Chinese Modernization and the Changes in Women's lives

While the ti/yong debate raged on and China started on a road of rapid changes, from politics to culture, one important center of debate focused on Chinese women.  Historically, Confucian teachings fostered a patriarchal society where women were to obey their husbands and grown sons and polygamy was practiced, encouraged by the Confucian teachings on the importance of lineage.  The introduction of Western learning and Christian ideas of monogamy led many Chinese intellectuals to challenge the treatment of women as secondary or almost non-existent, and challenge the idea of marriage as simply a means of procreation and perpetuating the family line.  The result was that in the 20th century, women started to go to school, and even to find jobs.  Instead of arranged marriages, they also started to find their own marriage partners, although this was more common in the city than in the country.  The different stories of Jung Chang's grandmother and mother are a testimony of the changes in Chinese women's lives in the first half of the 20th century.

1. Women in traditional Chinese society.

Historically, as mentioned above, women were treated as secondary or non-entity.  Many women did not have names, and when they got married, they would be referred to by their own and their husband's last names.  They had no legal rights.  If a woman was to divorce a man, she could do so only when natal male relatives made the petition, because she as a woman could not confront her husband.  Concubinage was common because according to Confucius, filial piety (great respect for one's parents) was a paramount virtue, and the cardinal sin was not to have (male) heirs and end the family line.  Thus having multiple wives was to guarantee one a male heir, thus fulfilling filial piety.  On the other hand, marriages were arranged not only because of property considerations, but also because the chief purpose of the marriage was to produce heirs, perpetuating the family line.  Thus it was too serious a matter to be left to the young people themselves.   Historically, women did not go to school and a few lucky ones would learn how to read and write from their brothers or fathers.  Confucius, who believed female obedience to men was one of the three cardinal principles of a society (the other two were: obedience from minister to emperor, and son's obedience to father), decided the most obedient women were illiterate, hence women were not educated in literacy.  My own late grandmother who was born in 1905, did not read a single word until after the Communist takeover in 1949, when the Communists started a popularizing literacy movement.  She was ultimately able to write my mother in broken Chinese.   Also, to keep women obedient and staying at home, starting from the 700s, Chinese women were encouraged to practice what was the fashion of upper class women of a western country, where women had their feet bound with three to four feet cloth to arrest the development of the feet.  From then on, the chief criterion of women's beauty in China became how small a girl's feet were.  Girls' feet were bound starting from when they were two or three years old, and every day for the rest of their lives their feet had to remain bound (except for letting the feet rest during the night) so that they would not grow.  A traditional Chinese saying "three inches of golden lotus" referred to both the size and the shape, and  the value, of small female feet.  Although my grandmother never had her feet bound, when I was growing up in China I remember seeing little old ladies with their triangular shaped bound feet hobbling in the streets.

2. The dual tracks of Jung Chang's Wild Swans.

1. The story of women and generational changes: from Jung Chang’s great grandmother, to grandmother, mother, and herself.  2. Also story of modern China (e.g. pp.2-3, 26-27, 35)  From Manchu to Republican Rule: From 1644-1911, China was ruled by an ethnic group called the Manchus, who brought into the Chinese map their territory northeast of China (later called Manchuria).  Although an ethnic group different from the majority of Han Chinese in culture, the Manchus successfully assimilated into the Chinese society.  Emperor Chien Lung, in writing to King George III in 1793, identified with the Han Chinese culture.  The Manchus were ultimately overthrown by Han Chinese because the latter wanted to introduce the Western idea of nationalism, and their racial interpretation of nationalism ruled the Manchus were foreigners, thus they could not properly represent the Han Chinese and so should be overthrown. Republic giving way to corruption and bribery.  China became a republic in 1911, but in 1913 it was taken over by a warlord.  From then on, the Chinese government of Beijing was ruled by various warlords and corruption became daily routine.   The northern expedition against the warlords and the Nationalist rule (1927 on).  In 1927 China was reunified under the Nationalist Party, founded in 1912 at the beginning of the Chinese republic.  During the years of warlord rule, the Nationalist Party retreated to Canton and in 1926, they allied with the Communist Party, established in 1921, to march northward to take over the capital, Beijing. hence it was called the Northern Expedition.  When the march came to Shanghai, the largest city in China, which happened also to be a dividing point between northern and southern China, the two parties split and thousands of Communist suspects were killed.  The Communists went underground, and the Nationalist Party went on to take over Beijing and to become the government of China. The rise of the Communists The Communist Party, founded in 1921, was a result of the introduction of Western learning to China, in particular, that of a particular Western branch of learning, Marxism.  When it was first introduced to China, it was just one of the many "isms" introduced from the West.  Because of its weakness, it allied with the Nationalist party in 1923 in an attempt to gain more influence in China.  After their split in 1927, Communists went underground and civil war between them and the Nationalists ensued that was to last to 1935.  The Communists found their base among the poor: proletarian workers and poor peasants.  After going underground, they focused more on the peasantry, relying primarily on a strict discipline, Spartan lifestyle, and redistribution of land between the rich and the poor.  When war against Japan started, they waged guerrilla warfare against the Japanese.  And for the moment, they entered a second round of alliance with the Nationalists.  Their discipline seemed to contrast with the corruption of the Nationalists, and won the hearts of many young and educated in China.  After Japan surrendered in 1945, civil war again ensued in China, with the Nationalists finally driven off mainland China into Taiwan. China became a Communist country. (chaps.4-5) The war against Japan (chap.3, pp.62- ) In 1931, Japan took over Chinese Manchuria and later established a separate country there.  In  1937, Japan launched a formal war against China, opening the Pacific phase of World War II.  War ended on Aug.15, 1945, after Japan declared unconditional surrender. Communist China After 1949, China became Communist.  But the Communists, with their vision for a completely new society, sought to achieve their goals more through mass political movements than solid economic changes.  They often treated the latter as bourgeois and identified them with practices of capitalist countries.  The Korean War (1950-53) led to severe deterioration of relations between Communist China and the free world led by the U.S.  The political movements culminated in the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) which led to the persecution of millions of Chinese.  This politics first orientation was moderated only after 1978, when China started an economic reform to catch up with the Western countries in economy and technology.

Additional question for discussion: why do you think Jung Chang's mother turned to Communism? and what does it say about the perception of Communism among the middle class educated Chinese in the 1940s?