The Birth of Chinese Feminism

Essential Texts in Transnational Theory

Lydia Liu, Rebecca Karl, Dorothy Ko

• Editorial: Columbia University Press
• Año: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780231533263
• Categoría: Social Sciences
• Categoría: Feminism & Feminist Theory

He-Yin Zhen (ca. 1884-1920?) was a theorist who figured centrally in the birth of Chinese feminism. Unlike her contemporaries, she was concerned less with China's fate as a nation and more with the relationship among patriarchy, imperialism, capitalism, and gender subjugation as global historical problems. This volume, the first translation and study of He-Yin's work in English, critically reconstructs early twentieth-century Chinese feminist thought in a transnational context by juxtaposing He-Yin Zhen's writing against works by two better-known male interlocutors of her time.

The editors begin with a detailed analysis of He-Yin Zhen's life and thought. They then present annotated translations of six of her major essays, as well as two foundational tracts by her male contemporaries, Jin Tianhe (1874-1947) and Liang Qichao (1873–1929), to which He-Yin's work responds and with which it engages. Jin, a poet and educator, and Liang, a philosopher and journalist, understood feminism as a paternalistic cause that liberals like themselves should defend. He-Yin presents an alternative conception that draws upon anarchism and other radical trends. Ahead of her time, He-Yin Zhen complicates conventional accounts of feminism and China's history, offering original perspectives on sex, gender, labor, and power that remain relevant today.

He-Yin Zhen, first left in front row, 1908, in Shanghai, from Liu Yazi xuanji [Selected works of Liu Yazi], ed. Wang Jingyao et al., vol. 1. Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 1989.

He-Yin Zhen

(aka He Ban

, He Zhen

, ca.1884–1920?) was born and raised in Yizheng, Jiangsu Province, at a time of great transition in China. Married in 1904, she and her husband, Liu Shipei, a renowned classical scholar, went to Tokyo in 1907, where they joined Chinese revolutionaries in exile in Japan and became acquainted with anarchist perspectives and leaders. In the same year, He-Yin Zhen and her fellow travelers in Tokyo formed the Society for the Restoration of Women’s Rights and created the official journal of the society, which they called Tien Yee (Tianyi), or Natural Justice. This journal, though only published between 1907 and 1908, became the foremost and the most influential medium for the articulation and spread of such radical ideas as feminism, socialism, Marxism, and anarchism in the last decade of the Qing dynasty.

He-Yin Zhen and Liu Shipei published numerous articles, both single authored and collaborative, during the two years the journal was in print. Since they both adopted pen-names, He-Yin Zhen’s editorial role and authorship are often misattributed by historians to Liu Shipei. The couple’s fallout with renowned scholar Zhang Taiyan and other revolutionary nationalists in 1908 on charges of collusion with the Manchu regime led to their ostracism after the overthrow of the Qing dynasty in 1911. Following the death of her husband in 1919, at age thirty-five He-Yin Zhen is rumored to have entered a Buddhist order of nuns and become ordained as Xiao Qi; others claim that she died of a broken heart and psychic disorder soon thereafter. No one has found reliable information about the end of her life.

“On the Question of Women’s Liberation”

He-Yin Zhen (1907)

For thousands of years, the world has been dominated by the rule of man. This rule is marked by class distinctions over which men—and men only—exert proprietary rights. To rectify the wrongs, we must first abolish the rule of men and introduce equality among human beings, which means that the world must belong equally to men and to women. The goal of equality cannot be achieved except through women’s liberation.

The social system in China has enslaved women and forced them into submission for many thousands of years. In ancient times, men acquired proprietary rights over women to prevent them from being claimed by other men. They created political and moral institutions, the first priority of which was to separate man from woman (nannü). For they considered the differentiation between man and woman (nannü youbie) to be one of the major principles in heaven and on earth.¹ Men thus confined women to the inner chamber and would not allow them to step beyond its boundaries. The Book of Rites states, “When a married aunt, or sister, or daughter returns home (on a visit), no brother (of the family) should sit with her on the same mat or eat with her from the same dish.” It goes on to state that “[m]ale and female, without the intervention of the matchmaker, should not know each other’s name. Unless the marriage presents have been received, there should be no communication or affection between them.”² Boji of the state of Song said that “a woman does not venture out at night without the company of her teacher or senior female companion.”³ The Han dynasty Confucian scholar Zheng Xuan wrote, “[A] woman should not concern herself with the outside world.”⁴ This is what they meant by distinguishing man from woman. Whenever people describe an age of prosperity in China, they invariably speak of how men and women walk different paths. What can they mean by the different paths but an extreme case of differentiation?

