Women in China's Long Twentieth Century Gail Hershatter Published in association with University of California Press Description: This indispensable guide for students of both Chinese and women’s history synthesizes recent research on women in twentieth-century China. Written by a leading historian of modern China, it surveys more than 650 scholarly works, discussing Chinese women in the context of marriage, family, sexuality, labor, and national modernity. In the process, Hershatter offers keen analytic insights and judgments about the works themselves and the evolution of related academic fields. The result is both a practical bibliographic tool and a thoughtful reflection on how we approach the past. Author: Gail Hershatter is Professor of History and Director of the Institute for Humanities Research at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Among her books is Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth-Century Shanghai. Review: “An important and much-needed introduction to a rich and fast-growing field. Hershatter has handled a daunting task with aplomb.” —Susan L. Glosser, author of Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915–1953 LONG TWENTIETHCENTURY LONG INCHINA’S WOMEN ASIAN STUDIES | HISTORY This indispensable guide for students of both Chinese and women’s history synthesizes recent research on women in twentieth-century China. Written by a leading historian of China, it surveys more than 650 scholarly works, discussing Chinese women in the context of marriage, family, sexuality, labor, and national modernity. In the pro- cess, Hershatter offers keen analytic insights and judgments about the works themselves and the evolution of related academic fi elds. The result is both a practical bibliographic tool and a thoughtful re- WOMEN IN CHINA’S fl ection on how we approach the past. “An important and much-needed introduction to a rich and fast-grow- LONG TWENTIETH CENTURY ing fi eld. Hershatter has handled a daunting task with aplomb.” SUSAN L. GLOSSER, author of Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915–1953 HER GAIL HERSHATTER is Professor of History and Director of the Institute S for Humanities Research at the University of California, Santa Cruz. HATTER Among her books is Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth-Century Shanghai. GLOBAL, AREA, AND INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVE repositories.cdlib.org/gaia UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley 94704 | www.ucpress.edu Cover illustration: Yu Hong, 1989 Yu Hong 23 Years Old, 2001 (detail). Pastel on paper. Reproduced by permission of the artist. ISBN-13: 978-0-520-09856-5 ISBN-10: 0-520-09856-0 9 780520 098565 GAIL HERSHATTER Women in China’s Long Twentieth Century UC_Hershatter-revs.indd 1 11/9/2006 10:37:58 AM UC_Hershatter-revs.indd 2 11/9/2006 10:37:58 AM Women in China’s Long Twentieth Century Gail Hershatter Global, Area, and International Archive University of California Press Berkeley los Angeles London UC_Hershatter-revs.indd 3 11/9/2006 10:37:58 AM The Global, Area, and International Archive (GAIA) is an initiative of International and Area Studies, University of California, Berkeley, in partnership with the University of California Press, the California Digital Library, and international research programs across the UC system. GAIA volumes, which are published in both print and open-access digital editions, represent the best traditions of regional studies, reconfigured through fresh global, transnational, and thematic perspectives. University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2007 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hershatter, Gail. Women in China’s long twentieth century / Gail Hershatter. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn-13: 978–0-520-09856-5 (pbk.: alk. paper), isbn-10: 0–520-09856-0 (pbk.: alk. paper) 1. Women — China — Social conditions — 20th century. 2. Women — Employment — China. 3. Sex role — China. 4. Women and communism — China. 5. Feminism — China. I. University of California, Berkeley. Global, Area, and International Archive. II. Title. HQ1767.H47 2007 305.40951'0904—dc22 2006029808 Manufactured in the United States of America 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48–1992 (r1997) (Permanence of Paper). UC_Hershatter-revs.indd 4 11/9/2006 10:37:58 AM For Grace UC_Hershatter-revs.indd 5 11/9/2006 10:37:59 AM UC_Hershatter-revs.indd 6 11/9/2006 10:37:59 AM Contents Introduction 1 1. Marriage, Family, Sexuality, and Gender Difference 7 2. Labor 51 3. National Modernity 79 Afterthoughts 107 Works Cited 119 Index 157 UC_Hershatter-revs.indd 7 11/9/2006 10:37:59 AM UC_Hershatter-revs.indd 8 11/9/2006 10:37:59 AM Introduction The study of women in twentieth-century China has expanded so quickly since the mid-1980s that a state-of-the-field survey becomes outdated in the time it takes to assemble and write one. This burgeoning area of inquiry draws its inspiration and approaches from many sources outside “the China field,” a realm no longer hermetically sealed within exclusive logics of sinol- ogy or area studies. Research about Chinese women has been enriched by the growth of women’s studies abroad and in China; by debates about gen- der as a category of analysis and its uneasy relationship to sex and sexual- ity; by conversations inside established scholarly disciplines about gender’s entanglement with politics, migration, nation building, and modernity; by discussions across the disciplines about agency, resistance, subjectivity, and voice; and by several waves of refigured Marxism in the wake of feminist activity, socialism’s demise, and the development of postcolonial scholar- ship. During the same period, China’s reform and opening have changed the conditions for scholarly work by both foreign and Chinese scholars. Gender has appeared at the center of new debates in the Chinese press, within the state, and among emergent groups such as women’s studies scholars, social workers, legal experts, and labor analysts. Available sources and opportuni- ties for research and fieldwork in China have expanded for both Chinese scholars and foreigners, giving rise to scholarly conversations that some- times intersect and sometimes trace utterly separate trajectories. To complicate this endeavor further, writing about women routinely crosses disciplinary boundaries. For China, the disciplines that investigate “women” shift with the period of time under investigation as well as with changing disciplinary norms. Historians, for instance, used to stop at the edge of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, at which point the pursuit of knowledge was handed over to social scientists. Now historians often 1 UC_Hershatter-revs.indd 1 11/9/2006 10:37:59 AM / Introduction traverse the 1949 divide, borrowing methods from anthropology and litera- ture. Even now, most studies of women in post-Mao China are produced by anthropologists, sociologists, and scholars of contemporary literature. The field being surveyed here, then, ranges within and across disciplines. The emergence of women’s studies has enabled many of these projects, but not all the scholars discussed herein locate themselves within “women’s studies.” This situation of crumbling boundaries presents some not-so- innocent taxonomical choices: To follow the interdisciplinary practices of women’s studies and risk a runaway bibliography? To draw on categories of analysis developed outside Chinese contexts, including the categories of “woman” and “gender” themselves, and risk analytical imperialism? To stay within the national boundaries of China (but which twentieth-century boundaries should we choose?) and risk reifying “the nation” as a timeless entity? To roam through recently imagined territories such as “Greater China” and risk taking “civilization” or “culture” for granted? To treat the term “Chinese” as synonymous with Han and risk subimperialism or the reinforcement of a simplistic Han-minority dyad? To include scholarship written for a Chinese audience and risk eliding its different conditions of production? To ignore such scholarship and thereby assume a provincial “we” as the only ones authorized to speak? To proceed chronologically, as historians habitually do, and thus assume the familiar signposts of political change (1911; 1949; 1978) as significant markers in a gendered landscape, as well as the very habit of thinking causally? To proceed thematically and thus naturalize categories such as “family” or “work” without attending to specificities of time and space? Faced with such questions, I have made choices that are unlikely to please everyone. My aim is to produce a usable and bounded piece of work, avoiding telegraphically brief discussion of the materials that are included while acknowledging the dispersed and overlapping inquiries that shape the scholarly subject of “Chinese women.” This volume is interdisciplinary but limited, focusing on works produced since 1970 in history, anthropol- ogy, sociology, and politics. It