@prefix vivo: . @prefix edm: . @prefix ns0: . @prefix dcterms: . @prefix skos: . vivo:departmentOrSchool "Arts, Faculty of"@en, "History, Department of"@en ; edm:dataProvider "DSpace"@en ; ns0:degreeCampus "UBCV"@en ; dcterms:creator "Johnson, Eve"@en ; dcterms:issued "2010-01-21T21:29:20Z"@en, "1974"@en ; vivo:relatedDegree "Master of Arts - MA"@en ; ns0:degreeGrantor "University of British Columbia"@en ; dcterms:description """Ch'en Tung-yüan's History of the Life of Chinese Women, written in 1927, is the only comprehensive contemporary account of the early women's movement in China. For this reason it has been widely used by Western scholars who have recently become interested in the origins of Chinese feminism. This thesis consists of a translation of the sections of Ch'en's History which deal with the period between 1895 and 1927, and a commentary which examines the value of Ch'en's work as a source for our understanding of women's history in China. In general, Ch'en's description of the changes in women's lives is accurate; but its scope is too narrow; the only women it applies to are those of the Orthodox Confucian past and the Modern, May Fourth generation of the 19201s. The omission of working class and peasant women, and of the cultural stereotypes of the folk tradition, lead to a serious distortion of the nature of Chinese feminism. Only by recognizing the limitations of Ch'en's approach and researching the role of women in the popular tradition, can we achieve a more balanced picture."""@en ; edm:aggregatedCHO "https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/18843?expand=metadata"@en ; skos:note "A HISTORY OF THE LIFE OF CHINESE WOMEN —THE DEVELOPMENT OF CHINESE FEMINISM by Carol Evelyn Johnson B.A., University of British Columbia, 1970 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in the Department of History We accept this thesis as conforming to the required standard THE UWERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA August, 1974 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfilment of the requirements for an advanced degree at the University of British Columbia, I agree that the Library shall make i t freely available for reference and study. I further agree that permission for extensive copying of this thesis for scholarly purposes may be granted by the Head of my Department of by his representatives. It is understood that copying or publication of this thesis for financial gain shall not be allowed without my written permission. Department of History The University of British Columbia Vancouver, Canada i ABSTRACT Ch'en Tung-yuan's History of the Life of Chinese Women, written in 1927, is the only comprehensive contemporary account of the early women's movement in China. For this reason i t has been widely used by Western scholars who have recently become interested in the origins of Chinese feminism. This thesis consists of a translation of the sections of Ch'en's History which deal with the period between 1895 and 1927, and a commentary which examines the value of Ch'en's work as a source for our understanding of women's history in China. In general, Ch'en's description of the changes in women's lives is accurate; but i t s scope is too narrow; the only women i t applies to are those of the Orthodox Confucian past and the Modern, May Fourth generation of the 19201s. The omission of working class and peasant women, and of the cultural stereotypes of the folk tra-dition, lead to a serious distortion of the nature of Chinese feminism. Only by recognizing the limitations of Ch'en's approach and researching the role of women in the popular tradition, can we achieve a more balanced picture. i i TABLE OF CONTENTS Page INTRODUCTION . . . • • . 1 PART I. COMMENTARY CHAPTER 1. CH'EN TUNG-YUAN AND WOMEN'S LIBERATION 5 Ch'en's Background 5 Ch'en's Intellectual Position 7 Positivism 7 Rationalism and Sexual Morality 8 Discarding Tradition and Accepting the West . . 11 Socialism and the Reorganization of the Family . 14 Nationalism Vs. Feminism 17 The Educated Elite . 19 Confusion: The Clans 21 Gaps in the Structure- 23 The Working Poor 23 Women and Industrialization 26 The Great Tradition and the Folk Tradition . . 29 2. MU LAN AND THE GIRLS—ALTERNATE STEREOTYPES . . . . 34 Swordfighters and Warriors 34 The Underworld 37 Secret Societies 38 Rebellion 41 i i i Page Banditry 43 Interpreting the Mu Lan Tradition 46 3 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEMINISM IN CHINA 49 Witke's Periodization: Feminism as a Product of the May Fourth Movement 50 The Women's Movement of 1912 52 An Alternate Interpretation 60 PART II. TRANSLATION A NOTE ON THE TRANSLATION 63 CHAPTER 1. THE LIFE OF WOMEN IN THE REFORM PERIOD 65 General Discussion 65 The Germination of the Intellectual Revolution . . 6 7 A. The First Period—before the reform movement of 1898 67 B. The Second Period—after the 1898 reforms . . . 69 The Establishment of a System for Women's Education 71 Reaction Against the Idea of Women's Rights . . 75 The Accomplishments of Girls' Schools Established by Missionary Societies . . . . 80 The First Growth of the Intellectual Revolution . . 81 A. The First Period—Before 1911 81 Women Studied Overseas 81 Women Who Sacrificed for the Revolution . . . 83 Women Who Sacrificed for Love . . . . . . . 88 i v Page B. The Second Period—After 1911 91 Enthusiastically Joining the Army 92 The Movement for P o l i t i c a l Participation . . . 97 Women's Education in the First Years of the Republic 100 2 THE LIFE OF CONTEMPORARY WOMEN 104 A. The Flowering of the Intellectual Revolution . . 104 The First Period--Before the May Fourth Movement 104 The First Period of The New Youth 105 The Heyday of The New Youth I l l B. The Second Period—After the May Fourth Movement 121 The May Fourth Movement and Women's Liberation . 121 Liberation in Education and Its Defects . . . 125 Liberation in Professions and Its Difficulties . 134 Liberation in Marriage and Its Inadequacies . . 138 The Extreme Need for Change in Sexual Attitudes . 146 Mrs. Sanger's V i s i t to China and the Birth Control Movement 151 The Movement for P o l i t i c a l Participation and Its Theory 159 Women Under Ideal Socialism 167 3 EPILOGUE 174 Bibliography 178 Ah Sz's wife wagged her head and sighed. Then she rose to her feet and said angrily: \"No wonder Ah To says that the meek and humble haven't a chance! \"He's right. The world's going to turn head over heels'. \"My father-in-law used to say that the Long Hairs will be coming again. I hear there are women Long Hairs too. You know, we 've got a big Long Hair 2 sword in our house ...\" Mao Tun, [Shen Yen-ping jtfft ^ L \"Winter Ruin*,\"1 i n . Spring Silkworms and Other Stories, (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1956 (1932)), p. 77. 1 INTRODUCTION The standard treatment of \"Women in China\" is a Cinderella story. The Wicked Stepmother (the Confucian Tradition) in f l i c t e d endless hardships on women. Not only did they l i t e r a l l y do a l l the housekeeping, they were also responsible for maintaining the moral cleanliness of society through a severe code of chastity, applicable in practice to them alone. Suddenly, just when the c i v i l war, follow-ing the years of war with Japan, had made conditions unbearable, a fairy godmother, (the ideology of Marxism-Leninism) appeared. Prince Charming (the Chinese Communist party under the leadership of Mao Tse-tung) led Chinese women from their oppression into a new l i f e of freedom and happiness. This is in many ways a satisfying story, as a l l Cinderella stories should be; but i t is not enough. Prompted by a revitalized Western feminism, some Western scholars have begun to study the be-2 ginnings of the Chinese women's movement early in the 20th century. Here they hope to find a more accurate, i f less dramatic story, material See: Roxane Witke, Transformation of Attitudes Toward Women in the May Fourth Era of Modern China (unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1970). Janet Salaff and Judith Merkle, \"Women in Revolution: The Lessons of the Soviet Union and China,\" Berkeley .^JournalnofySociology, Vol. XV, (1970), pp. 166-191. Marilyn Young, ed., Women in China, Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies, No. 15 (Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, The University of Michigan, 1973). la 2 f o r a comparison o f Chinese and Western femin ism, and the reasons, beyond the F a i r y Godmother, f o r the amazing progress which Chinese women have made. In t h i s s e a r c h , Ch'en Tung-yuan's ( ) H i s t o r y o f the L i f e o f Chinese Women (Chung-kuo fu -n i i sheng-huo sh ih ^ I j ^ - i r % )» publ ished i n 1928, i s probably the s i n g l e most impor tan t source o f i n -3 f o r m a t i o n . Roxane Witke depends h e a v i l y on Ch'en f o r her account o f 4 the women's movement before 1919. Jane S a l a f f and J u d i t h Merkle r e l y on him almost e n t i r e l y f o r t h e i r i n f o r m a t i o n on the e a r l i e r years o f the 5 women's movement, as does Chow Tse-tsung i n h i s b r i e f note on feminism c i n The May Four th Movement. I t i s easy to account f o r the p o p u l a r i t y o f Ch 'en 's H i s t o r y . In a spate o f books on the women's ques t ion ( fu -n i i w e n - t ' i kJf-hr?4M- ) publ ished a f t e r the May Fourth I n c i d e n t , i t i s unusual i n p r o v i d i n g a long and reasonably s c h o l a r l y n a r r a t i v e r a t h e r than a c o l l e c t i o n o f a r t i c l e s on the d i f f e r e n t aspects o f the p r o b l e m . 7 In a d d i t i o n , Ch'en (Shanghai: Shang-wu y i n - s h u - k u a n , 1928) . 4 For examples see W i t k e , Transformat ion o f A t t i t u d e s , pp. 24 -5 , 44-45 , 62 -64 , 68 -69 , 225. 5 S a l a f f and M e r k l e , \"Women i n R e v o l u t i o n , \" pp. 179-180. Chow T s e - t s u n g , The May Fourth Movement ( S t a n f o r d : S tan fo rd U n i v e r s i t y Press , 1960) , pp. 257-59, 437. 7 For examples see: Mei Sheng ( ) e d . , Co l l ec ted Discussions on the Chinese Women's Quest ion (Chung-kuo fu -n i i w e n - t ' i t ' a o lun ch i v& MM Utfct )» . (Shanghai: Hsin-wen-hua shu-she, 1924-1928). T Mei Sheng, e d . , The Women's Yearbook (Fu-nu ' -n ien-chien 3 i s r e l a t i v e l y n o n p a r t i s a n . Al though he supports the N a t i o n a l i s t government, he possesses a degree o f p o l i t i c a l i m p a r t i a l i t y t h a t became i n c r e a s i n g l y ra re as the s t r u g g l e between the n a t i o n a l i s t s and the communists developed. As impor tan t a source deserves more c a r e f u l c o n s i d e r a t i o n ; and should i d e a l l y be a v a i l a b l e even to those who do not read Chinese. For t h i s reason I have t r a n s l a t e d the f i n a l sec t ions o f Ch 'en 's H i s t o r y ; e s s e n t i a l l y those pages d e s c r i b i n g women's emancipat ion i n the t w e n t i e t h c e n t u r y . (The book begins w i t h the s t a t u s o f women i n pre-Han t imes and g ives d e t a i l e d accounts o f how i t has changed through successive d y n a s t i e s . ) In the course o f t r a n s l a t i n g Ch 'en 's work , I became convinced t h a t a l though h i s i n f o r m a t i o n i s , on the who le , r e l i a b l e , i t i s i n -complete; and f o r t h i s reason h i s general i n t e r p r e t a t i o n i s m i s l e a d i n g . In an at tempt t o prov ide a more accurate p i c t u r e o f the way i n which the women's movement developed, I w i l l preface the t r a n s l a t i o n w i t h a s h o r t c r i t i q u e o f Ch'en and h i s work . Pa r t o f the c r i t i q u e w i l l be devoted t o Roxane W i t k e 1 s Trans format ion o f A t t i t u d e s Toward Women During the May Fourth Era o f Modern China, which i s a t present the on ly impor tan t Jf ) , (Shanghai: Hsin-wen-hua shu-she, 1924-1926). Mei Sheng, e d . , Co l lec ted Research on the Women's Quest ion (Nli-hsing w e n - t ' i yen-chi iu ch i ^^f^Mz&&^Ji J~, (Shanghai: Hsin-wen-hua shu-she, 1928) . 1 * Hsu Tsung-tse ( i ^ - ^ ^ f ) e d . , Notes and Comments on the Women's Quest ion (Fu-nu w e n - t ' i t s a - p ' i n g fJ]-^,^If-)» (Shanghai: Sheng-chiao t s a - c h i h she, 1931) . ' 4 scholarly study of the early women's movement. Witke in many ways accepts Ch'en's intellectual outlook, particularly his emphasis on the May Fourth Movement as the most significant force in the history of women's emancipation in China. I believe that this emphasis is misplaced. In general, I w i l l argue that the source of Ch'en's inadequacies as a historian of women's emancipation i s , paradoxically, his position as an intellectual of the May Fourth generation—the f i r s t generation of Chinese intellectuals to enthusiastically promote women's liberation. To accept Ch'en's analysis of the women's movement without examining his intellectual bias means imposing, as I would argue Witke imposes, a pre-conceived pattern on the development of the movement; and ignoring significant material which does not f i t the pattern. I w i l l not attempt, in this critique, a thorough theoretical discussion of feminism, nor an analysis of the meaning and operation of feminism in societies which differ from our own in the absence of a liberal democratic tradition. I hope merely to point out inadequacies of approaching the history of women in modern China with the outlook of a May Fourth intellectual, and to suggest areas which seem to demand further research and more serious consideration. CHAPTER 1 CH'EN TUNG-YUAN AND WOMEN'\"S LIBERATION Ch'en's Background Ch'en Tung-yuan was born in 1902, a native of Hofei county in Anhwei province. He was seventeen years old in 1919; and i t is quite probable that he was already studying in the Faculty of Education at Peking National University when the May Fourth demonstrations broke out. Whether he was an actual participant or not, the May Fourth Movement had a profound effect on his thinking, as i t did on that of nearly a l l of the students of his time. After the publication of A History of the Life of Chinese Women in 1928, Ch'en lectured at several universities in Shanghai on women's emancipation; but his greatest interest seems to have been education. He was a member of the Anhwei Provincial Education Depart-ment, held a lectureship at Anhwei University, and published three more books: The History of Education in China, Ancient Chinese Education, and Education Under the Old Examination System (as of 1936).^ Biographical information on Ch'en Tung-yuan was obtained from the Gendai Chugoku Jimmei Jiten Ol,KtlW*H)» (Tokyo: Compiled by the Asia Section, Japanese Foreign Office, 1936), p. 389, and in correspondence with Mr. T'ao Hsi-sheng (ffyjfy 7f£ ), Taiwan. 5 6 Ch'en is in many ways excellent material for a case study of the May Fourth mind. In his sympathies, a middle-class urban in-tellectual, he combined an idealization of the advanced West, and particularly the United States, with a desperate desire to see a new and strong China rise to her proper place among the powers. He had given up any hope that the Chinese tradition might be able to adapt to the modern world. Instead he placed his faith in the young intellec-tuals, who were to lead the people from the darkness of their age-old superstitions into the rational light of the modern world. Ch'en was not an intellectual leader of his time. He could offer no b r i l l i a n t solution for China's problems, nor even a synthesis of the solutions that others had proposed. Nor is his work particularly original; he relies heavily on quotations and in at least one instance, he plagiarizes. The result is a rather inconsistant piece of work, burdened with some glaring contradictions. Despite these deficiencies, several strong patterns of thought emerge which are typical not only of Ch'en, but of his whole generation. If we examine these patterns, and the ways in which they influenced Ch'en's analysis of the women's movement, perhaps we can gain greater u For example, pp. 104-122 below (the two sections on the New Youth magazine) are made up almost entirely of quotations and paraphrases with a minimum of c r i t i c a l commentary. Pages 135-36 contain a section plagiar-ized from F. Mu11er-Lyer, The History of Socia1 Deve1opment, trans. Elizabeth Coote Lake and H. A. Lake, (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1920), pp. 223-24. For contradictions in Ch'en's work, see p. 21-22. 7 distance from the \"May Fourth mind,\" and more freedom to reach our own conclusions. Ch'en's Intellectual Position i . Positivism With many other intellectuals of his generation, Ch'en was attracted to the popular gods of the early 20th century: progress, science, the power of reason, evolution and eugenics, and democracy. His intellectual position might best be described as a simplified nineteenth century positivism; for example, he accepted Herbert Spencer's argument that evolutionary theory could be applied to human society, apparently without Spencer's caution that evolution need not always work in a positive direction. In this way the theory of social evolution was reduced, in i t s most vulgarized form, to a blind trust in progress and a tendency to equate \"modern\" with \"better.\" Another part of Ch'en's positivism was derived ultimately from Comte--his belief in the value of a rational s c i e n t i f i c examination of social institutions. The values of society and i t s moral codes should be based not on tradition or religion, but on reason backed up by the tested and systematized experience of the positive sciences. The Chinese tradition, and particularly the Confucian philosophy, was the ultimate authority for many §f China's social institutions. Ch'en believed that these were long overdue for a rigorous examination in the clear light of reason. 8 This \"rationalism\" although not always rigorously applied, is an important element of Ch'en's thought. Its significance can be seen clearly in his consideration of the problem of sexual morality. i i . Rationalism and Sexual Morality By late 1927, when Ch'en wrote the epilogue to his History, the Nationalist Government had removed a l l of the legal barriers to sexual equality. In Ch'en's view, only two obstacles remained to block women's emancipation in China\" the hardships resulting from China's economic problems, and an outdated sexual morality embodied in clan law. For the f i r s t obstacle, he had no solution beyond a rather vague socialism. The second, however, would yield to modern, rational sexual morality as soon as the adherents of modernism spread through-out the society. The Confucian sexual code had placed enormous value on female chastity, presumably in order to ensure a true heir. Marital f i d e l -i t y was essential for women, extending from the time of their engage-ment until their death. Women whose fiances died before the marriage were encouraged to remain single for l i f e , to marry their husband's ghost, or to seek unity in death. Remarriage for widows was unthink-able, as was remarriage after the shame of a divorce. This tremendous concern for women's chastity led to extraordin-arily severe supervision. Ideally, an unmarried g i r l l e f t her family's 9 home for the f i r s t time as a bride. While she stayed with her family she remained in the inner apartments, for her chastity could be en-dangered even by a glance from a passing stranger. Elaborate rules of avoidance were observed; i t was improper for children above the age of seven to play in mixed groups, as i t was for a man and woman to touch hands while exchanging anything. Ignorant of men outside of her immediate family, the g i r l was eventually married off to a man her parents chose. Except for the arrangement of his f i r s t marriage, none of these sanctions applied to men. They were naturally free to stray outside the confines of the family home and to mix with their neighbours. No importance was placed on male chastity, a man might remarry after the death of his wife, or indeed, add concubines and secondary wives to his household at will--as long as he could afford them. Ch'en Tung-yuan abhored the obvious sexual inequality of Confucian morality, and in addition thought i t the expression of an 3 irrational view which placed too much importance on sex. Because sexual behaviour was given too much weight, the sexes were kept un-necessarily far apart, social intercourse was restricted, and the old sexual values were retained. The result was needless suffering on a vast scale. Young women who could have raised families were forced into celibacy or suicide by the death of their husbands. Arranged marriages ignored women's right 3 See below, p. 146. 10 to self-determination; while love matches often failed through the social inexperience of both partners. Without the social contact provided by coeducational schools, many educated women failed to find a mate and lost their opportunity to marry. The solution to a l l of these problems, Ch'en believed, was the adoption of a western style sexual code. Drawing from Western sexual 4 theorists of the 1890's, like Edward Carpenter, he advocated a newer and less restricted married l i f e which would allow both partners room to grow. Ch'en argued that children should be brought up from infancy with companions of the opposite sex, and that the contact should be maintained during completely co-educational schooling. He also stressed the f o l l y of attempting to repress women's sexual desires through s t r i c t supervision; and the lack of any scient i f i c basis for assuming women g to be naturally more moderate in their sexual desires than men. As a final proof of the destruction wrought by the odd sexual code, Ch'en quoted statistics from the Ministry of Justice on the murder of husbands (presumably by their wives or the wives' lovers) and repeated a gruesome story of barbaric folk punishment for adulterers. 7 Edward Carpenter (1844-1929) was an English poet, essayist and sexual theorist, at his most influential in the 1890's. His theories of modern sexual relations were popular among radical students in the May Fourth Period. See Stanley J. Kunitz, ed., British Authors of the Nineteenth Century, (New York: The H. W. Wilson Company, 1936), pp. 118-19, and A Bibliography of Edward Carpenter, (Sheffield City Libraries, 1949). 5 See below, p. 89. ^ See below, p. 144. 7 See below, p. 150. 11 He believed that this brutality was caused by \"the senseless maintenance of loveless relations between husband and wife\" and suggested that a new sexual code would solve the problem: If she could have divorced her husband when she f e l l in love with another man, things would never have reached an atrocity of these proportions, nor would women go to the extent of murder-ing their husbands.8 Ch'en's belief in reason made him disapprove of the Confucian moral code and advocate the \"freely chosen, innocent and natural g marriage\" of modern Western morality. In addition, i t caused him to look with utter horror on the folk morality of the peasantry; the severity of folk punishments for adultery \"only reveals the people's barbarism, brutality, and the total irrationality of their sexual attitudes.\" 1 0 i i i . Discarding Tradition and Welcoming the West The distance which Ch'en f e l t from the uneducated poor, and particularly the peasantry, suggested in the above quotation, is another t r a i t he shared with most of the intellectuals of his time. While students of the May Fourth generation may have sought the support of workers in demonstrations, they were in no way turning to the workers for instruction or inspiration, as another generation of students was See below, p. 150. See below, p. 147 See below, p. 150. 12 urged to do during the Cultural Revolution. If the Confucian system was to be.broken in order that a new China might flourish, then to these May 4th intellectuals, the non-Confucian tradition, the predominantly Taoist and Buddhist folk culture of the peasantry with itsnimyriad dieties and superstitions, was even less deserving of preservation, and even more certainly slated for destruction. In the place of the old culture, whether classic or folk, Chinese people would accept \"modern c i v i l i z a t i o n . \" 1 1 Thus the strength of the May Fourth Movement lay not only in i t s attack on Confucianism, but also in its advocacy of modern ideas. As Ch'en says: If at this time there had been only the discussions in The New Youth, but no tendency to accept Western c i v i l i z a t i o n , of course the movement would not have achieved success J 2 The Western nation that Ch'en was most strongly influenced by was the United States; perhaps because of American 'returned students' like Hu Shih, or simply because of America's position as the youngest of the great powers. Aside from a lengthy quote from Hu Shih's \"American Women,\" Ch'en gives a description of the modern American household 13 originally part of F. Muller-Lyer-s The History of Social Development. The paragraph begins by referring to \"Western\" women, but by the end i t is obvious that Ch'en is really using i t to describe the l i f e that he believes American women lead. See below, p. 123. See below, p. 123. See below, p. 135. 