英语学习资料:五四运动MayFourthMovement

英语学习资料：五四运动MayFourthMovement

五四运动May Fourth Movement

A photo exhibition in Beijing marks the 95th anniversary of

the May Fourth Movement, an important cultural and political

movement in modern China. The images were taken by American

photographer Sidney D. Gamble (1890-1968), grandson of James

Gamble, one of the co-founders of Proctor & Gamble.

"In the early 1900s, photos were rarely en in China, and few

survive today," says Guo Junying, curator of the memorial.

"Gamble captured valuable historical moments from the

perspective of a sociologist and prerved tho images well."

The May Fourth Movement started with mass student

protests on May 4, 1919, against the government's respon to

the Treaty of Versailles that impod unfair penalties on China

and undermined the country's sovereignty. It then began a

national campaign to overthrow the feudal society and promote

scientific and democratic ideas.

Hosted by the New Culture Movement Memorial of Beijing

and Duke University Libraries, the exhibition displays 143

photographs showing China's May Fourth Movement and

people's lives at that time.

The photographs include students delivering speeches,

being arrested and protesting during the movement in 1919.

"They open a window for Chine to better understand their

history and plement existing historical documents for that

period," Guo says.

Gamble worked as cretary for the Beijing Young Men's

Christian Association, witnessing and documenting this pivotal

time. In 1908, he began taking pictures in China during the first

trip here with his family. He returned three more times between

1917 and 1932 and traveled widely, collecting data for socio-

economic surveys and photographing urban and rural life, public

events, architecture, religious statuary and the countryside.

About 15 years after Gamble's death, his daughter found his

nitrate negatives in a clot at home in New York. Stored in

beautiful rowood boxes, the negatives were houd in

individual paper sleeves, annotated with typed and handwritten

captions. An agreement to bring the collection to Duke was

signed in 2006.

"I was immediately fascinated by the images of Chine life

more than 100 years ago as I tried to figure out the location and

background of each picture, and later as I translated their titles

into Chine. Since then, I have wanted to promote this collection

to audiences around the world," says Zhou Luo, a rearcher with

Duke University.

Zhou started working on the metadata on the Gamble

photographs in 2008, when the images had been nt to Duke

after digitization.

Among the 5,000 photographs in this collection are about

2,000 images related to Beijing. "The majority of images were

never published or exhibited during his lifetime," Guo says.

The memorial has received about 300 to 400 visitors on

workdays and nearly 700 on weekends since the exhibition

opened.

"In a picture that shows a traditional Chine funeral, I saw a

(rare, sacrificial) paper car. It's amazing. I never expected that

the luxury sacrifices had such long history in China," says a

visitor from Beijing.

A middle school student says that young Chine lack such

passion today and they need to learn from the spirit of the May

Fourth Movement.

"The spirit involves patrioti *** , progress, democracy and

science. While we make more money and enjoy a better life today,

we need to ek spiritual pursuit and faith. This exhibition gives

us a new perspective to know our history in a vivid and objective

way," Guo says.