The obscure face of modernity in China begins with the fact that the project in that discourse is incomplete in a much more radical sense, in that its historical siting, key definitions, and ultimate implications, which all remain in many important ways quite up in the air. This paper outlines various limitations inhering in notions of modernity and modernism in China. For early 20^(th) century Chinese literature, there would thus seem to be a late Qing modern, an early Republican modern and a "May Fourth" modern, each with its distinctive features. For a variety of reasons, the early Republican version, as I hope to show, seems to offer the most interesting innovations, perhaps the most important single feature of modernity, and something that fits comfortably with either interpretation of its essential nature. Modernity in essence, needs no longer borrow the criteria by which it takes its orientation from the models supplied by another epoch; it has to create its normativity out of itself.