13 It probably would have come as more than a mild shock to the majority of American women of the late 19201s to hear that they need no longer wash clothes or preserve food, but only cook, do housework and raise children. Ch'en imagines modern conveniences like running water and electricity to be universal, and presumes an availability of kindergartens and limitation of family size that had not yet been achieved. This freedom of American women had come about, so Ch'en argued, through industrial development which led to a highly efficient division of labour. Chinese women were oppressed by a family structure that was s t i l l primitive in form and could not soon be expected to yield to a more sophisticated division of labour. As a solution, Ch'en advocated the remodelling of Chinese society along the lines suggested by European 14 socialists like Auguste Bebel and F. Muller-Lyer. In order to free women for production, the state was to provide cooking, cleaning and childcare, services which were less efficiently provided by each nuclear Ferdinand August Bebel (1840-1913) was a German Socialist and a leader of the German Social Democratic Movement. He wrote on socialism, the peasantry and the status of women; Women And Socialism was translated into English by Meta L. Stern (New York: Socialist Literature Co., 1910). (See Chamber's Biographical Dictionary, ed. J. 0. Thome, (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1969), p. 104). Franz Muller-Lyer, (1857-1916) was a German sociologist and philosopher, the founder of the phasedogical method in cultural history. For a translation of his work see The History of Social Development, trans, by Elisabeth Coote Lake and H. A. Lake^London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd., 1920). (See also Webster's Biographical Dictionary, (Springfield, Mass: G. & C. Mem am Company, 1971), p. 1070). 14 family. At the same time, the importance of women's reproductive function was to be fully recognized and protection for mothers and children built into the national economy. iv. Socialism and the Reorganization of the Family Ch'en's discussion of the problems of working women is rather short, especially in comparison to the sections on his true interest, education. Nevertheless, his conception of the problem, and i t s solution, bring up some interesting questions. Despite his insistence on economic oppression as the reason why women seek work, he totally ignores those women whose social class would 15 expose them to this oppression. Instead, he writes exclusively of women school teachers; women whose families had been able to afford an education for daughters as well as sons. While Ch'en's analysis of the problems of working women obviously does not apply to the working class, we may be mistaken i f we accept i t as an accurate evaluation of the middle-class woman's situation. His portrait of the school teacher who must take care of children, cook meals and wash clothes in addition to her teaching duties seems rather unrealistic. Even the \"twenty odd dollars\" which Ch'en gives as a teacher's monthly salary^ 7 was a healthy contribution to the family's economy, and with the husband's salary would easily have provided See below, pp. 134-35. See below, p. 136. See below, p. 177. 15 1 o servants to free the wife of household chores. Perhaps Ch'en's omission of the possibility of hiring servants is another reflexion of his study of European and North American socialism. Ch'en is trying to prove a point; he is advocating the replacement of the nuclear family by a collective family. The same approach is evident in Liu Pan-nung's analysis of the middle-class woman's l i f e , and his rejection of the idea that time may be saved by 19 delegating domestic work to servants. In both cases, the author goes on to suggest socialist reorgan-ization of the family as a solution. And for both authors, the projected solution is far more important than the analysis of the problem. After World War I, when \"the servant problem\" became an inexhaustible source of small talk for Europeans and Americans, the collective family with newly developed machines to speed housework might logically have been suggested to increase the supply of available labour. China faced no shortage of domestic labour; her problem was instead providing employment and a reasonable livelihood for her population. Women of the middle-class were not tied to their homes by lack of servants. Their problems In 1927 women workers in Canton received an average wage of $7 per month. In Shanghai cotton mills, wages for women ranged between $.36 and $1.03 per day. (Fang Fu-lan, Chinese Labour, (London: P. S. King & Son Ltd., 1931) p. 50, p. 47). 1 9 Liu Fu I'Hl , or Liu Pan-nung %\\ f % (1891-1934) was a distinguished teacher, linguist and writer, and an early advocate of the pai-hua movement. See Biographical Dictionary of Republican China, edited by Howard L.'Boorman, (New York and London: Columbia University Press, 1968), pp. 394-95. The work in which his analysis appears is \"Random Thoughts on Returning South\" (Nan-kuei-tsa-kan The New Youth, Vol V, no. 2 (August, 1918). , w f 16 were instead predominantly social; issues like arranged marriage and concubinage. While the new domestic systems envisaged by Ch'en and Liu have been largely realized, in the people's communes, this develop-ment came as a response to a different situation than that which faced the middle-class women of the 1920's. It is interesting that Ch'en's suggestion for a new social organization does not involve any significant changes in the way men lead their lives. His cherished \"rationalism\" which supports him through his attack on Confucian morality does not extend to an examination of traditional sexual roles. Instead, he sees women's liberation as a widening of women's sphere. Before a woman was only a wife and mother; under ideal conditions, her duties as wife and mother w i l l be lightened and she w i l l be able to expand into areas formerly the exclusive pre-serve of men. There is l i t t l e suggestion that domestic duties be shared, or that men might take part in traditionally female activities such as child-care. Liu Pan-nung's suggestion for social reorganization, which Ch'en quotes at length, would free from forty-two to sixty-one of every hundred women for work outside the home, but i t would not change the 20 traditional division of labour by sex. Furthermore, Ch'en is vehement in his insistence that women must 21 marry and have children. He is unwilling to submit the nuclear family to evaluation by reason; even his socialist reorganization takes the 20 See below, pp. 117-118. 21 See below, p. 17. 17 family, not the individual, as i t s basic unit. Apparently Ch'en believed that China would inevitably become a socialist nation, although the date of the transformation could not be predicted. Only under socialism could women become truly liberated and the dual oppression of domestic duties and work as \"wage-slaves\" 22 under the capitalist system be broken. v. Nationalism Vs. Feminism But Ch'en, no matter how sincere in his support for women's emancipation, was equally, i f not more interested in national recovery. While he protested the injustice of treating women only as daughters, 23 wives and mothers, without \"independent human status\" he could not accept the idea of a large group of women turning against marriage and motherhood. This was especially true for those educated girls who could pass on their enlightenment to their children. In his concern for the number of educated women who were rejecting marriage Ch'en says: Girls who have received higher education naturally are the best mothers for excellent children; i f they sacrifice this glorious role, then they cannot f u l f i l l their one and only duty to society. 2 4 This statement is surprising, coming after Ch'en's insistence on the need for completely co-educational \"human education!,\" the impor-tance of \"transcending the good wife and mother\" and of having the 2 2 See below, pp. 138, 167. 2 3 See below, p. 10'7. 2 4 See below, p. 145. 18 \"independence\" of Hu Shin's American women. Although he softens the statement by saying that: Under a wholesome society . . . the fact that a mother has two or three children w i l l not necessarily stand in the way of her giving service to society,25 'it is clear that for Ch'en, a woman's responsibilities as the producer of a new Chinese race outweigh her right to choose a l i f e not deter-mined by her sex. It is even \"a symptom of illness\" for a woman to avoid marriage and dislike small children. China's progress is tied to \"increasing excellence of the bodies, minds and morality of the 27 elements of society\"; i f a woman is to help to build \"a new nation, 28 a new society, a new family and a new race,\" then her \"one and only duty\" of producing excellent children cannot be ignored. The conflict between women's emancipation and national interest 29 has always been one of the most serious problems of world feminism. It is doubtful that Ch'en Tung-yuan could have been aware of the com-plexity of the problem. When women's emancipation was f i r s t suggested in China, the advantages to national health and to the economy seemed 25 See below, p. 145. See below, p. 145. 2 7 See below, p. 144. 2 8 See below, p. 108. 29 See Salaff and Merkle, \"Women in Revolution\" for a discussion of the role of national interest in the changing fortunes of Russian and Chinese feminism. 19 obvious, but by the time that Ch'en was writing, some doubts had begun to surface. The fear that educated women would not be attracted to family l i f e was obviously uppermost in Ch'en's mind. He believed that the problem would be solved by socialist domestic organization which would simultaneously free women for productive labour, release them from their household duties, and provide the most suitable care for children. Ch'en never hints at what the solution would be i f this new organization were too expensive for the state, or i f freeing women for labour would take jobs away from men. I t is interesting to speculate on how long his advocacy of women's emancipation would survive in a duel between women's interests and the interests of the state. Most of the time, the conflict was not clearly drawn. The more pressing struggle for Ch',en was the fight for national survival, in which China's old culture had to be destroyed and replaced by the modern ci v i l i z a t i o n of the West. If women could be freed from the bondage of the traditional way of l i f e , freed to make a contribution to the struggle for a new China, then so much the better. v i . The Educated Elite In fact, Ch'en makes i t clear that those who w i l l lead the Chinese people into a new way of l i f e are the educated young men and women of the middle-class. The ultimate example is of course the students of the May Fourth Period who spread the new culture through their magazines and newspapers. In the future, Ch'en hoped that educated women would \"make a sacrifice for their sisters who lack wisdom and 20 morality, sick children and youth, and the pitiable people in 30 general. This would presumably include work in promoting birth control; to Margaret Sanger's suggestion that the Chinese begin their work in birth control with the poor and i l l § Ch'en adds the observa-tion that \"promotion of contraception to these people always depends 31 on the young men and women of the intellectual class.\" Because Ch'en sees women's emancipation as essentially an intellectual movement to be promoted by the intellectual classes, he quite naturally emphasises the literary landmarks in the movement's history. While he gives l i p service to the role of social and economic forces in the development of the women's movement, i t is obvious that his interest really lies in women's education and the changing intellectual content of women's emancipation. These interests reinforce Chien's emotional commitment to the May Fourth Period as the most fr u i t f u l stage in women's history. He gives lengthy quotations from the articles in The New Youth, pointing out the increasingly advanced positions taken by their writers. To Ch'en, advances in theory are equivalent to improvement in actual con-ditions, and the events of importance in the women's movement are literary events. Thus Ch'en Tu-hsiu's article \"Nineteen-Sixteen\" 32 \"prompted the birth of the new woman\" while Liu-Pan-nung's Random See below, p. 145. See below, p. 157. See below, p. 108. 21 Thoughts on Returning South\" and Hu Shih 1s \"American Women\" \"had an 33 enormous effect on the liberation of women.\" The May Fourth Period, with i t s tremendous intellectual excitement and the sudden opening of higher education to women, was for Ch'en an unparalleled time of pro-gress. The young intellectuals of the middle-class, using the power of propaganda with unprecedented s k i l l and success, had brought the women's movement into intellectual maturity. All that remained was to extend and reinforce the gains they had made, and to ful l y implement their plans for sexual equality. v i i . Confusion: the Clans It is d i f f i c u l t to get a clear understanding of how much pro-gress the women's movement had made from Ch'en's book, despite his attempts in the last section to sum up i t s problems since 1919. This is partly Ch'en's responsibility, for he contradicts himself a number of times. On the question of sexual discrimination in employment, for example, he f i r s t says that: We may say that women have already won professional liberation; as long as there is work that they can do, they can be employed.34 Later, however, he complains that: more women every day are unable to find the work they seek be-cause the boundaries of the professions which have already been opened are too small.35 33 34 35 See below, p. 115. See below, p. 135. See below, p. 138. 22 He is also contradictory on the question of clan law; at one 36 point, i t has \"collapsed without waiting for the blow\" while later i t is only \"close to bankruptcy\" and Ch'en admits that \"Even in death the corpse w i l l not stiffen, and remnants of thought and customs do 37 great harm.\" Part of Ch'en's problem in deciding on discrimination in employment and on the exact state of health of the clans, can be attributed to the extreme di f f i c u l t y of making generalizations about a nation as f u l l of contrasts as China was in the 1920's. Evaluation of the strength of the clans is further complicated by geographical and social distinctions which pre-dated the family revolution. Clans had always been stronger in rural areas, cities were not regarded as real homes, and loyal members kept their allegiance to a country clan rather than bringing the organization into the city. Clans were far stronger in the south than in the north. Finally, although clans spanned a variety of social classes, they were much more important to the scholar-gentry class than to the lower orders of society. 3 b See below, p. 125. 3 7 See below, p. 176. 3 8 The term \"clan law\" tsung fa ) may require some explanation. The Chinese clan was made up of a l l of the paternal relatives who venerated the common ancestor. Part of the purpose of the clan was to give extra sta b i l i t y to individual families within the clan, helping them to achieve the Confucian ideal of a joint family stretching over several generations. The genealogies compiled by the more prosperous clans contain examples of clan rules. Intended to be a code of conduct for clan members, the clan rules tried to legislate the hierarchies of generation 23 Gaps in the Structure i . The Working Poor Contradictions aside, how accurate a picture of female emanci-pation in China emerges from Ch'en's History? Can he be relied on as a contemporary observer, or do his intellectual biases seriously inter-fere with his perception of events? In his reporting of the details of the emancipation of women in China, Ch'en i s generally accurate. It is not what he includes, but what he leaves out, that damages his work. His omissions are most serious in two areas: he completely ignores working class and peasant and sex and the virtue of f i l i a l piety. Naturally they were an impedi-ment to the liberation of women, for they codified and re-inforced women's inferior position in the traditional family. The clan laws advocated, for example, the seclusion of women and the subordination of women to men at a l l points in their lives, and condemned the re-marriage of widows. In the clans with a f a i r l y strong organization, penalties for violations of the clan rules were often prescribed. These ranged from oral censure and corporal punishment, through to expulsion from the clan or being handed over to the government for punishment under the law. (So strong was the emphasis on women's obedience that except for expulsion from the clan through divorce or the re-marriage of a widow, women did not usually suffer direct punishment. The men who were res-ponsible for them received punishment from the clan for their inability to control the conduct of their subordinates). Despite these provisions for penalties, i t is unlikely that Ch'en was referring specifically to the clan rules in genealogies when he spoke of \"clan laws.\" The real strength of the clan rules was not their (generally lenient) application, but rather the fact that they were a codified form of the prevailing mores. They showed the idealized peak that traditional institutions could reach, were imitated most closely by the gentry class and less so by the other classes. The efficacy of threat of punishment by the clan was probably slight in comparison to the effect of the internalized standards on public opinion and on women themselves. (See Hui-chen Wang Liu, The Traditional Chinese Clan Rules, [New York: J. J. Augustin, 1959]\"]\": 24 women, and he ignores the native feminist strain within the folk tradition. Ch'en Tung-yuan was basically of the same mind as Liu Pan-nung; neither could \"bear to speak of the distress of women of very poor 39 families. . . . \" Instead, they talked about, and addressed them-selves to, women of the middle class. Admittedly, the membership of the o f f i c i a l women's rights move-ment, at least after 1919, was basically urban and middle-class. Ch'en's scope is far wider than merely the suffrage movement; but he discusses a l l aspects of women's liberation solely in terms of how i t affects the educated young women of the city. Some of the distortions that result from this limitation to one social class have already been discussed.^ In addition, Ch'en's information on the increasing incidence of celibacy and on the marriage ceremony^ should be adjusted to f i t the experience of other classes. Celibacy of women outside of religious orders was not entirely new in China, but had previously been confined to those women whose work in the traditional s i l k industry had given them some economic inde-42 pendence. The spread of celibacy to women of the middle and upper classes which Ch'en views with such horror, was new, as was the gradual See below, p. 115. See above, p. 14. See below, pp. 138-143. Lang, Chinese Family, pp. 108-109. 25 43 increase in the average age of marriage. Ch'en's analysis of the causes of these two phenomena seem to be f a i r l y accurate. These causes, fear of an old-fashioned marriage and increasing opportunities for work, produced much the same effects among factory women, although probably to a lesser degree. It is important to remember, however, that apart from areas surrounding industrial centres, peasant women, the bulk of the female population, were largely unaffected. As late as 1949, when celibacy was presumably even more common, most eel bates were to be found in the new intellectual groups within Chinese society. Ch'en's description of the marriage ceremony is again, an . adequate description of the way in which those of comfortable means carried out the r i t u a l . Although the poor generally tried to follow the correct form, they did so in a far less extravagant manner, and 45 even omitted steps entirely. The ceremony could be drastically cur-tailed, for example, i f the bride was an adopted daughter-in-law, who had been taken into her husband's family as a child. The use of go-betweens and the provision of a wedding feast by the groom's family seem to be two of the essential details, although the cost of the wedding 46 feast might drive the groom's family into debt. Marion J. Levy, Jr. , The_ Family Revolution in_ Modern China, (New York: Atheneum, 1968), pp. 301-302. 4 4 Ibid., p. 307. 4 5 Ibid., p. 101. 4 6 Ibid., p. 103. 26 i i . Women and Industrialization Ch'en mentions women factory workers in passing, but he is clearly not interested in their problems; for him \"working women\" means professional women, schoolteachers particularly. His lack of interest in women outside of the gentry class l e f t Ch'en unaware of one of the benefits of industrialization; the growing independence and economic importance of the woman factory worker. In the traditional society there were few opportunities for women to work outside of their families. The most common occupations for women were related either to sexual l i f e or religion; they could be prostitutes, midwives, matchmakers, procuresses and nuns. Although peasant women were far from id l e , their labour was not fully used, and the tasks they 47 performed gave them l i t t l e economic power in the family. With the growth of modern industry in China, this situation began to change. Opportunities for employment, particularly in light industry, suddenly expanded. Furthermore, women worked in factories, away from the supervision of the husbands and mothers-in-law, and were paid in cash. Their wages, although low, were often higher than those 48 of men engaged in traditional occupations. Women became economic assets for the f i r s t time. In the groups of factory women interviewed by 01ga Lang between 1935 and 1937, this 4 / Olga Lang, The Chinese Family and Society, (n.p.: Archon Books, 1968, originally published by Yale University Press, 1946), p. 43. Ibid., p. 208. 27 49 new economic importance had raised the women's status in their families. Wives were given far more power in making family decisions and were 50 substantially free of subordination to their mothers-in-law. The obvious financial advantages of having a factory g i r l in the family made parents less eager to marry off their daughters and more likely to treat 51 the girls with some consideration and respect. It is true that these effects were confined to the areas around industrial centres, but the same might be said for the advances in educa-tion which Ch'en discusses in some detail. Nor does Ch'en ever mention the growth of trade unionism among women factory operatives, and their readiness to use militant tactics against their employers. In fact, early in the process of industrializa-tion, women in China were organizing and carrying out strikes of a respectable size for shorter hours and better pay. In 1922, 60 factories 52 were struck in 80 strikes, and over 30,000 women workers were involved. The business^pages of the North China Herald yield a steady stream of 49 Although Lang's survey was taken 10 years after the publication of Ch'en's book, many of her observations on the social change caused by women's new economic value are valid for the 1920's. Women had already entered the work force in significant numbers; in 1927, 58.7% of the factory workers of Shanghai were women. (Ibid., p. 103). Women workers had also demonstrated considerable militancy and solidarity by this time. (See pp. 7.%~2S\\ belouo^) 50 Lang, Chinese Family, pp. 203-212. 5 1 Ibid., p. 262-269. Hsianq Chinq-yu ((*}tykT ), \"Chung-kuo tsui-chin fu-nii yun-tung\" ( ^ /f) 3R.il-if j) ) in Mei Sheng, ed., Chung-kuo fu-nii wen-t'i t'ao-lun chi, pp. 78-79. 28 reports on industrial unrest, particularly in the s i l k filatures of 53 Chapei. The readiness of women workers to strike was remarked on by foreign observers; George E. Sokolsky, in a special article \"The Strikes of Shanghai\" wrote: The women workers are in this respect, [openness to communist propaganda through poor conditions] harder to handle than the men. . . . When the causes of the strikes during the past two and one half months are analysed; i t w i l l be seen that the women workers are more discontented and more virulent in indi-cating their antagonism that [sic] the men workers.54 Hsiang Ching-yu, a revolutionary executed by the Kuomintang in 1928, was greatly impressed by the strength and s p i r i t of the women strikers. She believed that the women's labour movement was the strongest and most endowed with fighting s p i r i t of any of the women's groups; and that i f they renounced i t , the women's rights and women's 55 suffrage movements could never hope to grow. Violent demonstrations, some of a Luddite nature, seem to have been quite common in the women's labour movement. In 1926, a rumour of new machinery requiring fewer workers at the Nanyang Brothers Tobacco J J See for example: The North China Herald, August 12, 1922, p. 459, August 19, 1922, p. 532, February 3, 1923, p. 313, June 23, 1923, p. 816, June 21, 1924, p. 131September 25, 1926, p. 602, October 23, 1926, p. 151, July 3, 1926, p. 14. The above articles deal only with strikes organized by women's unions, and not strikes in which both women and men participated. It is not a complete l i s t ; in general only large strikes or strikes in which physical violence occurred are included. 