China Books

Through the lens of modern Chinese literature, Gender Politics in Modern China explores the relationship between gender and modernity, notions of the feminine and masculine, and shifting arguments for gender equality in China Ranging from interviews with contemporary writers, to historical accounts of gendered writing in Taiwan and semi-colonial China, to close feminist readings of individual authors, these essays confront the degree to which textual stategies construct notions of gender. Among the specific themes discussed are: how femininity is produced in texts by allocating women to domestic space; the extent to which textual production lies at the base of a changing, historically specific code of the feminine; the extent to which women in modern Chinese societies are products of literary canons; the ways in which the historical processes of gendering have operated in Chinese modernity vis a vis modernity in the West; the representation of feminists as avengers and as westernized women; and the meager recognition of feminism as a serious intellectual current and a large body of theory Originally published as a special issue of Modern Chinese Literature (Spring & Fall 1988), this expanded book represents some of the most compelling new work in post-Mao feminist scholarship and will appeal to all those concerned with understanding a revitalised feminism in the Chinese context (For this item please quote stock ID 4274) ISBN: 9780822313892

Description not available (For this item please quote stock ID 4276) ISBN: 9780822364245

Spanning the century from the Taiping Rebellion through the establishment of the People's Republic of China, this is the first comprehensive history of women in modern China. Its scope is broad, encompassing political, economic, military, and cultural history, and drawing upon Chinese and Japanese sources untapped by Western scholars. The book presents new information on a wide range of topics: the impact of Western ideas on women, especially in education; the importance of women in the labour force; the relative independence enjoyed by some women textile workers; the struggle against footbinding; the influence of anarchism; the participation of women's brigade in the Revolution of 1911; the role of women in the May Fourth Movement; the differencwes between the more assertive women of south China and the 'traditional' women of the North in organising for political action; the involvement of peasant women in insurgency and anti-Japanese struggles in the countryside; and the effects of the Marriage Law of 1950. The author has contributed a new preface to this English edition, and Joshu A. Fogel and Susan Mann have written an introduction that places the book in the context of studies of Chinese women, Japanese sinology, and women's history in general. The book has extensive notes, a bibliography, and, as an appendix, a chronology of the history of women in modern China. (For this item please quote stock ID 4486) ISBN: 9780804714976

In this feminist history of eight centuries of private life in China, Francesca Bray inserts women into the history of technology and adds technology to the history of women. Bray takes issue with the Orientalist image that traditional Chinese women were imprisoned in the inner quarters, deprived of freedom and dignity, and so physically and morally deformed by footbinding and the tyrannies of patriarchy that they were incapable of productive work. She proposes a concept of gynotechnics, a set of everyday technologies that define women's roles, as a creative new way to explore how societies translate moral and social principles into a web of material forms and bodily practices. Bray examines three different aspects of domestic life in China, tracing their developments from 1000 to 1800 A.D. She begins with the shell of domesticity, the house, focusing on how domestic space embodied hierarchies of gender. She follows the shift in the textile industry from domestic production to commercial production. Despite increasing emphasis on women's reproductive roles, she argues, this cannot be reduced to childbearing. Female hierarchies within the family reinforced the power of wives, whose responsibilities included ritual activities and financial management as well as the education of children. (For this item please quote stock ID 4666) ISBN: 9780520208612

The Western Eyes are not those of Mimi Chan, but of the non-Chinese writers, novelists in particular, who have contributed to the creation of images of varying degrees of accuracy of Chinese women. After a brief but illuminating resume of images of China and the Chinese from the 18th and 19th centuries, from Crusoe to Colleridge's 'Kubla Khan', Mimi Chan turns her attention to the work of several popular (and therefore influential) 20th century novelists. (For this item please quote stock ID 5069) ISBN: 9789620407260

Provides a scholarly overview of women's status in Hong Kong from a gender perspective. The contributors are associated with the Gender Research Programme at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The chapters offer substantive analyses on the indicators of women's status, including education, work, division of domestic labour, gender roles, women's movement, and public policies affecting women. The historical-cultural context of women's status and the cross-cultural relevance of women's studies are also examined. This book embraces both longitudinal as well as cross-sectional perspectives, and includes both quantitative and qualitative materials. It is not only a scholarly document on Chinese women in Hong Kong, but also a statement marking their changing status. Readers interested in women's issues, gender studies, and Chinese studies will find this book a useful reference. (For this item please quote stock ID 5398) ISBN: 9789622017368

The Sung dynasty (960-1279) was a paradoxical era for Chinese women. This was a time when footbinding spread, and Confucian scholars began to insist that it was better for a widow to starve than to remarry. Yet there were also improvements in women's status in marriage and property rights. In this thoroughly original work, one of the most respected scholars of premodern China brings to life what it was like to be a woman in Sung times, from having a marriage arranged, serving parents-in-law, rearing children, and coping with concubines, to deciding what to do if widowed. Focusing on marriage, Patricia Buckley Ebrey views family life from the perspective of women. She argues that the ideas, attitudes, and practices that constituted marriage shaped women's lives, providing the context in which they could interpret the opportunities open to them, negotiate their relationships with others, and accommodate or resist those around them. Ebrey questions whether women's situations actually deteriorated in the Sung, linking their experiences to widespread social, political, economic, and cultural changes of this period. She draws from advice books, biographies, government documents, and medical treatises to show that although the family continued to be patrilineal and patriarchal, women found ways to exert their power and authority. No other book explores the history of women in pre-twentieth-century China with such energy and depth. (For this item please quote stock ID 6671) ISBN: 9780520081581

This collection presents new research on the changing roles of women in Japan and Korea. At a time when women in these two countries are becoming more politically and socially prominent, these essays provide insight into the clashes that have arisen between tradition and change. The contributors compare similarities and differences in the two cultures, considering family life, education, health care, work, reproductive and legal rights, and political participation, including the rise of women's movements in Asia and the battle against sexism and gender stereotyping. Essays written by Japanese and Korean women, leading social scientists and practitioners, illuminate the current political, economic, and social status of women in Japan and Korea. (For this item please quote stock ID 7334) ISBN: 9781566392242

