After the May Fourth Movement,the anti-traditional cultural stance was clearly written into the discourse of youth,and the image of the"New Youth"marked a turning point in the Chinese youth movement.Taking Ye Shengtao's Ni Huanzhi as the subject for case study,this article explores how the growth of the new generation of young people has helped construct the Chinese growth novels.Through a historical study of the youth discourse constructed by the New Youth magazine,it analyzes the cultural expression of enlightenment ideals and explains how the"New Youth,"as transmitters of enlightenment culture,inspires educated youth to shape themselves.Ni Huanzhi narrates the individual development and spiritual history of the new youth in a retrospective manner,establishing a classic plot of modern Chinese growth novels:The protagonist's gradual engagement in social actions hopefully leads him to achieve his lofty ideals.However,this process is always interrupted,and a series of setbacks dim his ideals,plunging him into an infinite cycle of hope and disillusionment.The term"New Youth"was the collective reference to a new generation of Chinese youth who answered its call to turn against their patriarchs during the 1910s and 1920s.The self-fashioning of the new youth generation motivated the beginning of a new type of literary writing,which culminated in the rise of the Chinese Bildungsroman that centered on the construction of the new youth identity with reference to a new historical consciousness,with both the personal development of the protagonist and national rejuvenation combined in one plot that unfolds as a process of writing youth into history.This article traces the ascent of the Chinese Bildungsroman in the context of the rise and decline of the New Culture Movement.My discussion focuses on the earliest full-length novel,Ni Huanzhi by Ye Shengtao,that depicts the life of the new youth.The novel was written in the late 1920s,nearly a decade after the peak of the New Culture Movement,and my central argument is that the self-reflective narrative with a retrospective timeframe constitutes the main characteristic of this new genre in Chinese literature.While striving to keep alive youthful idealism,this genre also presents heightened conflicts between self and society,ideal and reality.This article looks into the historical conditions and literary form of Ni Huanzhi,which first presents an effort to historicize the story of a new youth,a process that would be continued by Mao Dun's early novels.The necessity of narrating the growth of young people is due to the fact that the new generation of young people have already aged and have gained experiences that have become the"past".But for Mao Dun,the more urgent task is to recognize the ever-changing face of young people in the current historical changes.He yearns for a way to break the cycle of beginning and end,with the aim of illuminating the present itself.
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