A Literary Revolution in China The Peking Leader Feb. 12, 1919. pp. 116-118. Theso-called Chinese literary revolutiont; which has aroused so much opposition in conservative quarters but which certainly has all promises of success, means simply a conscious demand for a living literature—a literature which shall be written in the spoken tongue and shall truly represent the life and needs of the people. It is obvious to all critical observers that the literature of modern China does not represent the real life of the nation: it is mostly imitative of the literature of the past. Classicism is no fitting epithet for this literature: it is a dead literature—a literature which persistently excludes the language of everyday conversation and is only vaguely intelligible to the classically trained …