The Crescent Moon Society () was a

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

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founded by the poet

Xu Zhimo Xu Zhimo (, , Mandarin: , 15 January 1897 – 19 November 1931) was a Chinese romantic poet who strove to loosen Chinese poetry from its traditional forms and to reshape it under the influences of Western poetry and the vernacular Chinese langu ...

in 1923, which operated until 1931. It was named after ''The Crescent Moon'', a poem by

Rabindranath Tagore Rabindranath Tagore (; bn, রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He resh ...

. The society began as a loosely-organized dining association. In addition to Xu Zhimo, its other members included leading author and educator

Hu Shih Hu Shih (; 17 December 1891 – 24 February 1962), also known as Hu Suh in early references, was a Chinese diplomat, essayist, literary scholar, philosopher, and politician. Hu is widely recognized today as a key contributor to Chinese libera ...

, poets

Wen Yiduo Wen Yiduo (; 24 November 189915 July 1946) was a Chinese poet and scholar known for his nationalistic poetry. Wen was assassinated by the Kuomintang in 1946. Life Wen Yiduo was born Wén Jiāhuá () on 24 November 1899 in what is now Xishui ...

and

Chen Mengjia Chen Mengjia (; 20 April 1911, in Nanjing – 3 September 1966, in Beijing) was a Chinese scholar, poet, paleographer and archaeologist. He was considered the foremost authority on oracle bones and was Professor of Chinese at Tsinghua University ...

, writers

Liang Shih-chiu Liang Shih-chiu (January 6, 1903 – November 3, 1987), also romanized as Liang Shiqiu, and also known as Liang Chih-hwa (梁治華), was a renowned educator, writer, translator, literary theorist and lexicographer. Biography Liang was born in ...

and

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, and sociologist

Pan Guangdan Pan Guangdan (; 1898–1967) known in English as Quentin Pan, was a Chinese sociologist, eugenicist, and writer. He was one of the most distinguished sociologists and eugenicists of China. Educated at Tsinghua University on a Boxer Indemnity Sc ...

. The Crescent Moon Society—along with other aspects of China's literary establishment at that time—was part of the larger

New Culture Movement The New Culture Movement () was a movement in China in the 1910s and 1920s that criticized classical Chinese ideas and promoted a new Chinese culture based upon progressive, modern and western ideals like democracy and science. Arising out of ...

. It engaged in running debates with the "art for politics' sake" (and

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-driven)

League of the Left-Wing Writers __NOTOC__ The League of Left-Wing Writers (), commonly abbreviated as the Zuolian in Chinese, was an organization of writers formed in Shanghai, China, on 2 March 1930, at the instigation of the Chinese Communist Party and the influence of the cel ...

.to excerpt
/ref> The Society dissolved shortly after the death of

in November 1931.

References

Literary Societies of Republican China

Modern Chinese Literary Thought
(p. 497)
The Columbia Companion to Modern East Asian Literature
(p. 368)
Twentieth-century Chinese Translation Theory
(p. 198)
The Cambridge History of China
(p. 430)
India and China in the Colonial World
(p. 94)
China
(p. 355)

Notes

Literary societies Modern Chinese poetry Chinese writers' organizations

See also

References

Notes

Further reading