Abstract:

In the late period of May Fourth Movement, Hu Shi and other reformers completely changed their anti-tradition attitude by advocating reorganizing national heritage and recognizing Chinese traditions.Their essential purpose of reorganizing national heritage was to discover those vigorous old traditions through developing traditional resources so as to seek traditional supports for enlightenment ideas appeared in the early period of the Movement and also seek traditional roots for remaking Chinese civilization through grafting modern Western culture.They explored Ming-Qing vernacular novels and ancient vernacular writings in order to look for a vernacular Chinese-language model and its historical origin.They explored textual research methods employed in the study of Chinese classics by men of letters of the Qing Dynasty and related ancient scientific methodology to seek traditional supports for advocating the modern Western scientific method of experimentalism. And they explored ancient Chinese studies on discrimination of falsehood and the thought of questioning the past in search of a traditional ground for revaluation and distinguishing the true from the false in old histories.

Key words: May Fourth New Cultural Movement, reorganization of national heritages, traditional resources, Hu Shi