Chinese Ways of Seeing and Open-Air painting

genuine attitude towards Hu: Chiang more than once vented his anger and disdain towards Hu, denigrating him as a shameless, manipulative “rogue politician” (wulai zhengke無賴政客) and lackey of America (334–37) who wanted money, position, and prestige (p.319). However, instead of following through, Hu Shi gave up his resistance to Chiang’s coveting of power under political pressures, and Huang once again points out Hu’s ambivalence between his liberal, antiauthoritarian side and his anxiety-ridden and compromising personality. Hu Shi’s ambiguous position and identity as a “conservative liberal” met another challenge in theWenxingMagazine incident inwhich Lei Zhen, a radical liberal intellectual and outspoken critic of Chiang Kai-shek, was arrested and jailed. To another radical thinker Yin Haiguang, Hu Shi had become an instrument of power-holders and his relationship with political power was always ambiguous. Yet, for Hu Shi himself, he made a wise choice by maintaining his stature as an enlightenment thinker, a fighter for the ideal of freedom and a compromiser who refused to break with the government. Despite the magazine’s enthusiastic engagement with Hu Shi, Huconsistently turnedhis back tokeep adistance from thepolitical radicals’ temerity. Culturally, however, Hu Shi was still an iconoclastic even after he moved to Taiwan, and his assertion that theChinese tradition “does not contain the spiritual values conducive tomodern science” (229) offended the apologists ofChinese culture inTaiwan. Based on his steadfast defense of the liberal, anti-traditional legacy of the May Fourth Movement, Hu Shi challenged Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan, insisting that the May Fourth iconoclasm was appropriate and Chinese “liberalism” should not be accountable for the rise of Communism, as Chiang denigrated. And Chapter 6 of the book focuses on the divergent interpretation of the meaning of the May Fourth in the 1950s’ Hong Kong and Taiwan. A timely and valuable addition to the burgeoning field of Hu Shi studies, the book successfully delineates the multiple facets of Hu Shi: the ideological origins of his liberal thinking, his political choice in early Republic partisan politics, and his enmeshed and troubled relationship with the Chiang Kai-shek administration in Taiwan. The book unravels this mixed image of Hu Shi as a person who harboured ambivalent personal ambitions to be a promoter of liberal democratic values, a defender of May Fourth progressivism, and a loyal yet critical minister to an authoritarian regime. Assuming all these personas indeed put Hu Shi in a “difficult situation” ( jianxin chujing艱辛處境) (390).