Christina Kelley Gilmartin rewrites the history of gender politics in the 1920s with this compelling assessment of the impact of feminist ideals on the Chinese Communist Party during its formative years. For the first time, Gilmartin reveals the extent to which revolutionaries in the 1920s were committed to women's emancipation and the radical political efforts that were made to overcome women's subordination and to transform gender relations. Women activists whose experiences and achievements have been previously ignored are brought to life in this study, which illustrates how the Party functioned not only as a political organisation but as a subculture for women as well. We learn about the intersection of the personal and political lives of male communists and how this affected their beliefs about women's emancipation. Gilmartin depicts with thorough and incisive scholarship how the Party formulated an ideological challenge to traditional gender relations while it also preserved aspects of those relationships in its organisation. (For this item please quote stock ID 7433) ISBN: 9780520203464

The first detailed treatment of the Chinese homosexual tradition in any Western language, Passions of the Cut Sleeve shatters preconceptions and stereotypes. Gone is the image of the sternly puritanical Confucian as sole representative of Chinese sexual practices - and with it the justification for the modern Chinese insistence that homosexuality is a recent import from the decadent West. Rediscovering the male homosexual tradition in China provides a startling new perspective on Chinese society and adds richly to our understanding of homosexuality. Bret Hinsch's reconstruction of the Chinese homosexual past reveals unexpected scenes. An emperor on his deathbed turns over the seals of the empire to a male beloved; two men marry each other with elaborate wedding rituals; parents sell their son into prostitution. The tradition portrays men from all levels of society - emperors, transvestite actors, rapists, elegant scholars, licentious monks, and even the nameless poor. Drawing from dynastic histories, erotic novels, popular Buddhist tracts, love poetry, legal cases, and joke books, Passions of the Cut Sleeve evokes the complex and fascinating male homosexual tradition in China from the Bronze Age until its decline in recent times. (For this item please quote stock ID 7979) ISBN: 9780520078697

(For this item please quote stock ID 8089) ISBN: 9780804714310

Since 1978, reform policies introduced in rural China have had a profound impact on women's work and gender divisions of labour. This book provides detailed information on the shifts in women's work patterns that have occurred. It explains how and why these shifts have come about, and how they relate to other aspects of women's position in society. While other aspects of reform in rural China have been analysed extensively, this is one of very few, and to date the most comprehensive, studies of the effects of reform on rural women. (For this item please quote stock ID 8466) ISBN: 9780521599283

A groundbreaking new work on the role of women in traditional Chinese culture. It takes into account women?s roles in the development of Chinese society, using a cross-disciplinary approach that merges economics, sociology, cultural issues, and family life to create a new view of Chinese women. Excellent reference for research in women?s studies and Chinese history. (For this item please quote stock ID 10859) ISBN: 9787500417415

Agnes Smedley, author of Daughter of Earth worked in and wrote about China from 1928 to 1941. These 18 pieces - all out of print and most unavailable even in public libraries - are based on interviews with revolutionary women. They include descriptions of the massacre of feminists in the Canton commune, of the silk workers of Canton whose solidarity earns them the charge of lesbianism, and of Mother Tsai, a 60-year-old peasant who leads village women in smashing an opium den. (For this item please quote stock ID 12765) ISBN: 9780912670447

Some 2,000 women participated in the Long March, but their experience of this seminal event in the history of Communist China is rarely represented. In Choosing Revolution, Helen Praeger Young presents her interviews with twenty-two veterans of the Red Army's legendary 6,000-mile 'retreat to victory' before the advancing Nationalist Army. Enormously rich in detail, Young's Choosing Revolution reveals the complex interplay between women's experiences and the official, almost mythic version of the Long March. In addition to their riveting stories of the march itself, Young's subjects reveal much about what it meant in China to grow up female and, in many cases, poor during the first decades of the twentieth century. In speaking about the work they did and how they adapted to the demands of being a soldier, these women reveal the Long March as only one of many segments of the revolutionary paths they chose. Against a background of diverse perspectives on the Long March, Young presents the experiences of four women in detail: one who brought her infant daughter with her on the Long March, one who gave birth during the march, one who was a child participant, and one who attended medical school during the march. Young also includes the stories of three women who did not finish the Long March. Her unique record of ordinary women in revolutionary circumstances reveals the tenacity and resilience that led these individuals far beyond the limits of most Chinese women's lives. 'In examining the lives of these women, we ourselves come to have a richer, more human, and more believable understanding of the Long March. Highly recommended.' - Lyman P. Van Slyke, author of Yangtze: Nature, History, & the River Helen Praeger Young is an associate scholar in the Center for East Asian Studies at Stanford University. (For this item please quote stock ID 16067) ISBN: 9780252026720

Centering on five life stories by Chinese women activists born just after the turn of this century, this first history of Chinese May Fourth feminism disrupts the Chinese Communist Party's master narrative of Chinese women's liberation, reconfigures the history of the Chinese Enlightenment from a gender perspective, and addresses the question of how feminism engendered social change cross-culturally. In this multilayered book, the first-person narratives are complemented by a history of the discursive process and the author's sophisticated intertextual readings. Together, the parts form a fascinating historical portrait of how educated Chinese men and women actively deployed and appropriated ideologies from the West in their pursuit of national salvation and self-emancipation. As Wang demonstrates, feminism was embraced by men as instrumental to China's modernity and by women as pointing to a new way of life. (For this item please quote stock ID 16478) ISBN: 9780520218741

