In the sturm-und-drang campaign against feudalistic culture, nearly everything ranging from tombs to scriptures became the punching bag. It was impractical for the disreputable civilized drama to undertake the task of preaching new culture. In the eyes of those advocates of the May Fourth New Culture, traditional Chinese drama was a citadel which should be demolished. Otherwise, it would be impossible to establish modern Chinese drama.
As a matter of fact, the dispute between the innovative and the conservative can be traced to the period prior to the advent of May the Fourth Movement. At that time, Han Shichang, a renowned Kunqu (a type of traditional Chinese drama) master, won high acclaim from the audience with his excellent acting. This triggered a sudden rise of interest in Kunqu in Beijing. Some enthusiasts of traditional Chinese drama took advantage of this to launch a battle against new drama, claiming that traditional drama was the quintessence of the nation and should "be retained rather than discarded".
To answer such a conservative point of view, a number of progressive precursors of modern drama started a crusade against traditional drama. Using New Youth as their banner, they published articles to the effect that the traditional drama was banal and trite in content, divorced from reality and thus detrimental to morals and ethics. Qian Xuantong regarded the painted face in traditional drama as ridiculous as a swastika imprinted on the bristle of all pigs in a hoggery and a circular print on the heel of each horse in a stable. Liu Bannong ridiculed the stage activities in the traditional drama as fandangle against the deafening sound of beating gongs and drums, making the audience dizzy and confused. Hu Shi considered traditional dramatic performance clumsy, stupid and self- deceptive. According to Zhou Zuoren, traditional drama still rested on vaudeville with rigid tunes and vulgar content. It is true that these counter- arguments had gone somewhat too far, but they facilitated the birth of new drama.
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