At Home in the World: Women and Charity in Late Qing and Early Republican China 9780231546232

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AT HOME IN THE WORLD

AT HOME IN THE WORLD Women and Charity in Late Qing and Early Republican China XIA SHI

CO LU M BI A U N I VERSI TY P R E S S

New York

Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York Chichester, West Sussex cup​­.columbia​­.edu Copyright © 2018 Columbia University Press All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Shi, Xia, 1979– author. Title: At home in the world : women and charity in late Qing and early Republican China / Xia Shi. Description: New York : Columbia University Press, [2018] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017034643 (print) | LCCN 2017045902 (ebook) | ISBN 9780231546232 (electronic) | ISBN 9780231185608 (cloth : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Women in charitable work—China—History | Women philanthropists— China—­History. | Women—China—Social conditions. | Sex role—China—History. | Charities—China—History. Classification: LCC HV541 (ebook) | LCC HV541 .S55 2018 (print) | DDC 361.7082/0951—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017034643 Columbia University Press books are printed on permanent and durable acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America Cover image: “Tso Wu Lao T’ai T’ai—our hostess.” Madame Zuo (Tso) stands with bound feet in front of the Changsha YWCA building located at her home in Changsha. From Box 67, Maud Russell Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments vii

Introduction 1 PART I. ELITE WOMEN AND CHARITY 1. Beyond a Personal Virtue 37 2. Being Female Philanthropists 68 PART II. THE YWCA IN CHINA AND “WOMEN IN THE HOME” 3. Reaching Out to Women in the Home 101 4. Women Interacting with the YWCA 125 PART III. WOMEN IN THE SCHOOL OF THE WAY 5. Redefining Confucian Gender Doctrines 159 6. Women, Superstition, and the Reorientation Toward Charity 181 Epilogue 202

vi Contents Notes 211 Glossary 241 Works Cited 247 Index 261

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I

have accumulated many scholarly and personal debts for the completion of this book over the years, so please forgive me if I fail to enumerate them all here. First, I feel fortunate to have worked during my doctoral studies with Kenneth Pomeranz and Jeffrey Wasserstrom, who together taught me a combination of scholarly and life skills. I cannot express enough my gratitude to them, for their knowledge and advice enabled me to grow so much during these years. Anne Walthall not only taught me knowledge beyond China but also carefully read every word of the manuscript when it was still a draft and offered much-needed advice thereafter. Qitao Guo’s cheerful spirit and hospitality combined with his erudite Chinese knowledge made his classes relaxing and enjoyable for both me and my wonderful classmates. I am grateful to the following organizations for providing funding to support my research at different stages. A postdoctoral fellowship from the Henry Luce Foundation/American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Program in China Studies in 2015–16 enabled me to complete a major round of revisions of the book. New York Public Library (Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations) provided a short-term research fellowship in summer 2015 to conduct research there. China Cultural Time Foundation offered crucial funding to support my research in China in 2011–12. In addition, I was assisted by a Grierson and Bain Scholars Fellowship at the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College; a small grant from the China and Inner Asia Council of the Association

viii Acknowledgments

of Asian Studies; and a travel grant from Stanford University’s East Asia Library. I also appreciate the financial support I received from UC-Irvine’s Center of Asian Studies, Humanities Center, and International Center for Writing and Translation. I am grateful for the help I received from the following archives and libraries and their staff members: the UC-Irvine library and its interlibrary loan services (special thanks to Ying Zhang, the East Asian librarian), the Sophia Smith Collection at Smith College, the Manuscripts and Archives Division of the New York Public Library, Stanford University’s East Asian Library, the National Library of China (particularly its gazetteer branch), Peking University Library, Qingdao Municipal Archive, Shanghai Municipal Archive, and Shanghai Library. I thank Li Guangwei, who not only shared with me copies of valuable sources about the Daoyuan but also accompanied me twice to interview Cong Zhaohuan, who generously recounted the history of the Cong family’s engagement with the Daoyuan from the 1920s to 1940s. I also appreciate the help of David Igler and Marcus Konda. My appointment as a research associate at UCI’s School of Humanities enabled me to access its library resources to further my research even after graduation. Sincere thanks go to my colleagues at New College of Florida: David Rohrbacher read a draft of this book and offered many helpful suggestions; David Harvey and Carrie Beneš gave me useful tips on the publication process; and Jing Zhang and Fang-yu Li shared my interest in China, Asian food, and stimulating conversations. At Columbia University Press, I thank Anne Routon for taking an early interest in my book and Miriam Grossman for being there whenever I had questions. Additionally, I thank Bryna Goodman, Gail Hershatter, Johanna Ransmeier, and two anonymous reviewers for reading earlier drafts and making valuable suggestions. My Chinese history cohort at UC-Irvine—Nicole Barnes, Maura Cunningham, Pierre Fuller, Nuan Gao, Christopher Heselton, Miri Kim, Jennifer Liu, Kate Merkel-Hess, Wensheng Wang, and Chen-Cheng Wang—offered friendship, helpful exchanges of expertise and advice, and engaging conversations in and after classes. Finally, I am grateful to my parents and friends in China who were so generous to me over the years, even though I could not visit them often enough. DS helped edit many draft chapters over email and offered

Acknowledgments  ix

welcome suggestions. I feel fortunate to have had the company of my family along the journey over the years. To Jojo, Farley, Gumbo, and Sam: your presence brings me daily joy and reminds me of the fun world outside of academia. Part of chapter 1 appeared in preliminary form in “Stepping Into the Public World: Cases of Guixiu Philanthropic Activities in Late Qing China,” Frontiers of History in China 9, no. 2 (June 2014): 247–79. I thank Brill Press for granting me permission to include it in this book.

AT HOME IN THE WORLD

INTRODUCTION

Y

ale-educated James Yen is often celebrated as the chief organizer of the Mass Education Movement, which brought literacy and other benefits to millions of Chinese citizens in the 1930s. However, it is rarely known that he was selected and supported by a woman. For nearly a decade, a Chinese woman with bound feet, Zhu Qihui (best known as Madame Xiong Xiling), raised most of the money for the movement; she chose Yen to be its vice chairman. Yen’s prominence has blinded historians to the role of Zhu, who embodies a seeming impossibility, examples of which we will see throughout this study: a domestically oriented woman without modern education who was also an effective progressive activist in early twentiethcentury China. This book focuses on married, nonprofessional Chinese women without modern educations and investigates how they repositioned themselves through little-known charitable, philanthropic, and religious activities in a changing urban public world. It covers roughly the 1870s to the 1930s, spanning the late Qing dynasty (China’s last dynasty, established by the Manchus) and the early Republican era (1912–1949), before the full-scale invasion by Japan. This crucial historical period witnessed a series of military defeats of the Qing dynasty by Western powers and its forced opening to the world. Subsequently, an increasing number of Chinese intellectuals, reformers, and revolutionaries came under the influence of the West and rejected the foundations of Confucianism. Both state and local elites carried out various

2 Introduction

modernizing reforms, which stimulated urban and commercial development and intellectual change. In the gender realm, women’s domestic seclusion gradually lost its legitimacy as a marker of virtue and respectability, and more and more women began to actively engage with the public arena newly opened to them. In this context, this book, through concrete case studies, offers a glimpse into how some women successfully adapted themselves to be active and effective public actors in a rapidly changing society without repudiating roles that gave them continued access to important material and ideological resources. It does not intend to provide comprehensive coverage of women’s charitable and philanthropic activities, but by investigating a hitherto unexamined aspect of women’s lives—charity and philanthropy—it will not only make the public activities of these women visible but also highlight the significance of charitable and philanthropic activities as forms of political, social, civic, and religious engagement, socializing, and networking.

WOMEN STEPPING INTO THE PUBLIC WORLD Three important developments contributed to shaping the stories told in this book and are worth highlighting and summarizing here. The first is the increasing acceptance of women appearing in public. In fact, one of the most dramatic social changes that occurred during the final decade of the Qing dynasty was the growing public visibility of women.1 Despite the fact that officials during the imperial period were never able to completely ban urban women’s (especially gentry women’s) public activities—such as frequenting teahouses, festivals, and temples— the general social consensus was that women did not belong in these public spaces. That changed during the late Qing, when women going out in public became a hotly debated issue. Under the influence of the West, social critics began to regard Chinese women’s domestic seclusion as a backward and outdated practice. Social conservatives, meanwhile, continued to emphasize the importance of women’s seclusion in reducing the possibility of sexual encounters in public spaces and the ruination of public morality that would follow. Zhan Xiaobai’s examination of Beijing nübao (Peking women’s daily), the most influential

Introduction  3

women’s newspaper in northern China around 1905–1909, underscores some typical social concerns and criticisms during this period, noting that the paper’s editors took a cautious, moderate, and reformist view of Chinese women’s public activities. Although its contributors generally approved the public activities of Western women, they also tended to believe that China was not ready to loosen its own controls, given that the only women who enjoyed a significant amount of freedom and independence in public were prostitutes and lower-class, boundarycrossing women such as midwives, matchmakers, and healers, whom local officials often saw as social irritants. To avoid the blurring of social lines, women from respectable families were advised to remain at home.2 Other kinds of social criticism contained a mix of old and new rationales. The most prevalent accusation since the Ming dynasty (1368– 1644)—that of “offending public decency and corrupting public morals” (shangfeng baisu)—still had currency. At the same time, articles in Beijing nübao frequently criticized women who went out to entertain themselves during major festivals, referring to them as fenlizhe (the term popularized by Liang Qichao, a leading progressive intellectual, to mean consumers rather than producers) who contributed nothing to the national economy but instead facilitated “the growth of a hedonist atmosphere.” Moreover, burning incense and going to temple fairs were “superstitious and uncivilized” behaviors, which could “lead to the downfall of the nation.”3 The term “superstitious” represented a new rationale, part of a newly imported vocabulary that began recategorizing Chinese spiritual practices around 1901. Over the decades that followed, reports in Shenbao (Shanghai daily), established in 1872 and one of the earliest and most influential modern Chinese newspapers, indicate that this new rationale grew increasingly powerful, quickly replacing a previously crucial aspect of prohibition against women in temples: the fear of their “desecrating a sacred space and causing ritual impurity” because “women are yin creatures that defile/endanger the yang power of the gods, and therefore any contact between the two should be avoided.”4 In an age filled with powerful antisuperstition discourse and waves of temple destruction movements, ritual purity became much less of a concern in intellectual and cultural debates than superstitious practices.

4 Introduction

In reality, according to historian Wang Di, strictures on women’s appearance in public had begun to relax in the late Qing, and women were increasingly showing up in places that traditionally had been reserved for men only, such as teahouses and theaters. This was even the case in the remote southwestern city of Chengdu, which was much less influenced by the West. Local police and social reformers there still discouraged women’s participation in public life and tried, among other things, to segregate men from women to avoid their mingling, as well-dressed elite women often “unwittingly created quite a spectacle” in public and became “the objects of male stares and endless gossip.”5 The case study in chapter 1 reveals the ways that social gossip about women’s public presence for charitable fundraising could cause serious backlash from moralist forces and a regulatory government. The situation in Chengdu changed by the 1920s and 1930s, as Wang Di points out; by then it was “no longer novel” for women to appear in public, and some open-minded elites began to connect women’s public presence with “the concept of equality.”6 Among a variety of women who were active in the public arena during the late Qing and the early Republican era, researchers are most familiar with the activities of the much-studied “new women”— students, teachers, suffragists, revolutionaries, writers, doctors, and other modern-educated professionals who emerged during this period.7 We see them active in newly established modern institutions such as public schools, hospitals, feminist and patriotic associations, and business offices. This scholarly focus has left the impression of the dawning public world as a stage onto which these new women walked with natural feet to act under bright spotlights. However, their activities were not without unease and risks, as Bryna Goodman has shown through the case of Xi Shangzhen, a twenty-three-year-old secretary who committed suicide in 1922 in the office of an economic journal in Shanghai.8 Paul Bailey has also pointed out that the newspaper and periodical press in early twentieth-century China focused disproportionately on the “transgressive” public behavior and attitudes of girls and young women. As these women responded to new opportunities available to them in the public sphere, they became the object of criticism by official authorities, educators, reformers, and male intellectuals.9 The public activities of female teachers in women’s schools or

Introduction  5

female doctors who attended female patients were far less controversial, mostly because they remained within acceptable gender boundaries. This suggests that gender segregation and classical notions of female virtue continued to retain authority in the modern era. Compared to the scholarly attention devoted to the activities, achievements, and controversies of the new women, other types of women’s public activities have received less attention. However, several studies have been published on the rising number of prostitutes in urban life, the reappearance of female actresses in the early twentieth century after a long period in which they had been banned from the stage,10 and the issue of working women in factories.11 Until the late 1940s the majority of the working women, particularly those in urban cotton mills, were young and unmarried, and the public space they ventured into—the factory floor—was often depicted in Republican era writings and oral narratives as a dirty and dangerous place that exposed them to sexual assault by foremen or male workers. Similarly, scholarly research suggests that although rural girls and women routinely worked in the fields outside of their houses, their labor was often associated with “sexual vulnerability, poverty, and violation of the social imperative that unmarried girls stay out of sight.”12 It is thus apparent that the public sphere remained a dangerous realm for young, unmarried women in particular. As for nonworking women, in many historical narratives they seem to have quietly disappeared into their domestic quarters and in time been eclipsed by the new women. Particularly, until now we have known little about the public activities of the married nonprofessional women without modern educations who are the focus of this book. In the Chinese context, these women were often addressed as taitai (Mrs.), a term I will discuss later; in the writings of foreign secretaries of the YWCA in China, they were frequently referred to as “home women” or “women at home.” Compared to unmarried young women, they were often perceived as less sexually vulnerable in public places owing to their relatively older age and marital status. Many were already mothers or grandmothers when they started regularly engaging with the public arena. Therefore their appearance in public tended to be less controversial, especially if within gender-segregated women’s organizations. However, it has been assumed that most of these women had

6 Introduction

neither the interest nor the capability to actively engage with and contribute to public affairs, except for occasionally venturing out for recreation and consumption needs, traveling for family duties, or visiting friends.13 While this might be accurate for some women, it was not the case for many others, as I will show in this book. Several factors have contributed to historians’ amnesia about married nonprofessional women without modern educations and their public charitable activities. The first is the long-held stereotype about these women, which can be traced back to progressive intellectuals’ reconstruction of Chinese traditions during the late Qing. A series of military defeats at that time not only forced the dynasty to open itself to the world for trade but also led many intellectuals to question their sense of superiority about Chinese civilization. As a result, categories of people too closely associated with Chinese traditions were redefined as groups lacking enough progressive spirit to walk out of the Chinese past. Myron Cohen points to the instance of Chinese farmers, portrayed by the era’s progressive intellectuals as “peasants” incapable by definition of creative and autonomous participation in China’s modernization.14 Likewise, sequestered Chinese women, widely regarded as the epitome of female virtue in the late imperial period, were reconstructed by progressive intellectuals like Liang Qichao (1873–1929) as parasitic and unproductive drags on the nation. Their bound feet became the indicators of their incompetence to carry out the task of making China modern. There was a conscious effort among progressive intellectuals of the late Qing to erase the value of women’s Confucian learning, as Hu Ying shows: talented elite women did not fit into the monolithic image of Chinese women as “ignorant, apathetic, and sequestered,” a significant part of the attempt to redefine Chinese tradition in order to justify modernizing reforms.15 In his widely read treatise General Discussions of Reform (1896), Liang Qichao argued that “real” learning comprised the practical and useful learning needed for the building of modern China, not the “useless” skills promoted by traditional high culture, such as the poetry writing or painting at which elite women excelled.16 Consequently, we can find far fewer writings left by these women from then on, perhaps either because they refrained from writing about their lives since their classical writings could be easily perceived as

Introduction  7

“frivolous,” or because their writings were no longer celebrated as valuable works to be preserved and published. In addition, many nonelite home women were illiterate, which further contributed to these women’s marginalization in history. Liang Qichao based another of his sweeping accusations against these women on an economic argument. He judged them not merely as “profit dividers” (fenlizhe), as opposed to producers, but as the “half of the Chinese population” who contributed nothing to the national economy and instead consumed large portions of its output, thus dragging down the whole nation.17 This argument made being productive (i.e., generating cash income) the major criterion used to evaluate women’s worth, while simultaneously placing gender issues at the center of social transformation and national salvation. Neglecting both working women’s economic contributions and the significance of elite women’s domestic labor (as Susan Mann has demonstrated18), this argument made it possible to devalue the worth of home women, especially in comparison to the emerging new women. The second reason these women have often been neglected is that studies of gender in twentieth-century China have often highlighted the theme of radical breaks with tradition, or at least changes in gender concepts and practices that result from new conditions and ideas. Consequently, it is not surprising to see that the iconoclastic new woman ideal and its various avatars in reality became the favorite subjects of many revolution-centered histories as well as contemporary progressive intellectual discourses. In these narratives, the new woman of China was often depicted as a heroic woman warrior, ready to sacrifice herself for the revolution, thereby transcending her narrowly individual existence. She was also lauded as antifamilial, in part a reflection of the popularity and publicity attending Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, whose fictional heroine Nora slammed the door, leaving her husband and children behind in search of her own individual freedom. Consequently, nuola zhuyi (literally, “Nora-ism”) was coined as a synonym for female emancipation. This previous scholarship’s focus on radical, individualistic strategies of emancipation for Chinese women has overshadowed stories of alternative modes of gradual adaptation experienced by other types of women and has thus missed opportunities to explore the broader

8 Introduction

implications of these different experiences for the development of modern Chinese gender roles. When Mary Rankin discusses the continuity and change between the final Qing decade and the early Republic and between the early Republic and the May Fourth period (around 1915–1926), she notes that apart from “the surviving traditional institutions, practices, and attitudes,” much of the ongoing change within society “was not produced by deliberate reform agendas and is better conceived as transmutation or reformulation of existing institutions, values and practices in changing contexts.”19 To some extent, this book’s study of home women’s charitable activism further confirms this. It argues that charity/ philanthropy deserves scholarly attention as an important field of inquiry in modern Chinese women’s history. The hardly used lens of charity/philanthropy can reveal the large numbers of women at home who were active and effective actors in contemporary Chinese urban society; it also challenges a modern mindset that evaluates personal worth in terms of professional work. The stories of women in the late Qing and early Republican era have been told in nationalist and feminist narratives, for instance, but not charitable/philanthropic ones, and this oversight has important consequences. It obscures the ways that charity, by virtue of being a traditionally sanctioned space for elite women’s activism, facilitated women stepping out of their domestic quarters and participating in important public and political affairs. Second, it gives a one-sided and unbalanced view of the rupture of traditional China’s cultural legacies and the development of modern Chinese gender roles. This book endeavors to expand the field of Chinese women’s history and fill the important gap in our knowledge about what married nonprofessional women without modern educations accomplished beyond the domestic sphere in a changing historical period that increasingly regarded domestic seclusion as backward and saw more women gradually entering the public world. By examining these women’s public charitable and philanthropic activities, it not only demonstrates that many women repositioned themselves and became active and effective urban public actors but also explores how the public, private, and domestic spheres were being remade and rethought in early twentieth-century China, and how the so-called home women navigated these developing spheres.