In Compositional Subjects Laura Hyun Yi Kang explores the ways that Asian/American women have been figured by mutually imbricated modes of disciplinarity, representation, and knowledge production. Kang's project is simultaneously interdisciplinary scholarship at its best and a critique of the very disciplinary formations she draws upon. She shows how several disciplines ? including literature and cinema studies, history, and the social sciences and political economy ? mediate the parameters of knowledge about Asian/American women. Kang begins by showing how different disciplines construct the figure of the Asian/American woman, each privileging different modes of subjection. She explores the issue of writing the self, studying the Asian/American woman as autobiographical presence through the vexed and voluminous writings about Maxine Hong Kingston's book The Woman Warrior. Kang then turns to cinematic representations of Asian/American women. She looks at three films where an Asian/American woman is the heroine and desired body, and then turns to the broader issue of representing and interpreting Asian/American women through distinctly American modes of cinematic production. Moving from cinema studies to history, Kang looks at the ways that the Asian/American woman emerged as a U.S. citizen over the past 150 years or so, reading immigration policies from the mid-19th century up through the present. Next Kang reads several notable recent texts by social scientists interested in discourses about transnational assembly line work, sex tourism, and military prostitution; she finds that these texts tend to naturalise the very exploitation of the Asian women workers that they critique Finally, Kang examines selected cultural productions by Korean women located within and across the nation-state borders of Korea, the U.S., and Canada, which critically and creatively contend with the fraught issues regarding identity and representation that are explored throughout the book. She ends by pointing to how these works can point toward new questions about the epostemological protocols of interdisciplinary fields such as Asian American studies, American studies, and women's studies 'Laura Kang's poised and tactful critique will greatly advance our understanding of the important social crises figured in the representation of "Asian" women within the discourses of literary studies, cinema, history and historiography, and social science throughout the last century. Compositional Subjects is both a critique of the ideological and epistemological stakes of disciplinary formations and a bold exemplary work of interdisciplinarity itself' - Lisa Lowe, author of Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics. (For this item please quote stock ID 17854) ISBN: 9780822328544

This book is the first comprehensive analysis of Chinese masculinity. Kam Louie uses the concepts of wen (cultural attainment) and wu (martial valour) to explain attitudes to masculinity. This revises most Western analyses of Asian masculinity that rely on the yin-yang binary. Examining classical and contemporary Chinese literature and film, the book also looks at the Chinese diaspora to consider Chinese masculinity within and outside China. Key Features: >Is the first comprehensive and theoretical examination of Chinese masculinty >Has insightful analyses of significant Chinese figures such as Confucius and modern writers such as Lao She and Ding Ling in terms of masculinity >Looks at the transformations of Chinese masculinity ideals in China and in the West. Contents: >Introducing wen-wu: Towards a Definition of Chinese Masculinity >Portrait of the God of War Guan Yu: Sex, Politics & Wu Masculinity >Confucius as Sage, Teacher, Businessman: Transformations of the Wen Icon >Scholars & Intellectuals: Representations of Wen Masculinity Past & Present >The Working-class Hero: Images of Wu in Traditional & Post-Mao Fiction >Women?s Voices: The Ideal ?Woman?s Man? in the Twentieth Century >Lao She?s The Two Mas and Foreign Wives: Constructing wen Masculinity for the Modern World >Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan & Chow Yun Fat: Internationalising Wu Masculinity >Wen-wu Reconstructed: Chinese Masculinity Hybridised & Globalised ?Theorising Chinese Masculinity is an excellent and much-needed account of masculinity in Chinese society and beyond. It will be widely read and cited.? - William Jankowiak, University of Nevada (For this item please quote stock ID 18422) ISBN: 9780521806213

Since the early 1980s sex and sexuality have become prominent themes of public debate in China, after three decades during which discourses on sexuality were subject to stringent ideological controls. This book analyses the ways in which sex and sexuality have been discussed in The People's Republic of China since 1949. It examines a wide range of materials - the official and popular press, women's magazines, sex education publications, self-help guides and medical advice pamphlets - and compares and contrasts the various discourses of sexuality and the meanings associated with 'woman' that emerge from them. It considers the role of the state in matters of sexuality, and argues that women's sexuality has been consistently targeted as a site for the regulation of general standards of sexual and social conduct. This is a highly original contribution to the growing body of literature on women and gender in China. It will appeal to students and scholars of modern and contemporary China, and to all those engaged in current debates about sexuality and gender in international feminist scholarship. (For this item please quote stock ID 18806) ISBN: 9780745613987

While the concept of 'gender equality' has become increasingly popular in the global village at the beginning of the new millennium, it still primarily represents a beautiful dream. Shanshan Du suggests that by shifting our attention away from Eurocentric utopias, we may be surprised to learn that gender-egalitarian societies do exist, despite their scarcity and imperfection. This book explores one of the few cultures in which gender unity and gender equality prevail both in practice and in the belief system. Du argues that the Lahu people of southwestern China provide an example of such a gender ideal, vividly expressed by their proverb, 'chopsticks only work in pairs'. Extensive fieldwork and interviews demonstrate the gender unity in labor allocation and leadership, reproductive activities, and gender relations generally. (For this item please quote stock ID 19167) ISBN: 9780231119573

In early 20th century China, age-old traditions of homosocial and homoerotic relationships between women suddenly became an issue of widespread public concern. Discussed formerly in terms of friendship and sisterhood, these relationships came to be associated with feminism, on the one hand, and psychobiological perversion, on the other - a radical shift whose origins have long been unclear. In this first ever book-length study of Chinese lesbians, Tze-lan D. Sang convincingly ties the debate over female same-sex love in China to the emergence of Chinese modernity. As women's participation in social, economic, and political affairs grew, Sang argues, so too did the societal significance of their romantic and sexual relations. Focusing especially on literature by or about women-preferring women, Sang traces the history of female same-sex relations in China from the late Imperial period (1600-1911) through the Republican era (1912-1949). She ends by examining the re-emergence of public debate on lesbians in China after Mao and in Taiwan after martial law, including the important roles played by globalisation and identity politics. (For this item please quote stock ID 19171) ISBN: 9780226734804