5 4 The North China Herald, August 21, 1926, p. 376. Hsiang Ching-yu, \"Chung-kuo tsui-chin fu-nii yun-tung,\" p. 86. 29 Company in Shanghai caused a riot by three hundred women workers, who picked up tools and \"began to lay about themselves in a manner typical 56 of the Chinese Amazon,\" resulting in $2000 damage. Perhaps incidents of this kind convinced Ch'en that the women's labour movement was merely a violent, unthinking outburst, incapable of constructive leader-ship. It is rather more like l y that he simply was uninterested in the women's labour movement, and put his hope for women's advancement wholly in the hands of the educated minority of women. To omit the problems and struggles of women factory workers, or for that matter, women peasants, from a discussion of the l i f e of women in China is to give a distorted picture, limited in i t s application to an extremely small part of the society. Because of this omission, the women's movement takes on the polite, non-violent character of the mainstream of Western feminism, especially as i t evolved after the First World War. Even more serious than Ch'en's fondness for the literary, middle-class manifestations of the changes in the l i f e of women was his omission of the feminist tendencies in the folk tradition. i i i . The Great Tradition and the Folk Tradition When Ch'en describes the status of women in traditional China, or the social restraints which bound them, he is almost always talking about one side of a multi-faceted situation. I t seems obvious that i t The North China Herald, September 25, 1926, p. 602. 30 is a mistake to view China's cultural past as a homogeneous whole. There are at least two separate traditions: that of the learned min-ority, the great, or classical tradition, and that of the less educated and uneducated, the folk tradition. The content of the folk tradition is again divisible into several regional traditions. In order to achieve a balanced understanding of the way women lived in traditional China, we must turn to the popular tradition that Ch'en ignores. The impressive unity of the Confucian tradition in China, both in area and over time, was achieved through the use of the classical written language. Everyone who had received an education in the classics shared a common fund of knowledge with a l l other educated men. They also shared an agnostic approach to l i f e , scornful of the ignorance and superstition of the common people, and a belief in the inherent superiority of c i v i l over military power--of the scholar over the warrior. Below the level of literacy, this unity was broken into diverse local cultures, which may, with some modification of Redfield's ideal 57 type, be called folk cultures. The \" l i t t l e community\" described by Redfield was smal1, distinct, homogeneous, and self-sufficient, provid-58 ing for a l l or almost a l l of the needs of the people in i t . Personal relationships, especially kinship relations, predominated, and sacred values outweighed secular values. Robert Redfield, \"The Folk Society,\" American Journal of Sociology, Vol. LII, (1946-47), pp. 293-308. L i t t l e Community, (Chicago: The University of 4. 5 8 Redfield, The Chicago Press, 1955), p. 31 The peasant community, in which the majority of Chinese lived, differs from this ideal type in several ways. It is less self-sufficient than the ideal type, depending on the larger community for defense and for administrative and judicial apparatus. It also tends to be more commercial and impersonal in relationships than smaller and more isolated 59 • -folk communities. Despite these differences, the degree-of inter-communication between members and the'stability of each group.was great enough to produce distinct local cultures which may be called folk cultures. Partly dependent on the classical tradition, and partly a purely local folklore, the popular traditions were a heterogeneous blend of beliefs. Some of the Confucian tradition was handed on orally, and in the process the originally rational moral and ethical system was permeated by superstitious beliefs. An even greater part of the popular culture was supplied by Taoist and Buddhist beliefs, again vulgarized. The folk pantheon was crowded with deities and semi-deities, some of them local heroes elevated to divine status after death, others members of the \"immortals\" of popular Taoism. Local festivals and special days for making offerings were common. In addition, the folk culture had a great number of popular heroes who were not considered to be deities; most often men of outstanding military s k i l l or great physical strength. Thus, in contrast to the classical culture, the folk tradition was r i f e with See G. William Skinner, \"Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China,\" Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 24, (Nov. 1964, Feb. 1965 and May 1965), pp. 3-43, 195-228, 363-399. 32 gods and superstitions, and glorified martial prowess. When we turn to the treatment of women in the popular culture we find an even greater contrast between the classical and the folk traditions. The great tradition of Confucian society confined and restricted women at every turn, forbade them any role outside of their homes, kept them perpetual minors, and burdened them with a severe moral code. It is this tradition that Ch'en Tung-yuan is fmiliar with; he describes the l i f e of women in the families he knew, families which could afford to carry out every detail of the code of propriety. The range of acceptable roles for women in the great tradition was extremely limited and with the exception of the matriarch, was characterized by weakness and passivity. Romantic heroines, when they appeared at a l l , were delicate fragile flowers, their wan complexions verging on illness. Daughters exchanged the authority of their father for that of their husband, and ideally in old age for that of their sons. Virtue for a woman consisted basically in rendering obedience to the person to whom, at that point in her l i f e , i t was due. The education of women in such circumstances was obviously unnecessary and perhaps even dangerous; as the proverb says, \"Only unskilled women are virtuous.\" (wu ts'ai shih te -J^^A^/tO-As i t gradually became apparent that national survival depended in part on changing the status of women, the range of roles open to women through the Confucian tradition had to be abandoned. Women who were to be educated or to become part of a modern working force would not possibly observe the traditional rules of propriety. Nor could 33 women with bound feet, confined to the family home and subjected to their mother-in-law's discipline and sometimes vicious mistreatment, be expected to produce strong healthy children for China's next genera-tion. The Western concept of sexual equality and the new roles that Western culture suggested for women undeniably had an enormous impact on the Chinese women's movement. Despite the almost total anti-feminism of the Confucian tradition, however, the new influence from the West was not the only possible source of models. China's popular tradition had a strong feminist strain and provided roles for women which seem to be, on the whole, the roles which have survived into the present. CHAPTER 2 MU LAN AND THE GIRLS—ALTERNATE STEREOTYPES Swordfighters and Warriors Any Westerner who frequents Chinese movies w i l l soon become aware of the extraordinary stereotype of the female swordfighter and knight errant (n'u hsia ). No female role in popular Western entertainment can approach the independence and physical s k i l l and courage of \"the Golden Dagger\" or \"the Black Butterfly\" and their countless cinematic variations.^ The women who make up this hardy group match or excel the s k i l l s of their male counterparts. Adept at e'hing kung ( &\\ ), they leap over houses and walls. They are expert swordswomen, often supple-menting their blade with tasselled darts, and—as v i l l i a n s — w i t h whips. They exist on a basis of easy equality with swordsmen and often enter into relationships of cloying sisterly love with other swordswomen. They do not recoil from k i l l i n g , but take their part in mowing down the \"thousands of extras\" either by themselves, or with their comrades. It is not uncommon for a female knight-errant to rescue the hero from For plot summaries of a number of nu hsia movies, see Wolfram Eberhard, The Chinese Silver Screen, Hong Kong and Taiwanese Motion Pictures in the 196CFs, Asian Folklore and Social Life Monographs, Vol. XXLII, (Taipei: The Orient Cultural Service, 1972). 34 35 phys ica l danger (by k i l l i n g w i t h dar ts a l l o f the t w e n t y - f i v e desperadoes who have surrounded him l a t e a t n i g h t on a deser ted mountain road . . . ) . As a v i l l a i n , the swordswoman is no one to i g n o r e . She may have mastered \" the bloodhhand\" which makes her ab le to despatch her adversar ies a t a s i n g l e b low; and u s u a l l y commands an enormous and f a i t h f u l f o l l o w i n g o f male and female r u f f i a n s . This s t r o n g , competent woman c o - e x i s t s w i t h the \" f e m i n i n e \" s te reo type o f d a i n t y , complete ly he lp less women, w i t h o u t any apparent c o n f l i c t . There i s no moral condemnation o f the r o l e o f swordswoman, nor any suggest ion t h a t \"what she r e a l l y needs i s a n i ce husband and a couple o f k i d s . \" I n f a c t , the s t a t u s o f w i f e and mother i s one t h a t the female k n i g h t seldom a t t a i n s . Romantic love i s less impor tan t than f i l i a l p i e t y , and i n any case, u s u a l l y leads to the grave. This r o l e has been popu lar f rom the beg inn ing o f the Chinese f i l m i n d u s t r y , as popular as the t r a d i t i o n a l s t o r i e s f rom which i t i s drawn. For cen tu r i es before t h a t , the female k n i g h t e r r a n t had been prominent i n dramas, b a l l a d s , s t o r y t e l l e r s ' t a l e s and h i s t o r i c a l romances, a long w i t h another s t rong female s t e r e o t y p e , the woman w a r r i o r (nu chan-shih ( irjfe^ ).3 Mu Lan ( ) i s o f course the most famous o f the woman w a r r i o r s . I n approx imate ly 500 A . D . , her a i l i n g f a t h e r was c a l l e d f o r See Jay Leyda, D i a n y i n g , An Account o f Fi1ms and the F i lm Audience i n China, (Cambridge Mass: The M. I .T . Press , 1972). 3 James J . Y. L i u , The Chinese Knight E r r a n t (London: Routledge and Kegan P a u l , 1967). 36 military service. In order to protect him from both the rigors of military l i f e and the dangers of disobedience to the throne, she went to war in his place, impersonating him for twelve years at the front, 4 and eventually being promoted to the rank of general. The Mu Lan legend was extremely popular and was told and retold in every possible form. The women who joined the Revolutionary Army in 5 1911 saw themselves to some degree as successors of Mu Lan. That they would ca l l on her name in a proclamation designed to add recruits to the women's army suggests both the extent of her fame and the attractive-ness of her legend. How can the existence of this tradition of heroic women be related to the development of feminism? Was i t simply an escape mechan-ism by which the tedium of a quiet domestic l i f e could be evaded for a short time, or did i t actually correspond to some part of reality? How great an effect did popular stereotypes have on women's lives? In \"The Nature and Characteristics of the Boxer Movement,\" Jerome Ch'en argues that the Boxers derived their beliefs from popular novels and operas. Among the most important sources were Water Margin See Wang Fan-t 1ing Chung-hua 1i-tai fu-nu Ay-k- . [Chinese Women of Past Generations], (Taipei: Commercial Press, 1966), pp. 131-135. 5 See below, pp. 93, 95. Even as \"feminine and domestic\" a woman as Mme. Wu P'ei-fu admitted to being a great admirer of Mu-Lan, the Chinese Joan d'Arc.\" See Edna Lee Booker, \"Madam Wu Pei-fu\" The Weekly Review (The China Weekly Review), July 29, 1922, p. 342. 37 and The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, books which had long been recognized as dangerous by the authorities. If the tales of heroes and supernatural powers in popular culture could be taken over so l i t e r a l l y by groups such as the Boxers, then surely we may expect that the images of women in the popular culture would have some appeal for women who were dissatisfied with the accepted female role. The example of Ch'iu Chin ( $ k ) comes to mind immediately. Although in many respects a self-consciously modern revolutionary, she was influenced by two famous knight^errants of the past, Ch'ing-k'o and Nieh-cheng, wore a short sword, and styled Q herself \"Heroine of Chien Lake.\" The Underworld Further evidences that some women actually did live out the l i f e pattern of the female knight errant and the woman warrior may be found by looking at women's participation in secret societies, bandit groups and peasant rebellions. Because the role of women in extra-legal groups is d i f f i c u l t to research (as are the extra-legal groups themselves) there are really no satisfactory secondary sources to work from. Statements of policy toward women are rarely found and i t is Jerome Ch'en, \"The Nature and Characteristics of the Boxer Movement—A Morphological Study,\" Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, XXIII (1960), pp. 287-308. The name of a lake near her family's home outside of Shaohsing, Chekiang. (Mary Backus Rankin, Early Chinese Revolutionaries, [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971], p. 44j~! 38 necessary to depend largely on eyewitness reports from foreign and Chinese observers. The research which would give a f u l l understanding of women's role in extra-legal groups could not, within practical li m i t s , be done for this thesis. But i f i t is possible to generalize from the information that I have so far, i t would seem that extra-legal organizations provided an outlet for women who could not accept or were unable to f u l f i l l their role as females in conventional society. i . Secret Societies Secret societies were in some ways a mirror image of the orthodox Confucian state; particularly in their hierarchy of leadership and their use of kinship ties (albeit f i c t i t i o u s ) to strengthen the bonds between members. Their treatment of women was one of the great exceptions to this rule. In most societies, women could join as rank and f i l e members and could become leaders; sometimes in the society as a whole, usually in parallel women's organizations. A Yellow Turban kingdom set up in present day Szechwan in the second century A.D. granted t i t l e s and grades of advancement to women as well as men, beginning with either Sons or Daughters of the Tao (Tao-nan jjf f} or Tao-n'u < j j [ ) and working up to Father or Mother of the Tao (Tao-fu i f i£ or tao-mu $ -ffi ). 9 Approximate sexual equality and the mingling of men and women continued to be an important part of secret society l i f e . In the White Lotus Rebellion of 1796, the chief commanders of the insurgents were Howard S. Levy, \"Yellow Turban Religion and Rebellion at the End of Han,\" Journal of the American Oriental Society, LXXVI (1956), p. 223 39 Yao Chi-fu, and a woman of the surname WangJ° Puree! 1 remarks that \"the mixing of men and women on an equality offended the Confucian sense of propriety more than anything else.\" 1 1 It was not only the Confucian sense of propriety that was offended. Father Leboucq, a Jesuit missionary in Chi hi i , reported on 12 the White Lotus Sect in 1875. He claimed that i t was the \"harpies\" of the White Lotus who held the f i r s t rank in the society, rousing and egging on the less courageous members; and that i f a commune were formed from the White Lotus sect, then i t would not want for \"les petroleuses.\" According to Father Leboucq, women of the White Lotus were not admitted to office, nor were they employed by the society; mais on sait les dedommager de cette exclusion apparente en leur confiant des missions et des postes de confiance qui les consolent largement de leur obscurite o f f i c i e l l e J 3 The Green Band, founded in 1725 as an association of transport workers on the Grand Canal, at f i r s t did not admit women, but after i t s reorganization in 1901 , this rule disappeared. Women had to be admitted by women, and women could not admit men. They had their own system of organization within the Green Band. They were admitted to the Triad society (the Red Band) but could never gain admission to the inner 1 0 Victor Purcell, The Boxer Uprising, A Background Study (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), p. 156. ^ Ibid., p. 56. P. Leboucq, \"Les Societes Secretes en Chine,\" Etudes, Paris, Series V., Vol. 7 (November, 1875) , pp. 179-220. 1 3 Ibid., p. 207. 40 sanctum. In both organizations there were separate statutes for each sex J 4 Despite the organizational division between male and female members, women in secret societies do not seem to have been relegated to a women's auxilliary role. I f parallel organization calls forth an image of church kitchens and coffee making matrons, then the career of the following secret society member may be an antidote: Before the federation of Triad forces under Ho Lu was wiped out, another Triad army rose under the command of a savage female smuggler-gambler, Chai Ho-ku (Chai [the Lady of] Burning Temper). Imprisoned for gambling, Chai broke out of j a i l and joined Ho Liu's [sic] troops for a while. Then she became the leader of several independent Triad bands in Kuei-shan hsien. In the half-year following August 11, 1854, when her forces f i r s t took over the market town of San-tung in Kuei-shan, her troops and their a f f i l i a t e d bands were a powerful threat to the government forces in this region, attacking the Kuei-shan hsien capital twice, besdeging the prefectural capital for more than twelve days, occupying the hsien capitals of Po-lo, Tseng-ch'eng, Hp-yUan, Ho-p'ing, and Hai'feng for various periods, and dominating Tan-shui, Ma-an, Pai-mang-hua, Heng-li, and a number of other market towns. It took two years for government troops to subdue the rebellions in this region.15 From the evidence of women's participation in secret societies, i t is not surprising that they took part in the two greatest popular movements of the nineteenth century: the Taiping and the Boxer rebellions. Jean Chesneaux, Secret Societies in China in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, trans. Gillian Nettle, (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1971), p. 207. 1 5 Winston Hsieh, \"Triads, Salt Smugglers, and Local Uprisings: Observations on the Social and Economic Background of the Waichow Revolu-tion of 1911,\" in Popular Movements and Secret Societies i n China, 1840-1950, ed. Jean Chesneax (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972), p. 154. 41 i i . Rebellion Equality for women was one of the most unorthodox parts of the Taiping social program. Although sexual equality in the Taiping Tien-kuo has been attributed to Christian influence on Hung Hsiu-chuan, i t seems more likely that its source was either the egalitarian tradition of the secret societies or the legendary strength and independence of Hakka 16 women. It is true that the Taiping policies toward women were at best unevenly applied and soon completely corrupted, and that women who entered the movement after the capital was established at Nanking were economically and sexually exploited. What concerns us here, however, is the evidence of Taiping women who took on specifically military duties, and became part of the folklore of the woman warrior. Virtually a l l of the female military heroes of the Taiping were Hakka women; members, with their families, of Hung Hsiu-chuan's God-Worshippers' Society. The Hakka women had never bound their feet and did most of the farming. In consequence, they were strong, healthy and economically valuable. At the beginning of the uprising, they were organized into separate women's camps, and into women's battalions which fought in the battles against the Ch'ing forces. At least two of the women commanders were originally independent leaders, who brought their forces to join the Taiping. Not long before the Taiping rising, C. A. Curwen, \"Taiping Relations With Secret Societies and With Other Rebels,\" in Popular Movements, ed. Jean Chesneaux, p. 66. 42 . . . two female chiefs of great valour named Kew erh [Ch'iu Erh] and Sze San [Su San-niang] each bringing about 2,000 followers, joined the army of the Godworshippers, and were received on sub-mitting to the authority of Hung and the rules of the congrega-tion . . . I 7 Three of the leading Taiping women warriors were close relatives of Hung Hsiu-chuan; his wife, his sister Hsuan-chiao, and one of his concubines. Hsuan-chiao was the commander of a women's army corps of God Worshippers known for i t s s k i l l with firearms. Unlike other Taiping women, Hsuan-chiao apparently did not actually fight, but only directed her troops. The concubine Hsiao was said to be a great acrobat and very clever on horseback, while the T'ien Wang's wife helped to break 1 o the siege of Yuan-an, leading the women into the battle. In addition, there was Hsiao San-niang, \"the Woman Commander,\" who led several hundred women soldiers in the capture of Chen-chiang, was reputed to be a great general on horseback, and could shoot an arrow with either hand. Finally, there was Yang Erh-ku, who carried a bag of seven inch knives into battle, threw them with amazing accuracy, and styled 19 herself \"the divine knife thrower.\" The Boxers, or the I H6:.Chuan; lalso had-lafge:numbers \"of women in their ranks; or more accurately in the women's organization of the Red 1 7 Curwen, \"Taiping Relations,\" p. 68. 1 o The T'ien Wang's father-in-law was a scholar whose study of the late Ming period led him into secret society a c t i v i t i e s . (See Vincent Y. C. Shih, The Taiping Ideology [Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967], p. 610). Perhaps a father's or husband's interest in revolutionary groups was the means by which most women were introduced to secret society l i f e . 1 9 Ibid., p. 62. 43 Lanterns (Hung Teng Chao j j f i l f c ^ M ) for girls between twelve and eighteen, and the Green Lanterns (Ch'ing Teng Chao \"Tpl <•-*•» ) and Blue Lanterns (Lan Teng_ Qiao Jl^f^R ) for widows. The function and aims of the women's group were identical with those of the Boxers. The women had to undergo a period of training lasting from forty-eight days to five months. At the end of this time they would, i t was said, be able to f l y , and also to set f i r e to any object they wished to burn. Unlike the Boxers, the Lanterns had a supreme leader* called Huang Lien Sheng Mu (the Holy Mother of the Yellow Lotus). The daughter of a Grand Canal boatman, she was believed to have miraculous healing powers, as well as the ab i l i t y to undo the screws of 20 the enemies' cannons at a distance of several miles. The participation of women was a t r a i t which the Boxers shared with the White Lotus sect, and is surprising, since the Boxers believed that women were a manifestation of yin, and thus unclean; an impediment to the spirits and to the working of spells. Paradoxically, because the members of the Lanterns were women, their magic was thought to be 21 less f a l l i b l e than that of the Boxers, i i i . Banditry Women also show up in the other great activity of outlaw society, banditry. It is of course d i f f i c u l t to draw dividing lines between Purcell, The Boxer Movement, p. 238. 2 1 Jerome Ch'en, \"The Nature and Characteristics of the Boxer Movement, A Morphological Study,\" Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, Vol. XXIII (1960), p. 303. 44 secret society members, bandits and peasant rebels; the same person could, as conditions changed, move from one category to another. The same is also true of the hazy distinction between bandits and troops; and female bandits could, and did, take advantage of this along with the men. In 1922, a band of several thousand robbers were sworn into the Kuangtung Army, including about 300 women. I t was reported that a l l of the women were armed with revolvers, and were quick to use them; 22 that they were, in fact, \"as bad as the men.