Introduction  9

The existence or emergence of the Chinese public sphere became a source of heated debate in the field of Chinese studies during the 1990s. A central issue of these debates was the nature of Chinese civil society and the extent to which the Chinese public sphere formed outside of, or existed independently from, the state, as did public spheres in Western societies.20 This book uses the term public sphere (or world, realm) not to wade into issues of independence (or dependence) but to refer to the world beyond the home—the opposite of the domestic sphere, which was nevertheless not always clearly separate, especially for women, as multiple case studies in this book show. Gender historians of China have concentrated their research on the gap between the Chinese rhetorical nei/wai (inner/outer) dichotomy and actual practice in late imperial China. They have shown that although Chinese gendered spatial distinctions are often understood to be analogous to the Western private/public distinction, it is problematic to treat these Chinese spheres as exclusive to each other; the family was often viewed as foundation of the state.21 For example, in the seminal classic that lays out the relationship among the home, the person, and the state—Daxue (The Great Learning)—we see that filiality, moral education, and household management skills instead of worldly expertise are essential qualifications for men to succeed in public service.22 In other words, the domestic, in Confucian lore, was not private at all. As we move to the early twentieth century, we notice that Chinese reformers started to attack the backwardness of women’s domestic seclusion, and that family became the symbolic center of an oppressive “feudal” tradition. Consequently, the domestic realm was blamed, as Gail Hershatter points out, as “the source of public ills” and of China’s weakness in the world rather than the foundation of public order.23 The public sphere, on the other hand, became the celebrated arena of higher good and virtue where individual citizens should not hesitate to make personal sacrifices, particularly during a time of national crisis. In this way, at least rhetorically, the divide between public and domestic deepened. Although some scholars have made pioneering attempts to study the public and political activities of some prominent, even iconoclastic individual elite women of the late Qing and early Republican period, more often than not the stories of these women seem to further reinscribe, though perhaps unintentionally, the idea that women’s public

10 Introduction

accomplishments could be achieved only through the rejection of their domestic roles. For example, the flamboyant revolutionary martyr Qiu Jin (1875–1907) left her husband and two children behind to study in Japan. The famous journalist, poet, and cosmopolitan lay Buddhist Lü Bicheng (1883–1943) remained single throughout her life. Tang Qunying (1871–1937) became one of China’s earliest suffragist leaders only after she widowed young and thus was able to continue her study in Japan.24 These studies certainly enrich our understanding of elite women’s public activities during this period but often leave the impression that their subjects were exceptional individuals who transcended the group to which they belonged and became celebratory public figures for successfully severing or denying their domestic ties. Although the domestic realm could potentially prevent some women from becoming active in public, the opposite could be true as well. The case studies of women’s long-forgotten public charitable activities in this book testify to this. How, then, did married nonprofessional women without modern  educations navigate the changing configurations of public and domestic spheres through charity/philanthropy in late Qing and early Republican China? How did they understand the relationship between the public realm and the domestic realm and their mobility between the two? In this respect, this book highlights the crucial and inseparable relationship between women’s domestic roles and their public charitable activities. It shows that when home women moved into public philanthropic causes, not only did their previous experience in managing their domestic sphere lay the foundation for them, but also some women perceived their public activities as an extension of those in the domestic sphere and therefore did not see their public charitable engagement as a radical and drastic reconfiguration of conventional gender roles. How did those women who were not educated in modern public schools and did not grow into professional women first become actively and legitimately engaged with the world beyond home? How did they seek out public places and opportunities and adjust themselves to the new urban public milieu? What were the available institutions and organizations that welcomed, attracted, or denied them? What were the challenges, social constraints, and practical obstacles they

Introduction  11

encountered? This book reveals, first, that early twentieth-century China severely lacked public institutions that regularly engaged such women. Consequently, charitable and religious organizations became crucial to serving this purpose. Modern girls’ schools, results of “deliberate reform agendas,” were often established for young and unmarried women without bound feet or those who had unbound their feet. Women’s patriotic and/or feminist associations and social clubs primarily attracted modern-educated women since they were mostly established following the models of their Western counterparts and based on public school educational networks. Second, although some home women found that an exceptional new public organization like the YWCA in China welcomed them, initially they viewed the YWCA as an “anomaly,” something that was neither a school nor family, the two types of institutions local women were most familiar with. Consequently, women resisted, for example, visiting the YWCA’s designated public building. Furthermore, its Western-based operation model, including fundraising and networking methods, in the beginning did not fit well with what home women had been accustomed to, particularly the not-so-clear-cut boundaries between the private and public spheres. All these factors forced YWCA branches to improvise by accepting advice and suggestions from local women to indigenize and transform the foreign organization’s local existence into something familiar and appealing to these women, making it easier for them to navigate. An examination of this process of indigenization enables us to see concretely how local women, through their interaction, negotiation, and communication with a social service organization, played a crucial role in shaping the formation and development of the local public sphere. Although this book demonstrates the significant contributions that home women made to the public realm, it goes further than just highlighting their individual agencies in explaining their achievements. In fact, one of the interpretive questions raised by this book is what may be lost by excessively focusing on women as individuals. The achievements of the many charitable/philanthropic women I examine cannot be separated from—or properly understood without—the contexts of their families, marriages, and friendships. An important part of their identities rested there. This means, on the one hand, that we should

12 Introduction

recognize the importance of women’s social networks, particularly in the context of a rising consciousness among Chinese women to unite together, organize into groups, and show the solidarity of the newly emerged category of nüjie (women’s world or realm) to help solve China’s national crisis in the early twentieth century.25 As we will see throughout the book, by organizing together to provide disaster relief, repay national indemnities, and establish educational philanthropic projects, women’s groups and organizations nationwide, through effective fundraising, compelled contemporary men to acknowledge their important contributions to public welfare. On the other hand, this book emphasizes that an analytical framework that overstresses women’s individual agency cannot reveal the importance of men (family members, friends, coworkers) as mentors, enablers, sponsors, and funders. Although Gail Hershatter raised a similar issue in analyzing rural women’s individual “subjectivity” in the 1950s, this problem has not been adequately addressed by current scholarship, including analyses of new women.26 This book underscores the recognition of collective agency. It thereby challenges us to think about agency itself in new ways—away from a liberal individualist model and toward one that is social and collaborative, enriching our understanding of the texture and content of women’s activism. Of course, presenting a woman’s agency within a collective project with her spouse is an analytical challenge, undertaken here through the case study of Zhu Qihui in chapter 2. In a sense, it seems that many home women’s public contributions have been marginalized precisely because they do not fit within an individualistic model of agency. This book, by contrast, pays considerable attention to the men in these women’s lives rather than merely offering an account of the women’s activities, a method of analysis that can help us see more clearly the factors beyond isolated individualism that enabled and empowered many home women to become effective public actors.

VARIETIES OF NONCAREER WOMEN AND POPULAR PERCEPTIONS OF THEM Before discussing in detail the second important development that shaped the stories of the book—the surge of popular enthusiasm for

Introduction  13

charity and philanthropy—I should point out that the women in this book encompass diverse types that defy easy categorization. In the late Qing, married women were often dubbed taitai (Mrs.) or furen (literally “husband’s person,” a more respectable term, often translated as Mme.), both of which emphasized the woman’s marital status and dependent identity. It is unclear when these terms were first used as forms of address. At least as early as Hong lou meng (Dream of the Red Chamber), one of China’s four great classical novels, written in the mid-eighteenth century, the term taitai was in use but without its later dependent connotation. Generally speaking, by the early twentieth century it referred to women who were believed to derive their identity, as well as their economic support, from their husband. In the case of concubines, slight variations would be applied: yi taitai or ru furen. In Dream of the Red Chamber concubines were still called yi niang (aunt mother, with yi originally meaning mother’s sister), a flattering term. However, they would never be addressed as taitai, a term exclusively reserved for main wives, nor as ru furen (like wife). By the late Qing, as in the satiric novel Guanchang xianxingji (Exposure of the official world), concubines were generally referred to as yi taitai (aunt Mrs.). By the early Republican era the previous term, yi niang, was used exclusively for servants. As a general term to refer to concubines, yi taitai had simultaneously become very popular and developed a connotation of social contempt, since concubinage in this era was often regarded as a symbol of regressive Chinese tradition. Behind concubines’ backs, servants and others cursed them with the term. In front of these women, taitai referred both to concubines and to main wives. Merely adding a number prefix could indicate the order in which the women were brought into the household. This suggests that, at least domestically, wife and concubine were similarly viewed as a husband’s married partners (though still with a hierarchy), an improvement from the past view of concubines as mostly lower-level servants. Historian Cheng Yu suggests that by the early Republican period, changing terms used to address concubines indicate that their domestic status was gradually matching that of wives. Furthermore, in news media and formal occasions, ru furen was often used to politely refer to concubines.27 The media’s need to frequently address these women in formal terms also indicates that they were active on the public stage—a place denied them in previous historical periods by virtue of their inferior class

14 Introduction

status and sex. It was not unusual for officials in the Beiyang period (1916–1928) to have concubines instead of wives accompany them to offices, on official trips, and even abroad.28 Although in the 1930s the Nationalist government carried out legislative reform on the woman’s surname issue,29 in reality the tenacity of customary naming practices remained visible in many places. In most of my sources documenting the charitable activities of married women from the 1870s to 1930s, the women were not referred to by their own names. In newspapers like Shenbao, the married women donators of the late Qing discussed in chapter 1 were primarily referenced by their dual two-character surnames (husband’s surname prefixed to the wife’s own surname)—“woman Liu Yu,” for instance, or “woman Lu Wang”; their personal names were omitted completely. Chapter 2 reveals that the aforementioned leader of the Mass Education Movement, Zhu Qihui, was mostly referred to as Mme. Xiong Xiling. When she needed to sign her full name officially, she did so as Xiong Zhu Qihui, putting her husband’s surname ahead of her own. We know her natal name only because she came from a prominent elite literary family, and the long-standing tradition by which married women from elite literary families maintained their own personal names and natal family surnames remained strong.30 The names of women who did not have such family backgrounds are rarely mentioned, making it difficult for historians to find further information about them. Taking into account the sensitivity and importance of the surname issue in relationship to women’s identity during this era, I endeavor throughout the book to give a woman’s personal name if known, paying particular attention to how she was addressed in a variety of documents and contexts. Wang Zheng once pointed out that New Culture Movement discourse essentially offered two models of womanhood: (1) the new woman who strove to achieve “independent womanhood” by identifying herself with male standards of education, profession, and privilege; and (2) the so-called taitai, with whom the new woman did not want to be associated.31 Bryna Goodman observes that expressions of derision against dependent women—taitai, xiaojie (Miss), and concubines—were common in the progressive press of the 1920s.32 Taitai were often regarded as the embodiment of a decadent, parasitic, and exploitative culture

Introduction  15

rooted in the past, women incapable of contributing to the crucial project of making China modern. The negative image of taitai was frequently used as a foil, pitted against the progressive identities of women in other social categories, especially that of the much-valorized then and much-studied now new woman. In this feminist perspective on the new woman of China, there was almost no discussion of how taitai could themselves be oppressed by patriarchy; the economic dependency of taitai was sometimes even used as a rationale to deny them political rights. In a Shangbao (Commerce newspaper) article titled “My Views on Female Participation in Government” in 1921, a male writer claimed: Female doctors, female teachers, female secretaries, female merchants and female restaurateurs—only these count as independent labor, and only these may have the right to participate in government. As for those taitai and xiaojie who ride in cars, play poker, mahjong, wear gold and diamonds and follow fashion, we absolutely cannot permit them the right to participate in government. They are only parasites on men, not themselves independent.33

In this way, in various discourses over the years, the existence of taitai as social dependents was both emphasized and exaggerated until it became their foremost cultural identity. This contrast between taitai and the new woman has proved so durable an idea that even when we look beyond the 1920s to the post-1949 period, we find a version of this dyad continuing to operate in official political discourse and visual representations, with communist heroines and oppressed women on one side and “feudal” or “bourgeois” taitai-like women on the other, their extinction from the new society much anticipated and allegedly imminent. In early twentieth-century China, taitai included elite women who (at least during their youth) were socialized mostly in the culture of their own domestic quarters. These women often addressed themselves as guige (ladies of the inner quarters) during the late Qing, and they are the focus of the first part of this book. At the other end of the spectrum, taitai could also be women who received a modern education but chose to engage with the public world mostly as civil volunteers rather

16 Introduction

than as career women. As I will show in part 2, these women often conducted charitable and philanthropic activities with older women of a previous generation—many of them relatives or friends—who participated in social service organizations such as the YWCA. Because these modern-educated women are already the subjects of some scholarship, they are not the focus of this book. 34 The fact that so many of them closely resembled the new woman, especially in terms of their modern education, did not rescue them from becoming caricatures to progressive intellectuals, who viewed their philanthropic engagement cynically. For instance, in his short novel Shanren (A philanthropist), written in 1935, Lao She, a well-known novelist and dramatist, sharply satirized his protagonist “Wang taitai” as an overly Westernized, hypocritical philanthropist. Mrs. Wang studied in the West in her early years but remains idle every day, extravagantly spending her husband’s money while zealously and punctiliously imitating Western lifestyles. She dislikes being called Wang taitai and insists that everyone call her Lady (nüshi) Mu Fengzhen (her maiden name) to reflect her independent personhood. She is cruel to her servants and assistant but pretends to be a compassionate and active philanthropist. She avoids doing any difficult social work but makes sure to show up in time for photographs or newspaper reports about the charitable events with which she is nominally associated.35 In the eyes of progressive intellectuals like Lao She, a taitai with elements of modernity, such as Mrs. Wang’s Western education, did not differ in essence from a traditional wife insofar as she lacked that quality most essential to the new women: duli ren’ge (independent personhood). Because this could be elusive to define, as Bryna Goodman has pointed out, 36 it proved easier to construct the meaning of the new woman through exclusions, such as specifying the negative traits possessed by a backward category of women—taitai— as Lao She did here. In between the classical guige and Westernized taitai lay a large number of lesser-known and less-educated taitai from less illustrious backgrounds. Part 3 focuses on a particular group of these women, those who married merchants and joined various indigenous new religious groups together with their husbands for spiritual cultivation. A typical stereotype and criticism of these women can be found in a

Introduction  17

Shenghuo (Life) article from 1926 titled “The Daily Life of Rich Taitai in Luzhi.” The unknown author, most likely male, set out to criticize the idle lifestyle of the women in Luzhi, a small town near Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, in southern China. The article points out that since Luzhi is a “half-open” (ban kaitong) place, few women there received formal schooling (it estimates less than 1 percent). Because of their lack of education, many of these women were, in the author’s opinion, very “stupid” (yuchun) and “superstitious” (mixin)—their stupidity evidenced by the activities with which they occupied themselves: “reciting Buddhist sutras” (nianfo) and playing mahjong. Because these women had servants taking care of their domestic chores, they remained idle; consequently, ten or more of them frequently gathered to recite Buddhist sutras either in local temples or at somebody’s home, while those taitai not interested in Buddhism played mahjong together daily. The article concludes by assigning blame for the women’s “unproductive” (wuwei) situation primarily to their “muddle-headed” (hutu) husbands. The author advises that they reduce their number of domestic servants, teach their women to stay away from “superstitious recreation,” and introduce them to “beneficial recreation” (youyi de xiaoqian) instead—without specifying what constitutes such recreation.37 Popular perception was not wrong to suppose that many of these taitai were very interested in religion. As I will show in part 3 through the case study of the Daoyuan (School of the Way) in Shandong Province, many of them found their Buddhist faith compatible with the teachings of new religious groups. However, the Daoyuan also made conscious distinctions between the beliefs and activities they promoted and ordinary “superstition,” exhorting its female members to focus on charity instead as part of a strategic response to the waves of antisuperstition campaigns that had washed over the country since the late Qing. The article’s other criticism—about the taitai playing mahjong to occupy themselves—represents another typical and influential critique of home women’s recreation. Since its appearance in the southern Chinese port city of Ningbo in the 1860s, mahjong had become immensely popular across social classes and genders nationwide.38 But notoriety as a species of “bad recreation” soon followed, mostly due to its association with gambling. Regional and national governments made many

18 Introduction

unsuccessful attempts to ban the game. In 1927 Hu Shi, the leading intellectual of the New Culture Movement, even took the time to write a short piece criticizing mahjong, along with opium, the eight-legged essay (i.e., the Chinese Civil Service Exam), and foot binding as the “four evils” (sihai) of China. He ridiculed mahjong as “the national game of China” (guoxi) and calculated the tremendous amount of time, money, and energy that the Chinese wasted daily on it, concluding that the game could never conquer a Western “diligent and striving” (qinlao fendou) nation but could become the monopoly of only the “idle” and “spiritual” Chinese nation.39 This critique of mahjong was widely shared among social reformers and survived into the Communist period. Upon taking power in 1949, the Communist government banned mahjong together with all other gambling activities, regarding them as symbols of “capitalist corruption.” Mahjong’s popularity in this period among middle- and upper-class taitai made it become, in the eyes of progressive intellectuals, a concrete symbol of the taitai’s idleness and parasitic status. The male writer quoted previously was not alone in believing that women “who ride in cars, play poker, mahjong, wear gold and diamonds and follow fashion,” owing to their dependent status and decadent recreation, should not be allowed to participate in government.40 According to historian Jia Qinhan, mahjong became a major form of recreation among women in large part because of the severe lack of other forms of available recreation, especially for housewives; it was thus singled out as a target for social criticism. Many conservative husbands disliked their wives going out to seek public entertainment, such as opera, dancing, or movies. By contrast, mahjong could be played at home with relatives or female friends and was therefore regarded as safe. Newspapers frequently published articles satirizing taitai who woke up late every day and spent their afternoons and nights playing mahjong, neglecting their domestic duties (such as properly raising their children and taking care of household chores) and social responsibilities (including becoming productive and patriotic citizens). Worst of all, claimed some commentators, mahjong could endanger women’s chastity and lead to social promiscuity if men and women were allowed to play it together.41 Given the strong negative perception of mahjong and the politics of women’s recreation (a topic that deserves further study), even the

Introduction  19

accomplished philanthropist Zhu Qihui felt she needed to be careful in answering inquiries about her recreational activities. When Grace Seton, an American writer, gave her a questionnaire in 1922 in Beijing, Zhu asked her English secretary to send Seton a brief personal history. After listing the various titles Zhu held, the letter devoted one paragraph particularly to recreation: “Madame Hsiung [Xiong]’s recreations consist of theatre, movie, or mah-jongg parties, given at times when relaxation is imperative. She is not a slave to any form of recreation, however.”42 The strong words used here make clear that Zhu was fully aware of how sensitive the issue of women’s recreation had become and that she intended to distance her public image from the popular stereotype of idle and parasitic women. She seems to have been successful on this front. Indeed, the Chinese sources I encountered only called her Xiong furen, never taitai. Nevertheless, it should not be forgotten that mahjong parties were sometimes instrumental for female socializing and network building; an occasional, deliberate loss could even facilitate the befriending process, a strategy that Zhu used often to establish her family as social luminaries in Shanghai, as shown in chapter 2.

THE SURGE OF POPULAR ENTHUSIASM FOR CHARITY AND PHILANTHROPY Around the late nineteenth century, as women appearing in public became a hotly debated issue, China witnessed a surge of tremendous popular enthusiasm for social charity, which is the second important development that shaped the stories of the book. A weak central government, an unusual frequency of natural disasters, and a series of military defeats by Western powers and Japan all stimulated a sense of urgency among various individuals and groups and dramatically increased their work in charity and social relief. Environmental historian Xia Mingfang estimates that of the forty-two million famine deaths between 1368 and 1937, over thirty-five million came after 1875, the period discussed in this book.43 Other scholars have shown how frequent natural disasters, in addition to wars with foreign powers and subsequent indemnities, helped drain the late Qing government’s

20 Introduction

finances.44 Meanwhile, foreign missionaries began making their way deep into inland China under the protection of unequal treaties, and both Catholic and Protestant missionaries seized the opportunities provided by famine relief to spread Christianity and convert “pagans” en masse. This process severely alarmed Chinese elites and stirred up what Andrea Janku calls a sense of “spiritual competition” through famine relief activities among southern Chinese elites, particularly during the Incredible Famine (dingwu qihuang) in North China in 1876– 1879.45 The second greatest famine in Chinese history (second only to the Great Leap Forward famine in 1959–1961), it killed an estimated 9.5 to 13 million people out of a total population in the five northern provinces of 108 million.46 Western fundraising activities were regularly reported in Shanghai newspapers such as Shenbao.47 Southern Chinese elites, facilitated by the introduction of modern newspapers as well as new transportation and communication technologies, reacted in a spirit of competition and, for the first time in Chinese history, organized beyond local boundaries—operating on a national scale to better coordinate the private relief efforts dealing with natural disasters. Consequently, some Chinese historians of philanthropy have argued that societies of the late Qing and early Republican eras witnessed a spectacular emergence of modern “philanthropists” (cishanjia) as a group or category. 48 Other scholars believe that the Chinese use of the term cishan to refer to the category of philanthropy and charity is of modern origin, much like zongjiao, the categorical term for religion itself.49 My research suggests that at least in the 1900s, if not earlier, Chinese intellectuals were already using cishan to refer to philanthropic causes and cishanjia to refer to philanthropists. By contrast, in the second half of the nineteenth century, intellectuals used cishan mostly as an adjective, similar in meaning to “benevolent,” rather than using it as an umbrella term for a variety of benevolent and compassionate activities.50 In addition to cishan, the terms for charity/philanthropy in Chinese are “as numerous and as difficult to define as they are in English,” as Joanna Handlin Smith points out. Although in English a distinction is sometimes made between charity and philanthropy, Chinese texts do not make this distinction.51 Discussing historical distinctions between English terms for charity and philanthropy, American historian Robert Gross argues that charity is rooted in

Introduction  21

Christianity and generally refers to the direct relief of pain and suffering with concrete and individual acts. Philanthropy, as a term, was coined in late seventeenth-century England and became associated with the Enlightenment. It “sought to apply reason to the solution of social ills and needs,” and, Gross writes, it “aspires not so much to aid individuals as to reform society.” Therefore philanthropy tends to be “abstract and institutional,” with the object of promoting progress through the advance of knowledge, so as to “cure disease.”52 I will apply this understanding whenever distinctions between the two terms can be clearly made in the Chinese context; however, when they cannot be distinguished and/or their meanings overlap, which is quite often the case in Chinese sources, I will use the two terms interchangeably and offer the Chinese term of reference when available. Indeed, despite little mention of cishanjia as a category in Chinese historical documents during the imperial period, scholars have generally agreed that China had a long history of benevolent activities in forms comparable to modern definitions of charity and philanthropy. As early as 1985 Raymond Lum studied certain native, permanent, nonemergency relief activities of the Chinese state, as well as private organized philanthropies focused on the Canton area in the nineteenth century. Lum disputed the idea that these effective, organized philanthropic activities were initiated by foreigners, especially by foreign missionaries, and that the Chinese lacked any sense of unselfish “true benevolence” expressed through action.53 By 2009 Joanna Handlin Smith’s work on charity in the late Ming period had shifted attention from tired questions about whether the Chinese had a tradition of charity to analyzing the nature of charity itself. Smith shows how an unprecedented passion for saving lives swept through late Ming society, giving rise to charitable institutions that transcended family, class, and religious boundaries.54 Particularly, she points out that the newly emerged benevolent societies and foundling homes were “locally sponsored, voluntary, widespread, and enduring” and should not be confused or conflated with the “state-sponsored, sporadic, and temporary” emergency relief institutions of the Song dynasty (960–1279).55 Historians of China often study charity through the perspective of local gentry or elite activism, since representatives of these groups tended to be the leaders of charitable/philanthropic initiatives.56 Smith