Patti Duncan explores multiple meanings of speech and silence in Asian American women's writings in order to explore relationships among race, gender, sexuality, and national identity. Duncan argues that contemporary definitions of U.S. feminism must be expanded to recognise the ways in which Asian American women have resisted and continue to challenge the various forms of oppression in their lives. There has not yet been adequate discussion of the multiple meanings of silence and speech, especially in relation to activism and social-justice movements in the U.S. In particular, the very notion of silence continues to invoke assumptions of passivity, submissiveness, and avoidance, while speech is equated with action and empowerment. However, silence too has multiple meanings especially in contexts like the U.S., where speech has never been a guaranteed right for all citizens. Duncan argues that writers such as Maxine Hong Kingston, Mitsuye Yamada, Joy Kogawa, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Nora Okja Keller, and Anchee Min deploy silence as a means of resistance. Juxtaposing their 'unofficial narratives' against other histories ? official U.S. histories that have excluded them and American feminist narratives that have stereotyped them or distorted their participation ? they argue for recognition of their cultural participation and offer analyses of the intersections among gender, race, nation, and sexuality. Tell This Silence offers innovative ways to consider Asian American gender politics, feminism, and issues of immigration and language. This exciting new study will be of interest to literary theorists and scholars in women's, American, and Asian American studies. 'Patti Duncan's sustained examination of the multivalances of silence in Asian American women's texts is an important intervention in both feminist and Asian American discourses. Duncan's astute readings and contextualisations illuminate the ways in which these novels and poems are social and political, as well as litereary, documents' ? Traise Yamamoto, author of Masking Selves, Making Subjects: Japanese American Women, Identity, & the Body. (For this item please quote stock ID 21133) ISBN: 9780877458562

Drawing on newly available archival case records, this book demonstrates that women?s rights to property changed substantially from the Song through the Qing dynasties, and even more dramatically under the Republican Civil Code of 1929-30. The consolidation in law of patrilineal succession in the Ming and Qing dynasties curtailed women?s claims, but the adoption of the Civil Code and the gradual dismantling of patrilineal succession in the 20th century greatly strengthened women?s rights to inherit property. Through an examination of the changes in women?s claims, the author argues that we can discern larger changes in property rights in general. Previous scholarship assumed that patrilineal succession and household division were but different sides of the same coin ? sons divided their father?s property equally as his patrilineal heirs. The focus on women, however, reveals that patrilineal succession and household division were, in fact, two separate processual and conceptual complexes with their own distinct histories. While household division changed little, patrilineal succession changed greatly. Imperial and Republican laws of inheritance, finally, were based on two radically different property logics, the full implications of which cannot be truly appreciated unless the two are examined in tandem. (For this item please quote stock ID 21339) ISBN: 9780804735278

The Fragile Scholar examines the pre-modern construction of Chinese masculinity from the popular image of the fragile scholar (caizi) in late imperial Chinese fiction and drama. The book is an original contribution to the study of the construction of masculinity in the Chinese context from a comparative perspective (Euro-American). Its central thesis is that the concept of masculinity in pre-modern China was conceived in the network of hierarchical social and political power in a homosocial context rather than in opposition to woman. In other words, gender discourse was more power-based than sex-based in pre-modern China, and Chinese masculinity was androgynous in nature. The author explains how the caizi discourse embodied the mediation between elite culture and popular culture by giving voice to the desire, fantasy, wants and tastes of urbanites. 'Song Geng exemplified an impressive range of knowledge not only about the field of sinology but also about critical theories of gender. This book examines the historical legacy of the Chinese discourse of masculinity while incorporating discussions of various cultural and social institutions such as patronage, marriage, and the imperial civil service examination. His intellectual orientation toward an interdisciplinary studies of pre-modern Chinese literature is greatly appreciated. Some of the conclusions Dr Song drew from the materials on the caizi discourse will serve as the cornerstone for any future critical studies on Chinese masculinity? - Jing Wang, S. C. Fang Professor of Chinese Language and Culture, and Professor of Chinese Cultural Studies, Foreign Languages and Literature, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Song Geng is Assistant Professor of Chinese Literature and Cultural Studies at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. (For this item please quote stock ID 22631) ISBN: 9789622096202

Women's dress, women's writing, women's bodies, women's work, women as portrayed by themselves and others in literature and the arts; these area the topics addressed in this wide-ranging volume of scholars from the disciplines of anthropology, socio-linguistics, media studies, literary criticism, social history and fine art. (For this item please quote stock ID 22928) ISBN: 9780732611743

The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism is a history of thinking about the subject of women in 20th-century China. Tani E. Barlow illustrates the theories and conceptual categories that Enlightenment Chinese intellectuals have developed to describe the collectivity of women. Demonstrating how generations of these theorists have engaged with international debates over eugenics, gender, sexuality, and the psyche, Barlow argues that as an Enlightenment project, feminist debate in China is at once Chinese and international. Noting the eugenicist roots of much 20th-century feminist thought, she describes how the emergence of the social sciences in the 1920s, in China and elsewhere, lent the liberation of women a particular urgency by suggesting that the health of nations and races rested in part on the biological mechanisms of natural selection and therefore on women's responsibility to select sexual partners. Barlow reads social theory, psychoanalytic thought, literary criticism, ethics, and revolutionary political ideologies to illustrate Chinese feminist theory's preoccupation with the problem of gender inequality. She reveals how, throughout the cataclysms of colonial modernity, revolutionary modernisation, and market socialism, prominent Chinese feminists have gathered up the remainders of the past and formed them into social and ethical arguments, categories, and political positions, ceaselessly reshaping progressive Enlightenment sexual liberation theory. She focuses on major figures in this ongoing project, including the fiction writer Ding Ling, a leading proponent of women's revolutionary liberation for half a century; contemporary literary scholar and feminist powerhouse Li Xiaojiang, a major advocate of women's studies; and the internationally significant film and cultural critic Dai Jinhua. Barlow's study provides an in-depth examination of one of the world's most compelling and significant feminist projects. 'Tani Barlow breaks original ground. Her book has a theoretical reach and sophistication very rare in the China field, drawing its analytical tools from history, literature, feminist studies, psychoanalysis, and film criticism' - Gail Hershatter, author of Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution & Modernity in Twentieth-Century Shanghai. Tani Barlow is a historian of modern China teaching in the Women's Studies Department at the University of Washington, Seattle. She is the editor of many books, including Formations of Colonial Modernity in East Asia and New Asian Marxisms, both published by Duke University Press. (For this item please quote stock ID 23064) ISBN: 9780822332701

