scholarly journals Writing for Justice: An Activist Beginning of the Cult of Female Chastity in Late Imperial China

2012 ◽  
Vol 71 (4) ◽  
pp. 991-1012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Siyen Fei
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Female Agency ◽  
Late Imperial China ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Late Ming ◽  
Imperial China

This article examines the rise of the chastity cult—the quintessential symbol of patriarchal suppression of female agency for modern reformers—during the sixteenth century. Despite the resultant stricter control over female sexuality, the growing dominance of the chastity cult cannot be simply construed as a product of top-down imposition. What made possible the penetrative power of chastity practice, this article argues, was a state indoctrination working in reverse. That is, the fast ascendance of the chastity cult in the late Ming was powered by various strains of activism that sought to protest and repair the failing system of chastity awards. The activist impetus greatly enhanced the centrality and influence of chastity practice in social life and, in doing so, opened the notion of chastity to contentious and sometimes subversive negotiations.

Gender and Social Life in Imperial China

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Weijing Lu
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Social Classes ◽  
Secret Societies ◽  
Late Imperial China ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Imperial Period ◽  
Imperial China ◽  
Foot Binding ◽  
Local Traditions ◽  
Native Place

Social life in imperial China was structured on the Confucian gender principles of the separation of male and female and the division of “inner and outer” spheres. Homosociality prevailed while heterosociality was limited. Homosociality dominated the forms and manners of social interaction. Men moved around freely and faced little constraint in forging relationships and networks, while women were largely homebound and secluded. In general, women enjoyed more physical freedom in earlier imperial times than in late imperial China, when seclusion of women intensified thanks to the rise of the female chastity cult and the spread of the practice of foot-binding. But even in the late imperial period, women were able to form networks and communities, in person or by means of writing. Local traditions and stages in the life cycle influenced women’s lived experiences of socialization, and class also played an important part in social life for both men and women. For example, education and a government career provided main venues for elite male socialization but for the men in lower social classes, their networks were built around localized institutions such as temple associations, sworn brotherhood, secret societies, and native place association.

The Surface—Subsoil Form of Divided Ownership in Late Imperial China: Some Examples from the New Territories of Hong Kong

1987 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. E. Palmer
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Land Reform ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Central China ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Late Imperial China ◽  
Principal Characteristics ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Imperial China

This paper is a study of certain aspects of land tenure in late imperial China. An extensive literature has evolved in recent years on the relationship between traditional forms of landholding and rural social structure in the irrigated rice-growing areas of southeastern and central China. In particular, the pronounced separation of‘rights to the surface’ (tianmianquan) and ‘rights to the subsoil’ (tiandiquan), which was common in many regions until its elimination as a result of the land reform campaigns of the People's Republic during the early 1950s, has attracted the interest of a growing number of sinological historians and anthropologists. I analyze here some of the principal characteristics of this traditional Chinese method of dividing property rights in land as they were found in the pre-British New Territories of Hong Kong. I also give consideration to those areas of the existing literature which seem especially relevant to my interpretation of the local manifestations of this extremely important feature of Chinese social life.

Gender, Technical Innovation, and Gu Family Embroidery in Late-Ming Shangha

2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-130
Author(s):  
I-Fen Huang
Keyword(s):  
Technical Innovation ◽  
Late Imperial China ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Late Ming ◽  
Shanghai Museum ◽  
The Feminine ◽  
Art And Culture ◽  
Technical Innovations ◽  
Imperial China

This paper takes Gu Family embroidery as a case study to discuss the contribution of technical innovation to the construction of gender in late imperial China so as to better understand Guxiu in its technical, social, and artistic contexts. Focusing on the Flowers and Fishes album (dated 1641, Shanghai Museum) by Han Ximeng, I argue that Gu family ladies, such as Han Ximeng, used embroidery as a means to display their individual creativity; and, further, by means of technical innovations, contributed not only to their family finances but also to the art and culture of late Ming Shanghai. While some of the technical innovations that the Gu family ladies achieved were driven by the desire to meet the literati aesthetic of their time, eventually, in the case of Han Ximeng, she went beyond the literati taste for ‘painting-like’ embroidery to assert the special qualities of embroidery. By affirming her own authorship, drawing attention to the feminine medium in which she worked and claiming the significance of her work with a carefully chosen subject, Han subverted the conventions of male painting in subtle ways and demonstrated her subjectivity.