\" A woman bandit chief called Lan Liu-tsang or \"Lan Da Jo Ba\" (Big Footed Lan) seems to have taken the same path to respectibility about two years later. She was f i r s t reported as leading a large band of old soldiers in an attack on the town of \"Dehlongchang\" (Szechuan) 23 in June of 1922. By A p r i l , 1924, she had joined General Yang Sen s First Szechuan Army, and was described by Mr. Elly Widler, who had been held captive by the army for six months: Lan Da Jo Ba is a robust and attractive woman, 30 years of age, and of very strong character. She travels in a two man chair and is always accompanied by her daughter, aged 15, who runs alongside and is armed with a Mauser pistol.24 In the same year, another woman bandit, \"Old Mrs. Djao\" described by the correspondent to T.he North China Herald as \"perhaps the most cruel The North China Herald, The North China Herald, The North China Herald, Feb. 11, 1922, p. 362. June 16, 1922, p. 738. April 12, 1924, p. 54. 45 leader the region has ever known,\" met a presumably richly deserved end. She was caught at Weihaiwei and executed at Ichoufu about June 5, 1924.25 Several women bandits were reported to be active in the country districts near Canton. Two were captured and executed in March, 1914, along with 10 men. The North China Herald reports that they \"were young 26 and beautiful women, who apparently were acting as leaders of the band.\" There is nearly no information of the social background of women bandits. It seems logical that their families would be poor, and that they might be driven to banditry in the same way as their brothers. On the other hand, the only woman bandit described in detail by The North China Herald was an eighteen year old graduate of a women's normal college. In 1923, she travelled to Anningchou in Yunnan, where she was to have married her fiance, a colonel under Tang Chi=yao. He was executed, how-ever, on the same morning that she arrived in camp. In her disappointment, she took to the h i l l s , and eight months later was leading a band of armed robbers in order to avenge her fiance's death. In this task she was apparently emulating the wife of a certain Yang Tien-fu who had spread devastation in revenge for her husband's death at the hands of the Ch'ing government. The North China Herald, July 12, 1924, p. 51. The North China Herald, March 28, 1914, p. 90. 46 Interpreting the Mu Lan Tradition Having examined these admittedly scattered and incomplete evidences of women's role in the folk tradition, we are better equipped to evaluate Ch'en Tung-yuan's assessment of women's emancipation in China. This is not to suggest that there are no problems in interpret-ing stereotypes of women in the popular culture. Certainly until more research is done i t w i l l be d i f f i c u l t to decide exactly what the connections were between this part of the tradition and the development of feminism. For example, the fact that women are more often encountered as leaders of bandit and rebel groups than as rank and f i l e members i s puzzling. It is possible that women became leaders through religious powers; and that their \"femaleness\" might be part of their magic. In this case there is no real escape from definition by gender, but instead an exploitation of the belief that women are inherently more closely in touch with the supernatural. On the other hand, women who managed to escape from the patterns of l i f e imposed on them by society may have had to be so strong that they would almost inevitably become leaders in any group. Another question raised by the women of the folk tradition is the effect of strong female stereotypes on the self-image of Chinese women. Western feminists have become sensitive to the sexual typing of women in children's books and the influence that negative images of women may have on children. Our traditional children's stories present 47 a never ending parade.of models for female helplessness: the frail'-and passive Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, the sensitive princess who could feel a pea through layers of mattresses, Rapunzel, and the heroine of Rutnplestiltskin. Even Maid Marian, at least in her television incarna-tion, spent most of her time being rescued by Robin Hood. The heroes of The Water Margin (Shui Hu Chuan 7]sylf^|' ) are often compared to Robin Hood and his merry men. The theme of good men forced outside the law by evil conditions is common to both legends as, on a superficial level, are some of the characters, like Friar Tuck and the monk Lu Chih-shen (-f\" i'% ). But nowhere in Robin's band was there a Hu San-niang ( i ^ f s c ) , capable of dispatching enemies on her own as well as working in concert with the other heroes of Liang Shan. The young, beautiful swordswoman, skilled in combat and well able to take care of herself, offered, in contrast to the passive heroines of the West, an exciting model for women who were trying to break out of a restrictive l i f e forced on them by traditional society. It may indeed be escapism to idolize exceptional women who have refused to play the part determined for their sex; but i t is escapism that leads to an expanded awareness of a l l women's capabilities, and therefore of one's own. Perhaps the availability of strong female stereotypes is part of the reason why Chinese women of the present day seem to have had less di f f i c u l t y in dealing with the problem of femininity than Western women, particularly with regard to occupation. While sex-typing of occupations 48 (child-care is an obvious example) is s t i l l present, Chinese women have been accepted in a wide range of jobs involving manual labour or tech-nical s k i l l s which are s t i l l unusual for women in Western society. But there are other sides to the attractiveness of the Mu Lan stereotype. Although female warriors and knights errant may have stepped outside of the prescribed behaviour for women, they did so most often for a reason which was supremely acceptable to the Confucian moral c o d e — f i l i a l piety. In the earlier tales particularly, the most common motive for taking up the sword is the protection of the father, or revenge for his death. Women seldom act in groups, and never pursue aims that would benefit women as a group, or seriously threaten the existing power relationships between the sexes. In this way the female warrior stereotype may be the equivalent of the successful black athlete or entertainer, who can be tolerated as long as he remains an exception. Despite these reservations, the available information on women in the popular culture suggests that at least on certain social and economic levels, women were less restricted in their activities than Confucian moralists believed they should be. It is by far the most serious f a i l i n g of Ch'en Tung-yuan's History that he ignores this side of the women's tradition in China; not even the Taiping Rebellion and its promotion of female emancipation attract his attention. CHAPTER 3 THE DEVELOPMENT OF FEMINISM IN CHINA Ch'en's interpretation of the development of the women's move-ment was probably an adequate explanation of events up to the time i t was written, in 1926, despite its omissions. At that time China did appear to be moving in the direction of the democratic West. Her Republican system was being given new l i f e by the recent successes of the Kuomintang, the party of the Republic. Women were making advances in education and in professional l i f e , and though progress might be slow in rural areas, the large metropolises gave encouraging previews of the future. Forty-odd years on into that future, we see an entirely different pattern of development. China moved towards the socialist rather than the capitalist West, and her new system was one which was tested and matured in the \"backward\" countryside. Women of no education, who had probably never heard of the Nationalist laws which declared the sexes equal, and in any case had no hope of seeing these enforced, became politicized. Their contribution to the victory of the Chinese Communist Party, primarily in production, and to a lesser extent as guerrilla fighters, and as members of the People's Liberation Army was enormous. If we continue to accept Ch'en's estimation of the central position of the May Fourth period in the history of women's emancipation, in the face of later developments, then we force an a r t i f i c i a l pattern on the development of the movement. Roxane Witke's dissertation, Transformation 49 50 of Attitudes Toward Women Durjng_ the May_ Fourth Era of Modern China is an excellent modern example of this approach. Witke's Periodi'zation: Feminism as a Product of the May Fourth Movement Witke's estimation of the importance of the May Fourth period is obvious from her choice of subject. The larger part of the disserta-tion deals with the periodicals of the time and their debates on the \"woman's question,\" although a background of traditional attitudes and an account of progress in women's emancipation are included. Like Ch'en, Witke divides the history of the women's movement into three periods, beginning with the late years of the Ch'ing dynasty. While Ch'en sees the May Fourth period as the final division, the time at which the women's movement came fully to l i f e , for Witke, i t is the centre period, dividing early efforts at emancipation from mature, post-May Fourth efforts. She writes: Three stages of the historical process of female emancipation in modern China are discernible. There was f i r s t the early re-volutionary stage when the \"new woman,\" brought to intellectual l i f e by the beginnings of modern education, struggled f i r s t against the Manchus, and soon after against the male. The second was the May Fourth era when the \"woman problem\" (fu-nii wen-t'i) coalesced as a major category of public debate, and gave rise to a variety of experimental programs, including the plain people's g i r l s ' schools, which were designed to extend modern consciousness to the masses of women. The subsequent period, in which women shift from being merely the subject of liberating arguments to being the agents of their own emancipation, constitutes the third phase. 1 Berkeley, (Unpublished Ph.D. 1970). dissertation, University of California, 51 Only at this point is the term \"feminism,\" in the sense of women campaigning and lobbying on their own behalf, appropriate. 2 According to Witke, the significant change which occurred in the May Fourth period was not the recognition of the woman's question, for this had begun by the late nineteenth century; but the beginning of active pursuit of emancipation by women themselves. Earlier activity by women and youth had been directed toward national goals; now they sought their own liberation: As Mary Wright has pointed out, for the f i r s t time in Chinese history youth and women, the two most flagrantly persecuted though formally unrecognized orders of the old society, since the turn of the century began to rise as self-conscious interest groups. It is significant that their i n i t i a l agitation was for public rather than private self-serving causes. Rising on the tide of nationalism which was moving to subvert the dynasty, i t was not until the May Fourth years that youth launched a campaign to benefit themselves at the expense of the older generation, and women began concertedly to pursue their own emancipation.3 There is some dif f i c u l t y in deciding from these two quotations exactly when \"feminism\" in Witke's terms began. In the f i r s t , women became \"the agents of their own emancipation\" only after the May Fourth period, while in the second i t is during the May Fourth years that \"women began concertedly to pursue their own emancipation.\" What does emerge clearly, however, is Witke's emphasis on the May Fourth era as \"a period of heightened vibrations in the revolutionary • Witke, Transformation of Attitudes, p. 330. * Ibid., p. 7. 52 continuum of the last century.'1.4 During this period, according to Witke, a real change occurred in the understanding of the women's question in China, as topics like free love, individualism and the con-cept of chastity were widely discussed. Out of the social and intellectual turmoil of the May Fourth years, a new concept of women and the women's question was born, a concept which led directly to the development of feminism. The May Fourth period was then, a turning point; the time at which the earlier, less-developed efforts at women's emancipation were superceded by a new, self-conscious, independent approach, by women and for women. The Women's Movement of 1912 One of the great weaknesses of this periodization is i t s i n -abi l i t y to adequately explain, within the boundaries of i t s self-imposed definition of feminism, the movement for equal rights which followed immediately on the establishment of the Republic. This movement grew 5 directly out of the various women's corps in the Republican army. The Women's Suffrage Alliance (Fu-nii ts'an-cheng t'ung-meng-hui i^-jrj^ i^lM 7!\"\" ), established in Nanking January 22, 1912, served as an overall coordinating organization for the various smaller groups. The long-range goals of the alliance included equal rights for men and women, Witke, Transformation of Attitudes, p. 6. See below, pp. 97/21015 53 universal education for women, and social and familial reforms like ending the sale of women and ensuring monogamy and freely contracted marriage.^ One faction within the alliance, headed by T'ang Chun-ying % )» presented a petition on March 2, 19127 to the parliament in Nanking demanding the inclusion of a clause regulating sexual equality in the constitution. On the 19th, in response to the assembly's re-fusal to immediately act on their demands, the suffragettes marched on the assembly building. They returned for a violent demonstration on the 20th. Nowhere is there mention of male leadership, or even participa-tion, in this early suffrage movement. Nor do the women seem to be acting on behalf of anyone but themselves. In fact, in analysing the significance of the 1912 movement, Witke writes: . . . i t shows that women's aggressive self-interest in equalizing their social roles was not the result of, but the prior condition of the May Fourth Movement.^ If this is so, on what grounds can we argue that feminism occurred only after the May Fourth Movement? Witke's definition of feminism is 6 Sun T'a ( . ^ \" f t i ) , \"Chung-kuo fu-nii yiin-tung chih chin-pu\" ( t ' ^ f . ^ i f $t -) Fu-nii-tsa-chih ( - j ^ ) . IX, Special issue on the Women's Movement, (January, 1923) pp. 249-252. 7 I have dated the petition from a North China Herald notice that: \"Miss Chang Chun-yin (sic) and other amazons have demanded women's suffrage . . . \" The North China Herald, March 2, 1912, p. 567. Q Witke, Transformation of Attitudes, p. 68. 54 simply \"women campaigning and lobbying on their own behalf\" a descrip-tion which seems entirely applicable to the 1912 demonstration. Witke gives l i t t l e explanation of the difference between the two periods; the f i r s t , which includes the 1912 demonstration, is called simply \"the early revolutionary period.\" She elaborates slightly on her reasons for counting i t as less mature, saying: The struggle for woman suffrage in China passed through two stages: the f i r s t in 1912 and the second a decade later, beginning in 1922. Differences of strategy and goal between these two periods indi-cate the greater seriousness with which the idea of female emanci-pation was taken in the early nineteen-twenties.9 Differences in strategy are readily apparent; differences in goals are rather less so. Certainly the emphasis on suffrage and legal equality were common to the two movements. The general approach to social and family reform was the same in 1922 as in 1912, though perhaps stated in a more organized way. In reference to 1912, Witke writes that: The fact that some seven years later these issues [the eleven items in the Women's Suffrage Alliance petition] were raised again as some of the most provocative topics of May Fourth debate indicates the degree of resistance to intellectual and social change which prevailed during the early years of the Republic.10 Surely i t also indicates the degree to which feminist goals re-mained the same over the ten years between 1912 and 1922. Witke, Transformation of Attitudes, p. 68. 1 0 Ibid. 55 Nor is i t entirely obvious that \"differences in strategy . . . between these two periods indicate the greater seriousness with which the idea of female emancipation was taken in the early nineteen twenties.\" While some writers of the period would agree with Witke that the petitions and press receptions of 1922 were a more mature and effective approach,^ the assessment was not unanimous. Hsiang Ching-yu argues that in 1912 the women had good organization and leadership and a good program of action, 12 but were defeated by non-democratic conditions.\" She is in turn rather scornful of the polite approach of the 1922 suffragettes, saying that \"they have never dared make signs of resistance to the old society out-13 side of kowtowing petitions and meek entreaties.\" , We cannot even be sure that there really was an overall change in feminist strategy. As late as Ap r i l , 1921, only a year before the \"new\" feminist movement began in Peking, women in Canton were demanding the vote in a style not far removed from that of the 1912 feminists. The North China Herald reports that: While the Provincial Assembly at Canton was discussing a b i l l for the election of d i s t r i c t magistrates, 700 women rushed in demanding See, for example, Chang Hsi-shen, ( ) who charges that the women of 1912 harmed their cause by their militant, and to his mind, irresponsible, tactics. (\"Chung-kuo fu-nii ss.u-hsiang te fa-ta\" M * ^ * - & & f t # i t ) in Homma Hisao ( ^ Wj-Mtf ) Ten Discussions on the Woman Question (Fu-nii wen-t'i shih-chiang -k^ j? fi\\$]l 11^. J (Shanghai: Fu-nu wen-t'i yen-chiu hui, 1924), p. 262. 12 Hsiang Ching-yu, \"Chung-kuo tsui-chin fu-nu yun-tung,\" p. 80. 1 3 Ibid., p. 83. 56 the addition of a clause granting women the right to vote. Dis-orderly scenes ensued in which several of the suffragettes were injured and a number knocked down unconscious J 4 The demonstration was followed by a meeting and a parade the next day which over one thousand women were reported to have attended. The women who had been injured in the March 30 demonstration later f i l e d suit against the members of the assembly for damages for the injuries • A 15 received. This incident is not mentioned in Ch'en's History; instead he implies that the student movement of 1922 was the f i r s t significant i f\\ instance of feminist agitation to occur after 1912. I f , in fact, i t was not, and i f intervening demonstrations were not entirely peaceful in character, then the neat division in tactics between the two periods must be abandoned, and the apparent movement towards \"greater serious-ness\" re-evaluated. Further Conditions for Feminism I would argue that in reserving the label \"feminist\" for the period after the May Fourth incident, Witke is setting up extra c r i t e r i a which are not expressed in her definition of feminism: \"women campaigning and lobbying on their own behalf.\" Two of the most obvious extra c r i t e r i a are public debate and the idea of individualism. H The North China Herald, April 2, 1921, p. 11. 5 The North China Herald, April 9, 1921, p. 83. 6 See below, p. 159-60. 57 While there had been some public discussion of women's emanci-pation prior to 1916, i t was only with the establishment of the New Youth and the flood of new periodicals which followed the May Fourth Incident that awareness of the problem spread widely in Chinese society. Individualism (jen-ke chu-i / v \\ A ) was also brought into prominence during the May Fourth period. A direct adoption from Western thought, the concept of individualism was contrasted with the collective ideal of the patriarchal Chinese family and heralded as the new ethic. It supplied yet another argument against the oppression of women under the old society; the violation of their right to individual status. Public debate and concern for women's rights as individuals are prominent characteristics of the Western women's movement. While not significantly present in the 1912 Chinese women's movement, these charac-teristics were f u l l y developed by the time of the 1922 agitation for suf-frage. The movement at that time had more participants and better staying power, but even more important in terms of classification, i t re-sembled the Western feminist movement far more than had the violent out-bursts of disbanded army women in 1912. It is tempting to see the 1922 agitation as a development from 1912; as progress in strategy and move-ment towards a more rational approach which i s , comforting thought, so much like our own. To then consider the f i r s t manifestation as merely a prelude to fu l l y grown feminism (or as a freak incident brought on by the euphoria of sudden revolutionary success), because i t has l i t t l e in common with our experience of the women's movement, is to bind the idea of feminism too tightly to a particular set of historical precedents. Public debate and individualism were useful aids which furthered women's emancipation; but they do not seem to be prerequisites for women 58 \"campaigning and lobbying on their own behalf.\" Beyond unspoken qualifications for \"feminism\" lies another assumption, this time concerning the nature of Chinese history. Vastly oversimplified, i t can be reduced to the syllogism: \"the May Fourth Period marks the division between traditional and modern China. Femin-ism is a modern idea, therefore feminism in China must appear after the May Fourth Movement.\" It is certainly true that feminism, in the sense of women seek-ing equal pol i t i c a l rights, is as modern in China as the idea of pol i t i c a l rights i t s e l f . The f i r s t time at which these rights became theoretically available, and feminism in this sense theoretically possible, however, was 1912, not 1919. The fact that women began immediately to agitate for suffrage may indicate more than just the degree to which the Western concepts of democracy and female equality had influenced Chinese intellectuals. It should, perhaps make us consider the question of cultural predisposition towards the acceptance of certain ideas. Per-haps a term such as \"pre-feminist\" would be useful to describe those aspects of traditional Chinese culture which furthered the eventual acceptance of female equality. I have obviously oversimplified the argument for the May Fourth era as the dividing point between traditional and modern China. Research into language reform and the changing intellectual climate in general has made us aware that the May Fourth period was the culmination, rather than the beginning of enormous changes in Chinese society and thought. 1 7 See for example, Michael Gasster, Chinese Intellectuals and the Revolution of 1911, (Seattle and London: University of Washington 59 Al l of the concerns of the May Fourth period: nationalism, youth, women, language reform and cultural revolution, had previously existed and gone through separate stages of growth. Although in the revolution-ary atmosphere of the May Fourth period they interacted and were in-fluenced by one another, their relationship at this time should not blind us to the fact of their previous, less closely related development. During the May Fourth era, feminism was bolstered by a new emphasis on individual rights and an all-out attack on the traditional family, while awareness of the problems of women was spread by modern magazines. But May Fourth feminism grew on a solid base, one that had been established with the women revolutionaries of 1911, who in turn, had available to them a native feminist tradition as well as the example of Western feminists. . The May Fourth period was an exciting and impor-tant era in the development of Chinese feminism, one in which new aspects of the women's question were brought into prominence. It was a period of ideological enrichment in which discussions on the family, free love, the marriage system, chastity, and related problems widened public aware-ness of the social implications of women's equality. It was not,how-ever, a transition period from immature to mature feminism, not i f feminism is \"women campaigning and lobbying on their own behalf.\" It is even possible that the May Fourth period was a diversion of feminism in China from it s original sources of energy. If we are to Press, 1969). Mary Backus Rankin, Early Chinese Revolutionaries, Radical Intellectuals in Shanghai and Chekiang, 1902-1911^ (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971). 