, died in Shanghai 1976.
caption: H. C. Zen and Chen Hengzhe
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