NAN NÜPub Date : 2020-06-08DOI: 10.1163/15685268-00221p04
Nicola Spakowski
{"title":"Yan’an’s Labor Heroines and the Birth of the Women of New China","authors":"Nicola Spakowski","doi":"10.1163/15685268-00221p04","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685268-00221p04","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article discusses the labor heroines of Yan’an and their cultural representation in the context of the early 1940s. It shows how the phenomenon of women’s labor heroism was formed during these years and it points out the rifts, contradictions and multiple understandings in the representation of labor heroines and their ideal role in the revolutionary process. In particular, this study highlights the co-existence of an instrumentalist and an idealist approach to women’s participation in production which is attributed to the double temporality in the Chinese Communist Party’s self-positioning at the time. The short-term necessities of the War of Resistance justified an instrumentalist approach which made labor heroines a “work force.” New Democracy, on the other hand, as a period of incipient socialism, opened the temporal horizon towards the future and moved revolutionary discourse from “memory” to “prophecy.” Writers embraced this creative space and imagined the social relations of a pacified, socialist society. Reportage as genre, labor heroines as subject and utopianism as orientation in time formed the basis for totally new conceptualizations of women’s liberation through work, restituting women’s agency and placing them in new sets of social relations.","PeriodicalId":286788,"journal":{"name":"NAN NÜ","volume":"3 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129166974","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
NAN NÜPub Date : 2020-06-08DOI: 10.1163/15685268-00221p02
Yuanfei Wang
{"title":"The Emaciated Soul: Four Women’s Self-Inscriptions on Their Portraits in Late Imperial China","authors":"Yuanfei Wang","doi":"10.1163/15685268-00221p02","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685268-00221p02","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This article examines the emaciated self-images of four women’s self-inscription poems on their own portraits. They are Huang Hong (early seventeenth century), Xi Peilan (1760–after 1829), Tan Yinmei (fl. mid-eighteenth to early nineteenth century) and Zheng Lansun (1819-61). These women similarly describe their self-images as qiaocui (emaciated), alluding to the legendary girl poet Feng Xiaoqing. Inherently ambivalent, qiaocui could imply sexual and erotic appeal, the virtuous mind of a recluse, sickness, ordinariness, melancholy, as well as aging and death. The article argues for the importance of the rhetoric of qiaocui and the topoi of Feng Xiaoqing in the self-inscriptions by women in Hangzhou and the broader Jiangnan region as a medium to construct their female subjectivity. This article suggests that, initially a persona publicly circulated in the late Ming, the topoi of Feng Xiaoqing came to define the women’s personhood in private spaces in late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.","PeriodicalId":286788,"journal":{"name":"NAN NÜ","volume":"141 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"114142118","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
NAN NÜPub Date : 2020-06-08DOI: 10.1163/15685268-00221p08
Daniel Burton-Rose
{"title":"Gender, Power, and Talent: The Journey of Daoist Priestesses in Tang China, written by Jinhua Jia, 2018","authors":"Daniel Burton-Rose","doi":"10.1163/15685268-00221p08","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685268-00221p08","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":286788,"journal":{"name":"NAN NÜ","volume":"12 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121355017","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
NAN NÜPub Date : 2020-06-08DOI: 10.1163/15685268-00221p14
S. Dauncey
{"title":"The Gender Legacy of the Mao Era: Women’s Life Stories in Contemporary China, written by Xin Huang, 2018","authors":"S. Dauncey","doi":"10.1163/15685268-00221p14","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685268-00221p14","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":286788,"journal":{"name":"NAN NÜ","volume":"24 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116611651","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
NAN NÜPub Date : 2020-06-08DOI: 10.1163/15685268-00221p01
Qiaomei Tang
{"title":"From Talented Poet to Jealous Wife: Reimagining Su Hui in Late Tang Literary Culture","authors":"Qiaomei Tang","doi":"10.1163/15685268-00221p01","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685268-00221p01","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 Su Hui was a late fourth century Chinese woman who is famed for her creation of brocade palindromic poems. Due to an account of her life story, attributed to the female emperor Wu Zetian, that highlighted her jealous disposition, Su Hui is remembered today primarily as a talented but jealous wife, which is in contrast with how she was viewed in the period prior to the Wu version. Tracing the genealogy of Su Hui’s narrative in pre-Tang and Tang literary and visual materials, this article demonstrates that the definitive version of Su Hui’s story is misattributed to Wu Zetian and, more importantly, that the image of this well-known figure of early medieval China underwent a transformation that reflects important aspects of Late Tang literary culture. In ‘boudoir lament’ poetry of the Southern Dynasties period, Su Hui is the stock image of a melancholy wife longing for her absent husband. In ‘frontier’ poetry of the Tang dynasty, she is a worrying wife concerned with her military husband fighting on the borderlands. It is in a Late Tang prose account misattributed to Wu Zetian that we finally see her as a jealous woman competing for her husband’s affections. The transformation of Su Hui’s image across three major literary genres over a period of half a millennium offers readers a window into the literary and cultural changes that took place in medieval China.","PeriodicalId":286788,"journal":{"name":"NAN NÜ","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128521134","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
NAN NÜPub Date : 2020-06-08DOI: 10.1163/15685268-00221p15
H. Gates
{"title":"Footbinding as Fashion: Ethnicity, Labor, and Status in Traditional China, written by John Robert Shepherd, 2018","authors":"H. Gates","doi":"10.1163/15685268-00221p15","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685268-00221p15","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":286788,"journal":{"name":"NAN NÜ","volume":"49 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"116476236","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
NAN NÜPub Date : 2020-06-08DOI: 10.1163/15685268-00221p05
S. Mellors
{"title":"The Trouble with Rubbers: A History of Condoms in Modern China","authors":"S. Mellors","doi":"10.1163/15685268-00221p05","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685268-00221p05","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In recent years, public health officials and scholars have voiced their concerns about comparatively low condom use in China, citing high rates of abortion and the growing HIV/AIDS crisis. By examining condom use through the lenses of gender and the history of medicine, this article traces heterosexual condom consumption in China from the early twentieth century to the present and situates contemporary attitudes toward condoms within long-term contraceptive patterns. Rather than simply taking for granted the role that men play in family planning decisions, this research takes men and masculinity as a central focus. An eye to the past reveals numerous historical obstacles to condom use, as well as an enduring aversion to condoms grounded in fears of reduced male sexual pleasure, and the gendered assumption that birth control is the sole responsibility of women. Analyzing evolving perceptions of condoms sheds light on constructions of sexuality, gender relations, and the roles of the state, society, and the individual in contraceptive decision-making in China.","PeriodicalId":286788,"journal":{"name":"NAN NÜ","volume":"70 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-06-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130132422","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
NAN NÜPub Date : 2019-12-11DOI: 10.1163/15685268-00212p07
De-nin D. Lee
{"title":"Song Dynasty Figures of Longing and Desire: Gender and Interiority in Chinese Painting and Poetry, written by Lara C.W. Blanchard, 2018","authors":"De-nin D. Lee","doi":"10.1163/15685268-00212p07","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/15685268-00212p07","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":286788,"journal":{"name":"NAN NÜ","volume":"27 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2019-12-11","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115711528","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}