60 understand the women's movement as a whole, including the changes that have occurred since Ch'en wrote his History, we need a new interpretation, one which does not revolve around the literary excitement of the May Fourth period. Perhaps the best place to begin is with the images of women we find in the popular culture, and the evidence that some women actually lived these images. Once we are aware of the \"pre-feminist\" tendencies in the traditional culture we may be able to suggest a sig-nificantly different pattern of development. An Alternate Interpretation It may be that the women's movement is best explained in three stages: the f i r s t being a period of interaction between newly introduced ideas of republicanism and sexual equality and the feminist strains of the popular culture. This period ended with the women's attack on the assembly in 1912 and the participation of many of the feminists in the \"second revolution\" of 1913. The action which women took at this time, joining the Republican army and resorting almost immediately to violence in their attempt to win the vote, was directly influenced by the cul-tural stereotypes of the woman warrior and knight. Increasing disillusionment with the pol i t i c a l revolution and recognition of the need for intellectual change began the second phase of the women's movement. At this point, women's emancipation became much more intellectually fashionable, and ultimately became a symbol for the need for radical reform. During the May Fourth period, women's emancipation was taken out of the hands of women and carefully analysed 61 by male intellectuals who adopted ideas from Western theorists like Ellen Key and Edward Carpenter. A new surge of feminist agitation began, this time adopting the rather milder methods of the English and American suffragettes. Finally, as the hope for po l i t i c a l progress under warlord govern-ments died away, and the lines between the Communists and Nationalists hardened, the women's movement returned to its roots. Enriched, certainly, by the debates of the May Fourth Period, but despairing of finding either freedom from opporession or \"individual human status\" without revolution, feminists turned to the role that women had always played in extra-legal groups. In the Chinese Communist Party they re-lived the l i f e of bandit and rebel women, supported, for the f i r s t time since the Taiping, by an of f i c i a l policy of sexual equality. In addition, the party's success in mobilizing women for resistance work might be partly explained by its s k i l l f u l use of the image of women as revolutionary fighters in i t s propaganda. Some examples, now enshrined in every medium from revolu-tionary ballet to comic books, are: The White Haired G i r l , the Red Women's Detachment, and the Red Lantern Brigade. This interpretation is tenuous and w i l l remain so until more research on the women's movement is done. In the meantime, i t is necessary Ellen Key, (1849-1926) was a Swedish feminist. Her theories on free love, (particularly the idea that mutual love was the only moral basis for marriage), and on the importance of motherhood, were widely discussed during the May Fourth period. Who Was_ Who, A Companion to \"Who's Who\" containing the biographies of those who Died During the Period 1916-1928, (London: A. & C. Black Ltd., 1929), p. 503. 62 for a l l who would study the movement to recognize the shortcomings of the interpretation put forward in A History of the Life of Chinese Women. Ch'en Tung-yuan's book can be useful as long as i t is realized that i t is a partial explanation of female emancipation in China before 1930. A satisfactory explanation w i l l only be achieved when we take into consideration the material that Ch'en ignores, particularly the feminist heritage in China's popular culture. A Note on the Translation The work which follows is not a formal or highly annotated trans-lation. This i s , in part, due to the nature of the text; Ch'en writes in colloquial Chinese which does not demand detailed philological ex-planation. It is also a reflexion of my purpose in translating the History; that i s , to make available the most important source on the early women's movement in China. The History of the Life of Chinese Women is not a triumph of modern Chinese literature, but an interesting social document. My aim has been to produce a translation in colloquial English, with as few forays into side questions as possible. Annotation has therefore been limited to brief explanations of names and terms unfamiliar to Western readers. In conflicts between l i t e r a l translation and smooth English I have tried to favour the latter. For example, the phrase Hsien mu liang ch'i ( fj^f-f^-jt- ) has been translated as \"good wife and mother\" rather than the more accurate \"virtuous mother and good wife.\" A more important example of a sacrifice of l i t e r a l translation to comfortable English usage is my alteration of Ch'en's metaphor for the intellectual revolution in China--\"the new tide\" (hsin ch'ao $fjy§f{ ). When Ch'en was writing, \"the new tide\" was a conventional expression, close to cliche, stripped of any strong visual imagery by continuous use. Therefore i t was not incongruous for him to divide! the history of the women's movement into the \"embryonic\" (chieh t'ai $j| jja ) period of the new tide, the \"immature\" or \"larval\" ( l i t e r a l l y \"wriggling 63 64 like worms\" ch'un tung j j ! . ^ ) period of the new tide, and the period of the \"birth\" (tan sheng ) of the new tide. In English the metaphors are hopelessly scrambled, and there are no tidal terms to substitute which adequately convey the sense of Ch'en's (three periods. In addition, our image of tides is inseparable from the idea of ebb and flow; the tide never remains f u l l , but begins to wane almost immediately. I do not believe that Ch'en intended to convey an impression of endless mutability; rather he saw history in terms of continuous progress toward a more enlightened future. For these reasons I have used \"intellectual revolution\" in place of \"new tide,\" and have substituted \"the germination,\" \"the f i r s t growth,\" and \"the flowering\" of the intellectual Revolution for \"embryonic,\" \"larval\" and \"birth.\" The second period suffers most in the change, for Ch'en's use of ch'un tung suggests vigorous but undirected movement, a shade of meaning which is lost in \"the f i r s t growth.\" The early pages of the translation have been edited. I begin my translation with Ch'en's ninth chapter, \"The Life of Women in the Reform Period,\" and give in f u l l his \"General Discussion\" and the introductory paragraph of the f i r s t section of this chapter, (\"Before the Reform Move-ment of 1898\"). The rest of the section is not included. The translation resumes with the introduction to the next section, omits the following section devoted to a revolutionary tract in favour of women's emancipa-tion, and is complete from then on, except for an appended chart of women mentioned in Chinese history up to the Manchu dynasty. Brief descriptions of the missing material are given in the body of the translation. A HISTORY OF THE LIFE OF CHINESE WOMEN CHAPTER 1 THE LIFE OF WOMEN IN THE REFORM PERIOD General Discussion Although i t is widely known that the l i f e of Chinese women in the recent past is quite different from that of former times, few realize that the women's movement in China has a history of more than thirty years. These thirty-odd years, moreover, should be divided into three stages during which today's conditions gradually evolved. Al-though the American and European influence had already entered China following the Treaty of Nanking signed after the Opium War (1842), the beginning of genuine reform was the period following the Sino-Japanese war. In 1894, China and Japan went to war over Korea, and China's armed forces were crushingly defeated by Japan. When, in March of the next year, Li Hung-chang, f i l l e d with feelings of disgrace and resent-ment, went to Japan and agreed to the twenty-one articles of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, China's international status immediately collapsed. This at last caught the attention of some Chinese, and the shock waves of their efforts to plan for strength engulfed the whole country; f i n a l l y people came to realize the value of Western culture. The l i f e of women also followed this tendency toward change. I call the period from this 65 66 time until just before the 1911 Revolution \"The Period of Germination of the Intellectual Revolution.\" Before the 1911 Revolution, the activities of the revolutionary movement were carried out with great intensity, and everywhere there were women participating in the movement. After the Revolution, in the f i r s t two years of the Republic, women enthusiastically joined the army, and ardently participated in p o l i t i c s ; at f i r s t glance i t seemed a glorious page in the movement for women's rights. Practically speaking, however, at this time the Intellectual Revolution s t i l l lacked a coherent system of thought and had only recognized i t s potential but was not yet ready to exploit i t . The apparent freedom of women at this time was made possible only by the current situation; therefore I call this \"The Period of the First Growth of the Intellectual Revolution.\" The smouldering coals of the movement for women's revolution fin a l l y burst into flame in January of 1916 when Ch'en Tu-hsiu ( fjjN$)4\" ) in The New Youth magazine (Hsin Ch'ing-nien 1^-^-4 ) published an essay entitled \"1916.\" He recommended that young women should rise from their status of being controlled to being in a position of control, and was the f i r s t to say that the Confucian theory of the Three Principles^ ought to be destroyed. After this time there were repeated discussions of the woman question in The New Youth. The more the f i r e burned, the hotter i t ^ The san Kang are the three \"net ropes,\" the three basic relationships of human society. They are: the relationship between a ruler and his minister, a father and his son and a husband and his wife. See Yen Shih-hu's fitH'k annotation to P&an Ku 1% 1^1 , Ch'ien Han Shu -ffa in the Ssu pu pei yao Jj^ (Shanghai: Chung-hua shu-chu, 1936), Chuan 85, p. 15. 67 became, until in 1919 the May Fourth Movement burst like a single shell, exploding everywhere in the country. The movement to liberate women spread simultaneously a l l over China. Since that time, through academic discussion and practical experience, the l i f e of Chinese women has fina l l y reached i t s present state. It is now ten years since the pub-lication of Ch'en Tu-hsiu's essay \"1916.\" These ten years I call \"The Flowering of the Intellectual Revolution.\" I deal with the two periods \"Germination\" and \"First Growth\" under the chapter \"The Reform Period.\" \"The Period of the Flowering of the Intellectual Revolution\" belongs to a different section, and is discussed in the chapter \"The Life of Contemporary Women.\" The Germination of the Intellectual Revolution A. First Period—Before the Reform Movement of 1898 In the period between the Sino-Japanese war and the Hundred Days of Reform, there were two movements concerned with the l i f e of women: the anti-footbinding movement and the movement to extend the system for women's education. Neither of these concerns was new, but i t was only at this time that they took on the qualities of a movement and attracted the attention of a good many people. After the agreement to open five commercial ports under the Treaty of Nanking (1842), foreigners in China enthusiastically evangelized and established schools. By this time a missionary society had established a private g i r l s ' school, and foreigners 68 were ridiculing the custom of binding feet.*\" The two following sections are omitted: The Anti-footbinding Movement The Movement to Extend Women's Education The first section is made up of a quotation from Liang Ch'i-ch'ao's ( ^Mjt& ) Pien-fa tung-I 4f' ijj^ fj^ (Suggestions for Reform) condemning footbinding as an inhumane custom and an impediment to women's education, and Liang's rules for an experimental anti-foot binding society. The second section begins by pointing out the shortcomings of girls' schools established by missionary societies; that is, their pre-ference for proselytizing instead of educating, and their willingness to comply with the restrictions that Chinese society had traditionally placed on women. The rules of the Chinkiang girls ' private school are given at 3 length to support this assertion. Next, Ch'en notes that, after the Sino-Japanese War, progressives like Liang Ch'i'ch'ao had begun to .call for women's education. He again quotes from Liang's Pien-fa tung-i giving arguments in favour of estab-lishing girls' schools. It seems probable that the school referred to here was that established by Miss Aldersey, a missionary for the English \"Society for Promoting Female Education in the East.\" Margaret Burton in The Education of Women in China says: \"when, after the treaty of 1842, five ports were fi n a l l y opened to foreigners, she at once went to Ningpo. . . . There in 1844 she established the f i r s t school for girls in a l l China. . . .\" (New York: Fleming H. Revel 1 Company, 1911), p. 35. 3 The school was established by the Methodist Episcopal Mission. (Samuel Couling, Encyclopedia Sinica, (Taipei: Ch'eng wen Publishing Com-pany, 1967 (1917)), p. 363. 69 Liang's fundamental eoncevn was strengthening the nation. Ee argues in the quotations given that until women are educated to sup-port themselves they will always be parasites, an intolerable drain on the economy of China. Furthermore, the education of women will create good, competent mothers, who will care for, and in part educate, China's next generation. The quality of this generation can, according to Liang, determine China's future. B. The Second Period—After the 1898 Reforms Historical perspective should not be used to judge an event as fortunate or unfortunate. When we look at the reasons for the failure of the 1898 Reform Movement, a l l we can do is trace back to the social environment at that time, which did not allow the movement to succeed. From another viewpoint, however, the defeat of the 1898 Reforms was a great loss to the government of China and the state structure, and a heavy blow to those seeking changes in the l i f e of women. The Reform Movement faded like a short-lived flower. The aims of anti-footbinding societies were not realized, and no system of women's education was established. The Empress Dowager Tz'u-hsi, who was representative of those who did not recognize the hardships of women, then gave her support to the Boxer Rebellion. In 1901, when the Allied Armies occupied Peking, she fled, taking the Kuang Hsu Emperor with her. In September of the next year, peace treaties were established and the al l i e d armies slowly with-drew. The imperial court did not dare to return from Si an until January 1902. The of f i c i a l s had then been without a prince for two years. 70 The Empress Dowager's heart was like a ravening beast, and she was not concerned for the good of the country. But after she had suffered this blow she was reprimanded by good o f f i c i a l s within the court, and of f i c i a l s outside sent memorials to the emperor. Thus, in outward appearance at least, she could not refuse to plan for reform. Another strong incentive for governmental reform was the revolu-tionary thought which sprang up spontaneously among the people. The revolutionary party published many pamphlets; one very radical book con-cerning the women's reform movement was The Women's B e l l , (Nu-chieh chung & ) by \"^eedom lover\" Chin I, ) published in 1903.4 The following section, \"The Promotion of Women's Rights in The Women's Bell, (consisting of quotations from The Women's Bell and Ch'en Tung-yuan's comments on the quotations) is omitted. In the excerpts from his book, Chin I argues that men and women are essentially equal, but that women are made subservient by their lack of education. Be sees bound feet, the style of women's clothing, superstition and the traditional restrictions on women as the four great impediments to the achievement of equality. Be also lists the rights that women should have, including the right to an education, the right to own property, 4 Chin I, or Chin Sung ts'en , was the translator of Kamayama Sentaro's Kinsei museifu shugi which appeared in 1904 as Wu cheng-fu chu-i (Anarchism). See Martin Bernal, \"The Triumph of Anarchism over Marxism, 1906-1907,\" in China in Revolution: The First PHase, 1900-1913, ed. Mary C. Wright, New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1968, p. 117. 71 freedom of movement, social contact, and freedom of marriage. Chin I separates women into three groups, according to their educational and social advantages: those who can change the social climate, those who can free themselves, but are unable to free others, and those who are trapped in the old society. He urges women, especially those in the first group, to get involved in the revolution and shoulder the res-ponsibilities that their relative enlightenment has placed upon them. i . The Establishment of a System for Women's Education In 1901, two years before the publication of The Women's Be l l , the government ordered that private colleges should be turned into govern-ment schools. All colleges would be changed according to their location: those situated in a provincial capital would become middle schools, and those in chou and hsien would become primary schools. Finally, the Peking Normal School was established. The government did not even bother to consider women's schools. At that time, however, privately established g i r l s ' schools sprang up everywhere like bamboo shoots after the spring rain. (The Shanghai Patriotic Girls' School was founded in the winter of 1902 by Ts'ai Chieh-min ^ ) and others). 5 Outside of the capital there were quite a number of of f i c i a l s at a l l levels petitioning for the establishment of women's education. The government opened a Bureau of Education in 1905, and ruled that women's schools would be regarded as part of family education. In Ts'ai Yuan-p'ei ( i ^ - o ^ l z ). 72 this year, an o f f i c i a l school system was established, and women's educa-tion began to come under the control of the Bureau of Education. In the f i r s t month of 1907, the Bureau of Education fixed thirty-six regulations for women's normal schools, and twenty-six regulations for women's primary schools, f i n a l l y giving women's education a position within the educational system. The f i r s t article of the statement of general principles in the establishment of women's normal schools said: In women's normal schools, our basic purpose is to train teachers for g i r l s ' primary schools and also to lecture on methods to pro-tect and nourish young children in the hope of benefiting the family livelihood and being of advantage to family education. Thus, aside from producing teachers, the purpose was s t i l l that of train-ing women to further family education. At this time, too, the standard of \"good wives and mothers\" was formally declared. The f i r s t rule in \"The Essentials in Women's Normal School Education\" said: In China, female virtue has been exalted from one age to another. The Way of being a woman, a wife and a mother can be found in the classics and the histories; the works of the ancient scholars give the details clearly. Today, when teaching women normal school students, from time to time we must encourage them to cultivate a l l the womanly virtues: modesty, serenity, obedience, virtue, com-passion, purity, uprightness and frugality, in the hope that they w i l l not turn their backs on the ethical teachings of China's past, and the virtues customarily esteemed in women. A l l bizarre talk of letting loose, and freedom, (Original note: from not maintaining separation between men and women, to choosing one's own mate and speaking at assemblies on poli t i c a l matters) we must rigorously reject and throw out, holding fast to tradition. (Original note: Among China's men there are those who regard women as too base, or do not treat them f a i r l y . This is an evil custom, and we must concentrate, in men's education, on rectifying and improving this. As for women, we must emphasize obedience to mother, father and husband.) 73 In this statement, the emphasis on the Way of being a woman, wife and mother, and the promotion of the three obediences,5 was carried to an extreme. The school rules of a l l g i r l s ' schools were comprised of the eight big characters; modest, serene, obedient, virtuous, compassion-ate, pure, upright and frugal. Women's education at this time was merely a repetition, in a different form, of the accumulated views of over two thousand years, without even the slightest new significance. There is no need to quote the passages on women's. normal school education which follow this as they are a l l similar to these words on \"good wives and mothers.\" However, in the section dealing with the aim of each course in the curriculum, there is one clause explaining the way in which the course on moral values should be taught: Al l ethics textbooks must base themselves on the classics, gathering together the finest parts of Biographies of Women, Pro- hibitions for Women, Advice to Women, the Women's Classic on F i l i a l Piety, Rules for the Household, Advice for the Women's Quarters, Rules for the Women's Apartments, Mr. Wen's Advice to Mothers, A Compilation of the Classics of Women's Education, Standards Be- queathed to Women, Girls' Education, Education for Ladies, and other such books, as well as those Western Books on ethics for women which are not contrary to China's customary teachings. In writing text-books we should extract the essence from these works and blend them together; and, moreover, grade them in order of d i f f i c u l t y , and add explanatory illustrations in order that they be easily understood. When this regulation was decidedron, much effort was put into the project of making anthologies from books on women's education from The san ts'ung ^ / U ^ , or three obediences; the obedience of a woman to her father, until married, her husband unti1 widowed, and to her son until her death. See Ta Tai l i - c h i j^jjL \\ty ifj (n.p., Kuang ya shu-chu, 1899), chuan 13, 11. * 74 Han times to the present. After the regulations had been made public, in Peking and in the large cities of each province, numerous women's normal schools were established. The medical school outside Chien Gate at Pachiao, Liuliching was reorganized as the Peking Women's Normal School. It had not been open long when something happened that attracted the attention of the Bureau of Education, which then dispatched an order to a l l g i r l s ' schools: RecentlyEwe have heard that students from a l l of the gi r l s ' schools are going to the charitable society at the g i r l s ' school established at Li u l i Yao and are selling handicraft articles there in order to contribute to the society's funds. Moreover they are holding concerts of singing and dancing. On reading the Peking Women's Daily,1 we see advertisements placed by the society, and furthermore, there is talk of holding a circus. When one examines the raising of funds to help alleviate disasters, one sees that, in essence, i t is a noble action; we should bow to public opinion in this. These girls who sel l their handicrafts are comparable to the virtuous beauties of ancient times who pawned their hairpins and earrings and sold their books and paintings in order to help raise money; they are not second in virtue. But in this society, the programmes of dancing and singing go on for days and days—this really f l i e s in the face of China's customs. Furthermore, i t necessitates great neglect of schoolwork. If, beyond this, they hold a circus, and add to the confusion, this Bureau w i l l not tolerate i t . Today, women's education is in the early stages of growth. Those enthusiasts who want to extend education ought to co-oper-ate and face d i f f i c u l t i e s together, and not give people a pretext 7 ^ Pei-ching nii-pao '}k t-^t l l i . (The Peking Women's Daily) was founded in 1905 and ran for at least 2 years. It published transcript matter from the Peking Gazettes, news of women's schools and organiza-tions and articles promoting women's education. The financial backing for the paper was probably supplied by the Empress Dowager; in any case the paper is unusual among women's papers in advocating staunch nation-alism on a basis of Manchu-Han solidarity and loyalty to the throne. (Charlotte L. Beahan, \"The Women's Press in China Prior to the Revolution of 1911,\" (draft of a paper prepared for a conference on \"Women in Chinese Society,\" San Francisco, June 11-15, 1973), pp. 32-37). 