Annotation

Zhen gonghe bao – ‘genuine republic newspaper’ – points to a publication whose editors were unsatisfied with the regime of their time, but may also have been an allusion to another Guangzhou-based newspaper Gonghe bao, that was launched at the time of the Republic of China’s establishment. Its regular columns included ‘Summaries of Chinese and Foreign News’, ‘Provincial News’ (from Guangdong province, including Hong Kong), political reviews, satire, fiction (including serialised martial art fiction, ‘revenge fiction’, ‘social critique fiction’, ‘weird and strange fiction’ and short stories), banyan, Southern tunes and Cantonese ballads, and opera scripts. Many of its articles featured social critiques or satirical reflections on the latest local trends. In addition to voicing clear opposition to the rule of warlords and Japanese aggression, the newspaper also expressed reservations about the Guangzhou-based ‘Constitutional Protection Junta’, particularly for its inability to uphold republican values through its violations of human rights and restrictions on free speech through its arrests of journalists. Although it supported the May Fourth movement, nearly all articles were written in classical Chinese, occasionally mixed with colloquial Cantonese.