22 Introduction

argues that the new charitable institutions such as the benevolent societies of the late Ming arose from a combination of factors, including “the growing importance of merchant wealth, the acquiescence on the part of scholars to the rhetoric of commerce, and the tightening of bonds between merchants and gentry.”57 Newer forms of charitable institutions continued to emerge in the Qing dynasty, including orphanages and homes for widows. Angela Ki Che Leung’s research on male elites of the Jiangnan region in the late eighteenth century shows that their devotion to these charitable activities was part of their pursuit of an ideal Confucian social order.58 The desire for social control and moral edification has long helped motivate the establishment of shantang (halls of benevolence, institutions established by local officials, gentry, and merchants to care for orphans and widows) and qingjie tang (widows’ homes), the two most prevalent forms of traditional philanthropic institutions. In his study of shantang, Japanese scholar Fuma Susumu describes an expanding charitable realm during the late nineteenth century, mostly because the Taiping Rebellion (1850– 1864) left the population increasingly vulnerable to a variety of social crises. By the 1870s Fuma sees a more substantive consolidation and coordination of philanthropists’ activities, especially along coastal areas, facilitated by the construction of telegraphs and the introduction of modern newspapers.59 Vivienne Shue has further demonstrated the “tenacity” and “elasticity” of certain popular Confucian beliefs and practices in the development of shantang in early twentieth-century Tianjin, which found itself confronted by the onrush of modernity and subsequent social and economic changes.60 Most of these studies focus on philanthropic men. Women, if they appear at all, typically show up in these accounts as the subjects of charity. The lack of a full study of Chinese women’s charitable and philanthropic activities is surprising, considering how prevalent worldwide—not merely in China—is the belief in a certain “women’s benevolence”: that is, the belief that women are “natural” vehicles of care and compassion. Historians have studied women’s involvement in charity or voluntary organizations in the United States, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Russia, and Australia, noticing, among other things, how significant were women’s contributions to the charitable realm and, as one of the most accessible forms of public activity for

Introduction  23

women, how charity and philanthropy played a crucial role in helping women adjust to public life, learn skills, and gain experience for potential employment.61 Additionally, the scale of philanthropic work undertaken by large numbers of women further challenges the conventional view of the passive, idle woman in, say, Victorian England.62 But we still know very little about women’s charitable/philanthropic activities in China, even though charity has occupied a sanctioned realm for women throughout Chinese history. The Confucian concept of benevolence (ren) emphasizes that women by nature are more compassionate and therefore better suited to charitable deeds. Meanwhile, the Chinese version of Buddhism stresses that people can be filial Buddhists by transferring to their ancestors the merit they acquire through doing good; the ancestors in turn protect them—an important part of making Buddhism appealing in a Chinese context. Historical neglect of this subject is due not merely to the longer dominance of male-centered narratives on China but also to the impact of radical revolution-centered paradigms in Chinese historiography, which emphasize the significance of obliterating systematic oppression and analyzing the causes of revolutions and belittle charity/philanthropy as bourgeois, bogus attempts to obscure ruling-class oppression and as having trivial impact on society. Significantly, from the eighteenth century onward, women, especially widows, played an indispensable role in the establishment, finance, and management of both lineage charitable estates for needy widows and their children and public institutions of widow homes, as Angela Ki Che Leung and Jerry Dennerline have both noted.63 Some charitable institutions created by men were actually established “upon the order of their mothers.” In so doing, women helped bolster and even spread official Confucian ideology throughout society: widow homes were motivated by a concern that these unfortunate women continue to fulfill their family duties, from caring for their in-laws to educating their children. 64 Furthermore, Chinese imperial governments regularly rewarded women’s charitable acts, in a gesture intended to promote moral edification throughout local societies, a point discussed further in chapter 1. The burgeoning historiography on modern Chinese charity/philanthropy is in great need of a gender perspective. Beginning in the late

24 Introduction

nineteenth century, with women’s domestic seclusion increasingly regarded as backward in the wake of China’s encounter with the West, more women gradually stepped into the public world. As a result, a large segment of China’s female population engaged more openly with the new society, both conceptually and concretely. Women from all walks of life, such as students, revolutionaries, working women, and even prostitutes, were involved in charitable and philanthropic activities. During the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945, a period beyond the scope of this book), the Nationalist government directed the momentum of female activism into concentrated efforts on war relief, as exemplified by the work of the Women’s Consolation Society (Zhongguo funü weilao zonghui), a national umbrella organization headed by Song Meiling, wife of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, that counted other high officials’ wives as board members. This is what Sun Xiaoping refers to as a “personalistic model of leadership” by officials’ wives that built on an earlier, similar model.65 The effectiveness of that earlier model was proven by the New Life Movement, begun in 1934 as a Nationalist reform project to make strong and modern citizens by instilling what Frederic Wakeman calls an “ideological hodgepodge of classical Confucian tenets, a Christian code of ethics, and military ideals.”66 Through its many local and even overseas branches, the Women’s Consolation Society successfully mobilized women of all strata to participate in fundraising, nursing, refugee relief, and sending consolation to soldiers at the front and their families.67 Despite these achievements, the takeover of the mainland by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1949 heralded the official redefinition of charity itself as a hypocritical attempt by landlords and the bourgeoisie to conceal class exploitation and deceive the populace.68 The new government set out to eliminate charity altogether along with “bad” social classes. As its function as social relief was taken over by a powerful central state, Chinese women’s many accomplishments in this realm were largely erased and then forgotten. Before the war with Japan wreaked havoc on Chinese lives, the generation of married noncareer women on whom this book is focused played the most significant and influential roles in many charitable and philanthropic initiatives. This is not surprising since they were economically more capable and had more leisure time and resources and

Introduction  25

a higher social status with which to initiate and organize these activities than did other categories of women, who tended to be followers and short-term participants. Female students, for instance, were often very young school girls still under their parents’ supervision and without the seniority, social network, and status associated with married elite women. Working women were primarily occupied by making a living for everyday survival. That said, some female revolutionaries and/or professional women played active roles in charities and philanthropies, such as educator and journalist Zhang Mojun (1884–1965) and revolutionary and suffragist Tang Qunying, both of whom were especially devoted to establishing schools for girls. Their charitable deeds could be conveniently written into stories celebrating the contributions made by new women to modernize China. Entrenched cultural stereotypes faulted the taitai for being unproductive, parasitic, and decadent; what they had done for public welfare was either recorded under their husbands’ names or completely forgotten. And what they had achieved through social activism could not easily fit into historical narratives that emphasized their diminishing importance in modern China. By putting these little-examined taitai back into our historical narratives, this book not only adds a much-needed gender perspective to the burgeoning historiography on modern Chinese charity/philanthropy but also gives these women overdue recognition for the important contributions they made to public welfare.

MODERNIZING CHINESE RELIGIONS Although women participated in charitable causes for a variety of reasons, expressing their religious piety featured prominently as motivation. Accordingly, charitable groups with religious dimensions tended to last longer and have a more continuous and devout following. Among the varieties of women living in early twentieth-century China, elderly married women tended to be most active in religious activities, for they were at a life stage that generally allowed them more time, authority, and money for religious spending, not to mention their responsibility to pray for blessings and expiate sins for their entire family. The fact that so many progressive intellectuals criticized these

26 Introduction

women in newspapers and magazines for engaging in “superstitious” activities—temple visiting, incense burning, Buddha worship—is the best evidence of their religious fervor. The article discussed earlier, “The Daily Life of Rich Taitai in Luzhi,” gives us a glimpse into this kind of criticism. Further evidence is presented in chapters 1 and 6. The nationwide emergence of numerous new indigenous religious organizations with a central focus on charity and social relief in early Republican China is especially noteworthy and is the third important development of this era that shaped the stories of this book. Boasting popular followings among both men and women, often as many as millions nationwide, these groups had roots in China’s sectarian and syncretic religious tradition but adopted an additional universalist feature in the modern era by embracing five major world religions. Many of these organizations had separate female branches and attracted married nonprofessional women to their memberships. These women often joined along with their husbands in order to practice spiritual cultivation and conduct public charity. However, few scholars have examined their female members, and thus we still know little about the gendered differences in members’ experiences in these religious organizations. The intensification of interactions with the West in the late Qing and early Republican era allowed progressive intellectuals to introduce two clear-cut categories of “religion” (zongjiao) and “superstition” (mixin) to China via Japan. To avoid being classified as superstitious and thus banned, Chinese Buddhists, Daoists, Confucians, and Muslims tried with varying degrees of success to reorganize their groups following the model of the Christian Church, the paradigm of a modern religious organization. But these groups represented, in the words of Chinese religious historian Vincent Goossaert, only “the tip of the iceberg of Chinese culture.”69 Many traditional popular cults, practices, and beliefs simply could not fit into the new category of “religion.” Instead, they were synthesized and institutionalized by their leaders into what historian Prasenjit Duara calls “redemptive societies,” in reference to their common project of saving both individuals and the world.70 The First World War was a turning point in many Chinese elites’ views regarding the West, and it further helped trigger the emergence of these organizations. The war’s brutality and the humiliating Treaty of Versailles shook Chinese elites’ confidence in the Western model of

Introduction  27

progress and civilization. Some of them came to believe that only Eastern spirituality and morality could fundamentally redress the West’s overly materialistic tendencies. Meanwhile, the lack of a central state in China allowed ample space for them to put their ideas into practice. Most redemptive societies institutionalized themselves with their own text-based religious scriptures, philosophical systems, liturgies (simplified from Confucian, Buddhist, and Daoist sources), congregational modes of participation, and hierarchical national organizations.71 Being extremely well connected with government officials, these groups promptly registered with the Beiyang government as “religious groups” and later survived waves of antisuperstition campaigns by the Nationalist regime.72 Their public reputation as charitable organizations played an instrumental role in their survival. Many reoriented themselves toward an explicit focus on social relief or public charity on a large scale. As Thomas DuBois points out, “although many of the traditional sectarian religions had devoted resources for public acts of benevolence, the new era changed charity from sideline to central focus.”73 Once Christian organizations such as the YMCA and YWCA set the example that a good religion is one active in social service, medical relief, and education, Chinese religious leaders and groups began reforming themselves in this direction. The motto of the monk Taixu (1890–1947), an influential leader of Buddhist reform in this period, was to transform Buddhism from a religion “for the dead” (siren de fojiao) into a religion “for the alive” (renjian de fojiao).74 In other words, Taixu envisioned altering Buddhism from the population’s primary provider of liturgical services to a major force in social charity for people suffering, such as refugees of natural disasters. In addition to putting social charity at the center of their focus, the leaders of redemptive societies consciously incorporated the antisuperstition discourse and religious reform goals of the state. Chinese intellectuals and social elites, regardless of political orientation, had been extremely sensitive to Western (typically Christian-inspired, as Goossaert notes) judgments of Chinese religions. Consequently, for instance, liturgy and ritual services long cherished by the population and regularly offered by Buddhist and Daoist monks were now deemed wasteful, extravagant, superstitious activities and were removed from

28 Introduction

the texts produced by modern religious associations. Even a major redemptive society like the Daoyuan, labeled as superstitious by Nationalist government, internalized this discourse. Believing that women were more superstitious than men, this organization exhorted its female members in particular to stay away from activities it defined as superstitious. The constant need to distance themselves from superstition encouraged these groups to use charity as an alternative channel to fulfill their pursuit of religious merit for personal salvation, which served as another important thrust in their turn toward charity. Thus, as we will see in chapter 6, charity became a major mechanism for women in the Daoyuan to express their faith and regularly engage with the public world.

SOURCES, METHODOLOGY, AND STRUCTURE One reason that women’s charitable and philanthropic activities in the late Qing and early Republican era have been largely forgotten is the limitation of sources. We still lack enough reliable data to provide a broad picture of women’s charitable engagement, or to determine what percentage of the female population participated, even within elite groups. We are also short on the data needed to precisely characterize the extent of female investment versus male investment in charity, or to provide a sense of proportion. In her study of Zhejiang Province, Mary Rankin notes that compared to the Qianlong period (1736–1795), “late Qing and Republican gazetteers record far more female investment from the mid-nineteenth century on. Much was for religious institutions or very local necessities like bridges, but women also contributed to academies and foundling homes.”75 Despite this apparent social enthusiasm, we should remain cautious in claiming that a higher percentage of women were involved in charity during the 1890s and 1910s than had been in previous generations. Their increased visibility in late Qing records could be a result of more gazetteers being compiled, or increased recordings of charitable deeds (rather than an increased number of the deeds themselves). Second, with regard to the majority of woman donors, sources rarely provide more than their names and the amount donated. Not even prominent female

Introduction  29

philanthropists recorded their private thoughts, motivations, or specific actions. The tendency to regard women’s ability to express themselves through the written word as a sign of their agency further explains why their activism was so often either downplayed or ignored.76 These limitations required me to use the available sources more deftly. The introduction of modern newspapers and periodical press not only provided a new media to document and publicize women’s charitable activities but also facilitated circulation of new ideas about and models of charity. During the final three decades of the nineteenth century, women first became a topic of public discourse in a newly emerging newspaper and pictorial press.77 Although many press reports, if they did mention the charitable activities of married nonprofessional women without modern educations, provided only very brief information about their donation amounts and surnames, thus making it difficult to trace their identities, some did present more details. Soon after the establishment of Shenbao in 1872, for instance, charitable announcements began appearing regularly from elite women. The formal donation-soliciting announcements that these women, often in their capacity as campaign leaders, placed in national and local newspapers can be used to examine how they articulated their charitable motivations and justified their public activities. Moreover, media reports and discussions on the public fundraising events they held and/or the commendations they received for conducting charity can reveal the ways that others perceived their charitable activities. Considering the fragmented nature of newspaper and periodical sources, chapter 1 carefully selects several relatively well-documented cases to examine major themes and issues of women’s charitable activities in the late Qing. In addition to modern newspapers and periodical press, long-lasting religious and philanthropic organizations left records of their female members’ activities, which can be used creatively. For example, the YWCA in China had a modern system of work reports, and their foreign secretaries regularly recorded their work experiences and encounters in various localities. These reports, as I show in part 2, contain rich details about the public activities of married nonprofessional Chinese women, though not without certain bias. Materials like

30 Introduction

these have been mostly neglected or occasionally used merely to study the institutional history of the YWCA. Instead, I use these reports to trace and examine the public activities of “home women” (in the foreign secretaries’ words) who interacted with the YWCA. Similarly, the Daoyuan, a major indigenous religious and charitable organization in Republican China, left some unusual sources, mostly deities’ exhortations toward their female members, through their ritual of spirit writing, an important method of divination for worshippers seeking practical aid and advice from deities through the planchette. Because the existing, limited research on the Daoyuan has focused on the organization’s nature and its male leadership or its concrete disaster relief activities, few scholars have used its spirit-writing texts to examine how this powerful medium was used to give regular and detailed instructions to female members. Often written in colloquial language more accessible to women, these instructions, as I show in part 3, can help unravel the gendered and charitable teachings of the Daoyuan and the activities of its female members. This book also puts to use a variety of other materials to better understand prominent philanthropic women and their families, from Wenshi ziliao (Cultural and historical records) to foreign travelers’ accounts and oral history interviews. Unearthing the true stories of these philanthropists concealed behind the existing dominant paradigms of female virtue and revolution is a particular challenge for historians. As I demonstrate in chapter 1, exemplary women in the late Qing were often written into biographic histories by way of a formulaic narrative of virtue, mostly on chastity, or filial piety; as a result, their life stories were simplified, truncated to suit a genre in ways that concealed important but ill-fitting details. Later, the Communist Party’s promotion of revolution-centered official histories meant that only historical figures whose life stories could be tailored to show their contributions to the revolution were singled out for celebration. As we will see in chapter 2, the story of Ma Qingxia (1877–1923), a widow philanthropist of Henan Province, was recorded along this line in the official local Wenshi ziliao. The existing sources have challenged me as a historian to carefully read through tainted official narratives of philanthropic women, compare them with a variety of other relevant

Introduction  31

sources, discern even the slightest incompatibilities in their stories, and inquire what those inconsistencies indicate for the larger picture. This book presents a variety of carefully selected case studies, including temporarily organized charitable campaigns and movements, individual women philanthropists, and large, long-lasting religious charitable institutions in which women played important roles. I believe this approach effectively highlights the significance of religious and charitable activities as forms of social, civic, and political engagement, socializing, and networking for many Chinese women, as well as illustrating the achievements, controversies, and challenges they faced. As the first book focusing on married nonprofessional women without modern educations and their public charitable and religious activities, I hope it shows that charity and philanthropy deserve scholarly attention as important fields of inquiry in modern Chinese women’s history, and that what this book has started can inspire other scholars to explore related topics in future projects. This book is organized into three parts, according to my case studies on different groups. It proceeds chronologically: part 1 mainly covers elite women’s organized charitable and philanthropic campaigns and movements from the 1890s to the 1910s; part 2 deals with the heyday of the YWCA in China, the 1910s to 1930s; and part 3 focuses on the most active period (1920s to 1930s) of the Daoyuan. Part 1 investigates elite women who moved out of domestic seclusion and became effective actors through their charitable and philanthropic work. Chapter 1 first traces the new developments of women’s charitable activities in the late Qing through contemporary newspapers and then analyzes some of the achievements, controversies, and issues involved through two case studies. It also serves as the historical background for the stories of two long-forgotten but prominent female philanthropists discussed in chapter 2, Ma Qingxia and Zhu Qihui. My deliberate juxtaposition of these two cases demonstrates the different ways in which patriarchy constrained and delimited women’s philanthropic and civic engagement in the early twentieth century. Meanwhile, the two cases also show how individual men in their lives, such as husbands and brothers, could in some cases support their developing agency and philanthropic activism in the public sphere.

32 Introduction

Part 2 examines some middle-class women’s interactions with the YWCA in China, analyzing how they gained new public experiences through this international social service organization while contributing significantly to the survival and development of the foreign institution in local Chinese societies. Originating mostly in Britain and the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century, the YWCA became arguably the largest women’s organization in 1920s China, and together with the YMCA it played a crucial role in introducing and exemplifying the Western Christian model of organizational philanthropy and social service. Chapter 3 shows that unlike its memberships in the West—the majority of which were made up of students, businesswomen, and working women—most of the women who participated in the YWCA in China were, from its beginning in 1890 to the early 1930s, somewhat older, married home women. The organization filled a much needed social niche of a well-organized public institution for married nonprofessional women, drawing many of them out of domestic seclusion and into the world of social service through its tailored programs, broadening their horizons and enlarging their social circles. Zooming in, chapter 4 pays close attention to how local women interacted with the organization. In particular, it shows that their resourcefulness gave them a certain degree of social agency to provide crucial guidance and advice to the YWCA, enabling it to indigenize its fundraising and networking methods according to local social customs. This indigenization proved a crucial factor, contributing to the organization’s success among local members despite its foreign religious identity. Part 3 focuses on the female members of the Daoyuan in Shandong Province, many of whom were the wives and concubines of merchants and were barely literate. It demonstrates that even in a conservative religious organization, charity played a central role in the lives and world of its female members. Through close analysis of the sacred texts produced by the Daoyuan, chapter 5 demonstrates how the organization redefined Confucian gender doctrines to meet the challenges of modern gender ideologies. Its new teachings’ repeated emphasis on domestic harmony also reveals the kinds of domestic grievances that drove women to seek spiritual solace and salvation through organized charitable activities. Chapter 6 first tells the story of one leading Daoyuan family in Qingdao mostly through oral history interviews, to

Introduction  33

enrich our understanding of the personal lives and charitable activities of women in the Daoyuan. It then analyzes how the organization promoted public charity as an alternative channel to help members accumulate religious merit for salvation, replacing those “superstitious” activities such as temple visiting and incense burning that the Nationalist regime condemned. This section not only speaks to how women derived collective agency from the support of family members (though not without complex, often revealing constrains) but also demonstrates in detail how gendered and charitable traditions were being redefined and modified to meet the demands of a modernizing China.

Part I ELITE WOMEN AND CHARITY

L

ouise Edwards has observed that isolation in the domestic sphere had previously “signified a woman’s high moral standing, yet over the course of the first half of the twentieth century, a ‘good’ woman increasingly was conceived as a politically aware and politically active woman. This shift impacted directly on family politics and national politics as well as on gendered codes of personal virtue.”1 The intensification of China’s national crisis prompted increased public attention to politics and social welfare and a new sense of urgency across social groups. As a new public realm of citizenship came into being in the late Qing, so too emerged a shifting moral valance of what we call the public. While women going out in public remained a hotly debated issue, when they ventured out for public fundraising, their activities could be justified and even praised as a “sacrifice” for the public good. Consequently, if virtues such as chastity, modesty, and filial piety had once been associated with the private and domestic sphere, now public-mindedness—demonstrating patriotism and a selfsacrificing spirit for the public welfare—became the newly celebrated criterion of a virtuous woman. Accordingly, charity and philanthropy, once viewed merely as a display of women’s personal virtue of benevolence, now gained a new layer of significance, symbolizing women’s dedication to a higher good. The two chapters in this part examine elite women’s public charitable activities, unearthing their social and political engagements and

36  Part I. Elite Women and Charity

demonstrating the ways that charitable activities enabled them to reposition themselves in the public world of the late Qing and the early Republican era. Chapter 1 begins by tracing new developments in women’s charitable activities in the late Qing and then presents two case studies of women’s charitable/philanthropic engagement. The two cases, dealing with disaster relief and women’s education, are not completely unknown among historians of China. However, they have never been analyzed through the lens of charity and brought together to present an overall picture of the controversies and opportunities surrounding women’s charitable activities in this crucial historical period. Chapter 2 juxtaposes the stories of two prominent individual female philanthropists to illustrate, in addition to their achievements, the different ways in which patriarchy constrained women’s charitable and civic engagement in the early twentieth century. It also shows why we cannot properly understand the agency women exercised without examining the men in their lives. Throughout this section, I highlight how these women repositioned themselves in the public world without completely shedding their old identities; indeed, certain legacies from their pasts that would seem to be obstacles instead served to empower these women and facilitate their successful repositioning as social activists in charity and philanthropy.

