清末北京的阅报活动(1904-1911)

The newspaper-reading activities of Beijing in the late Qing period(1904-1911)

清末,有识之士开展了以"开民智"为口号的启蒙运动,其中一项活动是利用报纸把新知识、新思想向社会传播,但是由于民众的购买力低和识字率低,买报阅报对大部分人来说,无疑是不现实的。为了使报纸真正深入民间,有一些人在北京创办了四十多处阅报社,还在街头贴报。清末北京的这些阅报活动虽然不像文人预期的理想,但作为报纸启蒙的辅助形式,在一定程度上还是促进了报业的发展,有利于民智的开启,是清末启蒙运动中不可或缺的一部分,也是社会教育一个重要方面。在这种活动中,阅报与报纸之间相互作用,白话报和画报的发展就为其发展提供了便利,使粗识文字的人能够自己阅报。

In the late Qing period,some literati members founded journals and newspapers with the aim of 'enlightening the masses'.They soon realized owing to the populace's low purchasing power and literacy rate,the majority of the masses could not afford to buy and was not able to understand newspaper writings.To solve this problem,places for facilitating newspaper-reading activities boomed in Beijing.It is these newspapers or journals which reported the activities concerned allow us to study this unique scenario of late Qing.This article thus employs a critical reading of these reports and tries to find out how newspaper-reading activities might have carried out and to evaluate how far the enlightenment ideals held by literati might have been put into practice.