ABSTRACT
Mao could continue to write poetry in the classical to the pure all things are pure. But generally, communist poets were warned off the ancient literary forms, and foreign forms as well. They were led to adopt the 'median' form ofthe Chinese popular songs." 0
Historical writing had its median, too. For the red thread running through the whole communist version of modern history was the charge that feudal China and foreign imperialism inevitably came together, each a support for the other against the Chinese people rising against them both. These 'twin enemies' rode with all the communist historians, who wrote of the I860s, 'Foreign capitalism and the feudal landlord power, which was represented by Tseng Kuo-fan, Li Hung-chang, and Tso Tsung-t'ang, joined forces to press down the Chinese people', 21 or of the I goos, 'The Ch'ing government and imperialism had a tight alliance, imperialism and feudalism laid heavy oppression on the Chinese people' ,22 and 'The abortiveness of IgI IS anti-imperialism and antifeudalism marked out the area of the revolution's failure'. 23 These simplicities from run-of-the-mill historians could be easily matched in the modern studies of Fan Wen-Ian or Hua Kang. They coloured all the introductions to the new, rich, multi-volume collections of modern source materials-on such central subjects as the Opium War, the Taiping and Nien and Moslem rebellions, the French and japanese wars, the Reform Movement, the Boxers, and the revolution of IgI I.