The World of Prostitution in Late Imperial Austria

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy M. Wingfield
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Sexual Coercion ◽  
Female Sexuality ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Female Agency ◽  
Economic Decision ◽  
Fallen Woman ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
The World ◽  
Forced Movement

This book encompasses the world of prostitution in late imperial Austria. It addresses female agency and experience, contemporary fears about sexual coercion and the forced movement of girls and women, and police surveillance. Prostitution is analyzed at three different, but interlinked levels: subjectivity, society, and state. Rather than treating prostitutes solely as victims or problems to be solved, in contrast to much of the historical literature, it seeks to find the historical subjects behind fin-de-siècle constructions of prostitutes, to restore agency to the women who participated in various kinds of commercial sex, illuminate their everyday experiences, and place these women, some of whom made the reasoned economic decision to sell their bodies, in a larger social context. It investigates their interactions with the police and other supervisory agents, as well as with other inhabitants of their world, rather than focusing on the state-constructed apparatus of surveillance from the top down. Many Austrian prostitutes came from artisan and working-class, often impoverished backgrounds. They faced a complicated array of constraints that shaped the environment in which they made decisions, including lack of other economic opportunities, of education, of legal equality with men as well as legal dependence on their fathers and husbands. Despite entrenched beliefs about female sexuality and the “fallen” woman, prostitution, clandestine or regulated, was a viable choice for some women of limited economic circumstances when faced with the alternatives: low-paid, often dangerous employment in a factory, in a night café or inn, or as a servant.

The Emaciated Soul: Four Women’s Self-Inscriptions on Their Portraits in Late Imperial China

NAN Nü ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-69
Author(s):  
Yuanfei Wang
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
The Self ◽  
Female Subjectivity ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Imperial China ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Late Ming ◽  
Late Eighteenth ◽  
Imperial China

Abstract This article examines the emaciated self-images of four women’s self-inscription poems on their own portraits. They are Huang Hong (early seventeenth century), Xi Peilan (1760­­­–after 1829), Tan Yinmei (fl. mid-eighteenth to early nineteenth century) and Zheng Lansun (1819-61). These women similarly describe their self-images as qiaocui (emaciated), alluding to the legendary girl poet Feng Xiaoqing. Inherently ambivalent, qiaocui could imply sexual and erotic appeal, the virtuous mind of a recluse, sickness, ordinariness, melancholy, as well as aging and death. The article argues for the importance of the rhetoric of qiaocui and the topoi of Feng Xiaoqing in the self-inscriptions by women in Hangzhou and the broader Jiangnan region as a medium to construct their female subjectivity. This article suggests that, initially a persona publicly circulated in the late Ming, the topoi of Feng Xiaoqing came to define the women’s personhood in private spaces in late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

From Tradition to Community: The Rise of Contemporary Knowledge in Late Imperial China

2019 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Vedal
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual Culture ◽  
Specialized Knowledge ◽  
Late Imperial China ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Literature Reviews ◽  
Sources Of Authority ◽  
Imperial China ◽  
Scholarly Collaboration

This article examines the emergence of a new emphasis on contemporary specialized knowledge in sixteenth-century China. During this period, sources of authority such as antiquity and the court came to lose their elevated status. As a result, scholars increasingly saw the expertise of a contemporary disciplinary community as a superior standard for validating knowledge. This trend appeared in scholarly collaboration and the citation of contemporaries, as well as new kinds of paratextual materials such as lists of works cited and literature reviews. These findings on new intellectual communities in the sixteenth century call for a reassessment of the better-documented shifts in East Asian intellectual culture from the mid-eighteenth century to the present.

Popular Culture in Late Imperial China

1985 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith A. Berling ◽  
James Hayes ◽  
Robert E. Hegel ◽  
Leo Ou-fan Lee ◽  
Victor H. Mair ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Late Imperial China ◽  
Late Imperial ◽  
Imperial China
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