Becoming China’s Baudelaire: A Case Study on the Learning and Use of the French Language by Chinese Work-Study Students

This article explores Li Jinfa’s transformation from a work-study student to “China’s Baudelaire,” whose symbolist poetry features a distinctive “francophone foreignness.” It addresses the “language question”—specifically, French language acquisition and utilization—intrinsic to Chinese students’ encounters with Western thought, culture, and life in the early twentieth century. Employing approaches of historical sociolinguistics, it not only investigates the materials, methods, and environments available for Li’s French language acquisition but also examines how he learned and used the language. It argues that, more than just a means for studying abroad, the French language was deeply intertwined with French literature, culture, and quotidian life in shaping Li’s engagement with a foreign world as a work-study student and with literary expression as a symbolist poet. Moreover, rather than serving solely a collective mission toward either Enlightenment or revolution, francophone education among work-study students fostered personal journeys of self-discovery.