1 BEYOND A PERSONAL VIRTUE

CARRYING ON A LONG CHARITABLE TRADITION The limited scholarship on women’s charitable activities mostly focuses on the Song dynasty (960–1279). We know that elite women were especially active in disaster relief and the support of orphans and the poor, and that their activities reached beyond their own families and lineages to include strangers in their areas (though strangers were admittedly most often of secondary importance). Song intellectuals made gendered distinctions regarding benevolent activities, frequently ascribing women’s motivations for charity to the Confucian virtue “women’s benevolence” (furen zhi ren). While claiming that men’s benevolence could be applied far beyond the family and could even be used in managing the country, women’s benevolence, Song intellectuals asserted, did not have this reach and was mostly limited to small charities within their inner spheres. Furthermore, charitable women were often regarded as more religious than charitable men. As a result, charitable women in their epitaphs were more frequently described by their sons or other male relatives as being very religious, believing in Buddhist or Daoist teachings.1 An examination of imperial court memorials submitted during the late Qing period by local officials to solicit official awards for women— nearly all of them mothers, wives, and daughters of scholar-officials— suggests that women’s charitable activities were happening across the country, even in relatively distant provinces such as Guangdong, Fujian,

38  Part I. Elite Women and Charity

Sichuan, and Guizhou.2 These memorials were both a high honor for the woman and her family and a strategy for the government to implement its civilizing and moralizing missions in local society. Prominent female donors might receive awards from the imperial government, often in the form of permission to the women’s families to build local arches or hang a plaque with the characters for leshan haoshi (readiness to show benevolence and fondness for charity) inscribed thereon, in close resemblance to the way of awarding chaste widows. In a memorial of 1890, the Zhejiang governor reports that a woman named Sun Mingyi from Anhui Province, a niece of an official, showed a “benevolent heart” and that whenever there were floods, droughts, or famine, she reached out to help. Recently, she had donated more than 1,000 liang of silver for Zhejiang’s flood. The governor proposed that such acts deserved to be rewarded by permitting her family to build an arch in their local area with leshan haoshi inscribed on it. The Ministry of Rites approved this request.3 Since arches were publicly visible, this aided in promoting the Confucian virtue of benevolence, which was deemed especially necessary in frontier regions where non-Han minorities primarily constituted the local population. Ethical and religious beliefs continued to influence women’s charitable decisions. An examination of some of the announcements that women put in Shenbao, established in 1872 and one of the earliest and most influential modern Chinese newspapers, helps us see how some elite women articulated their charitable motivations. When a flood broke out around the Yangzi River near Jiangsu Province in 1881, a woman who addressed herself as “guixiu Wang Wanxiang” (guixiu here specifically refers to young unmarried elite women of the inner quarters) from Yunjian (now the Shanghai area) placed an announcement in Shenbao encouraging other women to donate to disaster relief. She listed the prices of her various genres of literary works, such as poems and lyrics, for potential donors to purchase for charity. She stressed that if scholar-officials (shifu) could donate generously to fulfill yi (meaning the upholding of righteousness and a moral disposition to do good—one of the five Confucian virtues), then “how could we secluded women, just because we are weaker and live in the inner quarters (shengui zhi ruoxi), not make our personal contribution?!”4 In the realm of benevolent activities, unlike Song male intellectuals, guixiu Wang did

Beyond a Personal Virtue  39

not perceive much gendered difference either in scope or in motivation; she believed that women should and could strive to emulate the Confucian virtues exhibited by male literati. In addition to invoking Confucian ethics, some elite women used Buddhism to appeal to other women. A woman surnamed Liu Yu from the Xinwu area (now Fengxin County, Jiangxi Province, in southeastern China) posted an announcement in Shenbao in 1879, at the time of the Incredible Famine of North China, “urging guige to help with disaster relief.” She called on xianggui (fragrant inner quarters, referring to sequestered elite women) to save the money they spent on clothes and jewelry to save people’s lives instead. She started by stating that “previous records” (gukao) suggested that disaster relief is the biggest “merit” (gongde) and its karma reward is the fastest and most generous. Although she did not specifically compare it with other types of good deeds, to strengthen her point she further quoted the popular sayings that “to save one man’s life is superior to building a sevenstoried pagoda” ( jiuren yiming shengzao qiji futu) and “donating money to the poor appears to be a loss on the surface but actually is a gain” (shiqian yu qiong liming zhong qu an zhong lai).5 She added that because her family was not rich and her husband was away traveling beyond the Great Wall, she had to rely on her needlework to make a living. Moreover, since she could not afford to hire a teacher for her son, she had to teach him by herself. The previous year she had heard about the disasters in Henan and Shanxi Provinces and wanted to help. Her family was having a difficult time and she had to reduce her daily meals to save for disaster relief. She knew that her donation was minimal and probably could not help much, but she tried her best. The more recent famine in Zhili Province was even worse. She had saved a little bit more and sent her savings to the disaster area. In her study of famine relief activities in late nineteenth-century China, Andrea Janku has pointed out that religious beliefs were crucial for the mobilization of “a broader populace” for the cause of famine relief, although elites could also be motivated by the concern for social peace and economic security, or by the pursuit of social prestige and probably “a hint of national pride.” She notes that the Buddhist link of the “doctrine of cause and effect” (yinguo zhi shuo) or “action and response” (ganying) to famine relief dates from at least Song times. It

40  Part I. Elite Women and Charity

is unclear when the primacy of famine relief as the foremost act to accumulate merit emerged, but the notion that “to save one man’s life is superior to building a seven-storied pagoda” goes back to at least the Yuan dynasty. During the late Ming dynasty (1368–1644), this Buddhist outlook became an important factor for elite fundraising activities, and by the late Qing period, the doctrine experienced a “renaissance” and was clearly used to instigate elite action and to provide the populace a kind of “moral instruction.” Some Qing scholars criticized the notion of karmic retribution as “petty-minded demand for effects and merits” that contradicted “the principle not to strive for profit and not to reckon with merit” and thus was “inappropriate for a (sincere) scholar.” Still, many charitable contributors to famine continued to expect and be promised with special rewards, from the birth of sons to the curing of illness, longevity, and examination success, all of which were standard elements of incessant relief campaigns. Although Janku’s focus is mostly on male elite of the late Qing, the case of Liu Yu in Shenbao clearly indicates that elite women applied the notion of religious merit to call for disaster relief as well. Nevertheless, famine relief had by no means been the foremost method for accumulating merit by the late Qing, as Janku also points out. Up to then, the most popular method among the wealthy southern elites had been spending money for lavish ceremonies or liberating living creatures.6 That changed over the course of the twentieth century. With the intensification of antiwasting and antisuperstition campaigns, many male intellectuals and social reformers tried to channel the religious zeal of the masses, especially women, toward charity and away from certain “wasteful” activities, especially those requiring women to leave home and travel for pilgrimage. In an article in Shenbao in 1880, an anonymous author (probably a male literati) praised a “benevolent woman” (shannü) surnamed Lu Wang, from Taohuawu in the Suzhou area of southern China, for writing to the Shanxi Bureau of Disaster Relief (zhenju) in northern China to suggest a new method of combining religious worship and disaster relief in order to save money for charity. Women interested in this method, the article explained, could each donate, say, five yuan to the bureau, of which two would be used by staff to travel to designated local temples and burn incense for the donor while the remaining three yuan would be put to disaster relief

Beyond a Personal Virtue  41

in the same region. In this way, women would not need to travel alone all the way to Shanxi (a province in North China known for its many Buddhist temples and sacred mountains) and spend a lot of extra “nonbeneficial fees” (wuyi zhi feiyong). Furthermore, they could benefit from the religious merit gained by donating for disaster relief, which is more “reliable” (youju). The writer for Shenbao also praised the benevolent woman Lu Wang, in contrast to women who complained that the government obstructed their “benevolent wishes” (shannian) and deprived them of the chance to receive blessings from “deities and Buddha” (shenfo) by forbidding them to travel far away, “regardless of the cost,” to burn incense and pay for pilgrimages.7 The Shenbao author situated his support of Lu Wang’s suggestion in a specific context. While “benevolent gentlemen” (shanshi) in southeastern China (the richest area in the late Qing) were running out of funds to support the disaster relief efforts for Shanxi, “countless” (buke xishu) women nationwide were still traveling to burn incense at local temples in spite of the cost. Women in the Wu area (a region in and around Jiangnan, south of the Yangzi River, surrounding Suzhou, in Jiangsu and Zhejiang Provinces), where Lu Wang resided, had long been known for the custom of believing in “ghosts and spirits” (guishen), he explained. He added that in contrast to this “shortcoming” (bing), women in the area were also known for their virtue of leshan haoshi (readiness to show benevolence and fondness for charity), and in the disaster relief efforts of previous years, women had often donated jewelry to help. He thought it therefore unquestionable that these women had a sincere desire for benevolence and concluded that if they could use their admirable benevolence to compensate for their mistaken beliefs that incense burning and Buddha worship were benevolent actions, and thereby stop misusing their benevolence, the Wu area would have endless blessings.8 The directive to cut religious spending and channel the surplus money to charity, especially to disaster relief, aimed not only to reduce women’s “wasteful” activities but also to limit their public activities in deference to long-standing concerns about women’s morality and the possibilities for promiscuity associated with frequenting public places like temples and festivals. In other words, although elite women were allowed to pursue religious merit as did elite men, men often criticized and regulated the women’s particular methods. The discourse of

42  Part I. Elite Women and Charity

channeling religious fervor into charity continued into the Republican era, though by then it was more often directly articulated through an “antisuperstition” discourse rather than merely through the rationale of rejecting “wasteful spending,” as we will see in greater detail in chapter 6. Overall, during the 1880s disaster relief efforts made by elite women most often took the form of donating money, clothes, or jewelry, in ways still indicative of individualistic rather than collective action. In the 1890s an important change occurred: women began to organize together for charity beyond their local areas and on a national scale. This was partly a result of their attempts to emulate elite men’s first nationwide disaster relief effort (during the Incredible Famine). As we have seen from Wang Wanxiang’s announcement, individual elite women like Wang already strove to keep up with their male counterparts by the 1870s and 1880s. Some were already donating for disaster relief beyond their locales: Liu Yu’s charitable announcement in Shenbao in 1879 and Lu Wang’s letter of 1880 to the Shanxi Bureau of Disaster Relief were both responses to the North China famine from elite women in southern China. The first opportunity for elite women to organize together to provide relief at a distance came as a direct response to a flood in the provinces of Jiangsu, Fujian, Zhili, and Shandong in 1890. Before long, flood relief organizations in the Shanghai area were overburdened and making little progress in fundraising. As a result, the Disaster Relief Bureau for Women of the Inner Quarters (Guige zhenjuan ju), a temporary relief organization formed by and targeted at mostly elite women as potential donors, was established. The initiative first came from a young woman named Sun Mingyi, daughter of a scholar official in the Sucheng county of Anhui Province. According to Shenbao’s report, Sun was a lay Buddhist who had resolved at age twelve never to marry (fangwai xinnü) and had been active in charity from her youth, contributing to the building of local bridges and donating for flood relief.9 Traveling through Shandong on her way to Beijing, she witnessed tragic scenes caused by the disaster and decided to organize other guige for disaster relief. Probably using official networks, her organization quickly established four headquarters—in Beijing, Shanghai, and Henan and Anhui Provinces—with the wives of respectable high officials in charge of each

Beyond a Personal Virtue  43

location, and ten smaller branches in other provinces.10 Sun’s initiative in this campaign reminds us that young unmarried women could be active in charity as well, to express, among other things, their religious devotion. Still, more often than not, their youth required that they rely heavily on gaining the support and endorsement of the wives of prominent officials, whose seniority and social respectability could more easily attract donations. Sun’s organization had detailed regulations about donation methods and standards for subsequent recognition.11 It designated a major bank in Beijing to accept donations, with specific rules to ensure the trustworthiness and transparency of the whole process. It offered receipts for each donation, and posters were to be regularly on display in the streets with lists of donation amounts to show the organization’s credibility. For those women who felt that it was “inappropriate” (bubian) to send their donations to the bank by themselves (since it required that they appear in public), they could instead visit the bureau’s Beijing headquarters, the home of a Hanlin official, and hand the money to his wife, Mrs. Hao. Mrs. Hao would then have the donations sent to the bank on their behalf. For women who donated more than one thousand ounces of gold, the organization would ask officials to report their names to the court and petition it to build arches for them to “commend morals and manners” (yizhang fenghua). Even those who could only afford to donate 200 wen would see their names appear in Shenbao and publicized nationwide.12 Newspaper recognition that did not include a local arch was regarded as a lower-level award. Nevertheless, the advent of modern newspapers provided a new channel to win nationwide recognition for women’s charitable deeds, and even news about government-sanctioned arches to be built for a certain woman was often publicized in Shenbao. The biggest achievement of this campaign lay not in the number of donations it collected but in its social impact. Judging by the praise in Shenbao, the campaign successfully convinced the public that, if organized properly, women could play a significant role in disaster relief. One author commented enthusiastically that these guige’s activities showed that Chinese women’s charitable reputations could compare favorably with those of Western women, and that the trend in China resembled those in Western countries whereby men and women were

44  Part I. Elite Women and Charity

considered equal.13 From then on, even relief organizations established by men started to target guige as a category of potential donors, with advertisements that used specifically Buddhist ideas about karma to appeal to women, encouraging them to put aside their cosmetics and jewelry money.14 This reveals a significant change from fundraising tactics during the Ming dynasty, when women were not considered as a separate category but only as “adjuncts of male donors.”15 The fact remains that although women like Wang Wanxiang believed that elite women should and could make contributions to disaster relief to demonstrate that they possessed the Confucian virtue of yi (righteousness) equal to elite men, contemporary newspapers (including their elite female contributors) frequently used the categorical term guige (women of the inner quarters) to refer to them (selves), suggesting that a major difference between charitable women and charitable men was that women’s identity and virtue were still closely associated with domestic seclusion.

THE CONTROVERSY OVER FUNDRAISING IN PUBLIC By the beginning of the twentieth century, charitable elite women began to form longer-lasting organizations and venture out for public fundraising activities. Established in 1906 by Mme. Liao (Liao tai furen) in Beijing, the Chinese Women’s Association (Zhongguo furenhui) was probably the most influential, long-lasting, and formal women’s philanthropic organization established by “upper class women” (guizu funü) at the turn of century. An examination of the organization’s public activities, which lasted about three years, demonstrates the power of charitable fundraising to legitimate upper-class women’s activities outside the home and reveals what was at stake when such women showed up in public places. How significant was it for women to establish sustained national organizations to conduct philanthropy, compared to temporarily organized charitable movements such as Sun Mingyi’s initiative? The founder of the Chinese Women’s Association, Mme. Liao, clearly embraced the view that the lack of a national Chinese women’s group

Beyond a Personal Virtue  45

symbolized Chinese women’s backwardness. While accompanying her scholar-official son on a visit to Japan from the fall of 1905 to spring 1906, Mme. Liao not only studied medicine but also noticed that, compared to the flourishing women’s organizations in Japan, Chinese women “for thousands of years, have been so dispersed that they do not have organizations.” On her return home, she made plans for a Chinese women’s organization. Before long, the opportunity for mobilization came. On April 18, 1906, a disastrous earthquake hit San Francisco and many overseas Chinese became refugees. Mme. Liao and her daughter-in-law raised funds on their behalf, and several hundred upper-class women from high-official families in Beijing responded to their call. By October they decided to make further use of this opportunity to found the Chinese Women’s Association. Targeting upper-class women, the association explicitly emphasized its philanthropic purpose. The leaders of the organization believed that their existence could promote “public welfare in women’s circles, practice self-reliance, help women to be independent, and promote benevolence.”16 Mme. Liao spoke for many female leaders in China when she argued that long-lasting philanthropic organizations represented a more advanced step—a sign of progress. Many women activists of this era shared Liang Qichao’s opinion that the lack of civic groups was a key reason that China was falling behind. Consequently, voluntary associations sprang up in the 1890s and 1910s, enlisting both men and women in solving local problems and in dealing with national political issues.17 Compared to women’s groups in the early and middle Qing, these new groups were mostly formed around an ideal or goal beyond a shared interest in poetry and literature, with particular attention to women’s education, nationalism, women’s economic independence, and political radicalism, and their members tended to include women beyond the immediate local geographic area.18 In addition to invoking the Confucian virtue of women’s benevolence, the proclamation of the Chinese Women’s Association utilized contemporary discourses on nationalism and “grouping”: women, as half the Chinese population, should “fulfill their obligations” (yingjin zhi yiwu) to society and the nation (guojia). Moreover, Chinese women should learn “care for groups” (aiqun). Notably, Mme. Liao’s association also began to use a newly

46  Part I. Elite Women and Charity

emerged category in this spirit: nüjie (women’s world or realm), a term created around 1903 to refer collectively to Chinese women with a sense of unity. 19 Adopting the model of the Red Cross Society,20 the Chinese Women’s Association’s main goals included helping with disaster relief and philanthropy, encouraging women’s enlightenment through education and public speeches, and teaching women practical skills in order that they become less economically dependent on men. Its funding mainly came from member donations, and by 1907 it already had over three hundred members. It was the first large-scale women’s organization in Beijing with specific regulations. These regulations were published in newspapers to specify the association’s name, location, goal, obligations, membership, rules, positions, funding, meeting schedules, and branches.21 Headquartered in Beijing with Mme. Liao as the president, the association also had a Nanyang branch at Shanghai that was responsible for the southeastern provinces, a Beiyang branch at Tianjin for the northeastern provinces, and a Dongying branch in Japan, with one of Mme. Liao’s female medical disciples as its leader in organizing Chinese citizens overseas. It also published a bimonthly newspaper, perhaps the first of its kind, through the Peking Women’s Sanitary Hospital (also established by Mme. Liao). One of the association’s most important charitable initiatives was to publicly raise funds for flood relief in the Huai River area in February 1907. In addition to running announcements in the newspaper Dagong bao (Commonwealth daily), the campaign had women sell their paintings of refugees to raise funds during a traditional festival fair at Liulichang in Beijing, fully utilizing what “talented women” (cainü) were known for. Organized by Mme. Liao’s daughter-in-law, the group printed twenty thousand copies of “paintings of refugees” (nanmin tu) and asked young female students to help sell them. Anyone who made a donation would have his or her name written down on a slip of paper, pasted on their booth, and the next day publicized in national newspapers. Within ten days they raised over a thousand yuan.22 The group benefited from the fact that one of its key members was the wife of the editor-in-chief of Dagong bao, Ying Lianzhi (1867–1926): the newspaper played a key role in helping promote their fundraising campaign,

Beyond a Personal Virtue  47

publishing donation lists four times in the space of several months and lavishing praise on the women’s activities. Ying himself praised the public fundraising activities of the Chinese Women’s Association in Dagong bao as a type of “sacrifice.” His editorial states: “These young women are willing to make the sacrifice of showing themselves in public, of standing in wind and snow, tirelessly talking and painting to solicit donations. This is indeed an action that we have never seen! When I heard about it, I could not help but prostrate myself in admiration. Ah! One chance of China’s advancement started from here.”23 Ying understood the Confucian rule that “good women” were supposed to remain in domestic seclusion; he presented their public fundraising as a “sacrifice” precisely because it endangered their chaste social reputation. He regarded women’s charitable activities as legitimate signs of “China’s advancement” because “the sacrifice of women’s personal reputation” was made for a higher good, a good for the public, “saving our compatriots from disasters.”24 I will discuss the role of sacrifice in the early discourse on women’s charity further through other cases. In the name of charity, elite women were applauded for their move into the public world. However, a fundraising incident soon provoked controversy and sensational news. An initiator of the fundraising event, Mrs. Du, brought her two student daughters to help sell paintings at Liulichang. One of them, Du Chengshu, received a love letter delivered to the event by an elementary school boy but sent by a man unknown to her named Qu Jiang, from the Imperial University of Peking. In his letter, Qu expressed his admiration of Du, criticized the strict traditional social rules of gender segregation, and asked for a date at a park in Beijing.25 Humiliated and angry, Du regarded the letter as not merely a personal assault but a crucial matter for the reputation of the Chinese Women’s Association and indeed for all Chinese women. She publicized the love letter as well as her response in newspapers and sent copies to the Ministry of Education and to Qu Jiang’s school, signing her name as the secretary of the Chinese Women’s Association. In her publicized response, Du not only accused Qu of using “obscene” (weibi huanbo) language to try to seduce a “good woman” but also condemned him for taking advantage of an event for disaster relief. Finally, she

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raised the magnitude of the matter to the level of endangering the respectability of women’s education, the future of Chinese women, and the survival of the Chinese nation. She hoped that publicizing the letter would allow people from all walks of life to judge it for themselves and officials to have a “proper reaction.”26 It is difficult to tell which word(s) qualified as “obscene” by Miss Du’s standards. Qu Jiang certainly chose the wrong occasion to send his courtly letter. Women’s presence in public during the late Qing made for a heightened atmosphere; Qu had the letter delivered by a third person, thus creating a witness at a public event. If Du chose to keep the letter secret after other people witnessed its delivery, her action might have aroused suspicion. Perhaps to avoid gossip and prove her innocence, she felt she had to publicize it. But the minute she publicized the love letter, her reputation was tainted. It mattered less to the public whether Du and Qu had previously been conducting a secret romance. Instead, the letter immediately turned the public’s attention away from the charitable activities (even as a type of “sacrifice,” in Ying Lianzhi’s words) and toward the more sensitive issue of women’s chastity. Du’s effort to publicly prove her innocence and defend the reputation of her philanthropic organization created even more cause for concern among its members. Some leaders of the association decided to distance themselves from the scandal and from the Du family in order to avoid having their reputations tarnished. This eventually led to the establishment of a separate women’s organization—Zhongguo funü hui (using funü instead of furen, translated as the same word, women, in English)—by Du’s mother and her family; we know little about this new organization or its later activities. Was Miss Du overreacting? Judging by the prevailing social response to the publicized letter, she was perhaps not. Indeed, as she understood it, it not only related to her personal reputation but also could endanger “the future world of Chinese women” (nüjie qiantu). Considering the fact that “good women” were only beginning to step onto the public stage, and that this remained controversial, one small mistake in the process could provoke a backlash from conservative forces. Indeed, after the love letter was publicized, socially conservative voices reached the Qing central government, which quickly showed its disapproval of women’s public charitable activities. Qu Jiang was summarily expelled

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from school. Meanwhile, reports reached the government of girls seen dancing and singing publicly while selling their handicrafts at Liulichang for the fundraising. Soon the Qing Ministry of Education issued an order stating that because Beijing was “the first and foremost area of charity,” female students who wanted to contribute could request that someone else send the donation; it was not necessary to be on the scene themselves. Dancing and singing in public were especially “inappropriate with regard to social etiquette and customs.”27 Although benevolent charity could lend legitimacy to women who ventured into public places, the Confucian gender ideology of female modesty and chastity was still a profoundly powerful social constraint, a fact that must draw our attention to the shifting emphasis on but ever-present imperative of virtue for women’s public activities during this era. It seems that elite women could remain virtuous even if they ventured into public for charitable fundraising, in which case their actions could be justified using a different and much-needed new virtue: willingness to “sacrifice” for the public good. But the moment their public activities raised questions about their personal chastity, their virtuous reputation became tarnished; without the protection of a good personal reputation, their charitable activities could rapidly lose both official approval and social sanction. In other words, the new emphasis on women’s public virtue was still closely connected to their private behavior. Despite this setback, sources also suggest that this ban, as well as other, similar warnings, did not immediately stop women’s public charitable activities.28 Moreover, the fact that Du’s family decided subsequently to set up a separate philanthropic organization to show their determination to continue their work indicates that the broader social trend of a new era—women emerging into the public world—was irreversible.