Tiger penis soup? Rhino horn on the oyster half shell? Give me a break! So says bestselling author Jerry Hopkins as he meets the people, visits the places, and 'road tests' dozens of Asia's most popular aphrodisiacs in the first definitive survey of the region's best and worst "'urn-on's.' Expanding the usual definition to include lotions as well as potions, sex toys and aromatherapy, music and massage, exotic Asian belief systems, pornography and a variety of surgical procedures, he travels from his home in Bangkok to Tokyo, Jakarta, Hong Kong and Kathmandu in search of the region's most exciting pick-me-ups. Along the way, he discovers that Asia was first in the development and prescription of aphrodisiacs, first in pornography and sex toys, and first in breast and penis enhancement surgery. In this exhaustively researched and often hilarious investigation of a subject that has held the world enthralled for thousands of years, the author discovers that Asia has been - and still is - in the lead when it comes to the promise of sexual enhancement. And surprisingly enough, he also finds several things that work! Jerry Hopkins is the author of more than 30 books, including the bestselling biography of Jim Morrison, No One Here Gets Out Alive. He spent 20 years as a correspondent for Rolling Stone, and currently lives in Thailand. (For this item please quote stock ID 26489) ISBN: 9780794603960

'This fascinating book offers new and fruitful ways of looking at gender relations in traditional China. By focusing on elite discourse, vernacular fiction, and advice literature by the Chinese literati in late Imperial China, Martin Huang shows how and why male writers in this period were so intent on using women to negotiate their masculinities. His analyses of texts ranging from classics such as Sanguo Yanyi to little-known household instruction guides are masterful and rewarding. No one interested in Chinese gender, literature, or history can afford to miss this stimulating and informative work' - Kam Louie, Hong Kong University 'This book is an extremely valuable contribution to the history of sexuality in China. The author?s presentation of the major definitions of manhood from early times to the late imperial era will be essential reading. Centering on the Ming and Qing from the 16th to the 19th centuries, the coverage is impressive in range and depth and the discussions are illuminating' ? Keith McMahon, University of Kansas Why did traditional Chinese literati so often identify themselves with women in their writing? What can this tell us about how they viewed themselves as men and how they understood masculinity? How did their attitudes in turn shape the martial heroes and other masculine models they constructed? Martin Huang attempts to answer these questions in this valuable work on manhood in late imperial China. He focuses on the ambivalent and often paradoxical role played by women and the feminine in the intricate negotiating process of male gender identity in late imperial cultural discourses. Two common strategies for constructing and negotiating masculinity were adopted in many of the works examined here. The first, what Huang calls the strategy of analogy, constructs masculinity in close association with the feminine; the second, the strategy of differentiation, defines it in sharp contrast to the feminine. In both cases women bear the burden as the defining 'other'. In this study,'feminine' is a rather broad concept denoting a wide range of gender phenomena associated with women, from the politically and socially destabilising to the exemplary wives and daughters celebrated in Confucian chastity discourse. (For this item please quote stock ID 26733) ISBN: 9780824828967

"Chinese women?s autobiography reveals what stories were told and what stories were silenced " ?Jing M. Wang In the period between the 1920s and 1940s, a genre emerged in Chinese literature that would reveal crucial contradictions in Chinese culture that still exist today. At a time of intense political conflict, Chinese women began to write autobiography, a genre that focused on personal identity and self-exploration rather than the national, collective identity that the country was championing. When ?I? Was Born: Women?s Autobiography in Modern China reclaims the voices of these particular writers, voices that have been misinterpreted and overlooked for decades. Tracing women writers as they move from autobiographical fiction, often self-revelatory and personal, to explicit autobiographies that focused on women?s roles in public life, Jing M. Wang reveals the factors that propelled this literary movement, the roles that liberal translators and their renditions of Western life stories played, and the way in which these women writers redefined writing and gender in the stories they told. But Wang reveals another story as well: the evolving history and identity of women in modern Chinese society. When ?I? Was Born adds to a growing body of important work in Chinese history and culture, women?s studies, and autobiography in a global context. (For this item please quote stock ID 29241) ISBN: 9780299225100

This volume contains 250 biographies of women active from 1912 until 1990, although many of the biographies include information current to 2000. In addition to biographies of internationally famous Chinese women, the editor was also able to include a far greater range of women than would have been previously possible because of the enormous amount of historical material and scholarly research that has become available in the last few decades. These are Chinese women who have forged careers as scientists, businesswomen, sportswomen, and military officers appearing alongside writers, academics, revolutionary heroines, politicians, musicians, opera stars, film stars, artists, educators, nuns, and traditional good wives, as well as women from minority nationalities. They include women from mainland China and Taiwan as well as those of Chinese descent who were born overseas. More than eighty authors and translators from all over the world have contributed to this impressive and indispensable scholarly undertaking. (For this item please quote stock ID 20624) ISBN: 9780765607980

