Wherever We Find Friends there Begins a New Life: Tagore and China

Tagore made a deep impression upon the Chinese culture and society. In 1923, the Jiangxue she 講學社 (Beijing Lecture Association) invited Rabindranath Tagore to deliver a series of talks. The Jiangxue she Association was established in September 1920 and represented one of the many institutions that came to life in China during the May Fourth Movement. Since then, almost all of his works in English have been translated into Chinese. He came to China just when the latter was beginning her Renaissance and his visit certainly gave a great impetus to this new movement. His poems of Stray Birds and The Crescent Moon have created new styles of prosody in the new Chinese poetry. A Crescent Moon Society (for poetry) and a Crescent Moon magazine were started immediately after this event by Hu Shi 胡适 (Hu 2002: 90). During his visit, Tagore raised two basic questions, one about the relation between tradition and modernity, and the other about the usual identification of modernisation with Westernisation. Since the May Fourth Movement, China has also been concerned with these questions and Chinese intellectuals have come out with different answers. These questions, however, were important not only for China but for India as well. Such debates and the revaluation of various answers represented the most important condition for a consolidation of new ideologies, which formed a political basis for the changing societies of both countries