THE BIRTH OF THE FIRST MODERN CHINESE PHILANTHROPIC HEROINE—HUIXING AND GIRLS’ SCHOOLS In addition to disaster relief, another prominent philanthropic field in which many elite women in the late Qing actively engaged was

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women’s education, mostly in the form of establishing girls’ schools. Beginning in the 1890s some progressive intellectuals attributed China’s profound national crisis to its lack of educated women. Arguing mostly on instrumentalist grounds, reformers (most of them male) initially believed that educated women could contribute to “economic prosperity, social cohesion, and the cultivation of a future healthy and patriotic citizenry.”29 Connecting women’s education to wider issues of social rejuvenation and national self-strengthening was a tactic that influenced all participants in the debate on the “woman question,” including social conservatives, during the final years of the Qing. As more women participated in public discourse at the turn of the twentieth century, they also placed increasing emphasis on the importance of education in enabling women to struggle for political rights and be actively involved in public affairs. Consequently, establishing schools for women became a priority for social philanthropy in this period. Because social custom still generally regarded it as inappropriate for men to be closely involved with women outside of their families, a unique opportunity emerged for Chinese women to step out of their homes and into a public “women’s sphere” as teachers and school administrators. A crucial incident that turned out to be highly influential in winning widespread social and eventually official support for the cause of women’s education was the suicide of a Manchu female philanthropist named Guaerjia Huixing (1870–1905), posthumously promoted by the media as a national heroine for women’s education. An examination of the process by which she was heroicized shows the ways that nationalism and the virtue of chastity were simplistically singled out as dominant themes in narratives of exemplary women. This case also reveals several issues closely intertwined with conducting philanthropy during this period: the ethnic division between the Manchu and the Han in the realm of social reform; the power of media (both modern newspapers and traditional opera performances) in promoting and popularizing charitable news and ideas; and the significance of philanthropic initiatives in stimulating changes to laws and government regulations. On November 25, 1905, Huixing, a Manchu widow, committed suicide in Hangzhou, a southern Chinese city, after failing to raise enough

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funds to continue her girls’ school. Nine days later Shenbao reported her death with an essay entitled “Lady Huixing Sacrificed for Girls’ School.” The word “sacrificed” as used here succinctly suggests Shenbao’s positive evaluation of Huixing’s death. In June 1904, according to their report, she asked some respectable Manchu gentry in Hangzhou to discuss the opening of a girls’ school and was able to solicit three hundred ounces of gold to start a school named Zhen Wen (chaste and civilized), located at an old academy within a bannerman camp where Manchu military troops were stationed. Other women of local, wealthy bannerman families promised to add another thousand ounces of gold once the school was officially open. But Huixing’s fundraising possibilities within Manchu circles were limited, and the money soon ran out. Classes were often canceled owing to the lack of teachers, and it was said that several wealthy taitai who once promised money now refused and called Huixing “meddlesome.” Unable to secure more funding, she swallowed a large amount of opium one day at home after writing two letters, one of which was to all her students. In it she allegedly said, “I am dying to beg for long-term funds so you can go to school . . . this is not ‘suicide,’ but ‘sacrifice,’ which is a rule made in ancient times to seek success for the initial cause.” The other letter was a petition to Ruixing, Hangzhou garrison general, possibly asking for a donation of public funds. It was said that before taking her final breath, Huixing opened her eyes, passed the petition letter that she had prepared on to her family members to send to Ruixing in person, and said, “Once you hand this in, long-term funds for the school will come.”30 She died at age thirty-five. The two chief versions of Huixing’s life featured self-mutilation as a key trope to show her character, though each story used the trope to highlight a different virtue. First, Shenbao’s report offered a sensational version to catch readers’ attention: on the day that the school officially opened, Huixing suddenly bared her arm in front of everybody and carved a piece off with a knife, promising, “Today is the founding day of the Hangzhou Bannerman Girls’ School. I commemorate it with my blood. If the school were to close, I would definitely die for it.”31 True or not, this scene invoked a traditional trope of filial piety, which usually included a son or daughter or daughter-in-law harming him/herself to cure his/her gravely ill parents. Jimmy Yu has coined the phrase

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“filial body-slicing” to describe such practices, which involve cutting flesh from one’s arm, thighs, or liver to make a healing broth for sick relatives (especially parents). He has also demonstrated that it became a culturally accepted expression of filial piety in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.32 In this case, Huixing’s self-mutilation was used to show heroic “resolution” (zhi) to a public cause rather than the personal virtue of filial piety. Huixing’s story can also be found in the “Biography of Exemplary Women” (lienü zhuan) in the Qing shigao (Draft history of the Qing dynasty), which was written between 1914 and 1928, after the fall of the dynasty, by its former scholar-officials. Here Huixing’s short biography also mentions her self-mutilation but not the same incident singled out by Shenbao: “Widowed early, she served her mother-in-law diligently, for whom she used to cut flesh off her own upper arm (kuigong) for use as medicine.”33 Moreover, this second version of the story did not use the word “sacrifice” (xisheng) to describe Huixing’s suicide, as she hoped and Shenbao did. Instead, this version only recorded her “claims that she is dying for her school” (zichen yishen xunxiao). It transmuted Huixing’s unconventional public selfmutilation into a familiar trope demonstrating a woman’s traditional virtue of filial piety, ensuring that she remain virtuous and praiseworthy but in a safe and noncontroversial way. Immediately after Huixing’s suicide, Hangzhou bannerman camp officials were unsure whether her death should be honored. In their report to Ruixing, the garrison general, they summarized her case as “a woman who tried to establish schools without official permission, overestimated her own ability to do private philanthropy, and committed suicide because of ‘women’s stupid opinions’ (funü yujian), [thus the case] hardly has any edifying effect.” 34 They expressed respect for a woman who took her own life for the goal of developing women’s education but also noted that this was the first case of a woman committing suicide for funding a girls’ school that they had ever encountered; owing to the lack of cases, they dared not to ask directly for an award. Indeed, Huixing’s case could not fit into the familiar scenarios for which women were rewarded—committing suicide to follow a dead husband, or in defense of honor and chastity upon/after being raped. To the officials’ surprise, perhaps, Ruixing’s reply came very quickly. He

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praised Huixing highly for being “enthusiastic about duties” (rexin yiwu) and believing that she could be an exemplar for all women. Soon afterward, Huixing’s case was officially reported to the Ministry of Rites. Literature scholar Du Xinyan has pointed out that traditional narratives about women’s deaths during this era tend to conceal the true reasons behind those deaths.35 Du and Xia Xiaohong both argue that ethnic tension between Manchu and Han was a key factor leading to Huixing’s suicide. Having examined several contemporary newspaper articles, Xia points out that Huixing sought to establish her Manchu girls’ school out of indignation when a local Han girls’ school rejected her request to enroll on the grounds that she was a Manchu. Huixing committed suicide partially out of dismay at the indifferent and selfish reactions to her fundraising efforts among local Manchu circles. In the suicide letter to her students, she contrasted local Manchu ladies’ indifferent reactions with waves of Han enthusiastic educational reforms, implicitly expressing concern that Manchus were rapidly falling behind in their social reforms, and that a lack of urgency and insufficient spirit of competition might result in their subsequent subjugation to the Han.36 In the North, where the majority of the Manchu population lived, the media’s long-term and widespread coverage of Huixing’s death turned her into the first modern Chinese heroine of philanthropy. Newspapers such as Daogong bao and Beijing nübao generally portrayed Huixing as the “pioneer of girls’ schools” and spared no efforts in using her suicide as a means to promote the cause of women’s education. From January to August 1906 Dagong bao ran a series of extensive editorials on Huixing, one of which argues that due to the underdevelopment of women’s education in China, the most well-known women had tended to be either “talented women” (cainü), “virtuous mothers” (xianmu), or “chaste widows” ( jielie fu), but that there had been no “real heroines” (zhenzheng renwu) such as Mme. Roland (1754–1793), who “removed private feelings, abstained from personal desires, and devoted herself to her compatriots, waiting for rewards from future generations.”37 What made Huixing greater than other Chinese women, in the editorialist’s view, was the fact that her activities were for the public rather than private (si). Another editorial praised Huixing as

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“unmatched among Chinese women since the beginning of Chinese history” in generously shouldering the obligation to enlighten the populace through education and sacrificing her own life for the public.38 It is noteworthy that none of these comments praised Huixing because her philanthropic activities demonstrated her personal virtue of benevolence, a long-celebrated Confucian virtue and the typical official praise offered charitable women: leshan haoshi (readiness to show benevolence and fondness for charity). Instead, these comments deemed her an outstanding heroine who contributed to the public. Xia Xiaohong has noted that during the late Qing the criteria for selecting individuals to be included in most biographies of exemplary women (both Chinese and foreign) shifted from the traditional emphasis on “personal virtue” (side) to a newer emphasis on “public interest” (gongyi). In other words, a woman who contributed to the nation/society was now more praiseworthy than she who possessed merely personal virtues. Accordingly, even the stories of well-known ancient exemplars, such as Mulan of the Northern Wei dynasty (386–536), were reinterpreted to emphasize their public spirit. Mulan taking her aged father’s place in the army was now seen as an act of nationalism rather than traditional filial piety; she was highly praised as “a female military citizen of the nation.”39 This change in criteria can help us better understand the aforementioned comment on Huixing—that she “sacrificed her own life for the public”—as well as Ying Lianzhi’s earlier praise of the public fundraising activities of Chinese Women’s Association as a “sacrifice” for the public. Still, this symbolism did not completely replace earlier understandings of philanthropy/charity’s connection to personal virtue; rather, it added another layer of significance. Compared to northern media, the southern media’s reaction to Huixing’s death was much quieter. The difference in coverage might be because the Han gentry in the Jiangnan area still vividly remembered the bloody conquest and slaughter by Manchus at the beginning of the Qing dynasty, as Xia Xiaohong argues.40 It might also have stemmed from the fact that a Manchu woman’s having established a girls’ school within a Manchu bannerman camp tended to draw less attention and interest among the majority of southerners—the Han people. Because Xia mostly examines this case from the perspective of the ethnic

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tension of Manchu and Han, she obscures the way in which philanthropy, a traditional field of women’s activism, legitimized and empowered an elite woman in the late Qing. Huixing herself probably expected that her death could at most touch some local officials enough to allocate funds for the long-term running of her school.41 However, after being heavily promoted by modern newspapers and later in popular theaters, she became one of very few influential indigenous national heroines—for both Manchu and Han—created during this period, among a flurry of foreign women exemplars introduced by newspapers to Chinese readers. Although other elite women had devoted themselves to establishing girls’ schools, their stories were less widely reported and thus less known. Huixing’s posthumous fame and heroic status was established even earlier than that of her contemporary Qiu Jin, the well-known revolutionary martyr. Huixing’s death was far less controversial than Qiu Jin’s, as she committed suicide for philanthropy, a cause on which both conservative and radical social forces could easily agree. Huixing’s status suggests that there existed a less radical, less political contemporary indigenous female exemplar in the late Qing, one “traditional” enough to be widely embraced by various social groups and individuals. For reasons that I will discuss later, Huixing is nonetheless barely remembered in the modern historiography on Chinese women. Sources indicate that around the time of Huixing’s death in 1905, philanthropy in China was coming to be defined as something both traditional and modern, offering simultaneously broad appeal and unique legitimacy to a variety of causes. In her case study of the Chinese Red Cross Society, Caroline Reeves notes that philanthropy/charity in the late Qing was recast as a benchmark of modern civilization and a symbol of progress and humanity.42 This argument has significant merit and deserves in-depth analyses based on more sources and more cases. For instance, the Western women Beijing nübao profiled—often in the Beijing vernacular—were not radical revolutionaries such as the wellknown Mme. Roland or the Russian assassin Sophia Perovskaya (1853– 1881) but mostly women devoted to reforming social customs and conducting philanthropy, such as Frances Willard (1839–1898, an American educator and temperance reformer) and Florence Nightingale

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(1820–1910). These models of modern womanhood, provided for Chinese women to emulate, could resonate with Chinese notions of benevolence and gain widespread social approval. Beijing nübao contributed more than editorials in Huixing’s honor. It organized an influential opera performance based on her story as well as her memorial service in the Taoyuan Park in Beijing. In March 1906 the newspaper’s cofounder (together with his mother), Zhang Zhanyun, joined famed Peking Opera singer Tian Jiyun to initiate a Women’s Addressing Education Society (Funü kuangxue hui) and compose a new show, Lady Huixing’s Tale, to raise funds for her Zhen Wen Girls’ School. Tian and several actors readily accepted the invitation to perform at no charge, with all proceeds sent to the school in Hangzhou. This sort of entertainers’ benefit performance for charity was a new concept in Beijing. Extremely popular in areas around Beijing and Tianjin, the show was presented in the most fashionable way for the time and went on to become a hot topic in major northern newspapers. The new custom then was to begin a show with a “civilized speech” (wenming yanshuo), which Zhang delivered, extolling Lady Huixing’s deeds. Tian himself played the role of Lady Huixing. Zhang had invited family members of important officials to be in the audience and obtained approval from the Beijing Police Department to sell seats upstairs to women. This enabled women to go to public “civilized theaters” (wenming xiyuan) in Beijing—the first time that Chinese women formally gained this right. Meanwhile, the production helped popularize Huixing’s story and gained sympathy for the cause of women’s education. Chinese theatrical circles during late Qing had become a place of social interaction between the upper and lower levels of Beijing society. This is perhaps true between Manchu and Han too. The show apparently was so touching that audience members were described as crying out loud during the performance.43 The performance raised funds of 2,500 liang of silver, and many of the donations flowed into the Women’s Addressing Education Society to help establish girls’ schools, with the largest sums coming from two Manchu officials’ wives.44 Just as some newspapers discussed Huixing’s suicide as a way to promote women’s education, so some Manchus used her death as a point of departure to express ethnic concerns and to advocate a revival of Manchu ethnicity. In April 1906 Manchu educational figures of the

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Hangzhou bannerman troops organized a preparatory committee for the aborted Zhen Wen Girls’ School and decided to hold a memorial service for Huixing within a local bannerman circle. One of the eulogies praised Huixing for having “the resolution to protect the Manchu” (baozu zhi) and “a patriotic heart” (aiguo xin). Her death “awakened her Manchu compatriots from dreams” (tongbao mengxing) and “startled other ethnicities” (yizu xinjing).45 Guilin, the local educational official temporarily in charge of Huixing’s school after her suicide, said it made “our ethnicity’s noble characteristics apparent to the world, and our East Asian women’s world turn bright from its thousands of years’ darkness.”46 Eager to claim Huixing as a Manchu heroine, Manchu education figures also claimed that she broadly represented East Asian woman and had a loving heart for the guo (nation) without specifying what they meant by the word. Thus was the significance of Huixing’s death raised from the level of ethnicity to the nation and finally the entire East Asian world. As the Hangzhou garrison general Ruixing had hoped, Huixing did become an exemplar for other Manchu women. The biggest donor to Huixing’s school was a Manchu official’s wife from Beijing named Ezhete Huixian. She and her husband had planned to establish girls’ schools together, but he died in 1905 before they could fulfill their dream. Pessimistic about her cause, she heard about Huixing’s school and her suicide. Seriously ill herself, Ezhete Huixian had her mother sell all her property and donate the proceeds to girls’ schools before her death. Because she was childless, Huixian also entrusted her husband’s good friend to help. Of the 25,700 ounces of silver they obtained, 500 were donated to Huixing’s school, 400 to a Buddhist elementary school, and 14,500 to establishing another women’s professional school (later named after Erzhete Huixian). Huixian’s story was widely publicized in newspapers too, and an author at Shuntian shibao juxtaposed her and Huixing as the two “prominent women” (nüjie) in women’s education.47 Sources suggest that the number of private girls’ schools increased dramatically following Huixing’s death, peaking in 1906.48 This rise is corroborated by a comment in Dagong bao: “Since Huixing’s death, girls’ schools have flourished.”49 In June 1906 Tian Jiyun and his opera troupe were summoned to the court to perform the Huixing play, indicating

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the beginning of official approval for women’s education. As expected, the Qing government issued regulations on girls’ schools in 1907, the first time in history that Chinese women were legally allowed to receive an education in public schools. How best to properly give Huixing an official award was the only remaining issue. By this point, the girls’ school she established had received enough funding to continue running, and its name changed from Zhen Wen to Huixing. The Ministry of Education’s discussion of General Ruixing’s solicitation of an official award for her revealed not only the officials’ belief that enough had been done on her behalf already but also their desire to avoid indirectly admitting the terrible shape of Chinese women’s education.50 When it proved too difficult to ignore widespread public enthusiasm and expectation on this case, an official suggested that because Huixing had been a chaste widow for fifteen years, she should be awarded, and that the Ministry of Rites should report the matter to the throne so as to have some morally edifying effect. The emperor approved this suggestion. The eventual official commendation therefore had nothing to do with Huixing’s philanthropy: she was celebrated as a chaste widow but not as the first exemplary national female philanthropist.51 It is no wonder that she was almost completely forgotten by later generations.

