The new literature of China, which began from the May 4th Movement, was a powerful wing of the Chinese New Democratic Revolution. Mao Zedong said, “The cultural revolution conducted by the May 4th Movement was a movement that thoroughly opposed imperialism and feudalism.” Being an important part of the cultural revolution, the new literature of China was filled with a thorough anti-imperial and anti-feudal spirit since the beginning.
New poetry came into being when the May 4th literature revolution had just set afoot; it served as a precursor of changes in other forms of literature. In January 1918 the [New Youth] magazine published for the first time the free style poems written in vernacular by Hu Shi, Liu Bannong, Shen Yinmo and others. Gradually, there were more and more people who responded to this initiative on newspaper literature supplements and magazines. Among all forms of new literature, new poetry was the first to bare fruits during the May 4th period. At that time, this was of militant significance. Without a victory for new poetry, the new literature could not obtain its orthodox position in the society. There were many that opposed the free style poetry. There were heated disputes on whether new poetry belonged to “civilians” or “aristocrat”. So, the promotion of new poetry not only broke the trammels of tonal patterns and rhyme schemes, advocated the usage of vernacular, but also contained deep anti-feudal significance. Lu Xun (鲁迅，1881-1936) introduced in 1907 the essence and spirit of the poems written by Byron, Shelley, A.S. Pushkin and M. I. Lermontov and Petofi Sander. His introduction gave a big push to the development of new poetry. He was mainly an essay writer and a novelist, yet he also wrote some new poetry during this period. To cater to the need of the people’s revolution, the poetry creation since the May 4th Movement inheriting in a creative way the national tradition of Chinese classical poetry and accepting the influence of outstanding foreign realist and romantic poetry. Aside from the free style and the usage of vernacular, the content new poetry covered was conspicuously new. For instance, the social consciousness of humanitarianism, sincere and healthy love, praise of labor and laboring people, eulogy of the spirit of revolt were often the themes of new poetry. These themes suited the surging revolutionary trend of thoughts. New poetry very quickly won the support of young readers.
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