19th century In the late Qing Dynasty, newspapers landed in China, and the product of the combination of prose and news began to breed. After the Opium War, the first batch of works with the embryonic form of reportage appeared, but it was not until the coup of 1898 by Liang Qichao that the basic characteristics of reportage were clearly possessed. After Liang Qichao, reportage works gradually increased.
The May 4th Movement brought profound changes to China's thought and culture, and reportage made great breakthroughs in subject matter and ideological content. Bing Xin, Qu Qiubai, Liang Qichao, Lu Xun, Rou Shi, Xie Bingying and other writers of the Literature Research Association actively wrote reportage. In addition to persisting in the patriotic propaganda, the ideological contents of sympathizing with the people's sufferings, exposing the evils of imperialism and feudal warlords, seeking a way out for China, praising the Soviet-Russian revolution and expressing the Northern Expedition revolution are more reflected in their works. The author mostly takes personal experience as the material, and the lyricism of his works is greatly enhanced. At this time, the author has no sense of style, and the word "reportage" was not formally introduced until 1930.
Famous reportage works include Report under the Gallows and Bonded Labourers.
Its basic characteristics are: 1. Timeliness II. Documentary 3. Literariness
1. Timeliness. Reportage, like news communication, is often good at conveying exciting events that have just happened in life to readers in time at the fastest speed. Reportage is welcomed by readers because it can grasp the pulse of the times, quickly reflect the reality that the masses care about and play the role of "literary light cavalry".
2. Documentary. Reportage cannot fabricate characters and plots like novels. It must take real people and things in real life as the description object, and photographic documentary is its important feature.
3. Literariness. Generally speaking, reportage should describe people and stories, but not any real people and stories can be the object of reportage description. Reportage should trace back to facts, but not all facts are worth reporting, but should be carefully selected and refined. Reportage can't be like news reports, it only has a summary of events, and it must create complete characters and vivid details. Reportage is different from novels in that it does not focus on portraying characters, but it requires a high artistic image. Close-up of people naturally needs to focus on portraying people when introducing their deeds. Even works that focus on writing things cannot be separated from writers. If we can vividly depict the characters, it will certainly greatly enhance the appeal. Reportage can also absorb the description skills of novels, the dialogue art of drama, the narrative method of movie scenes and the jumping technique of poetry.