MOBILIZING WOMEN OF THE NATION—WOMEN CITIZENS’ DONATION MOVEMENTS From 1906 to around 1912 China witnessed waves of nationwide donation movements enthusiastically participated in by women of all social classes. I refer to them together as women citizens’ donation movements for they appealed to women through a female constituency specifically referred to as nü guomin (female citizens), which, like the term nüjie (women’s world), symbolizes the growing recognition of a public collectivity of women transcending class or kin.52 These include the Women Citizens Donation Movement (Nüzi guominjuan) in 1906 to repay the onerous Boxer Indemnity through popular donations, 53 the Railroad Rights Recovery Movement in 1907 to regain control of China’s railroads by purchasing railroad shares through donations,

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Women’s Fundraising to Repay Other National Debts (Chouhuan guozhai) around late 1909 and early 1910, Donation Campaigns for Revolutionary Troops’ “Pay and Provisions” ( junxiang) after the Wuchang Uprising in October 1911, and another round of Citizens’ Donation Movements in April 1912, to name a few important cases. These movements further suggest that the symbolism of women’s charity had acquired significance beyond the traditional virtue of personal benevolence. Chinese women’s enthusiasm for public and political causes was exemplified by their famous slogan: “fulfilling one’s obligations as female citizens.” Compared to the temporary charitable campaigns of the 1890s, such as the one organized by Sun Mingyi, these movements exhibited several important new features. First, they were all for urgent nationalist causes, such as paying off China’s indemnities, rather than for natural disasters, reflecting a deepening of the national crisis following the Sino-Japanese War of 1895. Second, they were initiated as separate women’s actions inside larger social movements. Charlotte Beahan has noted the separate male and female public spheres of the late Qing, especially “the preference for separate organizations for women dedicated to the same ends as the original male group.” She points out that as heterosocial mingling was still regarded as improper, a separate women’s organization could not only help win the acquiescence of relatives but also give women real control in practicing leadership and widen their social networks within a male-dominated society.54 Third, unlike Sun Mingyi’s Disaster Relief Bureau for Women of the Inner Quarters, these campaigns, though initiated by upper-class educated women, quickly appealed to women of all social levels. The commonly used term for a female constituency during these campaigns was nüjie (women’s world) rather than guige (women of the inner quarters). Consequently, the donation movements tended to be on a larger scale and had a broader social impact. Issues of Dagong bao from this period disclose many donation records from ordinary women (mostly only with donors’ surnames),55 though it remains unclear how many women in total donated to the movements, or what the relative proportion of women’s donations amounted to within the overall national movements. Newspaper reports tended to highlight the enthusiasm shown by the movement’s female students and jijie (prostitutes’ circle)—the

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former a newly emerged social category that attracted considerable public attention; the latter capable perhaps of stimulating public engagement by showing that even lower-class women were donating.56 Fourth, all these campaigns invoked the notion of the female citizen and frequently called for women to “fulfill their obligations as female citizens” ( jin nüzi guomin zhi yiwu). Women’s rights as citizens were not emphasized, which suggests an important phenomenon— many female activists during this era interpreted their role as citizens to incur obligations more than confer rights. Some believed that by fulfilling their duties as citizens of the nation through charitable donations, women could thereby demonstrate their capability and contributions to society, laying a foundation for the future acquisition of rights: “If women could not fulfill obligations equally with men, they would not be able to enjoy their rights in the future. . . . If women’s obligations today were reduced by one part (yifen), then future rights would be reduced by ten (shifen).”57 In her analysis of women’s newspapers during this era, Beahan points out that when they did speak of “equal rights,” they meant “in the final analysis and in almost every case, the right to a decent education.”58 Fundraising events often became important occasions to help spread the consciousness of women’s citizenship from among well-educated women outward to all levels of society. Public speeches became a major vehicle for mobilizing large groups as donors and were more effective even than newspapers, which required a certain level of literacy. 59 Whenever the Speech Society of Women Citizens’ Donations at Tianjin Puyu Girls’ School sponsored a speech, several hundred officials, gentry, merchants, peasants, and working women gathered to watch.60 Opera performances also played a significant role in popularizing and disseminating the spirit of donation, as in the case of fundraising for Huixing’s school. Some opera troupes started to “rehearse women’s new patriotic shows,” and singers often donated proceeds to the Citizens’ Donation Movement to fulfill their “duties.”61 In this way, ordinary women became increasingly familiar with new terms like “female citizens” (nü guomin), “nation,” and “obligations,” although, as Judge notes, “the very term used for citizen in this period, guomin (citizen of the nation) rather than gongmin (civil citizens), reveals the preoccupation of late Qing elites with asserting China’s position vis-à-vis the foreign

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powers rather than ensuring the rights of individual citizens vis-à-vis the nation state.”62 It is worth noting that religious ideas (such as accumulating karmic merit) and Confucian ideals (such as the virtue of benevolence) were not invoked in these campaign announcements; this might have been due partly to the ever-increasing influence of antisuperstition discourse after 1898.63 Judge has noted that almost all of the late Qing textbooks [for women] included lessons on eliminating “superstition,” which was defined as including fengshui, the principles of yin and yang, belief in ghosts and spirits, and folk customs such as the annual festival celebrating the story of the cowherd and the weaver. Buddhist and Daoist religious practices were also targeted. Lessons in the various textbooks ridiculed women who burned incense, visited temples, and worshipped wooden and clay idols in the form of bodhisattvas. They taught that superstition harmed the greater society and the nation by eliminating human responsibility and distracting women from their more pressing practical duties.64

Though very few sources mentioned the personal motivations of female donors, we cannot exclude the possibility that ethical and/or religious concerns, not merely nationalist ones, existed. Wu Zhiying (1868–1933), for instance, initiator of the Women Citizens’ Donation campaign to pay off the Boxer Indemnity, was from a well-known Confucian scholar-official family in Tongcheng, Anhui Province; she was also “profoundly involved in Buddhist practice.”65 Under the influence of her father, a county magistrate who was enthusiastic about building charitable schools, Wu had been engaged in various philanthropic activities, including donating to Chinese refugees of the San Francisco earthquake through the Chinese Women’s Association. In April 1906 Wu Zhiying sent to the Shanghai Chamber of Commerce a document titled A General Regulation on Women’s Citizens’ Donation as well as the script for a mobilizing speech. She had drafted both documents hoping to use the chamber’s wide business networks to spread the campaign nationwide.66 Her activities soon received support from many sources, but all direct financial contributors were women.

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Wu herself, widely known as a “talented woman” who excelled in calligraphy, poetry, and essays, donated profits from her most successful artwork to provide an example for others. Later she used her personal network to expand the campaign to Nanjing, forming another donation center in southern China. Officials’ wives often volunteered to play leading roles in the campaign. Mrs. Shen Fenglou, the wife of the head of the Liang Jiang Education Office, a government entity, added a personal postscript to Wu’s campaign materials and designated two girls’ schools at Nanjing as places to collect donations.67 The campaign also spread rapidly in northern China, centered on the Beijing and Tianjin areas. As in Nanjing, girls’ schools became frequently designated spots at which to receive contributions to the fund, due in part to the fact that girls’ schools were one of the few gender-segregated public institutions for women to visit. Finally, during this period we see elite women gradually begin to use these donation movements as opportunities to participate in political affairs. A growing understanding emerged among them that merely being a “virtuous wife and good mother” was not enough; being a “good” woman meant doing something for the nation. As early as 1905 we can already see some elite women, such as Lü Bicheng (1883–1943), a well-known poet from a scholar-official family who was also a devoted Buddhist, arguing that “women are mothers of citizens. How could we shirk the responsibility of educating our sons?! However, if some women believe that besides this, women have no other obligations, then they are extremely wrong!” By “other obligations,” she meant the obligations of citizenship. 68 During the Railroad Rights Recovery Movement in 1907, for example, public fundraising meetings organized by various local women’s circles in different parts of the country became a major channel for them to discuss national politics and demonstrate their patriotism. Typically, a meeting began with a string of speeches made by elite women (occasionally with an invited male guest) to explain the urgent situation of Chinese railroads and to stir up the audience’s emotions. After discussing what to do together as a group, two types of methods were typically proposed. One was to send a telegram to the Qing government, demanding that Beijing take a tough position to resist foreign encroachment and arguing that the government should consider

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voices from women’s groups as well. The other was to encourage everyone present to sign a pledge purchasing railroad shares to help regain national control of the railroads, most of which had been built by or were heavily mortgaged to imperialist interests. In some places, women were not satisfied with being merely passive donors. In Sichuan, where the antiloan protests were the strongest, some women felt that since this matter was related to “the life and death of Sichuanese,” “women’s world” (nüjie) should not “shirk their responsibility” (duxie qize). They selected several representatives, all wives and daughters of scholar-officials, to go to Beijing together with Sichuan’s male representatives to petition to the government.69 Women representatives from Zhejiang Province also went to Beijing to appeal to the government, expressed their opinions about the railroad issue, and met with Princess Bao Shufang.70 Female representatives were all wives and daughters of scholar-officials because their families tended to have connections with the government and thus had a higher chance of getting their voices heard. This trend of women participating in politics through charitable donations continued into the early Republican era. In contrast to radical suffragists such as Tang Qunying and Lin Zongsu (1878–1944), moderate women leaders preferred a more gradual, conciliatory approach to the question of women’s suffrage, including the promotion of women’s education, industry, and laws that would nurture women’s effective participation in politics. In March 1912 some of them founded the Chinese Women’s Republic Assistance Society (Shenzhou nüjie gonghe xiejishe). The honorary presidents included several prominent women, such as Lu Muzhen (1867–1952), the first wife of Sun Yat-sen (1866–1925); He Miaoling (1847–1937), a Christian philanthropist and wife of the diplomat and politician Wu Tingfang (1842–1922); the aforementioned Wu Zhiying; and philanthropist Ma Qingxia (see chapter 2). The presidents were Zhang Mojun (1884–1965) and Yang Jiwei, then, respectively principal and provost of the Shanghai Shenzhou Girls’ School. They together raised a substantial amount of money for the revolutionary armies to support their expedition to the North to overthrow the Qing government and presented it to the provisional president of the Republic, Sun Yat-sen.71 Only after gaining social and political recognition of their public contribution did these philanthropists express their

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political agenda. Unlike suffragists who violently demanded the immediate right to vote, the philanthropists asked to have seats set aside in parliament to allow women to listen and observe political procedures. Only when women were fully educated about political matters, they agreed, should they be given suffrage. Sun Yat-sen supported and advocated this orientation. By December, owing to the strong social backlash provoked by the violent attempts of radical suffragists like Tang Qunying, parliament was no longer willing to consider the question of women’s suffrage.72 Consequently, these moderate activists felt obliged to focus instead on educational philanthropy, providing girls with educational opportunities that had long been denied.73 * * * Elite women—principally the wives, mothers, and daughters of scholarofficials who had long been active in local charities—carried on this tradition in the late Qing, stepping into the public world with legitimacy and repositioning themselves as citizens of the nation active in political and social affairs. Instead of merely making individual donations, some played a prominent leadership role in initiating and organizing nationwide fundraising campaigns. Their active and resourceful performance in disaster relief, women’s education, and nationalist causes makes clear that the “women’s world” they represented had emerged as an effective and important social force enthusiastic about and capable of contributing to public welfare, particularly in a time of national crisis. An examination of these women’s charitable activities also reveals that there seems to be a historical shift in the discourse of female and civic virtue, from a gender-separate model focused on chastity to a gender-integrated model focused on social and national duty, in the final decade of the Qing. In both the cases of Du Chengshu of the Chinese Women’s Association and of Huixing, the Manchu widow, their reputations as chaste women were still very important to gain public approval of their charitable activities. This preoccupation with women’s chastity posed moral challenges to their public lives, making their charitable activities easily become controversial, even sensational (especially when compared to those of charitable/philanthropic men),

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and preventing the women from receiving proper recognition by both their contemporaries and future generations. Nonetheless, we can already see an emerging discourse praising their public activities as a type of “sacrifice” for the public good. Meanwhile, the years from 1906 to 1912 witnessed the popularization of the slogan “women should fulfill their obligations as citizens” in various women’s citizens’ movements. Charitable women leaders repeatedly emphasized that female citizens, just like male citizens, had equal obligations to contribute to the public welfare and to help relieve China’s national crisis, though they meanwhile downplayed the urgency of the issue of women’s rights. Consequently, this new emphasis on fulfilling citizens’ duties became a significant new component of the symbolism of women’s charitable and philanthropic activities. In addition, the predominant narrative of virtue has the tendency to conceal women’s philanthropic contributions from history. Another case in point is Li Run (1865–1925), the wife of Tan Sitong (1865–1898), a much-celebrated martyr of the aborted Hundred Days’ Reform in 1898. The popular version of Li Run’s life story insisted that after her husband’s summary execution by the Qing government, she committed suicide by slashing her throat at the age of thirty-three. It was said that she died broken-hearted, in protest against the wicked court ministers responsible for Tan’s death. Printed in contemporary newspapers such as Guowen bao (National news) and Qingyi bao (China discussion), the story continued to circulate into the twentieth century. In fact, Li Run spent the rest of her life taking on family responsibilities and remained active in charity and community affairs in her husband’s native Liuyang District of eastern Hunan, as Luke Kwong’s research reveals. First, through the help of Sitong’s father, a former governor of Hubei Province, she adopted one of Sitong’s nephews to continue his family line, since their only son died in infancy in 1889. Li did not confine herself to domestic matters alone but continued to devote herself to various local charitable causes. Growing up in a scholarofficial’s family (her father was a jinshi degree holder, a graduate of the palace examination), she was well positioned to help her husband build a school for women in Nanjing when he was posted as a minor official. A staunch believer in the supreme value of education for the young, she continued this cause after the Revolution of 1911; headed the

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fundraising campaign for the construction of the first local girls’ school in Liuyang; and eventually became its honorary principal. Together with several other local elite women, she worked tirelessly to manage the school. In addition, she supported local nurseries, orphanages, and other social welfare organizations and offered monetary assistance to neighbors in financial need. Her devotion to the cause of charity was so strong that during a devastating local flood, according to the recollection of her daughter-in-law, Li Run “volunteered to donate rice porridge and deliver it herself to the afflicted area” in pouring rain and bone-chilling wind. Owing to physical overexertion, Li died at the age of sixty, after receiving a birthday banner from Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao bearing the characters jinguo wanren (a perfect woman). Nevertheless, Li has been recognized merely as “the wife of a reform martyr, a sacrificial hero in the prehistory of the Chinese Revolution.”74 The high-profile, big-budget traditional Hunan-style opera Tan Sitong, shown in 2014, was a major cultural project to promote the “brave” spirit of Liuyang locals through a well-known martyr.75 Despite finally giving Li the limelight as the wife of the martyr, the show’s adoption of the Communist Party’s official historiography, with its persistent focus on revolution and male-centered narratives, marginalized other aspects of her life. The general public still knows little about how Li stepped out of the traditional domestic confines of a woman’s place and became an “educator, humanitarian, head of the Tan family (Sitong’s line), community leader, local philanthropist, and critics of public and governmental affairs.”76 The cases presented in this chapter demonstrate the lasting but long-obscured significance of women’s charity and philanthropy in society and politics in turn-of-the-century China. Due to the frequency of natural disasters and national crises, charitable events—from public fundraising speeches to opera performances—often became occasions when new notions of citizenship and nation could be disseminated to a large number of illiterate women. Public fundraising gatherings were a convenient and accessible way for the majority of women to engage with the politics of the nation and demonstrate their patriotism and citizenship, as seen during the Women Citizens’ Donation Movement and Railroad Rights Recovery Movement. Furthermore,

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events and incidents related to charity and philanthropy could be highly influential and effective in stimulating changes to government regulations and laws. Huixing’s death aroused social awareness and public sympathy nationwide for the cause of women’s education and accelerated the official sanction of public school for girls. Resourcefully planned charitable opera performances based on Huixing’s story effectively won official permission for women to enter public theaters for the first time in Chinese history. Though limited in number, these cases suggest that charity/philanthropy is a promising entry point for a reexamination of modern Chinese women’s history and late Qing society.

2 BEING FEMALE PHILANTHROPISTS

I

n 1913 Ma Qingxia (also known as Liu Ma Qingxia, 1877–1923), a female philanthropist from Henan Province, received two plaques inscribed with the characters for jinguo yingxiong di (a heroic woman) and tianxia weigong (a public spirit rules all under the sky) from Sun Yat-sen, first president of the Republic of China. Awarded for the donation of her family fortune to help build railroads by native means—a project Sun and many others deemed crucial in saving China from Western imperialists’ monopoly and encroachment—the plaques represent the culmination of Qingxia’s life-long engagement in philanthropy. Sources suggest that during her lifetime, Qingxia was as wellknown nationwide as the female revolutionary Qiu Jin; they were often dubbed together as “Southern Qiu and Northern Liu” (nanqiu beiliu). And yet, until recently, Qingxia was barely remembered in China, while Qiu Jin has been a household name. Regarded as only a philanthropist widow who died of illness, Qingxia has a reputation that stands in sharp contrast with the flamboyant Qiu Jin’s, whose execution by the Qing government turned her into a revolutionary martyr, securing her spot in the Chinese Communist Party’s revolution-centered histories. Similarly, Zhu Qihui (1876–1931), praised as China’s “most prominent woman” by then-president Li Yuanhong in the 1920s, was said to be “known throughout China in those years between 1923 and 1930” both as Madame Xiong Xiling, the wife of a high-ranking official in the early years of China’s Republican era, and as a leading philanthropist.1 She too has been mostly forgotten, in part because her husband, Xiong

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Xiling (Hsiung Hsi-ling, 1870–1937), was regarded until recently as a disgraced politician who served briefly as premier under Yuan Shikai (1859–1916), who made an infamous and short-lived attempt to revive the Chinese monarchy. The strong influence of “leftist” thought on history written during the Communist era prompted Xiong to be either ignored or labeled a “feudal” politician. In recent years Xiong’s philanthropic contributions have increasingly been recognized while his wife’s remain neglected or subsumed under his name. This chapter tells the stories of these two long-forgotten female philanthropists as a means of further examining the opportunities, achievements, and challenges encountered by some married nonprofessional women. The two women, nearly the same age, lived through China’s transition from imperial to republican society and successfully repositioned themselves to play active public roles. Their stories illustrate one way in which domestic-oriented women without modern educations responded to new challenges at the beginning of the twentieth century. As I will show, they did not simply shed their old identities and transform into someone completely new. Rather, their increasingly active public roles were built on the legacies of their pasts, particularly those related to gender, class, age, and education, which intersected in this changing era and provided them with social and cultural capital of a kind with which even Western-educated intellectuals could not always compete. In addition, juxtaposing these two cases shows the different ways in which patriarchy constrained women’s philanthropic and civic engagement in the early twentieth century. Considering that so much of women’s identities during this era still hinged on their roles as daughters, wives, and mothers, I put these two philanthropists in the contexts of their marriages and families to analyze what made them who they were and to examine the crucial and inseparable relationship between their domestic roles and their public philanthropic activities. Despite a shared interest in philanthropy, the two women have divergent histories, and where they diverge most was exactly in the roles played by the men in their lives. Zhu Qihui successfully gave birth to a son, and her husband was alive to support her philanthropic activities; history barely remembers her as a philanthropist in her own right. Qingxia did not give birth to a son before her husband’s sudden

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death. She had to adopt and constantly do battle with her husband’s lineage to hold on to the money and property he left and use it as she chose: for philanthropy. In addition to showing the constraints of patriarchy, a detailed study of these two cases can further reveal the importance of men—alive, dead, or absent—to philanthropic women’s agency in the public world. While other elite women also repositioned themselves through public philanthropy, few saw their actions as thoroughly recorded as did Ma Qingxia and Zhu Qihui. The CCP’s downplaying of political struggles since the 1980s has enabled figures such as these to shed their “feudal” and “exploitative” class labels and be rediscovered by local historians under the category of “local luminaries,” gradually returning them to public historical memory, though not without ideological taint. Reconstructing their life stories required piecing together a variety of sources, including Wenshi ziliao (Cultural and historical records), foreign travelers’ accounts, personal papers, manuscripts, memoirs, and written recollections from family members, friends, and coworkers. The variety of sources has the advantage of revealing rich information from multiple angles. Because Zhu Qihui and her husband were instrumental in many political, social, religious, and philanthropic movements of their period, a case study of their life and world has special significance. Zhu Qihui will reappear in part 2 with respect to the adult education program of the YWCA in China, and her husband in part 3 regarding his role in the expansion of the Daoyuan nationwide.

