Notable Women of China

Shang Dynasty to the Early Twentieth Century

Barbara Bennett Peterson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317463726
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Ethnische Studien

The collaborative effort of nearly 100 China scholars from around the world, this unique one-volume reference provides 89 in-depth biographies of important Chinese women from the fifth century B.C.E to the early twentieth century.

Part I

Ancient Chinese Civilization: An Orientation to the Xia, Shang, and Zhou Dynasties

According to legendary and scientific information, the birthplace of Chinese civilization and culture was in the central plain of Henan province. In ancient times this area was called Yu, which means “hunting elephants,” and indeed today one can find unearthed elephant fossil remains that date back 480,000 years. Paleolithic humanoid ancestors date back to 500,000 to 600,000 years ago in Henan, and Mesolithic remains found here date to ten thousand years ago. On this North China plain, more than three hundred Neolithic villages have been found dating to around eight thousand years ago, and these areas are dotted with cave homes and bone and stone artifacts, making careful dating possible. The western region of the Funiu and Taihang mountains are especially abundant in artifacts, offering archaeologists, ecologists, and anthropologists material for study. Early China developed along the Yellow river (Huang he), which carries loess, or yellow silt. It is within the river’s basin that civilization began, based on the cultivation of millet, soybeans, and wheat. The headwaters of the Yellow river are in the Himalayas of Tibet and flow eastward across China toward the Pacific. Chinese people regulated the river and irrigated arid land to extend their developing culture. China’s southern river, the Yangzi, also flows from the mountains of Tibet. Along its banks developed a culture that depended on wet-rice cultivation.

One of the earliest cultures in ancient China is known as Peiligang culture, which predates the Longshan and Yangshao pottery. Peiligang, revealed through recent digs in the Xinzheng and Mixian regions, offers some of the best and earliest evidence of Neolithic culture in China. Peiligang culture was discovered in the 1970s on the south side of the Yellow river between Zhengzhou and Kaifeng. A similar site was found at about the same time at Cishan, in Hebei province, north of the river. Using carbon-14 dating techniques, archaeologists place Peiligang culture at 5500–5100 B.C. The red pottery site of Yangshao (named after Yangshao village, Mianchi county, Henan province), which dates back to the latter part of the new stone age, and the later black pottery site of Longshan (2300–1800 B.C.) had earlier been thought to be China’s earliest sites. At Peiligang, pit houses and storage caves were found, as well as tombs for ancestors. Red pottery was also found at Peiligang, and so were water jars, bowls, and two-handled jars, along with pestles and stone mortars for grinding grains such as wheat and millet. Sharpened stone implements such as saws, picks, and sharpened plough shares were also discovered there. The evidence points to an early division of labor between the sexes: The heavier, planting tools were found in the men’s tombs, while the processing tools were found in those of the women, which indicates that as tools became heavier, agricultural planting was taken over by men. This probably had much to do with the emergence of a patrilineal society over the initial matriarchal society. The tools also indicate that sedentary agriculture had begun to supplement the primary activities of hunting, foraging, and fishing. Primitive societies in China were based on communal ownership of property, and men and women worked together to find sufficient food to sustain the group.

Henan was the cradle of China’s early civilization.¹ In this region arose the tale of Nu Wa, who is illustrated in Daoist scripture from the Han period as a beautiful woman, sometimes with a snake or dragon body. The tale explains the mythological origin of all living things, which has been passed down from the Han dynasty’s collection of ancient legends compiled by Ying Shao entitled The Constant Rule of Customs. One legend, similar to the biblical story of Genesis, states that the goddess Nu Wa gathered some earth and molded it into human figures and gave them life. Day after day she worked, making the arms, legs, heads, and bodies. She finally thought of a way to make them faster by adding ropes made from straw and mixing it with the clay. From this mixture, numerous people were formed when she pulled the rope through the clay. As the legend goes, China’s official class came from her figures of pure clay, while China’s poor peasantry came from the straw. Nu Wa established the customs of marriage; thereafter, men and women began to reproduce and thus Nu Wa created the human race. In other legends, Nu Wa was featured holding up the sky and repairing the leaky heavens.² She stopped the deluge that had caused a great flood, mended cracks in the earth, and brought safety and comfort again to the Chinese.