In ancient times, the separation of the inner from the outer was originally instituted to prevent illicit sexual affairs. Unfortunately, this has led to a situation where a woman’s lifelong responsibility has been restricted to the double task of raising children, managing the household, and nothing else. These tasks are relegated to women out of a widespread belief that a man’s offspring embodies his soul and that the art of defying death lies in the perpetuation of his own seed. The socioeconomic system of China treats a man’s children and grandchildren as his own property, which should explain why every man regards multiplying his progeny as the way of becoming wealthy. Men take advantage of this socioeconomic system and the moral teachings that sanction their indulgence in sexual gratification, all the while regarding women as nothing more than instruments that make and nurture human seeds. Moreover, Chinese men never bother to attend to small things, and they expect women to take care of all the details in the management of the household. Women serve and toil for them and devote their whole lives to the two tasks of raising children and running the household.

How far back can we trace the conditions of such an arrangement? I suppose that one explanation is that it began when men started to treat women as their private property. The other explanation is that the cost of living before modern times was low, so it was relatively easy for men to find employment to feed their parents and their immediate family. The income based on men’s employment alone could support a family of moderate means and above, so their wives could afford to stay home and do nothing more than raise the children and run household affairs.⁵ But this has inadvertently instilled a habit of idleness and a slave mentality among some women, whereas men are mostly content with this state of affairs.

Chinese men refer to their wives as neiren, “person of the inner chamber,” or neizi, “the inner one.” The word nei is opposed to the word wai, or “outer.” By keeping woman as his own property, a man cloisters his wife within the walls and deprives her of her basic freedom. When we get closer to the present age, it seems that women are not the only ones who have lost their freedom. Men, too, have lost their freedom by taking on the burden of supporting their families, for a man is solely responsible for the cost of caring for his mother, [maintaining] his wife, and [providing] the dowry of his daughter.⁶ Despite all these hardships, men prefer to abide by traditional rituals and laws, remaining hostile to the liberation of women.

Families below middling means, however, can hardly depend on men’s labor alone for support; women have no choice but to go out to earn their own keep. These women either work on farms or sell their labor as bondservants. Women further down the social ladder might become prostitutes. Even though lower-class women need not suffer the hardship of being cloistered at home, and even though their bodies are in that sense liberated, this liberation has nothing to do with the liberation of the mind. Not to mention that those who enjoy a modicum of freedom of the body are the kind of women who suffer the most strenuous forms of labor, the most ruthless exploitation, and the most shameful humiliation. Is this not very sad?⁷

We must consider further whether the idea of cloistering women in the home can effectively be put into practice. Young women from wealthy families or families of moderate means are supposed to be sheltered and secluded, but the seclusion cannot but lead to desire and fantasy, which is the natural tendency of human beings. A man may spend months and years traveling in distant lands, or he may devote his attention to a favored concubine. His wife might get angry but dare not tell him her feelings. Her pent-up sexual desire might smolder and burn; it cannot be suppressed by traditional ethics and laws. When a young widow is forbidden to remarry after the death of her husband, her cloistered life consists of eating and sleeping, and there is nothing in the daily routine of her life that occupies her heart’s desire, nothing to prevent her from indulging in sexual fantasy. As we reflect on the situation of wealthy households, it seems that the wife’s devotion to one man is in name only; in actual practice she may end up having more than one husband. In the case of young widows who do not remarry, they remain chaste in name only but not in practice. There is no need to cite examples from the remote past. In recent years, when Wu Yinsun was promoted to be the prefecture chief and was posted to Ningbo and Shaoxing, his fifty-year-old wife engaged in illicit sex with one of her handsome male servants at home.⁸ Another well-known example is Liang Dingfen’s wife, who had a smattering of learning. She was seduced by Wen Tingshi and went to live with him for several years.⁹ The cases of Sheng Xuanhuai’s daughter and that of Fei Nianci’s wife indicate that the former engaged in illicit affairs after she became a widow, whereas the latter indulged in all kinds of incestuous relationships with male members of her own clan.¹⁰ Did these acts of transgression not take place in prominent families?

In arranged marriages, the parents make all the decisions and the young woman has absolutely no say. When a woman is not allowed to marry her lover, she either resorts to eloping like Zhuo Wenjun or plots secret rendezvous with her lover as in the case of Cui Yingying.¹¹ If we conduct an annual survey of the number of cases of sexual transgression committed by women from county to county across China, we would discover dozens of them, not including the countless unexposed cases. Infamous capital crimes involving the murder of husbands or children are usually the outcomes of these circumstances. The foregoing analysis proves that confining women to the boudoir does not prevent them from conducting illicit affairs with other men. This obviously contradicts the stated goal of cloistering women within walls. The unintended consequence, as we have seen, is to encourage women to indulge freely in sexual fantasies even though the original intention was to deny them freedom. In other words, the prohibition of sexual transgression exists in name only; it encourages sexual transgression in practice.

The main reason that men object to women’s liberation is that they are concerned that once women obtain their freedom, they will become sexually promiscuous. In fact, the stricter the controls, the more eager women are to break down such controls, jumping at the slightest opportunity to find an outlet for their sexual fantasy. It is not unlike the act of hiding something, which precisely alerts a thief to its value and therefore intensifies his desire to steal it. I argue that women’s sexual transgression is ca...