THE PHILANTHROPIST WIDOW Ma Qingxia was born in 1877 into an illustrious scholar-official family in Anyang, Henan. The youngest of four brothers and two sisters, she shared a biological mother with only her fourth brother. Her father, Ma Piyao (1831–1895), and second brother, Ma Jizhang (1859–1931), were both jinshi degree holders and were known as upright, caring, and diligent officials.2 Throughout her life, Qingxia was especially close to Jizhang, who served both the Qing (as an official in the prestigious Hanlin Academy) and the Beiyang government (as secretary to the president); he was reform-minded and emphasized the importance of

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education. Her eldest brother was actively engaged in the Revitalizing China Through Industry Movement (Shiye jiuguo) but died early (around 1911).3 Her two sisters were both known as “talented women” (cainü). Qingxia was immersed in Confucian classics from a young age, though her talent was said to be not at the level of her two sisters’. Qingxia’s father established the illustrious status of the Ma family. Starting as a county magistrate in Shanxi, he eventually rose to hold positions as high as governor of Guangxi and Guangdong Province.4 Praised by the Guangxu emperor as “the model official” of Shanxi, Ma Piyao was well known for his uprightness and achievements in improving living standards. He also established foundling hospitals to help prevent female infanticide and successfully carried out several important disaster relief measures in Henan.5 Because Qingxia’s brother Jizhang was the Guangxu emperor’s reading assistant at the Hanlin Academy, the Ma family continued to enjoy imperial favor even after their father passed away. When the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded Beijing as a result of the Boxer Uprising, Empress Dowager Cixi and the Guangxu emperor fled to Xi’an; on their way back to Beijing, they were said to have stayed at the Ma family mansion in the company of Ma Jizhang. This visit was regarded locally as a high honor. The Ma family also actively participated in local charity, which probably influenced Qingxia. Ma Piyao set up a “charitable estate” (yizhuang) to aid the poor of his lineage, inspired by the practice of Fan Zhongyan (989–1052), a prominent official in the Song dynasty.6 When she was eighteen years old, Qingxia married a son of the Liu lineage in Weishi County, Henan, reputed to be as rich as “half the county.” She added her husband’s surname to her own and was from then on formally known as Liu Ma Qingxia. The rise of the Liu lineage began in 1738, during the Qianlong emperor’s reign, when a Liu ancestor who was then a shepherd won the jinshi degree. Descendants of the lineage had been successful ever since, alternatively in officialdom and commerce. By the generation of Qingxia’s husband, the twelfth, five branches made up the lineage. Qingxia’s husband, Liu Yaode, was said to possess one-fifth of the large lineage’s fortune, making him the wealthiest individual in Henan (unlike other Liu branches, his had had only one son to inherit for several generations).7 Liu Yaode owned approximately 150 bank branches and pawnshops, not only in Weishi

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County and the provincial capital Kaifeng but also in other big cities such as Nanjing and Beijing. With enough wealth and without motivation to study for the highly competitive civil service exam, Qingxia’s husband and most other Liu descendants chose to purchase their degrees and some empty minor official titles. For seven years, Qingxia did not give birth to a child; for reasons unknown, nor did her husband take a concubine.8 In 1901, when Qingxia was twenty-five years old, Liu Yaode died suddenly, without a son to be his legitimate heir. In the face of his lineage members’ attempts to seize her husband’s fortune, land, and property, Qingxia claimed that she was pregnant with her late husband’s child. With her maid’s help, she traveled to Kaifeng and stayed there for half a year, to “give birth.” In fact, Qingxia quickly adopted one of the newborn twin boys from her husband’s sister in Kaifeng and then returned to Weishi County. In spite of considerable suspicion, she was able to temporarily keep most of her late husband’s property under her son’s name.9 Meanwhile, she learned to manage her husband’s family business, especially the banks and pawnshops.10 During this process, she had more interaction with the outside world and probably bore further witness to the suffering of the local poor. In part to avoid lineage disharmony, Qingxia donated large sums of money and land to establish a charitable estate for the lineage elders, to renovate ancestral halls, and to set up a lineage school and widows’ home. In addition, she made donations to build an elementary school at Kaifeng, and, through her brother, to establish an academy for Henan students at Beijing—though as a woman, she had to put down her young adopted son’s name (Liu Dingyuan) as the academy president. Consequently, the Qing government issued a decree to name her yipin mingfu (lady of the first order), allowing her to hang up a plaque with the characters for leshan haoshi (readiness to show benevolence and fondness for charity).11 At this stage of her life, Qingxia resembled a typical charitable elite woman: contributing to the types of charity that local gentry often promoted during the imperial period and receiving a standard award from the central government to commend her virtue of benevolence. Changes were transforming her world, however, starting within her social circle. In addition to Qingxia’s brother Jizhang, several fellow Henan students studying in Japan influenced her tremendously,

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particularly Zhang Zhongduan (1879–1911), a young man involved in the Henan branch of the well-known Tongmenghui in Japan, a revolutionary society founded by Sun Yat-sen. Zhang got to know Qingxia as a close friend of her nephew, Liu Hengtai. It seems that Qingxia was very close to the revolutionary until his execution by the Qing government in 1911; rumors questioning their relationship circulated in the local area. In 1906 Zhang, Liu Hengtai, and two other Henan young men returned to China from Japan during their school break. During their visit with Qingxia, they discussed politics, informed her about the corruption of the Qing government, and encouraged her to visit Japan. The opportunity arose the following year: her brother Ma Jizhang was selected by the Qing government to officially investigate the Japanese political system as a possible model for reform, and she decided to accompany him, seeking to broaden her horizons. Jizhang reported to the court that his sister intended to investigate women’s education in Japan, so the Qing government issued her a visa under her official title, lady of the first order.12 She stayed first in Tokyo for two months to unbind her feet and sent her son to a kindergarten there. She began to associate with many Chinese students in Japan, particularly those of Henan origin, which exposed her to radical influences. One of her regular guests was Tang Qunying, who would become one of China’s foremost female political activists several years later. Qingxia also donated a large sum to support the founding of the first overseas Chinese women’s magazine, Zhongguo xinnüjie (Chinese new woman’s world), in 1907. The magazine’s editor was a woman named Yan Bin, a Henan native like Qingxia. Half a year living in Japan converted Qingxia to a firm belief in the significance and urgency of women’s public school education. Upon returning to China, she established Huaying Girls’ School, probably the first private girls’ school in Henan, in the garden of her home. She recruited fifty female students, mostly above the age of ten, from some open-minded families in Henan (few were of Liu lineage due to the disharmony caused by the property dispute). The school required that students first have their feet unbound and then study modern subjects such as mathematics. Clothes, food, and books would all be free. Rooms were set aside for students to raise silkworms and learn

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practical feminine skills such as weaving and embroidering—the hallmark of respectable women for centuries and now a way for women to be economically independent and productive. This emphasis on sericulture was probably due to the influence of Qingxia’s father, who was known to promote the industry during his official career to help local people make a better living. Qingxia hired four teachers, including a Japanese woman with whom she had been good friends in Japan. Qingxia herself often shared meals with teachers and students, although nominally her young son remained school principal. For reasons unknown, the school lasted only for four years.13 A closer examination reveals that most of Qingxia’s philanthropic activities related to the anti-Qing revolution were directly connected to the revolutionary Zhang Zhongduan, who often asked her for financial support. She first sponsored him to finish his studies in Japan after the Qing government canceled his scholarship because of his involvement in revolutionary activities. Qingxia also donated approximately sixteen thousand yuan to help Zhang and his fellow revolutionaries found the journal Henan, which advocated nationalist and revolutionary ideas. Later in 1911, when Zhang was organizing an uprising in Kaifeng and needed money, Qingxia contributed sixteen hundred liang to the cause. Moreover, she once donated several thousand yuan to help found Big River Academy (Dahe shushe), an underground organ of Henan revolutionary activities under Zhang’s leadership.14 There is no evidence to suggest that Qingxia herself carried out any revolutionary initiatives. One of the few extant writings by Qingxia was her refutation, published in a major Henan newspaper, of the charges and (she believed) slander lodged against her. Qingxia’s piece clearly demonstrates that she had seized on some key modern Western concepts and terms, only recently introduced in China, to justify her public activities. Fed up with Liu lineage members’ endless lawsuits for her late husband’s property, Qingxia published an announcement in Ziyoubao (Freedom newspaper) of Kaifeng titled “Henanese Liu Ma Qingxia Disclosure” on November 11, 1911.15 This was a time of regime change, between the Wuchang uprising in October—a catalyst to the Xinhai Revolution—and the abdication of the final Manchu emperor the next February. In her

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announcement, Qingxia first recalled the generous charitable activities she had carried out both within the Liu lineage and in the larger society during the preceding decade and expressed anger at her kinsmen’s attacks. Rather than justify her public charitable activities as good deeds that demonstrated the personal virtue of Confucian benevolence, she instead asserted that her activities were meant to “fulfill one’s obligations” ( jinyiwu), the same slogan used by other elite women during the Women Citizens’ Donation Movement, in which she also participated. Making clear that she was not an ignorant woman, Qingxia conveyed her understanding that “the founding of the Republic means the changing of policies,” as well as the concepts of “natural rights” (tianfu renquan) and “freedom and equality” (ziyou pingdeng). She referred to the changes as those “from principles of concession (tuirang zhuyi) to competition ( jingzheng zhuyi); from familism ( jiazu zhuyi) to socialism (shehui zhuyi).” If any Liu lineage members continued to sue her, she pledged to hire a lawyer to deal with them, adding that the Lius were a respectable and reputable family: “why cannot they just let a widow devote herself to social public cause (gongyi shiye)?” She continued: “Even a woman like her knows to ‘fulfill her obligations,’ how could other lineage members just squander their money, refuse to donate for social causes, and bully a widow and her young son?” One key difference between the Qing and the Republic, Qingxia pointed out, was that “the weak do not necessarily have to be the prey of the strong” (ruozhirou weibi jiwei qiangzhishiye). She hoped that her compatriots could be fair judges and give her the justice she felt that she deserved. In addition, Qingxia used this announcement to refute rumors about her relationship with Zhang Zhongduan by asking what contemporary law was broken by a man and a woman working together. During her travels and studies in Japan, she described meeting “outstanding” people from intellectual circles whom she viewed as “comrades for life.”16 She worried that “if barriers of social interactions were not removed between men and women, it would be hopeless for social activities, and our society would have to support 200 million ‘dead people’ [siren, half of the Chinese population, referring to all Chinese women, most of whom were depicted by progressive intellectuals as unproductive].” Thus, she argued, the real intention behind her lineage members’

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slander was to “pressure her to retreat to the inner quarters to avoid rumors and thus save the money to satisfy the endless greed” of her kinsmen rather than use it for charitable purposes. It is not difficult to see that Qingxia had been keeping up with new ideas circulating in the late Qing period, either through her own reading or by communicating with her brother and friends. This announcement was published in Ziyoubao, a revolutionary newspaper in Henan that Qingxia helped establish with her funds. It probably secured support for her among social progressives; we do not know if her writing— studded as it was with Western concepts—struck a chord among people who did not believe in the legitimacy of Western principles. Judging by the continuous lawsuits that followed, Liu lineage members remained unswayed. In the early 1910s Qingxia’s reputation as a philanthropist reached its peak. In March 1912, together with Mrs. Sun Yat-sen (Lu Muzhen), Mrs. Wu Tingfang (her husband was then serving as minister of justice for the newly established Nanjing Provisional Government under Sun’s leadership), and the aforementioned Wu Zhiying, Qingxia became honorary president of the Women’s Republic Assistance Society (Shenzhou nüjie gonghe xiejishe)—the moderate women’s suffrage group that also made charitable contributions (see chapter 1). Two months later she was appointed by the society as the Henan manager of the popular Women’s Citizens’ Donation Movement.17 Newspaper reports from this period suggest that she held several other titles simultaneously, such as president of Beijing Women’s University of Politics and Law (Beijing nüzi fazheng xuexiao), president of the Beijing Women’s Educational Sustaining Society (Beijing nüzi xuewu weichihui) and Beijing Women’s Suffragist Association (Beijing nüzi canzheng tongmenghui), and “initiator” (faqiren) of Baihuabao (Beijing women’s vernacular magazine).18 We should be cautious in defining Qingxia’s political or social opinions based on the projects she supported, some of which were not exactly in tune with one another. It is likely that many of these were just honorary titles, and that her main contribution was financial, answering the needs of her friends or people who found connections with her through Henanese native place networks. She consistently supported the cause of women’s education, though she seems to have been not very selective or discerning regarding the different approaches

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to achieve women’s liberation. The first overseas Chinese women’s magazine, Zhongguo xinnüjie (Chinese new woman’s world), which she helped finance through fellow Henan native Yan Bin, was comparatively moderate. Qiu Jin once criticized Yan for not daring to speak out through the journal.19 On the other hand, the Baihuabao and the Beijing Women’s Suffragist Association (with which the journal was officially affiliated), which Qingxia supported, were under the direct leadership of her radical friend Tang Qunying, who was known, along with her activist friends, for frequently using militant tactics to demand women’s suffrage during China’s first brief wave of suffrage activism. Qingxia clearly cared deeply about many public causes, but she could be susceptible to a variety of ideas depending on her closest influence at any given time, and she made more donations based on personal relationships than on specific principles or her own vision. Nevertheless, Qingxia’s support for the anti-Qing revolution makes her case an ideal reminder for historians looking to avoid a too rigid characterization of distinctions between taitai politics and the politics of new women. Although the majority of the married nonprofessional women who are this book’s focus tended to support moderate political reforms, a few did involve themselves in radical means one way or another. In 1913, tired of fighting the endless inheritance lawsuits filed by her late husband’s lineage members, Qingxia twice went to Shanghai to meet with Sun Yat-sen and decided to donate all her family fortune to help him build railroads in China. Just as Qingxia claimed that her charitable activities were “fulfilling her obligations” as a citizen, Sun believed her praiseworthiness lay in the public spirit she demonstrated though her charity. Comparing Sun’s commendation—tianxia weigong (a public spirit rules all under the sky)—to that received by Qingxia from the Qing imperial government—leshan haoshi (readiness to show benevolence and fondness for charity)—once again we see signs of the emergence of a new understanding of the symbolism of women’s philanthropic activities: its merit no longer lay solely in demonstrating a personal virtue but in a woman’s contributions to the public. Following failed political negotiations and before the actual transfer of funds could occur, South and North China split. Liu lineage members immediately reported Qingxia to the northern government, claiming

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that she had secretly contacted the Nationalist Party represented by Sun Yat-sen in the South, thus betraying the northern government. With the help of her brother Jizhang from Beijing, Qingxia escaped the charge. The struggle for Liu family property only ended in 1922, during the rule of Henan warlord Feng Yuxiang (1882–1948), who allegedly said, “It is better to confiscate it for public use than to leave lineage members to scramble for it endlessly.” Confiscate it he did.20 What may have hurt Qingxia most during this entire property dispute was her adopted son’s betrayal near its end. When he reached adulthood, during the 1920s, he cut ties with Qingxia and demanded control of his share of the Liu family property. After court mediation, she reluctantly agreed to provide some land, houses, and money for him to live separately.21 His demands dealt her a significant blow, after which she was said to often invite Catholic nuns into her home, seeking spiritual solace.22 Nevertheless, she continued her charitable activities, establishing schools for children, women, and the poor with the fortune that remained to her until she died in 1923 at her natal family home in Anyang, Henan.23 When her coffin was carried back to her late husband’s family, Liu lineage members would not allow her to be buried together with her husband in Liu family ancestral tombs, citing, among other reasons, that she had not given birth to a son for the Liu family. As a result, her coffin was left in a temple indefinitely. Her brother Jizhang composed a sorrowful poem in response: Little sister donated thirty thousand ounces of silver, Establishing the School for Henanese in the Capital, Two coffins still unburied, Childless, she cries on the road under heaven.24

THE PHILANTHROPIST COUPLE Born in 1876 in Hunan, Zhu Qihui was the thirteenth of fourteen children in a scholar-official family originally from Baoshan, Jiangsu Province.25 She received her classical education by listening to and observing her father and brothers, all of whom were classically educated. Zhu’s third half-brother Zhu Qiyi (1846–1910), the most renowned member of

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the family, was also reform-minded and influenced her deeply, particularly with respect to her dedication to education and her generosity toward the poor. 26As the magistrate of Changde, and subsequently of Ruanzhou in Hunan around 1880s, he was devoted to educational reform and established several new schools. He also invited poor students and scholars to live and study in his own home. One of them, Xiong Xiling, often referred to as the “boy genius of Hunan,” impressed Zhu Qiyi so much that he arranged for his own sister, Qihui, to marry him. Zhu Qihui was said to be impressed by the talented Xiong as well. Xiong, at the age of twenty-four, passed the jinshi examination in 1894 and began serving in the prestigious Hanlin Academy. His marriage to Zhu Qihui in 1896 was a major social event in Ruanzhou, commonly regarded as “a Union of Dragon and Phoenix” (longfengpei).27 Zhu Qihui was a learned woman, able to compose poetry and to embroider. Despite spending most of her youth in the quiet inner quarters with bound feet, she followed the national news, impressed her elders with her ideas and eloquent speech, and shared her brother’s commitment to educational reform.28 The years from 1898 to 1902 were difficult for the young couple, owing to Xiong Xiling’s involvement in the aborted Hundred Days’ Reform in 1898. Though not in Peking during the coup d’état staged by Empress Dowager Cixi, Xiong was stripped of his official title regardless because of his association with reformers such as Liang Qichao and Tan Sitong in Changsha, the capital of Hunan. The couple was forced into hiding and their only son became disabled—both physically and mentally—owing to delayed treatment of an illness, which lingered throughout their lives as a significant source of grief. Forced by financial necessity, Zhu Qihui started a business of rice shipping and later opened a leather shoe store and a photography studio to help the family through their difficulties.29 These business ventures prompted Zhu Qihui to realize that she had a special talent for commerce and finance. She began to invest in real estate, buying old houses, having them renovated, and renting them out. Her association with many bankers’ wives provided another kind of resource. Whenever she went out on her business dealings, she always brought another person along (sometimes her little daughter Rose

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Xiong Ding), just as when Ma Qingxia traveled, she always brought her adopted son since social convention still required that respectable women not travel alone.30 Zhu Qihui’s business success enabled her to support not only her husband’s various cultural enterprises—thereby contributing to his steadily growing fame—but also several of her nephews’ educations overseas. One of them, Zhu Jingnong (1887–1951), later became a leading educator in Republican China. Until her death, she was the domestic pillar of the Xiong family. It was well known that “the practical affairs in their family and of their common undertakings are directed by her. The family fortune is said to be due to her foresight and close supervision.”31 Even her husband admitted that he had never taken care of any domestic affairs, all of which—including the family budget, finances, and his income—were handled by his wife.32 When she passed away in 1931 after a cerebral hemorrhage, her husband ran into immediate financial trouble and left debts amounting to more than 400,000 dollars following his own death in 1937.33 In addition to finance, Zhu Qihui was also adept at social networking and making friends. Around 1905, the year that her husband accompanied a ministerial delegation sent to study constitutional government in Europe and the United States, Zhu moved her family to Shanghai. To establish the Xiong family as local luminaries, she borrowed a large sum of money to build a grand, Western-style house. She supervised her own menu and kitchen and was a generous hostess who entertained and received numerous men and women, officials and intellectuals, revolutionaries and reformers, bankers and entrepreneurs, missionaries and educators. She wore long leather shoes to conceal her bound feet, which seems to have been a practice among some progressive elite women. 34 She made good friends with the wives of important political figures, such as Liang Qichao and Zhu Qiqian (1871– 1964), and was cheerful when losing money at their mahjong tables.35 She learned to conduct herself according to Western etiquette and became a sought-after guest of honor, “a charming Chinese lady,” at embassy and legation parties in Beijing. Befitting the status of her family and herself, she purchased another large mansion in Beijing, from a former Manchu prince, and used telephones and two cars to communicate with the outside world.36 These details indicate that Zhu cared very much about the public image and social status of her

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family; however, no evidence suggests that her later philanthropic engagements were strategically planned to enhance their social reputation. In contrast to his wife, sources suggest that Xiong Xiling had no interest in business, was not good at giving speeches, was poor in practical affairs, and was mostly known as a scholar skilled at Chinese classics and poetry—“a poetic tempered, magnanimous sort of man.”37 However, just as his wife excelled at networking and had extraordinary social skills, Xiong had his own strengths. His sociability and broad human sympathies, though compromising his effectiveness at the higher levels of Republican politics, made him particularly effective at intermediate-level brokerage activities. By the 1920s Xiong had used his extensive political and social connections to build an impressive network of philanthropic and commercial ventures in the city, ranging from the Xiangshan Children’s Home to a bus company. He became known as one of Beijing’s “most prominent fixers and mediators.”38 Nor did the couple share religious feelings, which influenced the types of charitable causes they associated with. Xiong believed in Buddhism, associated with religious friends, and practiced daily meditation. His spiritual and political connections led him to serve as director of one of the largest indigenous religious charitable organization—the Red Swastika Society, discussed in part 3—for fourteen years (from 1923 until his death in 1937). On the other hand, Zhu Qihui held a staunch position against traditional Chinese religions. She seems to have considered herself a modernizer, refusing to believe in Buddhism or Daoism as had other Chinese women since the imperial period. Her younger daughter Rose recalled that her mother did not allow Buddhist nuns or Daoist priestesses to enter her house but often associated with missionaries and respected their educational and social activities. She sent all her daughters and nieces to missionary schools and later abroad to study.39 Four years after her death, Xiong remarried and enlisted his new wife—Mao Yanwen (1898–1999), a much younger, modern-educated woman—to take charge of the women’s branch of the Red Swastika Society. It was widely believed that the help of the exceptionally competent Zhu Qihui had a lot to do with Xiong’s fast-rising political career.40 When Xiong was appointed by the Qing government as a financial superintendent and later a salt commissioner in Manchuria, it was

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well known within his close circle that his wife, with her talent for finance, served as his constant adviser and sometimes even wrote comments and endorsed official documents on his behalf.41 Xiong’s achievement in these positions won praise and credit and led to his appointment as minister of finance in the Republican government. He reached the peak of his political career around 1913 when he served as prime minister during the presidency of Yuan Shikai, well known for assembling a “First Caliber Cabinet.”42 Recognizing Yuan’s ambitions to become emperor, Zhu Qihui advised her husband to resign. She was prescient: in December 1915 Yuan boldly announced a new imperial dynasty with himself as emperor. Seeking to ensure Xiong’s support, he appointed Zhu Qihui as chief of the twelve female officials (nüguanzhang) assembled to serve in his inner court—part of a conscious effort to replace the much criticized court eunuch system by restoring an ancient Zhou dynasty practice. Zhu was said to have immediately seen through Yuan’s scheme but remained calm, yielding neither to Yuan’s intimidations nor to his enticements; Yuan’s sudden death in June 1916 put an end to her dilemma.43 Zhu Qihui was able to play such a significant role for the Xiong family not just because she was extraordinarily competent but also because a contradiction animated traditional Confucian gender doctrine: despite placing women in an inferior position in gender relations, it still left room for capable women to maneuver and assume power within the family. Susan Mann has deftly demonstrated that at least since the imperial period, learned wives were expected to serve an advisory and counseling role for their husbands in daily political or business decisions.44 Zhu’s frequent assistance to her husband during his political career reminds us of those women celebrated by Lienü zhuan (Biographies of exemplary women) as competent advisers in ancient China. In urging her husband to resign as Yuan’s prime minister, Zhu was also carrying on the elite female tradition of wielding moral influence over her husband. As Mann argues, elite women from scholar-official families during the Qing dynasty often served as a moral compass for the officials they married, reminding their husbands of fundamental values that could easily be forgotten amid the compromises of political scrambling and administrative routine. The couple seems to have been closest in the early years of their marriage when they suffered hard times together. Later, as Xiong rose in

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his political career, he received many offers of concubines. At least once he sought his wife’s approval, but Zhu remained staunchly against taking in another woman. Xiong was publicly known as the “president of the association of PTT” (pa taitai, “henpecked” husbands). In the 1920s he mostly resided in his villa near Xiangshan Children’s Home (Ciyouyuan) rather than living with his wife, suggesting that their relationship was no longer as intimate as it had once been. 45

THE FEMALE PHILANTHROPIST Xiong’s retirement from the political stage in 1916 marked a turning point in the couple’s life. Disillusioned with politics and hoping for atonement, they turned their full attention to philanthropy and social relief. In 1917 and again in 1920, natural disasters struck North China: a major flood in 1917 around Zhili, Shandong and Shanxi Provinces, and a severe drought in 1920 among five provinces (Shandong, Henan, Zhili, Shanxi, and Shaanxi). The president put Xiong in charge of disaster relief, with very limited funds. Xiong decided to send a telegraph nationwide, issuing an urgent call for social relief and charity. His call was enthusiastically answered by a variety of organizations and individuals.46 Xiong himself donated five hundred yuan while Zhu Qihui organized the servants in her family and made one hundred sets of clothes for refugees.47 The 1917 flood also directly resulted in the Xiong couple’s first philanthropic enterprise: the Xiangshan Children’s Home near Beijing, built for the many children who lost parents to the disaster and needed to be taken care of. It officially opened in 1920 with seven hundred children and was meant not only to provide them a home but also to ensure they received an education suited to their talents and capable of making them productive citizens. As a complete educational system, the home included a nursery, kindergarten, elementary school, and middle school, in addition to a variety of special occupational and vocational training sections. It also emphasized the idea of broader community service, branching out into a range of other charitable activities from volunteer disaster relief to the organization of a women’s home industry training center.48 The home existed for over thirty years as one of the best in China and provided care for thousands of homeless orphans.

