This article examines how the notion of a tradition of invention, which took shape in China in the nineteenth century, became entrenched there by the 1920s. It begins by looking at how invention received heightened attention from Chinese elites in the May Fourth era, when many of them upheld the primacy of science for national salvation while science’s very rectitude was being contested. It then explores how these elites took up and contributed to narratives of a past inventiveness as a way of imagining possibilities of a better future, the most notable expression of which was the idea of the “four great inventions.” Finally, it delves into a particular paradox that underlay this glorification of prior scientific and technological achievements. While staking claim to a tradition of invention may have been ultimately for the purpose of charting a course toward a technoscientific tomorrow, the fixation on those past accomplishments led many Chinese across China’s long twentieth century to either ignore or downplay domestic developments in science and technology that were actually taking place. Ironically, then, the nagging sense of inferiority that underlay the lauding of ancient inventions came to be reinforced rather than alleviated by that very act.
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In a 1928 essay comparing Eastern and Western civilizations, the prominent May Fourth thinker Hu Shih 胡適 (1891–1962) wrote admiringly of his ancestors’ idolization of inventiveness. “In the East,” he noted, “all the legendary kings of China were not priest-philosophers, but inventors.” According to Chinese lore, as it was with the mythologies of many other cultures, technologies foundational to human existence could be credited to certain fabled figures. To Hu, the ancient Chinese inventors included “Sui-jen [Suiren], the discoverer of fire, You-tsao [Youchao], the first builder of houses, and Shen-nung [Shennong], the first teacher of agriculture and medicine.” As he saw it, that the early Chinese had venerated such makers of things was notable and commendable. “Our forefathers were quite right,” he insisted, “in deifying the creators of tools.” In Hu’s brief take on the long arc of human history, it was “the invention of necessary and effective tools” that accounted for civilizational advancement. This was, he noted, a process to which “the East,” having produced “a number of epoch-making tools of ancient civilization,” had once contributed (Hu Citation1928: 26–27).