75 for gossip and for causing obstructions. Now this department wishes to explain clearly i t s exhortations to each student: when contributing handicrafts in order to raise re l i e f funds, you should, as much as is possible, send others out to deliver them, and not go to the society in person. Attending society meetings and singing and dancing is even more inappropriate social conduct. Holding a circus in the midst of a l l this shows further lack of respect for the Way of being a student. Because the Capital City is the foremost d i s t r i c t , every woman student must recite the classics and listen fully to teachings on propriety [as an example to other d i s t r i c t s ] . This Bureau takes as i t s responsibility a l l of the schools in the country. We wish to impress upon everyone who establishes a school that they must make each woman student understand the pro-found way in which this Bureau respects women students, and the great pains i t takes in protecting women's schools. Twenty years have passed since a l l of this happened, and we can see how t r i v i a l i t was. But the Bureau of Education blew up the incident vout of a l l proportion, to the point where i t seems almost ridiculous. i i . Reaction Against the Idea of Women's Rights Support for the idea of women's rights, expressed in works such as The Woman's B e l l , began to attract a great deal of attention at this time, and a group of \"defenders of the way\" rose in opposition. The Ministry of Education's adoption of the good wife and mother as the educational standard cannot really be considered very conservative. On the other hand, at the end of the commentary on ethics in The School of Dialects ( ^ \" i t ^ ' l T ), which we see from the preface was written by Ch'en Tseng-shou ( f f . ' f ^ ), is a section bitterly attacking those who advocate women's rights, saying: There are some petty husbands, blind to the great principle that man rules outside the home, who cast aside this sacred responsi-b i l i t y , and call out for women's rights. They won't be satisfied 76 until women rule outside the home. To do this is to take a serious and far-reaching duty and entrust i t to someone who can only worry about immediate interests. To do so not knowing that i t shouldn't be done is unwise. If i t is a case of taking these weak creatures and entrusting to them this d i f f i c u l t and vast mission, knowing their i n a b i l i t y , like letting a monkey climb a tree and ignoring the consequences, then this is inhumane. If a man is unable to carry out his righteous duty to pre-serve l i f e , and yet would seek protection in the hands of women, then he is shameless. Those who would promote this doctrine w i l l cause men to cast aside their sacred responsibility of ruling outside, and so the affairs of the country w i l l f a l l into ruin; and the women to neglect their sacred duty of ruling inside, and the Way of the home w i l l also be laid waste,, Hard and soft w i l l lose their virtue, and the way of men w i l l be perverted, inner and outer transposed, and propriety and righteousness destroyed. Heaven and earth w i l l be shut off from one another, principles w i l l change to chaos; as in the f i r s t six of the k'un diagram, \"when there is hoarfrost under-foot, solid ice is not far off,\" to six at the top, \"dragons battling in the meadow, their flowing blood is black and yellow.\" How can a gentleman of broad wisdom have foresight to see this and not tremble with fear?8 Even today this kind of thinking cannot be avoided, and so i t is worthy of our attention. Whenever an intellectual revolution develops, i t w i l l be opposed by a group of conservatives. Out of this The second diagram of The I Ching is k'un, the receptive (earth, female). It is the complement of ch'ien, the creative (heaven, male). The two are interdependent but not equal, for the receptive is only productive of good when i t is led by the creative. If i t tries to become equal with the creative, i t becomes e v i l . When Ch'en Tseng-shou quotes the text \"when there is hoarfrost underfoot, solid ice is not far off,\" he is warning that signs of decay, like hoarfrost signalling the coming of winter (death), are present, and w i l l go on increasing unless measures are taken to stop them. The \"dragons battling in the meadow\" are the male and female principles at war in a struggle which w i l l end in defeat for the female principle, but with injury to both. For a f u l l explanation of the texts see Richard Wilhelm, The I Ching or Book of Changes, translated by Cary F. Baynes, (Princeton University Press: Princeton, New Jersey) 1970 (1950) pp. 10-15. 77 situation w i l l evolve a compromise faction, the largest group in any society, which is able to gain power. A l l of the regulations for g i r l s ' schools decided on by the Ministry of Education were the result of compromise. In 1905, Lai Chen-huan ( jfj[ jfc % ) of Shun-te ( ) published a book called Collected Evidence in Favour of Women's Education (Ch'iian nli hsUeh chi cheng, ^ -k-^ ^ P't )• F r o m t n e author's preface we read that in 1897 he had advocated an anti-footbinding society, and in 1903 had promoted women's education in his home village. His thought, however, was extremely corrupt; the book at the most recorded earlier people's praise for admirable conduct, which coincided with the stipulations in the Ministry of Education's self-cultivation course in Women's Normal Schools. He also printed a book for the enlightenment of the common people called A Few Words on Women's Education (Nu-hsiieh szu-wu yen ho pien -k<*f <® X ~t 4^4) ). Although i t was a l l the same old line of \"the Way of reverence and f i l i a l piety,\" \"respect for the husband,\" and \"honouring her domestic function,\" he repeatedly said that he took the promotion of women's education as his personal mission and s t i l l regarded himself as a man of the times. In 1909, the Peking I Shen Company lithographed a popular tract called Domestic Models for Women (Nu'-tzu chia-t'ing mu-fan -k\\'>Yk i%k%U ). It is said that the Chen Kuo-kung's ( 4 & @ \\ \"A ) wife, Su-wan-kua-erh shih ch'ien nien (jf^jL^V^ Jify-fy ) was the editor. 9 I have not been able to identify this woman, but i t seems pro-bable that she was a Manchu, and the characters given are a transliteration 78 This also was a repetition of the old formulas for women's education, but i t s t i l l received a great welcome. In the appendix there is an article called \"The Right Path of Womanly Virtue.\" It says: Home and family were established with the most ancient principles. A l l men seek wives who w i l l regard the rearing of children and keeping the house as their purpose; the woman serves the man and regards rearing children and keeping house as the root of her being. But in the demoralized customs of the modern world, women look on marriage as a means to obtain honour, i f the clothes and financial resources are a l i t t l e less than sufficient, then she rouses her resentment and becomes insatiable. Coveting the dowry of others, she resents her husband's poverty. Who would have thought that a wealthy and noble l i f e is accumulated from virtue and caused by human heartedness, as in the ancient saying, \"great fortunes come from fate, small fortunes from diligence?\" Since she is a woman she should take up the broom and dustpan, operate the well and the mortar, taking the bitter and sweet together. Even ancient and modern kings, vassals, generals and ministers, have their periods of prosperity and decline. How much more so for a woman. If they don't concentrate on diligently accumulat-ing virtue, how can they hope to enjoy good fortune for long? After a woman has married, these are her duties: 1. to treat her husband's parents with f i l i a l piety, to serve them with her labour. 2. to aid her husband in respecting his brothers, in order to create honest and true friendship and love. 3. to rear children for her husband and continue the ancestral ha l l . 4. to aid her husband in cultivating virtue so that he may be an outstanding man. 5. to instruct the children for her husband so they bring honour to the family. 6. to help her husband to acquire property to avoid f a l l i n g into poverty. The above six items are necessary for a woman to establish herself in l i f e . of her name. In any case, the t i t l e Chen Kuo-kung was a Ch'ing dynasty t i t l e ofsthess'eventh rank reserved for members of the royal family. See Li tai chih kuan piao )§K t l L ( P e k i n 9 : Chung-hua shu-chu, 1965), p. 201. 79 Not only are the Ministry of Education regulations and the popular texts conservative, when we look at the t i t l e s of essays at women's schools at that time, we realize that women's education was equally conservative. The great majority of the essays written in g i r l s ' schools at that time were: --On Post Hsia Marriage and the Consort Chiang of the Chou --Dynasty Bringing About Dynastic Restoration --On the Classic handed down by Fu Sheng's daughter,H and Pan Chao's continuation of the History of the Han.'^ —On Meng Mu and Le Yang's wife breaking the shuttle' 3 --Discussion on Nu Wa's patching the sky!4 --Discussion on the necessity of respectfulness and self-denial and not disobeying one's husband and sons. --Plan for giving up jewelry and establishing banks. —Thoughts after reading the ballad of Mu Lan. 15 (Consult Essay Models from Lung Chiang ,Girls' School, printed in 1910. (Lung Chiang Nu-Hsiieh wen-fan -jfiji.-k ff l b ) Chiang Hou was the consort of Prince Hsiian of the Chou dynasty in the ninth century B.C. She reprimanded her husband for his irresponsible behaviour, causing him to reform. Herbert A. Giles, A Chinese Biographical Dictionary, (Taipei: Literature House Ltd., 1965 (1898)), p. 132. ^ Fu Sheng iK't concealed a copy of the Shang Shu (The Canons of Yao and Shun) at the time of the destruction of the classics in the Chin dynasty (221-209 B.C.). His daughter learned the book from him and passed i t on when Fu Sheng grew old, and his speech became garbled. See Ch'ien Han Shu, chuan 88, p. 9. 12 Pan Chaoft^S was the sister of the Han historian Pan Ku . He died before he was able to finish his history of the early Han; she completed i t for him. See Hou Han Shu f O ^ l f i n Ssu pu pei yao, chuan 114, 3-8. Meng Mu the mother of Mencius, was considered to be the most virtuous of mothers. She was a widow and supported herself and her child by weaving. In order to reprimand him for his negligence in his studies she s l i t the unfinished weaving on her loom from top to bottom. See Liu K1 a j -. - ^ Kuang Li eh nu chuan ffa$'\\-jt4fy 80 They are a l l in the same vein, never rising above this level. But i t is not even necessary to v i s i t the inside of the school. If we look at the couplets inscribed on the pil l a r s of g i r l s ' schools of that time, we can see the essential meaning of their education. The couplets at Lung Chiang Girls' School were: Confucius and Mencius are resources for the education of a mother. The classic of Fu' and Pan's history have significance for a l l . A sagely mother can do the work of fostering and guiding. A fledgling daughter knows how to sing the song of the republic. Women's education at this time was a l l like this, reformed on the surface but conservative in essence. i i i . The Accomplishments of Girls' Schools Established by Missionary Societies Girls' schools established by Chinese were s t i l l rare in the f i r s t five years after the Bureau of Education's statement on regula-tions for g i r l s ' schools. The schools established by foreigners had (n.p., 1884), Chuan 19 , 1 . 7. Lo Yang went away to study, but returned after one year. When his wife asked the reason for his return he said that he had come back to see her. She then cut her weaving in order to show him that like the weaving on her loom, his studies, once abandoned, could never be completed. See the Hou Han Shu, chuan 114, 1 . 8. 1 4 Nu Wa* , a legendary figure, the sister and successor of Fu Hsi . When Kung Kung-^-J^ rebelled and broke one of the eight columns supporting heaven, she repaired the breach by melting down stones. See E.T.C. Werner, A Dictionary of Chinese Mythology, (New York: The Julian Press, Inc., 1961J, pp. 334-335. See above, pp. \" 3 5 - 3 6and note 4 , p. 36. 81 already accomplished a great deal. The American Young J. Allen in the tenth collection of A Comprehensive Examination of the Life of Women in All Lands (translation published in 1903) gives statistics for g i r l students of missionary society schools :^ Type of School Colleges Theological Colleges Higher and Middle Schools Technical Schools Medical Schools and Service Hospitals Kindergartens Primary Schools Total No. of Schools 12 66 166 7 30 6 Total No. of Students 1,814 1,315 6,393 191 251 194 no details 10,158 Women Students 96 543 3,509 96 32 male and female students e s t i -mated equal at 97 4,373 The First Growth of the Intellectual Revolution A. The First Period—Before the 1911 Revolution i. Women Who Studied Overseas The Ch'ing court began sending students overseas very early; by 1872, they had already sent students to the United States, and later Young J. Allen, or Lin Lo-chih #4f-& was a Georgia Missionary who l e f t the United States for China in 1859. He presented a copy of Women in A l l Lands to the Empress Dowager, \"who graciously acknowledged it,\"--according to The North China Herald, February 21, 1925, p. 305. 82 continuously sent people abroad. Government policy on overseas students was formally set down in 1894. In Kiangsu, as early as 1883, women were allowed to s i t for the examination given to determine which students should be sent abroad; three women were selected, becoming qualified for government support for overseas students. But there were already several women studying abroad. In Complete Works of the Ice-Drinkers' Studio 1 7 there is an essay written in 1896 called \"The Diary of Miss K'ang of Kiangsi'.\" Miss K'ang A i - t e , u was twenty-five years old at this time, and had already returned to China after graduating from Michigan University in the United States. According to the account, Miss K'ang became an orphan in her infancy, and travelled to America at the age of nine with an American woman, Gertrude Howe. In 19 1880, while in America, Miss K ang was a schoolmate of Miss Shih Mei-yu; The author is Liang Ch'i'ch'ao. Levenson notes: \"His [Liang's] own work began to appear in a more permanent form; in 1902-1903, to fac i l i t a t e distribution in China, Liang made a selection of articles and lessons written for the Ch'ing'i pao and Ta-t'ung hsueh-hsiao and pub-lished them in Tokyo under the t i t l e Yin-ping shih ch'uan-chi (Complete Works of the Ice-Drinkers' Studio). Joseph R. Levenson, Liang Ch'i'ch'ao and the Mind of Modern China, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967\"T7\"p. 68. 1 g Ida Kahn (1873-1930), who later became a prominent physician, was adopted as an infant by Gertrude Howe of the Methodist Mission at Kiukiang. She made her f i r s t trip to the United States with Gertrude Howe in 1882, returning to China in 1884. It was on the second t r i p , in 1892, that she studied with Mary Stone at the University of Michigan Medical School, not, as Ch'en states, in 1880. See Howard L. Boorman, (ed.), Biographical Dictionary of Republican China. (New York: Columbia Univer-sity Press, 1967). Vol. 2, pp. 225T226. According to Boorman, Ida Kahn's Chinese name was K'ang Ch'eng ( ) rather than K'ang Ai-te )• 1 9 Shih Mei-yu {& j £ ), or Mary Stone, (1873-1954), trained as a physician in America and was best known for her work as superinten-dent of the Elizabeth Skelton Danforth Hospital at Kiukiang. Boorman, Biographical Dictionary, Vol. 3, pp. 128-130. 83 they should be considered the earliest women returned students from America. But K'ang Yu-wei's daughter, T'uug-pi ( ( 8 | 4^ ) went to India by herself to v i s i t her father when she was nineteen years old. A poem she wrote says: \"I am China's f i r s t woman scholar to come from the West.\" This is in reference to India. Japan's proximity to Chekiang and Kiangsu makes i t probable that after the 1898 Reforms, numerous women from these provinces went there to study. Returned students from Japan were the majority of the participants in the actual revolution. i i . Women Who Sacrificed for the Revolution After the Boxer rebellion, the revolutionary movement was f i t f u l in i t s development. Many women participated in the movement at this time. In A New History of Chinese Women (Shen-chou nu-tzu hsin shih $-v[4rl %JC ), published by the China Bookshop in 1913, Hsu T'ien-hsiao [ { ^ ^ ^ ) quotes a portion of a certain gentleman's notes: In midwinter of 1901, I returned home to China from Kyoto with several Japanese friends, aboard the Genkai Maru, and then travelled over the country, with the exception of Korea and Manchuria. One day, near twilight, we were about to lodge at an inn, when we met with a woman, pretty and elegant in appear-ance and simply dressed. The cold moonbeams congealed; the wintry mountain wrinkled blue-green. Accompanied by an old nurse and a maidservant, she hurriedly set out for the north. I was intrigued by a l l of this. On entering the inn, I saw several poems jotted on the wall; the ink was not yet dry on the ele-gantly written characters. The f i r s t poem said: I was originally a bright pearl and had self-respect, Incense from the golden urn gently hugged the king-fisher robe. For whom did I throw away the land of my native village? A limitless expanse of white snow. 84 The second poem read: My rosy cheeks in the bright mirror fade with time. The cold wind, like scissors, cuts my icy flesh. Grieving, again I take the Elm Pass Road' Everywhere the wind flutters the five-coloured flags. (Author's note: this refers to the variegated colours of the flags of foreign nations and definitely not to the five coloured national flag adopted after the Republic was established). The third poem read: There is no way to waken this country's people Streams of pure tears she wiped away with her red handkerchief. I 'could willingly get used to the insults of other races But how could I ever live with injustice from men. There was s t i l l another poem, but the characters were so freely written that I could not make them out. Ah! Who was this person? I asked the landlord, but he didn't have the slightest idea. In the end, did this woman really exist? Or was she only an ideal in the minds of the revolutionaries of the time? From this account alone, i t is very d i f f i c u l t to decide. Before 1911, however, a great many women died for the Revolution. Twelve years before the Republic, at the time of the Boxer up-rising, T'ang Ts'ai-ch'ang plotted an uprising at Hankow, but the affair was divulged and T'ang was k i l l e d . 2 0 Miss Chou Fu-chen, ( if] ifo 4, ) 2 0 T'ang Ts'ai-ch'ang ( ) \\ $ ) was a Hunanese reformer, and a follower of K'ang Yu-wei and Liang Ch'i-ch'ao. He arranged for his own 85 Miss Mao Chih-hsiang ( H 4 ) and Hiss Liu Hui-fang ) were also martyred at this time. They were the earliest women to sacrifice their lives for the revolution. Five years before the Revolution, Hsu Hsi-lin shot the governor of Anhwei province, En-ming, ( ) at Anking. 2 1 After the up-rising was defeated, the Ch'ing court ordered each province to seize and deal with the remaining members of the group. Hsu's cousin, Miss Ch'iu Chin, ( fas Iff, ) had beforehand set up association offices in Cheng and Hsien Chu districts of Shaohsing, (Chekiang province) with Chu Shao-22 23 k'ang, Wang Chi-fa and others. After the plot fa i l e d , she was seized student group (the Tzu-li hui or \"Independence Society\") to join with the central Yangtze branches of the ancient Ko-lao hui (Brothers and Elders Society) for a rising at Hankow in 1900--only to be discovered, seized, and executed.\" John K. Fairbank £t. aj_., East Asia, The Modern Transformation. (Boston: Houghton Mi f f l i n Company, 1965) p. 636. Hsu Hsi-lin ) was born in 1873 in Tung-pu village, near Shaohsing. He was interested in Western learning and spent a short time in Japan where he became involved with the revolu-tionaries living there. He was taken on as an assistant by the Manchu En-ming (j§.f>e ) when the latter was appointed Governor of Anhwei in 1906, and given charge of the police academy in Anking. From this position, Hsu attempted to lead an uprising which was spectacular in i t s lack of organization and common sense. The uprising was to be supported by several secret societies and Ch'iu Chin's group at Ta T!,ung School, but coordination was poor and Hsu had been executed before the others realized that the revolt was underway. See Mary Rankin, Early Chinese Revolutionaries (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971) for a f u l l account. 2 2 Chu Shao-k'ang ( i t J& ) was the founder, in 1900, of the P'ing-Yang Society, a secret society with i t s greatest strength in Cheng hsien of Shaohsing prefecture. He worked closely with the revolu-tionaries in the area until 1907, and held several military posts after the 1911 Revolution. Ibid., p. 139. Wang Chin-fa ( ) was the chief assistant of Chu Shao-k'ang. A military graduate under the old system, he became more 86 at Shaohsing and executed at Hs'uant'ingk'ou. The attention of the people was strongly aroused at this incident. Ch'iu Chin, also called Hsiian Ch'ing ( l | f ^ f ) or Ching Hsiung ( ~i£%fi ) was a native of Shanyin hsien, Chekiang province. She 23 admired heros such as Ching-k'o and Nieh-cheng, and called herself the 25 Heroine of Chien Lake.\" At nineteen she was married to a member of the Wang clan of Hunan, and had one son and one daughter. After the Boxer 26 2 7 Rebellion, she studied in Japan, organized an \"Encompassing Love Society\" and planned with her comrades for the revolution. After she returned to China (1906) while teaching at the Shaohsing Ming-tao Girls' School, she 28 established the Chinese Women's Journal, strongly advocating male and closely identified with the revolutionaries than with secret societies after 1907, and was assassinated after the Revolution. Ibid., p. 135. 2 4 Ch'ing-k'o ( * ' l P \\ ) and Nieh-cheng { jfa ) were \"assassin-retainers.\" Ch'ing-k'o attempted the assassination of the Chin prince who later became the \"First Emperor.\" Nieh Cheng was a Chou dynasty hero who assassinated Hsieh Lei, a minister of the Han state. Giles, Chinese Biographical Dictionary, p. 156, 597. 25 See above, p. 37, note 8. In 1904, Ch'iu attended the normal school of the Aoyama Girls' Vocational School in Tokyo. Rankin, Early Revolutionaries, p. 41. 27 Ch iu seems to have revived the Encompassing Love Society rather than actually creating i t . A group by the same name promoting women's rights and education had been formed earlier, but existed in name only when i t was revived by Ch'iu. Rankin, Early Revolutionaries, n. 99, p.a254. 2 8 Ch'en calls this the Nu pao, ( ~& ) or Women's Journal, but the covers reproduced in Ch' iu Chin shih chi ( -£01 ) (Shanghai: 1958) bear the t i t l e Chung-kuc~nu pao ( t f l U ^ ? ^ ). Rankin describes the journal as \"directed particularly at women students with the idea of subsequently establishing a woman's association. The 87 female equality. This was China's f i r s t women's newspaper. When Ch'iu was seized, in 1907, the investigator forced her to write a confession. At f i r s t Ch'iu wrote only a few words in English, but the investigator did not understand i t and ordered her to use Chinese. She then wrote one character, \"autumn.\" She was again interrogated and added several more characters, saying: \"The autumn rain and the autumn 30 wind w i l l make me die of sorrow.\" She was then executed. In the spring of 1911 a righteous uprising at Canton was defeated, 31 and government guards k i l l e d seventy-two people. After the uprising, the government again thoroughly searched out the participants. Two women, Wu Yen-niang ( ^ 'K^h ) and Wu Ch'i-niang, ( X -&$C ) were ki l l e d as a result. In the last few days before the 1911 Revolution, the government found and seized military weapons at Wuchang,,and on October 9 seized and paper was written in a simple style and avoided overly erudite subjects. The aim was to exhort women to study and be active outside the home.\" Rankin, Early Revo!utionaries, n. 8, p. 255. 29 At least two important women's papers preceded Ch'iu Chin's Chung-kuo nu-pao. The f i r s t was the Nu-pao ( |M, ) '(Women's Journal j published by Ch'en Chieh-fen~( ) the daughter of the publisher of the Su-pao, Ch'en Fan ( ffcjfej ). The primary concern of the paper was women's education as a means of strengthening the nation. See also p. 74 above, note 7 for information on the Peking Women's Daily, f i r s t published in 1905. (Roswell Britton, The Chinese Periodical Press, 1800-1912, (Taipei: Ching-wen Publishing Company, 1926), p. 115, and Charlotte Beahan, \"The Women's Press in China,\" i b i d . , pp. 8-16). 3 0 The character is the same as that for her surname ( $K ) . The story of the poem is probably apocryphal--see Rankin, Early Revolution- aries , p. 187--but was of great value as propaganda. This was the \"Canton Revolution\" or Huang Hua Kang Uprising of April 26, 1911. 88 k i l l e d some party members. Woman party member Lung Yiin-lan (^tjik^{ ) was also captured at this time. In the afternoon of the next day, the revolution broke out in Wuchang. i i i . Women Who Sacrificed for Love In the period before the 1911 Revolution, yet another topic, aside from that of women who participated in the revolution, is worthy of discussion. That i s , those women who tried out new patterns in love. That freedom to marry was an important issue in the mind of the society at that time can be seen by the fact that freedom to choose one's mate was regarded as deviant and uncivilized, and prohibitions against i t were clearly written into g i r l s ' school rules. It is not that there are no love stories in China's past--love affairs had developed even under the strictest supervision—but the majority were of an un-natural, clandestine nature. Consequently, there was in the Chinese concept of love between men and women an unconscious idea that i t was an indecent and ugly thing. This attitude was extremely harmful to the development of new patterns in sexual relationships. Think, on what was the Chinese concept of love between the sexes based? The earliest stories are of \"Sang Chien on the River 32 33 34 p'u, and \"Chance Meeting at East Gate.