On this day, 105 years ago, January 2, 1920 (November 12, 1919, the lunar calendar), classical Chinese was abolished. On January 2, 1920, the government of the Republic of China issued a new decree abolishing classical Chinese and using vernacular Chinese, which was also an important step towards modernization of the country. As we all know, an important point in the May 4th Movement in 1919 was that we have been unable to make progress and move towards modernization because we were bound by Confucian culture. At that time, under the initiative of many intellectuals, vernacular writing was begun, and some extreme phenomena were even carried out. For example, everything was simplified to the point that even vernacular writing was not used, and even Chinese characters were used directly. Everyone believed that everything was bound by this square character. Of course, we did not implement it this way in the end. But in other countries, this phenomenon did occur during the transition to modernization. For example, Vietnam later abandoned Chinese characters and switched to phonetic scripts. We weren't that radical yet, we changed it to vernacular. After the implementation of vernacular writing, a variety of strange vernacular writing appeared for a time. Because everyone was exploring at the beginning, there were all kinds of vernacular writing. Now when we look back at the vernacular writing of that period, some of them will seem particularly ridiculous. There are also some special circumstances. For example, when sending telegrams, people still used ancient Chinese. Because telegrams were very expensive and the money was calculated according to the word, people who could draw telegrams in that era were all good at ancient Chinese. The person who could write telegrams at that time was equivalent to the person who can write Weibo now, because Weibo wanted to explain the whole matter clearly in 140 words. Our family still has a telegram, which is a telegram sent back from Germany by my grandparents when my mother was born in Berlin. It only has five words: "Get a daughter on New Year's Eve" because telegrams sent across the ocean are particularly expensive. The reason why I talk about this matter is to tell you that every time you want to implement reform, new ideas always emerge, with hope and enthusiasm for new things, but in the process of change, there will be some conflicts of this kind or that kind. For example, sometimes ancient prose is more refined than vernacular prose, except for those words that are too popular. The reforms we make should be scientific, practical and practical, rather than just comparing the old and the new, accepting the new and eliminating the old. This kind of reform is extreme. One point that needs to be explained here is that many new words appeared at that time, especially when integrating with the West. We didn't have so many modern words at that time, so a large number of modern words came from Japan, because they integrated with the West earlier, and they took the lead in using modern words. At that time, there were many China students studying in Japan. After they came back from Japan, they brought back a large number of modern Japanese vocabulary. They were already very mature in the translation of Western vocabulary at that time, so after they were introduced in, we directly used many of them. For example: organization, discipline, revolution, socialism, capitalism, law, republic, literature, art, philosophy, politics... When we talk about boycotting Japanese goods today, we may say that we can no longer drive Japanese cars or use Japanese electrical appliances, but if we boycott everything, we may not be able to use 70% of modern nouns and vocabulary, because they were all imported from Japan. Although China and Japan have had many conflicts and problems in history, from a cultural perspective, the two countries have influenced and learned from each other. Regarding vernacular Chinese, we only talked about a small aspect today. Starting from the May 4th Movement in 1919, vernacular language finally became law under the leadership of Hu Shi and other large numbers of advanced intellectuals who studied abroad. Regarding Hu Shi and other great intellectuals of his generation, we will wait until May 4th or when they are born or passed away to talk more.