In the absence of written records in prehistoric societies, oral legends and myths retold by generations preserved these early beliefs and explanations of the cosmic order. The legend of Nu Wa offered evidence of a matriarchal society in early China. In later times, she was referred to as Emperor Wa or Emperor Earth, a reminder of a period in which women ruled the earth. Archaeologists and anthropologists believe that the introduction of heavier agricultural implements may have been the reason for the shift in power originally based upon women as food providers to men. In early Chinese primitive societies women enjoyed high status as food providers and wielded enormous power based on economics.³ They would later cede this status as metal tools supplanted wooden implements.

In primitive cave societies or among the tree-dwelling nest people, as they were called, communal sexual intercourse was practiced, making it difficult to establish parentage and family blood lineage of the children. Children born were viewed as children of the community, but it was primarily the mother’s responsibility to raise and protect her progeny. Children knew their mothers, but often not their fathers; hence in early communities property passed from mother to daughter, or along matrilineal lines. Children took the surnames of their mothers. Slightly later in these matriarchal communities, if a woman married outside her family or clan, she brought her spouse to live in her home. The discovery of fire and the use of the campfire contributed to a sense of kinship groups and eventually to the family. Numerous legends sprang up to explain conception: A woman became fascinated with a spirit with a dragon’s head, and later gave birth to the emperor Shen Nong; the mother of the emperor Fu Xi was blessed with a child after stepping into the footprint of a giant; the emperor Huangdi was conceived after his mother saw a streak of lightning; Qing Du gave birth to Yao after mating with a dragon; and the mother of emperor Da Yu bore him after swallowing a pearl.

Beyond procreation and food production, clothing and shelter were important in early survival. As in other areas of the world, in China the earliest forms of clothing were made from animal skins. However, early artifacts in China indicate the use of textiles, even if primitive. Among artifacts found in a cave on a hillside near Zhoukoudian, about 48 kilometers (1 mile = 1.6093 kilometers) from Beijing, were a bone sewing needle, which indicated that clothing was made as early as the latter part of the old stone age, or 10,000 to 50,000 years ago. At the Yangshao pottery site, a stone spinning wheel was found—evidence of the use of natural fibers such as cotton in producing clothing. Sericulture, or silkworm cultivation, developed in China as early as the new stone age, or about 4,000 years ago. At an archaeological excavation in Wuxing county, Zhejiang province, East China, fragments of silk clothing, ribbons, and thread were found in bamboo baskets. By the time of the Zhou dynasty, the silkworm had become a venerated creature, and its image decorated many of the bronzes of the time. The Shi jing (Classic of Songs), recorded in the Zhou dynasty, contains a poem celebrating sericulture:

Orioles sing merrily

In the bright spring sunshine;

Women, baskets in hand or slung on poles,

Move along the paths in a steady stream;

They are on their way

To pick tender mulberry leaves for their silkworms.

Initially, the silk dress was decorative and ceremonial. Common people even in the Zhou period usually wore clothing made of hemp. Even the minority groups in Southwestern China wore clothing made from hemp. But the cultivation of silk led to the development of weaving and its related technology. By the time of the Han dynasty, the silk industry had progressed to include the making of brocade, damask, satin, and gauze.

Cotton was another fiber used early on in Chinese clothing production. As early as 1 A.D. tree-grown cotton from Guangdong in South China was utilized for making clothing. Herbaceous cotton was imported over land from Central Asia and raised in Xinjiang, as well as imported by sea from Southeast Asia and raised around Guangdong, Guangxi, and Fujian. By the time of the Song dynasty, cotton raising had spread from its concentration in the south, northward across the Yangzi and Huai rivers into Central China. Extensive cotton weaving dates back to the Southern Song dynasty with the Li people on Hainan island.⁴