\" UWen ch'un s elopement and 3 2 Sang Chien on the River P'u ( f ^ J ^ ) was a notorious place for profligacy.' 1 The phrase was used in the Li Chi ( if iLi ) [Book of Rites] and the Han Shu ( ?£~f ) [Book of the Han]. See Huang Yen-kai, A Dictionary of Chinese Idiomatic Phrases, (Hong Kong: The Eton Press, 1964), p. 791. 33 I was unable to find any classical reference for Chance Meeting 89 35 Miss Chia's present of incense to her lover were things which happened in the Han and Chin dynasties. Again, in the T'ang dynasty there was 36 the tradition of \"Waiting for the Moon in the West Chamber.\" These stories were very popular. Historically, this type of thing was common but these few famous affairs were especially well known. Reader, how did later people regard this type of thing? \" I l l i c i t intercourse is the certain result of romances between men and women\"—this was the attitude of a l l later people! Surely, i f i l l i c i t intercourse is immoral, this type of immorality is only nurtured by taking excessive precautions! But ten or twenty years ago, how many people would have reasoned to this point? As the author of the b r i l l i a n t tract,\"\"The Women's Bell\":says: The rays of light of the mind Every day tortuously seek to extend themselves. If they cannot reach out to this, Then they w i l l reach out to that. Why would such a passionate and emotional g i r l be locked up year after year? Desiring proper social contacts and being denied them, once at East Gate (chieh-hou tung-men ). From the context i t seems obvious that i t refers to a story of an i l l i c i t love affair. Chuo Wen-chun ( J i t ) was a woman of the second century B.C. who was so charmed by Sze-ma Hsiangrju;s\"lute musict'that sherelpped with him. See the Ch'ien Han Shu, chuan 57:1, 1.2. 3 5 Miss Chia Wu, ( 'f f ), a Chin dynasty beauty, saw Shou Tzu-yung, and made him a present of incense, in other words, made the f i r s t advances. See Chung-kuo jen-ming ta tz'u-tien, (Shanghai: Shang-wu yin-shu-kuan, 1922), p. I, 328. 3 6 Hsi-hsiang chi ( & ) , a T'ang dynasty love story which was expanded into a play in the Yuan dynasty. It has been translated into English as The Romance of the Western Chamber, by S. I. Hsiung, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968). 90 she is given the opportunity, she finds i t even easier to have secret sexual relations. Society refuses to recognize that this is i t s own fault, and furthermore ridicules from the side and whips from behind. This is really too unreasonable. Then there are the so-called romantic scholars who could be for-giving towards the affairs of men and women; such incidents appear in many poems and songs. In the era of Ch'ien Lung (1736-1795), in Jenho hsien of Chekiang province, a g i r l of the Kao clan had sexual relations with her neighbour, a certain Mr. Ho, without her parent's knowledge. Later on, when Miss Kao was about to be married, she sent Ho away from her one day, and then hung herself from a beam. When Ho returned, he was greatly grieved; and took the rope and strangled himself. The two families abhorred this lack of propriety, and did not want to prepare the corpses for burial, but the d i s t r i c t magistrate, Master T'ang, at his own expense, bought coffins and buried them together. Moreover, he ordered the women scholars of the city to compose poetry to be chanted for them. (Some of the poems by Sun Yun-hsuan are found in The Women Disciples of Suiyuan (Sui-yuan nu-ti-tzu shih-hsuan f ^ l l ] \" ^ |\" £ *|-$t )• Although this can be considered forgiveness, the idea that \" I l l i c i t intercourse is the certain result of romances between men and women\" was 3 7 Sun Yun-hsuan ( II- ' T ) was a woman poet of the Ch'ing period, a disciple of Yuan Mei, ( % i t ) (1716-1798) the poet and owner of the \"Garden of Contentment\" (sui-yuan). Yuan broke with Confucian tradition by accepting women as pupils and publishing their poetry. See Arthur W. Hummel, ed., Eminent Chinese of the Ching Period, 1644-1912, (Washington, D.C., Government Printing Office, 1943-1944J7 p. 955-957, Vol. 2. 91 never completely eradicated from the mind of the Chinese people. After the 1898 year of Reform, thinking about rights for women had become very advanced. In large cities like Shanghai, there were many women students, and social contacts between men and women were becoming more free. Naturally, love affairs developed in this environ-ment. At the Patriotic Girls' School, there was a student called Wu Ch'i-te ( -1:4 f& ) who f e l l in love with Jao Fu-t'ing A ) (also called K'o-ch'uan, \"°T$$, ), a student at the Shanghai Public School. They decided to marry, but at the time of the marriage, someone said that Miss Wu was guilty of improper conduct. The rites of marriage consequently could not be performed. Wu saw that Jao doubted her, and realizing that there was no way to prove her innocence, she drank poison and died. She may be considered the f i r s t woman to be sacrificed in the cause of the new patterns in sexual relationships. Jao FuH'ing was one of the seventy-two martyrs of Huang Hua Kang. It is said that he devoted himself to the revolution in order to pay back his debt to Miss Wu. (See the f i r s t 6-7 pages of the supplement to A New History of Chinese Women.) B. The Second Period—After the 1911 Revolution At the sound of a great cannon blast in the afternoon of October tenth, 1911, the huge edifice of several thousand years of despotism began to crumble. Women, who had been oppressed for over two thousand years, took advantage of this opportunity to change their lives. The spring thunder woke a dragon which had been hibernating for so long that perhaps his eyes were dazed by the flash. Therefore, the contemporary women's rights movement did not succeed; but the experiment was a valuable part of women's history. 92 i. Enthusiastically Joining the Army Once the revolutionary army had occupied the three cities of Wuchang, i t s greatest need was for soldiers. On October 14th, a proclamation was sent out to summon a revolutionary army. Miss Wu Shu-ch'ing ( ) wrote to Li Yuan-hung [^JLiv'A ) saying that she wanted to join the army to devote her l i f e to service. Since the army was a l l male, Li thought that i t would be d i f f i c u l t to place her, and so politely refused. Shu-ch'ing, however, argued forcefully that there should be no discrimination between men and women; furthermore, draw-ing on the history of our country's soldiers, she talked with enormous courage. Li then ordered the levy of a separate women's army, with Shu-ch'ing in charge of i t . As soon as the proclamation was sent out, hundreds of people came to enlist. (See the supplement to A New History of Chinese Women). Several women's army brigades were established at this time; Ch'iu Chin's pupil, sister Yin Jui-chih ( ), organized a Chekiang Women's Army (Chekiang nii-tzu chiin y^j-jX-^r ^ ) which participated in the battle of Hangchow. She also bombed the Provincial Governor's yamen, want-38 ing to k i l l the Manchu Kuei Fu in order to avenge her teacher. Hsin Su-chen ( ^ l|, J[ ) and others organized a Women's National Army, (Nii kuo-min chun t^rllJtV.^ )» a Women's Suicide Squad\"1 (Nii-tzu chueh-ssu tui&#M$f>) and a Women's Assassination Squad (Nii-tzu an-sha tui &§~ P?K ) which were used to defend Wuchang, and also took part in the Nanking-Hankow 3 8 Kuei Fu ( Hlk ) was the Prefect of Shaohsing who was in charge of the capture and interrogation of Ch'iu Chin. 93 offensive. Shen Ching-yin ( y'fc^f^ ) and others raised a women's army at Shanghai. Aside from these, the most famous of the other brigades were the Women's Northern Expedition Brigade (Nii-tzu pei-fa tui ^ r ^ ^ t A ^ ) the Women's Military Regiment (Nu'-tzu chiin-shih t'uan f <&> \\ ^ \\j?£, f'.fj ^ .=); and the Women's Union (Nii-tze:.t'ung-'meng-hui\" '/.sj ^ ^ ) was the reorganized United Women's Military D r i l l Corps. Aside from these, there were also the 98 Shanghai Women's Pol i t i c a l Participation Comrades Association (Shanghai nii-tze ts'an-cheng tung-meng hui Jz & the Women's Re-inforcement Association (Nu-tze hou-yiian hui ^ Shih Shu-ch'ing ( & ) and others from the Institute of Law and Government, formed a liaison with students of the Women's Higher Normal School and began a movement for p o l i t i c a l participation. They held a preparatory meeting at the Institute of Law and Government on July 25th. Since there was disagreement, they s p l i t into two groups: Wan, Chou and others organized the Society for the Advancement of Women's Pol i t i c a l Participation (Nii-tzu ts'an-cheng hsieh-chin hui ^-^$0^ llk^T ) and those from the Women's Higher Normal School organized the Women's Rights Alliance (Nii-tzu yiin-tung t' ung-meng-hui ~k i^lM'^ 2^ % ). The new movement for political participation differed in method from that of the f i r s t year of the Republic; at that time i t was violent, this time i t was non-violent. However, the founding meeting of the Society for the Advancement of Pol i t i c a l Participation encountered police inter-ference and had no alternative but to become a lecture group with the intention of demanding women's participation in national politics after the formal opening of the National Assembly. In their declaration they Proposals\" calling for the reform of warlord government and the creation of a \"good government\" which would combine efforts to improve the welfare of the nation with guarantees of individual liberty. See Chow Tse-tsung, The May Fourth Movement, p. 240-241. 161 stated their aims: 1. To overthrow the constitution which was established exclusively for men, in order to demand protection of the rights of women. 2. lo destroy the inheritance rights which consider only male heirs, in order to achieve economic independence. 3. To destroy the educational system which is only concerned with managing the home, in order to achieve educational equality. Looking at this carefully, the f i r s t two items must be gained through changes in legislation, but the third item is not really necessary. There were no unequal regulations in the educational system established by the Republic. If the training at gi r l s ' schools was not the equal of that at boys' schools, this is the fault of current attitudes, not the fault of the system. Let me put aside my criticism and repeat their forthright slogan: We demand women's right to po l i t i c a l participation! The aims of the Women's Rights Alliance were more comprehensive than those of the Society for the Advancement of Po l i t i c a l Participa-tion. On the 13th of August, they gave a tea party at which they enter-tained press and academic circles, and gained their warm approval and praise. After a founding meeting on the 23rd, they held a series of public lectures and published a special report on the movement for women's rights. They were said to have three hundred members. Their proclamation stated seven principles: 1. All national educational organizations should be open to women. 2. Men and women should enjoy equally the constitutional rights of ci t i zens. 162 3. In c i v i l law, the relationship between husband and wife, the relationships between parents and children, inheritance rights, property rights, rights of action, etc. should a l l be greatly revised, according to the principle of male and female equality. 4. A marriage law based on sexual equality should be instituted. 5. Regulations concerning \"the age of consent\" and the consideration of those who take concubines as bigamists should be added to the criminal code. 6. Public prostitution, the sale of servant g i r l s , and the binding of women's feet should be prohibited. 7. Laws should be formulated to protect women workers in accordance with the principles of \"equal pay for equal work\" and \"the pro-tection of mothers.\" China's men and women have never enjoyed equal rights under the law. Women's conduct is restricted. As the ninth article of the Draft of the Civ i l Law says: On reaching maturity, one simultaneously achieves power of discrim-ination and the abili t y to act, however, wives are not in this category. Again, in the same law, the sixth and seventh articles say: In those matters which are not common household affairs, the wife must obtain her husband's permission. Thus, in the relationship of husband and wife, the woman is not independent by law. Women's hopes in regard to inheritance rights are extremely slight. If she has parents, a l l this goes without saying. If she does not have parents, then the property w i l l go to the oldest male in the family. If there are no sons and no male heirs, then the property must be handed down in a set sequence of inheritors, namely: 163 1) husband or wife 2) the lineal ascendant 3) an elder or younger brother of the family 4) the family head 5) a daughter of the family (Civil Law, Article 1,468) Since the daughter's status in the order of heirs is so low, she clearly has l i t t l e hope of inheriting property. Again, men and women are not equal in law on the question of divorce. The law recognizes the taking of concubines. The \"age of consent\" is nowhere regulated in Chinese criminal law, although i f a g i r l under ten years old has inter-course, we ordinarily regard this as rape. The idea of the \"age of consent\" is that i f a g i r l has intercourse with a man before reaching the legal age of consent, then no matter what the circumstances, she cannot be assumed to have given consent. The man must be considered to have seduced her and must suffer the punishment set by criminal law. Since no \"age of consent\" has been fixed in China, its maintenance is entirely dependent on popular sentiment, and thus i t cannot give young girls true protection. Trade in human beings and the business of keeping brothels hold women's stature in contempt and go against humanitarian!'sin. Moreover, there is not, in the laws of any country, the determination and methodology to thoroughly root out these two practices. In China, women's professions are s t i l l not absolutely free, and the narrow choice of professions is gradually becoming insupportable. Even when women do the same work as men i t is d i f f i c u l t for them to get the same wages. Further-more, the rearing of children does not have suitable protection. From the above types of unequal treatment we can see that i t is necessary that women demand pol i t i c a l participation. Even i f men are not 164 completely s e l f i s h , there are some areas which they either forget, or they neglect. These things forgiven, I do not know how long we would have to wait i f we had to depend solely on men to bring sexual equality: this is the basis of the suffrage movement. The suffrage movement is only a means, i t s end is the women's rights movement. After woman's suffrage has been put into effect, the rights of women can be extended. What effect w i l l this have on society, on the nation, on women themselves, on men, and on the world? Let us look: 1. The effect of women's suffrage on women's thought An elective system has a function of poli t i c a l education. After women have attained suffrage, they w i l l pay more attention to pol i t i c a l questions than in the past, in this way widening their viewpoint, in-creasing their knowledge, and heightening their powers of judgment. 2. The effect of women's suffrage on home l i f e Those who are opposed to women's rights assume that after women's suffrage is achieved, home l i f e must be greatly affected. They do not realize that unless a woman accepts the responsibility of being a p o l i t i -cian, the carrying out of elective duties is simple, and need not hinder the performance of domestic responsibilities. Again, some people fear that conflicts in the p o l i t i c a l views of husband and wife w i l l lead to separation over their differences. They do not realize that i f both men and women had poli t i c a l viewpoints, these viewpoints would have to be largely in agreement at the time of marriage. Because of this the relation-ship between husband and wife can, on the contrary be strengthened. 165 3. The influence of women's suffrage on women's rights After the achievement of pol i t i c a l rights, women's professional sphere w i l l be wider, they w i l l be able to f i l l a l l kinds of o f f i c i a l positions in Justice and State Administration, and w i l l find i t much easier to make a living. At that time there w i l l also be a few jobs in which the principle of \"equal pay for equal work\" can be put into effect. 4. Women's suffrage and the protection of women's rights and status After the achievement of suffrage, the property rights of married women can be made equal to those of men, so parents w i l l have no need to be stingy in educating g i r l s . Pregnant women and widows can be given special help, and a high \"age of consent\" can be set. 5. Women's suffrage and i t s contribution to the protection of children Feminists recognize that children's education, children's hygiene, the r e l i e f of poor children's distress, and problems of children'.s morality must wait for the achievement of women's suffrage before we can begin to find a statisfactory solution, for these problems are a l l closely related to women, and women's disposition and ab i l i t i e s can best help to thoroughly solve them. 6. Women's suffrage and the correction of men's vices A man's vices do not affect only himself; they indirectly harm his wife. Women who are demanding suffrage strongly advocate the pro-hibition of such things as prostitution, alcohol, gambling and opium. 166 7. Women's suffrage and its contribution to governmental morality Feminists assume that women are morally purer than men. If women enter p o l i t i c s , then they can sweep out corruption and improve the people's po l i t i c a l morality. This must be decided, however, on the basis of the level of men's poli t i c a l morality in each local area. If men's political morality were totally degraded, women might not necessar-i l y be able to maintain their purity in this base environment. 8. Women's suffrage and i t s contribution to world peace All those concerned with the future of mankind and with humani-tarianism place enormous hope in women. They assume that women far excel men in pacifist mentality, and that i f women's suffrage is allowed, perhaps mankind's wars can be eliminated. (The above viewpoints are from Wang Shih-chieh ( £.^t^ ), Research on Women's Suffrage (Nii-tzu ts'an-cheng chih yen-chiu fr%f-&£. z- * j ), (University of .'Peking, Publications Division.) The items outlined above are the theory behind the demand for women's suffrage. Although the movement far political participation has twice been defeated, women's po l i t i c a l participation must one day materialize i f China s t i l l wants to adopt the parliamentary system. Moreover, this day is not very far off. The earliest Kwangtung provisional provincial assembly provided limited electoral rights for women and a l l together chose ten women assembly members from one hundred and sixty famous women elected from the people. A few years ago, Hunan's provincial constitution 167 stipulated sexual equality, and Miss Wang Chang-kuo ( ) was 23 elected as a member of the assembly. Furthermore, Miss Ho Hsiang-nmg is the head of the Department of Industry in the latest Nationalist govern-ment. A l l of this proves that China's women have the a b i l i t y to take part in government, and that the po l i t i c a l stage can include women. Women's poli t i c a l participation i s , of course, a voluntary expression of a l l women and certainly does not limit i t s hopes to merely creating a number of women politicians. If those women who are fighting for po l i t i c a l participation do not use governmental positions for their own advancement, then their female comrades can trust them for the creation of their future happiness. v i i i . Women Under Ideal Socialism How could the l i f e of Chinese women ever be free or happy under the present dual oppression? In their struggle for a free l i f e , many people make every effort to support the birth of new systems and new organizations. Oxygen cannot be allowed to encounter f i r e , therefore the entrance and spread of socialism in China was met with undue alarm, 2 3 Ho Hsiang-ning ( /|£ ), 1880-1972. The wife of Liao Chung-k'ai, Ho was the f i r s t woman to join the T'ung-meng-hui. She took part in the First National Congress of the Kuomintang, i n January, 1924, with Soong Ching-ling and Ch'en Pi-chun (Mme. Wang Ching-wei) and was appointed director of the women's department of the party. She was elected to the Central Executive Committee of the Kuomintang in January, 19,26,. There is no mention of Ho as head of the Department of Industry ( M 4- ) in Boorman, or in the Gendai Chugoku Jimmei J i t e n / After the KMT/CCP s p l i t of 1927, she resigned her posts in the Kuomintang and moved to Hong Kong. She helped to found the Kuomintang Revolutionary Committee in 1948, and was Chairman of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Commission, 1949-1959. See Boorman, Biographical Dictionary, pp. 67-68, and Gendai Chugoku Jimmei Jiten, p. 114. 168 and, although there are very few Chinese socialists, socialist thought is extremely widespread. We certainly cannot predict the time at which socialism w i l l be realized in China, but even then, perhaps i t is not necessary that everyone in the country w i l l be socialist. Women's lives have already changed to some degree in the past ten years. In retrospect, i t seems that in the last three thousand years, women have leapt out of seventeen of the eighteen layers of hell. Once they have completed this last layer, they can ascend into paradise. This paradise is l i f e under socialism. We spoke previously of women seeking work, hindered by the home and without independence. This is caused by the primitive form of domestic organization which does not meet the needs of working women. A new kind of organization is absolutely necessary.y Women working outside the home is the certain result of social evolution. We cannot oppose i t s realization and must think of ways to relieve the d i f f i c u l t i e s of the transitional period, thereby hastening the appearance of the new organi-zation. Liu Pan-nung has spoken briefly about this new system in The New Youth magazine (V:2). It is worth speaking of in detail again today. In his book The History of Social Development, the great German sociologist Muller-Lyer speaks of how cumbersome the old domestic system i s , and how simple and convenient the new: Our homes have until now been like small businesses, with extremely fragmented direction. In sixty small households, there must be sixty women to manage domestic affairs, to go to the market to buy goods, to light the fires of sixty stoves, to adjust several hundreds of small cooking pots of food and wash countless utensils. More-over, because machines are s t i l l not suitable for use in these small 169 businesses, they must use tiresome hand labour. If they were in a combined household, one tenth of the women would be sufficient to handle this kind of work, and moreover handle i t better, more economically and less laboriously. If sixty small households united into one organic body, established a common kitchen and hired a cook, i t would be possible to produce more d i f f i c u l t dishes with more numerous processes, and with the least possible waste. Each household would be linked to this common kitchen by an elevator, and no matter what time people ordered the food and beverages they wanted i t would be prepared. In this greater domestic organization, labour-saving machines could be used. These machines have already been invented, but have not been adopted for use. A dishwasher can clean several hundred plates and pots in a few minutes; central heating can save the trouble of transporting coal; a vacuum cleaner can sweep up the household dust; and boot brushing machines, gas lights, electric lights, hot and cold running water, steam cleaners etc., can lighten a l l of women's hard and bitter duties over which they are so depressed at present. (See T'ao's translation, Commercial Press edition, p. 238). Muller-Lyer speaks in detail of the outstanding advantages of the new organization. The work of today's women in the small household is not only more laborious than this new system, but the loss to the nation in labour and material resources, calculated from an economic viewpoint, surely would amount to millions of dollars each day. The socialist family organization of the future is the same as that outlined above. Meta Stern Lilienthal, in Women of the Future says: In the future, there w i l l be no need for the women of twenty houses to prepare food in the kitchens of each home. They w i l l hire from society three or four men or women, and organize a kitchen and dining hall in a central place, using the best and most efficient methods to cook for these twenty households. The cooks w i l l a l l be specialists, having undergone suitable train-ing, like a physician, because they have a very important relation to the health of a society. The social status of cooks in the future w i l l be different from that of today's cooks. Unlike to-day's cook who is only a household slave, they w i l l a l l be well-educated people, and w i l l be public servants. (Ch'en's translation, Tientsin; Women's Daily Press Publishing Company edition, p. 24). 