Written vernacular Chinese, also known as baihua () or huawen (), is the forms of written Chinese based on the varieties of Chinese spoken throughout China, in contrast to Classical Chinese, the written standard used during imperial China up to the early twentieth century. A written vernacular based on Mandarin Chinese was used in novels in the Ming and Qing dynasties (14th–20th centuries), and later refined by intellectuals associated with the May Fourth Movement. Since the early 1920s, this modern vernacular form has been the standard style of writing for speakers of all varieties of Chinese throughout mainland China, Taiwan, Malaysia, and Singapore as the written form of Modern Standard Chinese. This is commonly called Standard Written Chinese or Modern Written Chinese to avoid ambiguity with spoken vernaculars, with the written vernaculars of earlier eras, and with other written vernaculars such as written Cantonese or written Hokkien.
Background history
During the Zhou dynasty (1046–256 BC), Old Chinese was the spoken and written form of Chinese, and was used to write classical Chinese texts. Starting from the Qin (221 BC), however, spoken Chinese began to evolve faster than written. The difference grew larger with the passage of time. By the time of the Tang and Song dynasties (618–1279), people began to write in their vernacular dialects in the form of biànwén and yǔlù (Chinese: 語錄; pinyin: yǔlù; lit. 'language record'),[citation needed] and the spoken language was completely distinct from the still-maintained written standard of classical Chinese (文言文). The majority of the population, not educated in classical Chinese, could understand very little of written or printed texts. Literacy in classical Chinese became synonymous with higher education, and because of the difficulty associated with mastering the form and writing characters themselves, reformers in the twentieth century went on to support language reform, such as vernacularization and simplification of characters, to make literacy and education more accessible. During the Ming and Qing (1368–1912), vernacular language began to be used in novels, but formal writing continued to use classical Chinese except for a few late Qing baihua newspapers were initialized either by major agencies and local pioneers.
In the twentieth century political activists and supporters of language reform attempted to vernacularize the Chinese language, or replace the formal written language with a spoken form (modern Mandarin, which is based on a vernacular Beijing dialect), as part of comprehensive language reform, which included debate on replacing characters with an alphabet, simplifying characters, and expanding vernacular vocabulary with technical terms intended to allow Mandarin to be used in formal contexts with a vocabulary suited to modern times, and with the theory that formal Chinese language would be more accessible to the general public, which activists hoped would increase literacy and education in China.
Written Vernacular Chinese was also popularized in support with the Western missionaries coming to China in the 19th century. Missionaries wrote stories, poems, essays and other works in this form of language in order to spread their message, often preferring to do so in vernacular Chinese than classical, which would make it easier for them to connect with common people. This started as early as around the 1840s and lasted until 1949, when the People's Republic of China (PRC) was established. This early form of baihuawen was mainly in vernacular written language. This was different from the old first version of baihuawen. At first, there was a lot of confusion as to what the message was, and with most of the Western ideas being presented to a Chinese audience, there was also a lot of pushback and confusion. But with more work and more popularity, baihuawen became increasingly popular and mainstream. The missionaries not only retained some of the original stylistics of the text, but included Chinese stylistics as well. In the end, this could be called a marriage between Western ideas and Chinese languages.
Some points that have not been considered by others and that should be considered going into the future is that this Western influence is often looked over, and not recorded well within history. This could be deemed due to the intentions of the New Literature Movement, who wanted to keep their movement domestic, and not have foreign influence and credit. The Western missionaries should get their credit for the influence that they had on this language movement, but at the same time, this history is not entirely clear and is still being discovered, so there needs to be room for discussion.