Provincial Passages

Wen-Hsin Yeh's book, Provincial Passages: Culture, Space, and the Origins of Chinese Communism, is a valuable monograph because it decenters the May Fourth Movement from Beijing and Shanghai; a refreshing turn away from what much of the literature on the May Fourth Movement tends to focus on. Yeh alternatively concentrates on the counties of Hangzhou and, largely, uses this book to illustrate the life of Shi Cuntong. More specifically, Yeh pointedly highlights that the meaning of May Fourth in rural villages like Jinhua was centered more around the friction between fervent traditionalism and an emerging cultural iconoclasm than it was about the Treaty of Versailles.

Despite the critiques some make about the microhistory approach to writing historical literature, I would recommend this book to anyone interested in gaining more perspective on the May Fourth Movement in China. It's contributions in highlighting the periphery of the May Fourth Movement make it a meaningful contribution to the May Fourth corpus.