Norman Smith reveals the literary world of Japanese-occupied Manchuria (Manchukuo, 1932-45) and examines the lives, careers, and literary legacies of seven prolific Chinese women writers during the period. Smith shows how a complex blend of fear and freedom produced an environment in which Chinese women writers could articulate dissatisfaction with the overtly patriarchal and imperialist nature of the Japanese cultural agenda while working in close association with colonial institutions. The first book in English on women?s history in twentieth-century Manchuria, Resisting Manchukuo adds to a growing literature that challenges traditional understandings of Japanese colonialism. It will be of interest to those who study the history of East Asia, imperialism, and women. (For this item please quote stock ID 30265) ISBN: 9780774813365

This book develops a new approach to historical change at the turn of the twentieth century, a crucial stage in the unfolding of Chinese modernity. Its focus is on the fraught and momentous woman question, which foregrounded the cultural paradoxes and political aspirations that define the era. Judge probes Chinese approaches to their own past and the modern West (mediated via Japan) through a close examination of the varied cultural and political uses of female biography?a genre with a 2,000-year history in China and a new political salience in the early twentieth century. She analyzes the ways a range of male and female actors appropriated historical Chinese and modern Western women's biographies to promote competing visions of female virtue, talent, and heroism?and by extension, to advance competing evaluations of China's ritual teachings, cultural heritage, and national future. Judge cogently maps these various approaches and establishes a new hermeneutics of historical change. At the same time, she highlights disjunctions among representations of exemplary heroines and between such representations and women's actual lives by ending each chapter with a methodologically innovative counterpoint. Excavating traces of the often highly mediated experience of China's first generation of female political activists, overseas students, schoolteachers, and public writers, she questions the ways long-standing and newly defined gender categories took on--or failed to take on?efficacy in women's everyday lives. Judge concludes by evaluating how women's issues continue to illuminate Chinese understandings of the past, the West, and the nation at the turn of the twenty-first century. (For this item please quote stock ID 30269) ISBN: 9780804755894

Promoting gender equality requires that we understand gender as a social construct cutting across the multifaceted political, economic and societal spheres.
The chapters in this book demonstrate the importance of gender mainstreaming in examining social issues and making decisions that affect women and men. They showcase the divergence of academic disciplines which converge to examine the underlying structure of gender equity. They also present a range of scientific methodologies and technical tools for gender analyses.
About the Editors
Fanny M. Cheung
Professor of Psychology, Chairperson of the Department of Psychology and Director of the Gender Research Centre of the Hong Kong Institute of Asia-Pacific Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Eleanor Holroyd
Professor of Asian and Gender Studies and Nursing, Division of Nursing and Midwifery, RMIT. She was formerly an Associate Professor in the Nethersole School of Nursing, Faculty of Medicine, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. (For this item please quote stock ID 31169) ISBN: 9789629963583

When China embarked on its rural economic reforms in the early 1980s, changes for women were not a planned part of its program for economic development, in the countryside or in the nation at large. In the late 1980s the official arm of the Chinese women?s movement, the Women?s Federations, began experimenting with a series of strategies designed to position women in the mainstream of the reform-era economy. A distinctive feature of this initiative was its focus on 'quality' (suzhi), including literacy, general education, and practical technical training, and extending to a general effort to strengthen women?s place in the market. The state?s official women?s movement had paradoxically become the major champion and architect of rural Chinese women?s turn toward the market economy. This book examines in detail how the women?s movement strategy was developed and implemented in one village in the northern Chinese province of Shandong, exploring the multiple meanings of the discourse on quality and the creation of a uniquely Chinese gender-and-development policy. The author explores several dimensions of this strategy: the promotion of education and training, the building of an organisational base for the rural women?s movement, and the expansion of women?s involvement in market competition. The author broadens the scope of the book by comparing similar strategies pursued in urban women?s organisations in Shandong in the 1990s. (For this item please quote stock ID 19232) ISBN: 9780804744065

This new volume of the Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women spans more than 2,000 years from antiquity to the early seventh century. It recovers the stories of more than 200 women, nearly all of them unknown in the West. The contributors have sifted carefully through the available sources, from the oracle bones to the earliest legends, from Liu Xiang's didactic Biographies to official and unofficial histories, for glimpses and insights into the lives of women. Empresses and consorts, nuns and shamans, women of notoriety or exemplary virtue, women of daring and women of artistic or scholarly accomplishment--all are to be found here. The editors have assembled the stories of women high born and low, representing the full range of female endeavor. The biographies are organized alphabetically within three historical groupings, to give some context to lives lived in changing circumstances over two millennia. A glossary, a chronology, and a finding list that identifies women of each period by background or field of endeavor are also provided. (For this item please quote stock ID 28086) ISBN: 9780765617507

This major new reference is the product of years of research, translation, and writing by a team of over 60 Chinese scholars based in North America, Hong Kong, Australia, and China. Compiled from a wide array of original sources, these detailed biographies present the lives, work, and significance of more than 200 Chinese women from many different backgrounds and areas of interest--including literature, painting, drama, embroidery, pottery, politics, science, religion, healing, cuisine, and music. Each entry is substantive and reflects careful research and the diligent gathering and synthesizing of the known facts of each subject's life. This book and another in the planning stage covering the years 1912 to 1990 are the first biographical dictionaries in any Western language devoted solely to Chinese women. Review(s): This collective biography is long overdue. ... 200 thoroughly researched and well-written biographies. ... Recommended for undergraduates and graduate students and for researchers in China studies. Choice In all other biographical surveys dealing with Chinese personae and compiled in the West during the past fifty years, only a handful of women are included. ... The purpose of [this] book ... is explicitly to counterbalance this policy of neglect and ignorance. ... It is noteworthy that women from minorities are part of the selection, as well as a couple of purely fictional characters. ... A commendable effort that one day, I hope, will transport us into other dynasties as well. Feminist Collections All of the biographies are eminently readable, and taken together give an insight into the complexity and variety of Chinese society in the Qing era. Europe-Asia Studies A most welcome addition to the field of Qing studies. ... The editors must be congratulated for the wide breadth of profiles encompassing empresses, authors, religious leaders, and one pirate. ... The entries are eminently readable and promise to open many avenues for future research. Pacific Affairs A giant step forward in removing our ignorance of some deserving women. Journal of Women's History This outstanding volume will stand as a classic reference for decades to come. The Chinese studies world owes Ho, Lee and Stefanowska a great debt. This is the first biographical dictionary of Chinese women available in English and consequently will be an invaluable resource for a wide range of scholars and students...Clara Wing-chung Ho's volume on the Qing indicates that this series will be invaluable to both university libraries and private collections. Asian American Association of Australia. Recommended. Undergraduates, graduate students, and researchers in China and women's studies. CHOICE Vol. 40, No. 10 (For this item please quote stock ID 28087) ISBN: 9780765600431

