Liu Yazi

[1] Liu was a leader of the Southern Society (Nanshe), founded in 1909 in Suzhou, Jiangsu, just south of Shanghai.

The Southern Society, whose national members numbered in the thousands, with Liu as its head continued its activities during the anti-traditional New Culture Movement.

The Society broke up in the early 1920s as Liu came to support the position of Hu Shih that literature should be written in the vernacular language.

[2] Liu went to Canton in 1923 to join the Guomindang Party (GMD) in 1923, but soon became resentful of the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek and in 1927 fled to Japan to escape repression.

[1] Liu had met Mao Zedong in Canton in the 1920s and discussed their preference for traditional strict classical forms.