China and the West

Walt Whitman and China : general.
1955
Achilles Fang : The Imagism-inspired literary revolution of 1917 tolled the bell for the traditional poetry of China ; but it failed to ring in its substitute, probably because it was not even Imagistic. Whitmanism, which propelled literary malcontents toward revolutionary literature, has not succeeded in producing great poetry in China, in spite of the fact that it has been the dominant trait of the new poetry. The search for a workable poetics, a poetics that honestly and earnestly faces the problem of the artist versus society, must go on.
1980
Mark Cohen : Whitman reflected the rise of American capitalism as well as the spirit of democracy. Although Whitman was politically somewhat progressive, as a poet he was often not economical in his diction, too abstract in his ideas, and too confused in his thinking.
1986
Li Xilao : The May Fourth student movement in 1919 is the starting point of modern Chinese literature. Walt Whiman's poetry seemed to be especially commensurate with the spirit of the time. Since Chinese new poets considered themselves to be part of the world new poetry movement pioneered by Whitman, they, and a great number of their readers, turned to him for inspiration. In the 1920s and the first half of the 1930s, Whitman seemed to be enjoying a warm welcome by all the major societies : he was held in great esteem by the Creation Society, appreciated by the Crescent Society, and introduced favorably by the Literary Study Society.
1995
Huang Guiyou : Whitman's reception has reached three peaks : the first was during the 1920s and 1930s when China was undergoing a literary revolution characterized by vernacular literature.
The second was during the 1940s and mid-1950s, a period notable for the founding of the People's Republic ; Whitman became a source of inspiration and a symbol of freedom as China was plundered by Japan ; translators concentrated on Whitman's poems that displayed a militant spirit, and the sole purpose of these translations was to call on the Chinese people to stand up heroically against Japanese invaders.
The third was during the open door policy since the late 1970s, and important phase in modern Chinese history, when a great demand for democracy and freedom and an increasing desire to know the outside world burst open the heavy Chinese door.
1995
Li Yeguang : In the thirty years before the founding of the People's Republic, those who appreciated and introduced Whitman to China were mainly poets, and most of them advocated and persisted in writing free verse, while some worked for the creation of new metrical patterns for many years and still others became famous for their classical poetic compositions. Their perspectives on Whitman varied, but they all respected him and benefited from his works in differing ways. Since the May Fourth movement, the task confronting the Chinese literature revolution has been one of opposing imperialistic and traditional feudalistic cultures with democratic and scientific spirit in order to build a new national democratic literature. Whitman's completely new democratic ideas and his urgent demand for an independent national literature for the New World aim in the same direction. The advocates of Chinese new poetry eagerly aspire to create a free verse or a new metrical poetry to keep pace with the new era, and Whitman, as the radical revolutionist in poetic patterns and the true creator of free verse in the world history, meets the needs of all schools of new poetry in China. Throughout the democratic revolution in China, under the new condition when writers were exploring and creating in the field of poetic art, Whitman became all the more valuable to them. Whitman's influence is felt in the spirit, in the force, and in the style.
In socialist China, the study of Whitman has been more and more widely undertaken by younger translators and scholars. Nevertheless, Whitman's influence on Chinese poets continues to grow, and his poetry – which sings of democracy, freedom, modern civilization, and love of mankind – along with his incessant exploration in the ideological field and his bold creation and experience in poetic art are still gaining popularity and depth, still inspiring and encouraging.
2002
Wang Ning : If we read Whitman's poetry next to some contemporary American experimentalist poets, we can undoubtedly find the inherent connections between him and postmodernism. That is perhaps one of the reasons why he is still read and discussed today not only in the West but in China. Another obvious reason Why Chinese scholars discuss Whitman in regard to modern Chinese literature is the unique role he played in the process of China's political and cultural modernity as well as in the Chinese literary modernist movement. During the May 4th period Whitman was one of the very few American poets who had a strong influence on revolutionary Chinese poets. Because the critical and creative reception of Whitman's poetry was absolutely relevant to the Chinese social revolution and to Chinese literary innovation, he as for a long time classified in the tradition of nineteenth-century romanticism. Whitman is now viewed more as a pioneering figure of literary modernism than merely as a romantic poet, for his appearance in the nineteenth century actually anticipated the rise of modernist poetry in the twentieth century, and many of his prophetic and insightful ideas paved the way for the process of modernism in Western culture and Western thought. Compared with what has been achieved in the Western academic circles, Whitman studies in China have a very different orientation : in China, he has always been introduced and studied as a merely romanticist or, as a revolutionary romanticist with his poems of social change highlighted and his symbolic poems virtually neglected. Although the mysterious and symbolic elements in his poems are sometimes mentioned, they are usually dealt with in a cursory way.