170 When cooking is socialized in this way, the remaining work like washing, ironing, sewing and sweeping can a l l be socialized. Since domestic work w i l l be completely moved into society and done by special-i s t s , the home of the future w i l l naturally become the sweetest place, and the most conducive to happiness. Women wi l l then have the maximum time to take part in society's work, and the opportunity to fully develop their free individuality. Because women of the future w i l l a l l go out into society to work, and w i l l receive ample wages, they w i l l be completely economically in-dependent, and w i l l not need to enter marriages of long-term prostitu-tion for food and clothing. Their work w i l l not be that of wage slaves, for the factories of that time w i l l be suitably healthy places, and people w i l l go and do a short period of labour voluntarily each day for amusement. The pay for this labour w i l l give women a secure and happy l i f e . The women of the future w i l l know marriage only as a love of free volition, the action of choosing a perfect companion. It w i l l have absolutely no other function. In the future, men and women who love each other w i l l not be prevented^from marrying because of economic hindrances. The women w i l l not have to wonder, \"Is this man able to pro-vide for me?\" because she w i l l provide for herself. The man w i l l have no need to worry about whether or not the woman can cook, (unless her profession is cooking), because he can eat in the public dining halls. With economic barriers eliminated, the body and the soul healthy, and knowledge sufficient, the conditions of l i f e w i l l naturally improve. Men 171 and women wi l l a l l have the opportunity to o f f i c i a l l y marry, and i t is unlikely that there w i l l be people thirty and forty years old who have remained single. Socialism holds that the marriage ceremony is not worth a cent. Men and women who marry in the future w i l l only need a legal declaration, and perhaps w i l l not want any ceremony. But people nowadays are very suspicious of this idea, supposing that these conditions make the develop-ment of marital chaos certain--eyen to the point of a man not knowing who his next day's wife w i l l be and children not being able to find out who their natural parents are. This idea is really only an il l u s i o n . There is no love that is not free; a l l that socialism advocates is the elimination of a r t i f i c i a l and unnecessary hindrances, so that the people concerned have the greatest right of free choice and no outside interfer-ence. If freedom of love is suspect, we must consider whether or not ci v i l i z e d mankind is promiscuous by nature. There are people today who have made a happy love match. Is the maintenance of their marriage com-pletely dependent upon national law and social morality? Do they want to abruptly renounce yesterday's loved one and seek a new lover for today? When you get down to the bottom of i t , does everyone, or do the majority of people, like a l i f e of insecurity, and are they willing to casually desert their loved ones? If you, reader, or your friends, have ever had a beloved companion, you can certainly test this. Your mutual love does not change because of changes in the law, and is solid irrespective of outside interference. It i s , therefore, not necessary to fear the abolish-ment of the marriage ceremony; i t w i l l do no harm to keep i t but we must make i t absolutely free. 172 After marriage, when a child is born, problems are bound to develop. The people in general suppose that \"public childcare\" cannot bring good results and are very suspicious of i t . In fact, socialist women do not surrender their child rearing responsibilities to others. Under socialism, pregnant women w i l l stop their work i f they are in poor health. From the time that the child is born until the time i t stops nursing, a l l mothers w i l l quit their work in society, and leave their professions to be mothers. The state w i l l not decrease their wages in the slightest. When the child is a l i t t l e older, the mother can take him to a nursery when she goes out to work, just as at present slightly older children are taken to kindergarten. The curriculum of these model nurseries is the deepest foundation of school education. Because a l l of the equipment must be the most suitable for children, and each teach-ing method must be able to withstand thorough research, the nurseries w i l l be even more beneficial for children than the most ideal of homes. The period that the child w i l l spend at the nursery each day w i l l be exact-ly the same as the period his mother spends at the factory, not exceeding five or six hours. When the mother has finished work, she can pi;ck her child up at the nursery and take him home. The governesses in nurseries w i l l , of course, have a very special-ized nursery school training, but a l l other women w i l l have s k i l l s in child-care. The socialist state w i l l have instruction and practice on a large scale in teaching methods and responsibilities toward children. Each woman must master chi 1 d-care—the study of children w i l l become a compulsory subject in women's education. Because a child in this way w i l l 173 be assured of good care from the moment of his birth, the same at home as in a nursery, the infant mortality rate w i l l be very low. Not only w i l l the infant mortality rate drop, but children's a b i l i t i e s w i l l be developed much more than they are at present, because young men and women w i l l a l l have received an education in how to be parents. While women ought to have the practical knowledge of \"good wives and mothers,\" men should also study the knowledge of \"good husbands and fathers.\" These terms w i l l not be used in the future, but, the meaning is really the same. Therefore, a l l parents w i l l know how to make the children of the future intelligent and healthy. A young wife w i l l feel that the hardships of raising a child are the most important and most sacred of a mother's duties. She w i l l , moreover, have the learn-ing and the interest to be equal to this work. Since women wi l l have the maximum opportunity to freely develop their individuality, and motherhood w i l l receive the maximum protection, thorough and deep liberation of women w i l l have been achieved. Not only w i l l women ascend from hell into paradise, but men, and in fact a l l of humanity, can rise dtnto paradise. The evolution of the l i f e of Chinese women is now headed in this direction. CHAPTER 3 EPILOGUE When I came to Shanghai this time, the type for this book had just been set. I was able to personally proofread i t , and moreover to make added revisions from Mr Hu's corrections which were of greatest interest to me. Last winter, when I finished writing the manuscript of this book, the National Revolutionary Army had just taken Hupeh and Kiangsi provinces and I l e f t Peking under \"the white sun and blue sky.\"1 That is now one year ago. In this one year, changes in the l i f e of women have been truly enormous. Under the leadership of the Kuomintang, the women's movement has made great strides. When I f i r s t went to Hankow and saw the women students in the Central Military and Pol i t i c a l School, or other cadre schools, with weapons and military uniforms, without powder or paint, like Mu Lan or ••2 Liang Yu come back to l i f e , I f e l t boundless admiration for them, but I could not escape from certain doubts. Although the traditional trappings of femininity are not the real l i f e demanded by real women, how can the 1 The Nationalist flag. 2 Ch'in Liang-yii ( %r^%. h ) was the wife of the Ming dynasty general Ma Ch'ien-ch'eng ( „| i - t ). A large woman, expert in horse-manship, she always dressed in men's clothing. After her husband's death she led his troops against rebel forces. Chung-kuo jen-ming ta tz'ugtien, p. 827. 174 175 obliteration of the female sex, and the adoption of a bold, swaggering walk so that people on the road cannot t e l l male from female, be the highest c r i t e r i a for women's l i f e ? At the same time I congratulated myself on being able to see this kind of thing, otherwise, I would have written a History of the Life of Women in vain. I had not dreamt that Chinese women would so soon advance this far. But there was l i t t l e good in later news. At the most the women in the army corps did some political work and at times they were actually a hindrance to the army's movements. Conservatives made a pretext of this to c r i t i c i z e the movement. By the time of the Kuomintang-Communist s p l i t , the Wuchang Central Military and Pol i t i c a l school was dispersed, and those women students who followed the fourth unit of the second army to Kiangsi were dispersed in Chiukiang. Having suffered this blow, they had to, as before, act the part of women. But this was only a momentary phenomenon; the seeds which they had scattered in the two fields of women's liberation and the opening of social intercourse were truly numerous. The Kuomintang sets forth clearly and in detail women's legal, 3 educational and economic equality in i t s platform. Therefore, absolute J The Women's Department of the Kuomintang was headed by Ho Hsiang-ning from 1924 to 1927, covering the period of the Northern campaign of which Ch'en writes. The most important arm of the women's department was the Women's Union, founded in 1925. In KMT held villages, the union tried to implement the principle of sexual equality that the party endorsed, usually by giving women support in family disputes. Their efforts to gain divorces for women who were mistreated by their husbands met with strong opposition from the peasants' unions, whose members saw their wives as property they could not afford to lose. In the conservative 176 freedom of marriage and divorce, the recognition of inheritance rights, the l i f t i n g of the prohibition against women from various organizations have a l l been realized in sequence. There are organizations such as women's associations everywhere, working for the protection of women's interests. The advantages to women of Kuomintang government are enor-mous. But true happiness must ultimately be created by women themselves. In today's China, both men and women s t i l l suffer from economic oppression combined with the oppression of clan law. Because economic conditions worsen daily and transportation and communication become daily more convenient, the system of clan law is close to bankruptcy. But even in death the corpse w i l l not s t i f f e n , and remnants of thought and customs do great harm. Of course women suffer even more because for them there is also sexual oppression. From the viewpoint of historical evolution, a l l periods are transitional periods. I do not pray that Chinese women w i l l someday reach the other shore, I only pray that their l i f e w i l l be daily more pro-gressive, more beautiful and happier! reaction;; which followed Chiang K'ai-shek's suppression of the Communist Party, the women's unions were destroyed and many of their members were tortured and ki l l e d . It is interesting the Ch'en makes no mention of the violence with which the women's movement was suppressed after the KMT/CCP s p l i t , and in fact, suggests that the movement was s t i l l making progress. Whether this was the result of fear of censorship, ignorance of the actual situation, or committment to the KMT government is d i f f i c u l t to determine. See \"Ho Hsiang-ning\" in Boorman, Biographical Dictionary, pp. 67-68. Paul Blanshard, \"Women of New China Loose their Age-old Shackles,\" China Weekly Review, December 12, 1927, pp. 72, 74. For a l i s t of the regulations adopted by the Women's Movement Committee of the Hupeh Provincial Kuomintang Union, see J. B. P., \"Chinese Women Take their Place in the Struggle for Freedom,\" China Weekly Review, May 21, 1927, pp. 312-314. 177 But I cannot bear to see either the prostitutes of the \"Green Lotus Pavillion\" and the hostesses of the \"Goddess World,\" or the women teachers who embrace celibacy for the sake of a salary of twenty odd dollars. And then there is the ultimate human tragedy of those surrounded by the power of clan law; young women who even now are accepting the ideal of chastity and the belief that widows must not remarry. These are the two grave problems in women's l i f e at present. Shanghai, December 1, 1927 Bibliography Because the study of feminism in early 20th century China is a relatively underdeveloped f i e l d with l i t t l e bibliographical informa-tion available, I have included in this bibliography not only works cited in the footnotes, but also those sources which gave useful back-ground information on the women's movement. I have briefly annotated the Chinese language sources, except those whose use is obvious from their inclusion in the footnotes. Western Language Sources I. Books: Ayscough, Florence. Chinese Women, Yesterday and Today. London: Jonathon Cape, 1938. Britton, Roswell S. The Chinese Periodical Press, 1800-1912. Taipei: Ch'eng-wen Publishing Company, 1966 (1933). Burton, Margaret. The Education of Women in China. New York: Fleming H. Revel 1 Company, 1911. Ch'en, Jerome. Yuan Shih-k'ai, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972. Chesneaux, Jean. The Chinese Labour Movement, 1919-1927. Translated by H. M. Wright. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1968. , ed. Popular Movements and Secret Societies in China, 1840-1950. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972. 178 179 Chesneaux, Jean. Secret Societies in China in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. Translated by Gillian Nettle. London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1971. Eberhard, Wolfram. The Chinese Silver Screen, Hong Kong and Taiwanese Motion Pictures in the 1960's. Asian Folklore and Social Life Monographs, Vol. XXIII. Taipei: The Orient Cultural Service, 1972. . Studies in Chinese Folklore and Related Essays. The Hague: Mouton & Co., 1970. Fang, Fu r lan . Chinese Labour. London: P. S. King & Son Ltd., 1931. Gasster, Michael. Chinese Intellectuals and the Revolution of 1911. Seattle,and London: University of Washington Press, 1969. Geddes, W. R. Peasant Life in Communist China. New York: The Society for Applied Anthropology, 1963. Hamberg, Rev. Theodore. The Visions of Hung-Siu-Tshuen, and Origin of the Kwang-si Insurrection. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1969 (1854). Hutchinson, Paul. China's Real Revolution. New York: Missionary Educa-tion ..Movement of the United States and Canada, 1924. Lang, Olga. Chinese Family and Society. Archon Books, 1968 (1946). Levy, J r . , Marion J. The Family Revolution in Modern China. New York: Atheneum, 1968. Leyda, Jay. Dianying, An Account of Fi1ms and the Film Audience in China. Cambridge, Mass: The M.I.T. Press, 1972. Lin Paotchin. L'instruction Feminine En Chine (Apres la Revolution de 1911). Paris: Librairie Geuthner, 1926. 180 Liu, Hui-chen Wang. The Traditional Chinese Clan Rules. New York: J. J. Augustin Incorporated, 1959. Purcell, Victor. The Boxer Uprising, A Background Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963. Rankin, Mary Backus.. Early Chinese Revolutionaries, Radical Intellectuals in Shanghai and Chekiang, 1902-1911. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971. Redfield, Robert. The L i t t l e Community. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1955. Rinden, Robert and Roxane Witke. The Red Flag Waves: A Guide to the Hung-ch'i p'iao-^p'iao Collection. Center for China Studies, China Research Monographs no. 3. University of California, Berkeley, 1968. Rowbotham?.Sheila.. Women, Resistance and Revolution. London: Allen Lane, The Penguin Press, 1972. Shih, Vincent Y. C. The Taiping Ideology. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1967. Sidel, Ruth. Women and Child Care in China. New York: H i l l and Wang, 1972. Snow, Helen Foster. The Chinese Communists, Sketches and Autobiographies of the Old Guard. Westport: Greenwood Publishing Company, 1972. . Women in Modern China. The Hague: Mouton and Co., 1967. Wakeman, J r . , Frederic. Strangers at the Gate, Social Disorder in South China, 1839-1861. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966. Wolf, Margery. Women and the Family in Rural Taiwan. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972. 181 II. Articles: Diamond, Norma. \"The Status of Women in Taiwan: One Step Forward, Two Steps Back.\" Women in China. Edited by Marilyn B. Young. Michigan Papers in Chinese Studies, no. 15. Ann Arbor: Center for Chinese Studies, the University of Michigan, 1973. Davin, Delia. \"Women in the Liberated Areas.\" Women in China. Leith, Suzette. \"Chinese Women in the Early Communist Movement.\" Women in China. Bernal, Martin. \"The Triumph of Anarchism over Marxism, 1906-1907.\" China in Revolution: The First Phase, 1900-1913. Edited by Mary C. Wright. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1968. Ch'en, Jerome. \"The Nature and Characteristics of the Boxer Movement--A Morphological Study.\" Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, XXIII (1960), 287-308. \"China's feminist'Movement:MI Current Scene, Vol. 9, no. 1 (Jan. 7, 1971), 18-19. Leboucq, P. \"Les Societes Secretes en Chine.\" Etudes, Series V, Vol. 7, (Nov. 1875), 197-220. Levy, Howard S. \"Yellow Turban Religion and Rebellion at the End of the Han.\" Journal of the American Oriental Society. Vol. 76 (1956), 214-227. O'Neill, W. \"Feminism as a Radical Ideology.\" Dissent, Explorations in the History of American Radicalism. Edited by Alfred Young. Delkalb: Northern I l l i n o i s University Press, 1968. Redfield, Robert. \"The Folk Society.\" American Journal of Sociology, Vol. LII (1946-47), 293-308. 182 \"Resolutions on the Women's Movement.\" Documents on Communism, National- ism and Soviet Advisors in China, 1918-1927. Edited by C. Martin Wilbur and Julie Lien-ying How. New York: Columbia University Press, 1956. \"Resolutions on the Women's Movement.\" Sixth CCP Congress, Moscow, 1928. Chinese Studies in History, Vol. 4, 229-240. Ruhlmann, Robert. \"Traditional Heroes in Chinese Popular Fiction.\" The Confucian Persuasion. Edited by Arthur Wright. Stanford: Stanford: University Press, 1960. Salaff, Janet W., and Judith Merkle. \"Women in Revolution: The Lessons of the Soviet Union and China.\" Berkeley Journal of Sociology, Vol. XV, (1970), 166-191. Skinner, G. William. \"Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China.\" Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 24 (November 1964, February 1965, and May 1965), pp. 3-43, 195-228, 363-399. Teng Ying-Ch'ao. \"Report on the Present Course and Tasks of the Chinese Women's Movement.\" Chinese Studies in History, Vol. 5, no. 2-3, (1972), 77-87. T'ien, Ju-k'ang. \"Female Labour in a Cotton M i l l / \" China Enters the Machine Age. Edited and translated by Fei Hsiao-tung and Francis L. K. Hsu. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1944. Tseng, Pao-swen. \"The Chinese Woman Past and Present.\" Symposium on Chinese Culture. Edited by Sophia H. Chen Zen. Shanghai: China Institute of Pacific Relations, 1931. Witke, Roxane. \"Woman as Politicians in China of the 1920s.\" Women in China. 183 III. Newspapers: The North China Herald (Shanghai), January 1895-December 1930. The China Weekly Review (Shanghai), January 1919-December 1930. esp. Blanshard, Paul. \"Women of New China Loose Their Age-old Shackles.\" December 1927. Booker, Edna Lee. \"Madame Wu Pei-fu.\" July 29, 1922. J.B.P. \"Chinese Women Take Their Place in the Struggle for Freedom.\" May 21, 1927. IV. Unpublished Materials: Beahan, Charlotte L. \"The Women's Press in China Prior to the Revolution of 1911.\" Draft of a paper prepared for a conference on \"Women in Chinese Society.\" San Francisco, June 11-15, 1973. Sponsored by the Joint Committee on Contemporary China of the American Council of Learned Societies and the Social Science Research Council. Pan Yuh-cheng. The Position of Women in T' ai-p' ing T',ien-kuo. Unpub-lished Master's thesis, University of British Columbia, 1971. Witke, Roxane H. Transformation of Attitudes Toward Women During the May Fourth Era of Modern China. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 1970. Chinese Language Sources I. Books: Chao Feng-chieh '-IL . Chung-kuo fu-n'u tsai fa-lu shang chih ti-wei ^ -ttr h. }i i.HMi(The Legal Status of Chinese Women). Shanghai: Shang-wu yin-shu-kuan, 1928. A history of women's legal status with a short section on post 1911 changes. ' 184 Ch1 en Tung-yuan P J |t7£ . Chung-kuo fu-nii sheng-huo shih *f esi^ x£r 1 ^ (A History of the Life of Chinese Women). Shanghai: Shang-wu yin-shu-kuan, 1928. Hsu Tsung-tse l?t%^ > ed. Fu-nii wen-t'i tsa-p'ing Uj. %\\l vfy (Notes and Comments on the Women's Question). Shanghai: Sheng-chiao tsa-chih she, 1931. A collection of articles concerned with the social aspects of women's liberation: in marriage, morals, education. Mei Sheng Jfy ± ed. Chung-kuo fu-nii wen-t'i t'ao-lun chi ^ ^ ffi •$! f<[ fj$~ |[ (Collected Discussions on the Chinese Women's Question). Shanghai: Hsin-wen-hua shu-she, 1924-1928. A collection of articles primarily concerned with the problems of education, chastity, freedom of marriage and struggles against the old style family. Mei Sheng 4^ ^£ ed. Nu-hsing wen-t'i yen-chiu chi ^ ^ J ; (Collected Research on the Women's Question). Shanghai: Hsin-wen-hua shu-she, 1928. A later collection, essentially concerned with the same problems as Chung-kuo fu-nii wen-t'i t'ao-lun chi. P'i I-shu )K.^K% Chung-kuo fu-nii yun-tung ^ i j | \"f^ (The Chinese Women's Movement). Taipei: Fu-lien hua kan she, 1973. The author sees the women's movement as a product of modern nationalism, and emphasises the role of the T'ung-meng-hui and Kuomintang. II. Articles: ^ Chang Hsi-shen \"Chung-kuo fu-nii szu-hsiang vteyfa-ta.\" l U tf^^Si^ ( T h e Development of thought of Chinese 185 Women). Fu-nu wen-t'i shih-chianq r#r f^] 1^ \\ f j | (Ten Discussions on the Woman Question). By Homma Hisao, Shanghai: Fu-nii wen-t'i yen-chiu hui, 1924. Hsiang Chin-yu \\£) j \"Chung-kuo chih-shih fu-nii te san p'ai.\" * f i f l h tfi-&fy rtr 3. y(K ( T n , r ? e e G r o « P s o f W o m e n i n China). Fu-nii nien-chien $^ -fr ;|^. (Women's Yearbook). Edited by Mei Sheng ^ , Shanghai: Hsin-wen-hua shu-she, 1924. . \"Chung-kuo tsui-chin fu-nii yiin-tung.\" ^ t ^ ^ i ^ t y ^ -ir \\i ^ e Contemporary Women's Movement in China). Fu-nii ,nien-chien. . \"Shanghai nii-ch'uan yiin-tung chin-hou ying chu-i te san chien shih.\" V. y\\ tfi ^llfHi t & | (Three Things the Shanghai Women's Rights Movement Should Concentrate O n ^ F r o m t r N o w 0n> Fu-nii nien-chien. Sun T'a J^t \"Chung-kuo f u - n i i yiin-tung chih chin-pu.\" Kf l$[ 0j -&r i f ^ 1?^ z . (Progress in the Chinese Women's Move-ment). Fu-nii tsa-chih ^ ^ (The Ladies Journal) Vol IX, (January, 1923). Wu Yu-chang Jp \"Chung-kuo f u - n i i tsai wu szu yun-tung-chung tsou-shang-le tzu-chi chieh-fang te tao-lu\" ^ |^ df^ -jt ~f±. d~. ^ i|f^ ^ i ^ J 6 If 4 ^ -- (During the May Fourth movement,\"Chinese women begin to'stand on theifccown feet.)' Fu-nu yiin- tung wen-hsien - ^ r ^ ^^^.(iArchTvescon'the'women's movement. Hong K6ngc!iHsin-min-chuheh'u-pan-she, 1949. Arguing from economic determinism, Wu Yu-chang sees the develop-ment o f Chinese industry during the f i r s t world war as the material basis for the women's movement o f the May Fourth period. "@en ; edm:hasType "Thesis/Dissertation"@en ; edm:isShownAt "10.14288/1.0099904"@en ; dcterms:language "eng"@en ; ns0:degreeDiscipline "History"@en ; edm:provider "Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library"@en ; dcterms:publisher "University of British Columbia"@en ; dcterms:rights "For non-commercial purposes only, such as research, private study and education. Additional conditions apply, see Terms of Use https://open.library.ubc.ca/terms_of_use."@en ; ns0:scholarLevel "Graduate"@en ; dcterms:title "History of the life of Chinese Women : the development of Chinese feminism"@en ; dcterms:type "Text"@en ; ns0:identifierURI "http://hdl.handle.net/2429/18843"@en .