In Obscene Things Naifei Ding intervenes in conventional readings of Jin Ping Mei, an early scandalous Chinese novel of sexuality and sexual culture. After first appearing around 1590, Jin Ping Mei was circulated among some of China's best known writers of the time and subsequently was published in three major recensions. A 1695 version by Zhang Zhupo became the most widely read and it is this text in particular on which Ding focuses. Challenging the preconceptions of earlier scholarship, she highlights the fundamental misogyny inherent in Jin Ping Mei and demonstrates how traditional biases ? particularly masculine biases ? continue to inform the concerns of modern criticism and sexual politics. The story of a seductive bondmaid-concubine, sexual opportunism and domestic intrigue, death, and adultery, Jin Ping Mei has often been critiqued based on the coherence of the text itself. Concentrating instead on the processes of reading and on the social meaning of this novel, Ding looks at the various ways the tale has been received since its first dissemination, particularly by critiquing the interpretations offered by 17th-century Ming literati and by 20th-century scholars. Confronting the gender politics of this 'pornographic' text, she troubles the boundaries between premodern and modern readings by engaging residual and emergent Chinese gender and hierarchic ideologies. 'Ding's reading of Jin Ping Mei is unique and extremely important. By reading this novel as a cumulative accretion of text and commentary and as a cultural icon, she shows how all of us who read it from an aesthetic perspective are implicated in covering up its disturbing and hatefully misogynist core. This is a true coup' - Maram Epstein, University of Oregon. 'Those who read Ding's investigation will never look at critical interpretations of Chinese fiction with the same complacency again' - Robert E. Hegel, author, Reading Illustrated Fiction in Late Imperial China. (For this item please quote stock ID 17857) ISBN: 9780822329169

[Indent] The 1980s and 1990s represent a critical historical juncture for Hong Kong, as it underwent important social, political, and economic transformations. This period of transition, during which the state worked to redefine itself, significantly altered the role and status of Hong Kong women. Colonial modernity, which arose through the integration of the colonial state, the capitalist economy, and the Hong Kong Chinese society, proved favourable for some women but also had adverse consequences for others. It constructed women of different class interests and shaped the gendered citizenship of its colonial subjects. Gender & Change in Hong Kong analyses women?s changing identities and agencies amidst the complex interaction of three important forces, namely, globalisation, postcolonialism, and Chinese patriarchy. The chapters examine the issues from a number of perspectives to consider legal changes, political participation, the situation of working-class and professional women, sexuality, religion, and international migration. This incisive volume offers sophisticated theoretical discussions and original empirical findings, and will appeal to a wide range of scholars and students in gender and women?s studies, postcolonialism, globalisation, and Asian studies. Eliza Lee is Associate Professor in the Department of Government and Public Administration at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. (For this item please quote stock ID 21142) ISBN: 9780774809955

The enchantment of the figure of the 'male dan' - female impersonator - remains a residual element in the cultural imagination of many contemporary Chinese societies. The various kinds of interpretive possibilities in the commanding tradition of cross-dressing Chinese opera have yet to be examined in-depth. In order to discuss 'mistaken identity' and gender issues as they relate to cross-dressing on the Chinese operatic stage, this book examines a wide range of materials, including traditional dramatic texts, modern literary writings, critical writings (for example, quhua), opera paintings, and contemporary movies. The book explores gendering and gender differences that are constructed, reproduced, dismantled, and contested in this particularly rich site of Chinese culture. 'This is the first ever in-depth study about Chinese opera that offers a reading that is thoroughly informed by queer theories almost in their entirety. Such an approach differs from the traditional comparative literature ... By giving voice to a lot of 'troubles' in the gendering of Chinese drama as a whole, Li has broken new ground in the fields of comparative studies and cultural studies' - Professor Wong Kin Yuen, Head, Department of Intercultural Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong. 'The author has amassed an impressive body of material to address a myriad of issues relating to cross-dressing and gender representation on the Chinese stage. Chinese opera offers rich soil for interpretation, and this fascinating subject has rarely been treated in such a scope' - Professor Bell Yung, Director of Asian Studies Program and Professor of Music, University of Pittsburgh. (For this item please quote stock ID 21374) ISBN: 9789622096035

Heroines of Jiangyong is the first English translation of a set of verse narratives recorded in the unique women's script (nushu) of rural Jiangyong County, Hunan, in southern China. This selection of Chinese folk literature provides a rare window into the everyday life of rural daughters, wives, and mothers, as they transmit valuable lessons about surviving in a patriarchal society that is often harsh and unforgiving. Featuring strong female protagonists, the ballads deal with moral issues, dangers women face outside the family home, and the difficulties of childbirth. The women's script, which represents units of sound in the local Chinese dialect, was discovered by scholars in the late twentieth century, creating a stir in China and abroad. This volume offers a full translation of all the longer ballads in women's script, providing an exceptional opportunity to observe which specific narratives appealed to rural women in traditional China. The translations are preceded by a brief introduction to women's script and its scholarship, and a discussion of each of the twelve selections. (For this item please quote stock ID 30332) ISBN: 9780295988429