New technology was developed in toolmaking at the same time weaving of textiles was improving. The discovery of a new toolmaking process—the casting of bronze—allowed the production of more advanced implements for agriculture, and may have ushered in the shift from a matriarchal to a patriarchal social system by ca. 1500 B.C. Agricultural tools such as plow blades could now be made sharper, since they were fashioned from bronze rather than wood or stone. The new tools gave an advantage to men with greater physical strength, who took over food-producing tasks and began to have more of a say in administering common property. The technological knowledge of bronze making was a closely guarded secret and may also have been an increasing source of political power. Under the patrilineal system, upon marriage a woman joined her husband’s household and took her husband’s surname, and property descended first from father to younger brother, and then later from father to son. The son’s succession to power and titles increasingly made men the center of society. The patriarchal system influenced the family: The father performed the rituals of ancestor worship on behalf of his family and practiced the agricultural rites to ensure productivity. Gradually clan or communal ownership of property was replaced by individual or private ownership. Private property was controlled by the male head of the family, and wives and children gradually became viewed as property. Inequality now appeared within the family, as depicted by Xu Shen in Shuiwen written during the Han dynasty. He defined father as “head of the family and a great, esteemed man who controls and educates the family and can beat whomever he choses.”⁵

Bronze technology and the utilization of draft animals enabled the accumulation of food surpluses. These food surpluses sustained extra population and now prisoners captured in war were no longer killed but compelled to do forced labor. Female prisoners of war were taken as concubines and passed down as property from father to son. A selection from the Yi jing (Classic of Changes) vividly portrays the fears of a young woman as she heard horses’ hooves clattering because she knew she could be swept away and abused at will if captured by the enemy. Mercenary buying and selling of women appeared in these early societies, with the common unit of exchange in bartering for women being deerskins. Initially clan military leaders divided the spoils of war with their clan, but gradually military warriors began to hoard their trophies and prizes; class divisions appeared, and for the defeated, impoverishment and slavery. Thus the so-called slave society arose within the earliest dynasties. The early communal clan traditions rooted in equality and common ownership of property disintegrated and were replaced by the patriarchal, stratified class structure based on the slave labor.

New historical and archaeological evidence has continued to push China’s earliest dynasties back to earlier and earlier dates. Not so long ago, it was believed in the West that the Shang dynasty was the first real dynasty, and that an earlier dynasty known as the Xia was merely mythical. New archaeological evidence shows that the Xia dynasty did exist, that it was a bronze age culture, and its earliest capital was in Henan province. Myths, songs, legends, and historical references had reported that the Xia existed 4,000 years ago with its first capital at Yangcheng, the capital of Yu the Great, the flood-controller and founder of the dynasty. North of the Yellow river and half a kilometer northwest of Gaocheng, Yangcheng has finally been discovered by archaeologists. Part of the city’s eastern wall remained, and the foundations of a house was found with skeletons buried beneath them. Using radioactive carbon dating on charcoal used for fuel, archaeologists dated this site to 2000 B.C., a date compatible with the traditional dates for the Xia dynasty.

The Xia period was a bronze age culture; for example, bronze yue (jue), or drinking cups, dating from the earliest periods, were characteristic of the period. Bronze—the symbol of power, class, and ritual—was used in burial practices and ancestor worship, for functional household items, for weaponry, and as a symbol of state authority. Cups found at Erlitou in 1975 A.D. dated to the second millennium B.C. The design of bronze vessels also found in 1975 A.D. indicated an origin in Neolithic prototypes, and their complicated piece-mold construction, not known in the Middle East, argues for the indigenous discovery of bronze making and casting in China rather than its importation. Ertilou vessels also seemed to point to the early presence of a Xia aristocracy, previously thought to have been developed only later during the Shang dynasty. The excavations that turned up these items also revealed palatial foundations for palaces and burial sites decorated with jades and bronze weapons, cinnabar, and pottery inscribed with early Chinese characters.

Contemporary researchers believe that the Xia dynasty was overthrown by the Shang dynasty. The ancestors of the Shang had lived in the lower Yellow river valley. The Shang dynasty moved its capital six times; five of the Shang capitals are thought to have been in Henan. The last capital of the Shang was discovered by archaeologists near Anyang in northern Henan. Royal tombs have been found, including the previously undiscovered and untouched burial chamber of Fu Hao, consort of King Wuding. She distinguished herself as a bronze age queen, leading her countrymen in battle, after receiving the military commission from her husband. Fu Hao ...