A prize-winning journalist and Asia expert issues a provocative critique of the West's eroticised illusions about Asia and how profoundly they colour our social, cultural, business, personal, and political interactions. Few Westerners escape the images, expectations and misperceptions that lead us to see Asia as exotic, sensual, decadent, dangerous, and mysterious. Despite ? and because of ? centuries of East-West interaction, the stereotypes of Western literature, stage, and screen remain pervasive icons: the tea-pouring, submissive, sexually available geisha girl; the steely cold dragon lady dominatrix; as well as the portrayal of the Asian male as effeminate and asexual. These 'Oriental' illusions colour our relations and relationships in ways even well-respected professional 'Asia hands' and scholars don't necessarily see. The Asian Mystique lays out a provocative challenge to see Asia and Asians as they really are, with unclouded, deeroticised eyes. It traces the origins of Western stereotypes in history and in Hollywood, examines the phenomenon of 'yellow fever', then goes on a reality tour of Asia's go-go bars, middle-class homes, college campuses, business districts, and corridors of power, providing intimate profiles of women's lives and vivid portraits of the human side of an Asia we usually mythologise too well to really understand. It strips away our misconceptions and stereotypes, revealing instead the fully dimensional human beings beyond our usual perceptions. The Asian Mystique is required reading for anyone with interest in or interaction with Asia or Asian-origin people, as well as any serious student or practicioner of East-West relations. Sheridan Prasso has been writing about Asia for more than fifteen years, most recently as Asia Editor and a Senior News Editor for BusinessWeek. Her articles have appeared in Time, The New Yorker, The New Republic, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications. An advisor to the Asia Society's Social Issues Programs and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, Prasso currently lives in New York City. (For this item please quote stock ID 26491) ISBN: 9781586483944

Herself an Author addresses the critical question of how to approach the study of women?s writing. It explores various methods of engaging in a meaningful way with a rich corpus of poetry and prose written by women of the late Ming and Qing periods, much of it rediscovered by the author in rare book collections in China and the United States. The volume treats different genres of writing and includes translations of texts that are made available for the first time in English. Among the works considered are the life-long poetic record of Gan Lirou, the lyrical travel journal kept by Wang Fengxian, and the erotic poetry of the concubine Shen Cai. (For this item please quote stock ID 29657) ISBN: 9780824831868

How should issues of sexuality and power in China be interpreted? Are China scholars really able to translate linguistically and culturally the 'truth' of China? And to what extent do fieldwork and interviews locate a study in the 'real life' of a country and its people? China, Sex & Prostitution is a topical and important critique of recent scholarship in China Studies, feminist studies and social theory. By examining recent literature on sexuality, power and prostitution, this book engages with contemporary debates concerning the application of mainstream theories in contexts other than those in which they were originally formulated. Beginning controversially with a critique of China scholarship since the Cold War, the text moves on to an examination of recent writing on sexuality in China. Through an analysis of government control and policing of prostitution the work highlights the unproductive nature of feminist debates over the most favorable responses to prostitution. It suggests that the very diversity of prostitution businesses and practices that exist in present day China show that it is not possible to characterize 'sex work' as a target for governmental intervention. Jeffrey's arguments are constructed on the basis of detailed analysis of a wide range of primary texts, including documents, press reports, police reports, and policy and legal pronouncements, and secondary literature in both English and Chinese. The work engages with some key debates in the fields of cultural and gender studies and will be welcomed by scholars in these areas as well as China specialists, sociologists and anthropologists. Elaine Jeffreys lectures in China Studies at the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia. (For this item please quote stock ID 22619) ISBN: 9780415318631

(For this item please quote stock ID 22357) ISBN: 9780862327835

Three complementary and interrelated essays on the upbringing of daughters in China before, during, and after the Revolution. They combine historical data with self-perceptions and case studies to explore how successive generations of daughter-rebels have defied conventional routes to womanhood by crossing and redefining gender and cultural boundaries. Argues that female-specific concepts of space and time lead to gendered attitudes toward rebellion, revolution, and reform. (For this item please quote stock ID 6158) ISBN: 9781856493420

Calendar posters were the earliest form of commercial art in China. At the beginning of the twentienth century, there emerged in Shanghai, Canton and Hong Kong great numbers of posters featuring Chinese women. These were produced by foreign and Chinese enterprises alike and painters of ths art form employed both Chinese traditional painting skills and watercolour techniques of the West catering to the populace and its quest for modernity. Most calendars featured utopean scenes of urban wealth, and the ubiquitous beautiful lady was a common centrepiece feeding a society's hunger for a modern aesthetic. This book contains some 250 colourplates. They include a variety of calendar posters plus rare archival pictures. With a special historical focus on the period that produced the Calendar Poster (Shanghai and Hong Kong of the 1930s), the book is divided into 28 topic areas around this art form. Together, they offer the reader a fantastical journey through the images and representations that shaped modern China almost a century ago. A Chinese language edition of this book - Calendar Posters of the Modern Chinese Woman: 1910-1930s - is also available. (For this item please quote stock ID 978) ISBN: 9789620412561

Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother is made up of the stories of Chinese mothers whose daughters have been wrenched from them, and also brings us the voices of some adoptive mothers from different parts of the world. These are stories which Xinran could not bring herself to tell previously - because they were too painful and close to home. In the footsteps of Xinran's Good Women of China, this is personal, immediate, full of harrowing, tragic detail but also uplifting, tender moments. Ten chapters, ten women and many stories of heartbreak, including her own: Xinran once again takes us right into the lives of Chinese women, students, successful business women, midwives, peasants, all with memories which have stained their lives. Whether as a consequence of the single-child policy, destructive age-old traditions or hideous economic necessity... some women had to give up their daughters for adoption, others were forced to abandon them - on city streets, outside hospitals, orphanages.

(For this item please quote stock ID 32282) ISBN: 9780701184032