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Although most historical sources give Xiong sole credit for the home, their eldest daughter, Xiong Zhi (Nora Xiong, 1901–1977), who also spent a lot of time working there, claimed that from planning to operations, her mother was the mastermind.49 Zhu had the latest equipment installed, including white ceramic-tiled kitchens and bathrooms, then rarely seen in China.50 According to an alumnus’s recollections, Zhu at the time was also chief director of the Chinese Women’s Red Cross Society; she therefore often organized the orphanage students to participate in Red Cross work, such as looking after injured soldiers and refugees. During faculty and student meetings, she typically followed her husband’s short speech with a long one of her own. She was said to take good care of sick children, likely drawing on her experience losing six babies (of nine pregnancies) to fatal illnesses. She helped found a modern Red Cross hospital directly behind the school, mostly to treat newly admitted children suffering from diseases.51 She raised the money and supervised the construction herself. When she invited an American writer, Grace Seton, to visit the school in 1922, Zhu confided that her “dearest wish” was to develop a “higher grade of men and women.”52 Zhu’s reputation as a leading female philanthropist was so widespread in the 1920s that even foreign women like Seton were eager to meet her when they came to China. Seton acquired a list of Zhu’s titles through her English secretary in 1922, just one year before she threw herself “heart and soul” into the Mass Education Movement. The list, reproduced below, provides a glimpse into the range of her philanthropic and social work. 1. Chief Director of the Chinese Women’s Red Cross Society 2. Director of the Xiang Shan Hospital of the Chinese Women’s Red Cross Society 3. Director of the Obstetrical Hospital of the Chinese Women’s Red Cross Society 4. President of the Chinese and Foreign Women’s Philanthropic Society in Peking 5. Honorary President of the Home for the Aged, Home for Aged ­Couples, and Home for Destitute Women 6. Director of the Peking Orphanage

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Figure 2.1  Zhu Qihui (wearing long leather shoes to conceal her bound feet) and her husband, Xiong Xiling, standing in front of Xiangshan Children’s Home in 1922. Grace Thompson Seton, Chinese Lanterns (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1924), 276.

7. Director of the Xiang Shan Children’s Home 8. Member of the Chinese and Foreign Famine Relief Association, ­captain of the Home Campaign Team 9. President of the Girls’ School of Commerce 10. President of the Peking First Kindergarten and Primary School 11. Director of the Shanghai Celestial Girls’ School 12. Director of the Peking Girls’ Preparatory School 13. Member of the Society for Educational Improvements in China 14. Director of the Women’s Commercial Savings Bank 15. Chairman of the Preparation Committee on the Metropolitan Bank of Peking53

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This list suggests that by the early 1920s, Zhu Qihui’s philanthropic work had already extended to a variety of social fields, including education, banking, health care, famine relief, women’s issues, and care for the poor and the elderly. She had successfully established herself as a widely acclaimed and effective philanthropist in her own right, since most of these projects were not joint efforts with her husband.

MOTHER OF THE MASS EDUCATION MOVEMENT Much of the historical research on the Mass Education Movement (MEM) has centered on the leading efforts of James Yen (1893–1990; also Yan Yangchu), together with those of other Western educated intellectuals, to spread literacy to residents of rural China and carry out intensive study of life in rural districts, represented by the “Ding Xian Experiment” in Hebei province. If scholars mention the name Mme. Xiong or give her some credit for the MEM, it is mainly as a supporter of James Yen.54 This historical amnesia is inconsistent with the recognition she received during her life. Before her death in 1931, Zhu Qihui was not only the movement’s primary fundraiser but also the mastermind of its development. Her contemporaries acknowledged the instrumental role she played in the brief Historical Sketch of Madame Xiong’s Work in Mass Education Movement, which was published around 1932 by the Xiong Zhu Child Welfare Foundation Society and stated that “before R.C. 12th (1923), the Association [of MEM] owed its plot for growth and running expenses entirely to her assistance.”55 One of Zhu’s life goals—to disseminate and improve education—had long been a significant part of Confucian tradition, shared by many elite women from scholar-official families like hers, such as Huixing and Ma Qingxia. In the wake of the national crisis during the late Qing, education acquired a new sense of urgency as a means for the regeneration of the Chinese people and earned a high place on many reformers’ modernizing agendas. This was particularly pressing for the female half of the population, since the belief that “ignorance is a virtue in a woman” was still prevalent even up to the early twentieth century, and women’s right to public education was not officially approved until 1907. Why did Zhu Qihui give up all her other philanthropic activities

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and choose to devote herself fully to the MEM? The Xiong Zhu Child Welfare Foundation Society explains: Madame Xiong considered that the above mentioned [referring to the list of positions she held in 1922] were but a measure for relieving only a minor portion of the poverty-stricken population, and could hardly lend a useful hand to the poor people at large, and therefore, began to exert her utmost in achieving a universality of mass education: hence the establishment, in the 12th year of the Republic of China, of the National Mass Education Association.56

To be sure, Zhu herself was no expert in adopting Western educational methodologies to spread literacy in non-Western settings. The question remains: how was she, a bound-foot woman with a classical education, able to play such an instrumental role in the movement, as admitted even by James Yen himself? Answering this question can reveal important, often overlooked aspects not only of Zhu but also of the movement she helped define. Sources suggest that Zhu had an unusual long-term vision and organizational power, which helped lift the movement from various local experiments to the national level. Many intellectuals at the time (such as Tao Xingzhi, 1891–1946), for all their fervor, had no method for organizing the spread of literacy on a national scale. Although James Yen developed a method to teach Chinese coolies in France to read and write commonly used Chinese characters, by the early 1920s he was still only able to conduct literacy classes in various localities under the auspices of the Shanghai YMCA.57 In the fall of 1922 Tao introduced Yen to Zhu Qihui in Shanghai; she was impressed with Yen’s teaching demonstration and slides. She envisioned expanding the literacy program to the national level and quickly enlisted many Western-educated intellectuals, such as Tao, Yen, and her nephew Zhu Jingnong, under her leadership. A first-rate organizer and highly efficient executive,58 Zhu went on to secure the financial and administrative support of Jiangsu military governor Qi Xieyuan (1885–1946) and set up their first city-based Mass Education Association in the provincial capital, Nanjing. Hearing this news, other leaders, “including those from the YMCA, YWCA, and the faculty of Southeastern University, flocked to Nanjing.” She then

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assigned Zhu Jingnong to work with Tao to compile the Pingmin qianzi ke (One-thousand-character primer). Published in August 1923 by the Commercial Press, it sold over three million copies in the next three years.59 Later, Zhu visited Yantai (then Chefoo), a prefecture-level city in Shandong Province, to address the commencement ceremonies for Yen’s campaign there. Yen’s explanation as to why he invited her to Yantai gives us another perspective on just what she brought to the movement that Western educated intellectuals like Yen could not: A good many of the classical high brows were still so benighted that they could not see the fundamental importance of the work and openly poured contempt upon it. So when the time came for the graduation ceremony the local committee felt that a notable personage ought to be secured to give the commencement speech in order to give dignity to the occasion. Madame Hsiung Hsi-Ling [Xiong Xiling], wife of the ex-premier, was the happy choice. I had the privilege of escorting her all the way from Peking.60

As Yen noted, “Mme. Xiong” was invited to pacify the “classical high brows,” which might include both gentry and officials of the former Qing dynasty. To promote a “modern” cause, her own classical education and her illustrious husband’s Confucian scholar-official status still had special appeal, particularly to people with similar backgrounds living in local societies where the force of tradition remained very strong during the early 1920s. This trip to Yantai also proved crucial in that it touched Zhu so deeply that she decided to give up her other philanthropic work and “devote my life to people’s education.”61 Many years later Yen recalled the following scene of Zhu addressing the commencement ceremonies at Yantai: She looked over the hall and she said: “Here is something I have never seen in my life before. You have old men and young men and women. I see a boy over there barefooted, that little girl there with an apron.” She went on, “This is real education for a free and equal people. This

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is the only way to realize a people’s government. This is education and democracy. This is education for democracy.” Then she broke down and wept. She was so moved by what she saw, all those people, holding their diplomas, able at last to read and write! Then she said, “I am President of the Women’s League and I am President of the National Women’s Red Cross. I am going to resign from them all now and give my life to this people’s education.”62

Zhu had already equipped herself with elements of modern rhetoric to explain her cause, which reminds us of Ma Qingxia’s announcement in Freedom Newspaper, in which she applied modern concepts of “natural rights,” and “freedom and equality” to defend her legal rights of inheritance. We know that Zhu Qihui had political insights and vision even in youth, and that she was her husband’s constant adviser during his political career. She envisioned her promotion of popular education to have a political goal: “education for democracy.” In addition, we know that she joined the Association for Women’s Suffrage (Nüzi canzheng xiejinhui) at the invitation of the organizers in 1922, though the issue of women’s suffrage no longer appeared as radical as it had a decade previous (when Tang Qunying and her group, including Ma Qingxia, who helped finance the movement, demanded it) owing to recent victories in the West resulting from the First World War. 63 Once she had determined to fully devote herself to the cause of popular education, upon her return to Beijing, Zhu “cabled leaders of every province and summoned them to send delegates to Peking to a meeting to be held on the campus of Tsinghua University.” She also lobbied intellectuals in Beijing and Shanghai and enlisted “three Cabinet members and some of the most prominent men representing education, business, and industry” to join a board of trustees.64 On August 21, 1923, the National Association for the Advancement of Education (Quanguo pingmin jiaoyu cujinhui) was formally established. Zhu was unanimously elected as chair, Yen as vice chair, and Tao as secretary. Zhu offered her own house in Beijing, formerly the mansion of a Manchu prince at No. 22 Shifuma Street, as the central office. Her impressive national organizational power could not be matched by newly returned Western-educated intellectuals like James Yen, especially in

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a decentralized warlord world. Zhu had unmatched political and personal ties and networks built with her husband, the former premier, through decades of political and social activities. Her exceptional personal capabilities combined with her husband’s high status were no doubt assets. But it is worth asking whether her gender was a disadvantage for her public activities. James Yen offered a revealing observation to Pearl Buck (1892–1973), a well-known American writer and novelist on China, during an interview: When she [Zhu Qihui] stood up to speak to groups of intellectuals and businessmen she would speak two or three hours at a time, and she had such small feet that she could not stand steadily, so she had to move about continually, and all the people, even through those many hours, would listen attentively. You know, here is an extraordinary thing about our country that Westerners do not understand. Women in our country are supposed to have an inferior position as compared to men, but whenever a woman attains power in the home or in scholarship, whenever a woman really has vision and a personality, somehow she is regarded even more highly than a man with the same qualifications. The fact that she is a woman and yet that she has such an education, such a vision, makes her all the more respected, admired and exalted.65

In Yen’s eyes, being a member of the “weaker sex” did not prevent Zhu Qihui from being respected and admired. In particular, her education, gender, class, and capability interacted on multiple and often simultaneous levels, contributing to her empowerment. Yen’s praise of her education suggests the enduring influence of Confucian culture on modern conceptions of Chinese gender roles. The “talented woman” image still had currency, as long as that talent was put to important public causes such as mass education rather than spent on “frivolous” poetry writing. Instead of leading to a general perception of “backwardness,” Zhu’s bound feet served as a reminder of her gender and the extra difficulties a woman had to overcome to be active in public. Last but not least is the factor of age. Scholars of elite women in the imperial period have shown that the nature and degree of power a woman exercised depended not only on her social position and the task

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at hand but also on such factors as her personal skills and her position in the life cycle.66 In the mid-1920s Zhu Qihui would have been around fifty years old and a mother, whereas James Yen and the other intellectuals involved in the MEM were in their thirties. China has a long tradition of respecting elders, even when they are women (hence all the stories about filial sons). As Yen noted, in addition to Zhu’s broad networks and extraordinary abilities, certain legacies of her past, instead of being a barrier, not only empowered her to better accommodate the present but also gave her social and cultural capital of a kind that Yen could not equal. Warlords and intellectuals both would only feel impressed by Zhu, respecting her to the extent that they “attentively” tolerated her hours-long speeches. Yen’s observation on Zhu suggests that gender is not easily isolated from other analytical categories. It plays off class attitudes, education, life cycles, and other historical practices, empowering Zhu to become a well-respected and effective philanthropic leader in the public realm. Zhu Qihui also proved to be a “brilliant” fundraiser, securing a large amount of the domestic funding for the MEM.67 She often traveled with James Yen nationwide to secure donations. Her son-in-law Robert Payne mentioned that she had “a quality of fearlessness.”68 She “bullied” warlords into “offering large sums of money” for the MEM—“she poured thousands of dollars into Dr. Yen’s hands.”69 Other sources suggest her arrogance, her propensity for pontification and scolding people, and her tendency to keep people waiting for one or two hours for any meeting or appointment.70 Of course, her fearless pontification might have helped her convince warlords to donate. Years later, Yen still vividly remembered details such as how she “tackled the big Marshal Hsiao Yui-lan [Xiao Yaonan],” who was already an opium smoker, in Hankou, Hubei Province, and made him donate $10,000 in silver (then roughly equivalent to U.S. $3,000). She also “directly went to the head of the government at Nanking, Marshal Qi Xieyuan, and got him so interested that he gave $10,000 to the campaign” as well as signing up his chief of police, the head of the Board of Finance, and the provincial minister of education for the board of directors. Yen told Buck during their interview in the 1940s: “You should have seen Madame Hsiung [Xiong] preside over that group of dignitaries. They all respected her and did everything she wanted them to do.”71

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In addition to helping raise funds, she also donated her own money. After helping to form the national organization of the MEM and being elected chair, she pledged to it half of her yearly income, about $10,000 in silver, and devoted her relentless energy to raising more.72 Yen confirmed: “It was she who supported the Movement at the beginning. We started in the fall of 1924. . . . The next year our expenses were $6000 and Madame Hsiung paid them out of her own pocket.”73 Zhu’s death in 1931 proved a big blow to the cause of the MEM. While she was alive, she devoted most of her time and energy to successfully securing its funding within China. After her death, Yen had to resort to international channels for funding; eventually he found support from the Rockefeller Foundation. Payne mentions that “on the death of Mme. Xiong, money for the experiment came largely from America, but the spiritual forces behind the movement no longer possessed its original fire. The Guomindang government attempted continually to take the scheme under its wing; Dr. Yen was too great a scholar to become a bureaucrat, and he fought a losing battle against Guomindang influence.”74 Zhu Qihui’s instrumental and indispensable role in the MEM calls attention to the group’s early period, when James Yen played only a limited and dependent role. It also reminds us to broaden our view of the actors in this movement from modern-educated intellectuals to those who contributed in other ways, such as the three Beiyang government cabinet members Zhu enlisted, or even the warlords who not only donated large amounts of money but also welcomed Yen and his colleagues “everywhere” as “revered teachers.”75 Only in this way can we gain a more nuanced sense of what this “massive” movement meant for different social groups in early Republican China. According to Charles Hayford, the MEM campaigns at their peak attracted more than five million students and served as a model for even more widespread schools.76 To downplay the significance of the fundraising accomplished by a woman is to ignore the vast networks needed for intellectuals and social reformers to do their work. * * * The cases of Ma Qingxia and Zhu Qihui show us two married nonprofessional women who, when faced with transformed opportunities for

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women of their class, shaped the most significant political and social movements of their day. They did not confine themselves to famine relief and soup kitchens; rather, their efforts touched the heart of nationalist organizing, such as Railroad Rights Recovery Movement, the 1911 Revolution, and the Mass Education Movement. Furthermore, the previous experiences that both women had managing their domestic sphere laid the foundation for their move into public philanthropic causes, which attests to the crucial and inseparable relationship between their domestic roles and their public activities. Scholars such as Dorothy Ko, in her study of elite women in seventeenth-century China, have pointed out that the traditional nei-wai (inner and outer) spheres are “negotiated boundaries where the nei and the wai are situated on a relative continuum, instead of two incommensurable realms.”77 In the late nineteenth century, this was still the case for both Qingxia and Zhu. Her husband’s sudden death compelled Qingxia to manage the family business while contributing to lineage charity, both of which significantly increased her interactions with the outside world. Zhu discovered her talent in finance when she struggled to make ends meet for her family. As crossing boundaries between the domestic and the public became increasingly socially acceptable in the beginning of the twentieth century, both women were able to extend their emphasis on the significance of education to a new public platform. Moving beyond lineage schools, Qingxia founded the first private girls’ school in Henan; Zhu became fully engaged with the Xiangshan Children’s Home and later applied the long-term vision, social networks, and financial talent that she had cultivated for decades domestically to the national Mass Education Movement. Neither woman repudiated her old domestic role to accomplish something new in public; instead, they each built on their previous positions while learning new ideas, initiating new public actions, and becoming “new” women along the way. On the other hand, we also see how men played crucial roles in enabling and empowering women’s public philanthropy. Their reformminded scholar-official brothers wielded particularly significant influences in their lives; in both cases, philanthropic activities led to their involvement in politics. Qingxia started with traditional lineage charity, a field in which elite women, especially widows, had long been active. Later, with her brother’s help from Beijing, the capital, Qingxia

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broadened her horizons in Japan and moved onto a national stage, establishing more schools and contributing to China’s efforts to build railroads by native means. Meanwhile, through native place and personal ties, her male friend Zhang Zhongduan familiarized her with the cause of the anti-Qing revolution, leading to her subsequent multiple financial contributions—the determining factor in her later resurrection from the dustbin of history. As for Zhu Qihui, she learned in childhood of China’s national crisis and developed her views about it by listening to her brothers. Later her brother Zhu Qiyi introduced her to his protégé Xiong Xiling, whom she would go on to marry. From then on, as the wife of a high-ranking scholar-official, she accepted politics as part of her life. Despite lacking a modern education, as a learned wife she was able to play an advisory and counseling role to her husband in political decisions, as well as to serve as his moral compass during challenging times, as had many elite women during previous historical periods. After Xiong’s retirement, their shared dedication to educational philanthropy enabled her to acquire her ex-premier husband’s support as well as the official and social networks the couple cultivated together over decades. In this way she became a highly effective leader with national-level organizational power in the Mass Education Movement. In sum, the cases of Ma Qingxia and Zhu Qihui suggest that although women’s individual abilities and decisions were very important, we cannot fully understand how their public activism played out without analyzing the familial, social, and collective agency they accrued from the men in their lives. Meanwhile, patriarchy posed special challenges and difficulties to female philanthropists in early twentieth-century China. Having no sons and a large fortune turned out to be Qingxia’s constant source of trouble in life, rendering her a vulnerable widow in the face of patriarchal laws and strong lineage power. In this sense, the lack of a legitimate male (either husband or son) in her life limited her philanthropic agency and made it occasionally controversial. Compared to Ma Qingxia, Zhu Qihui, whose illustrious husband remained alive during her lifetime of philanthropy, was surely less susceptible to social constraints. As a result, however, male-centered historical narratives often gave credit for her achievements to either her husband or her male coworkers. Being Mme. Xiong Xiling in early twentieth-century China

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made it difficult for her to claim her own individual identity, no matter how capable she proved to be. It is said that whenever her daughter Rose wanted to provoke her, she only had to say, “You are only Mrs. Hsiung Hsi-ling [Xiong Xiling].”78 The remark was sufficient to make her “hit the roof,” suggesting that Zhu indeed desired a separate identity. To what extent is it possible to talk about her “individual identity,” and to what extent was it separable from her married identity? This is a complex question lacking a clear-cut answer. One thing is clear: without Zhu Qihui, Xiong Xiling would not have risen so high in officialdom. Her brother’s early mentoring of Xiong, her own social networking and financial investment for the family, and her frequent advising and counseling to Xiong over the years were all crucial to Xiong’s career. Meanwhile, without Xiong, Zhu would not have had the social capital to wield as Mme. Xiong Xiling in order to conduct effective philanthropy. Nevertheless, despite her wish to be acknowledged for her individual achievement, the fact that she was mostly known in public throughout her life as Mme. Xiong Xiling ( just as Ma Qingxia was called Liu Ma Qingxia) indicates that female philanthropists’ identities in early twentieth-century China still hinged on men, in spite of their successful repositioning in the newly opened public world.

Part II THE YWCA IN CHINA AND “WOMEN IN THE HOME”

B

ecause female leaders since the late Qing had attached great significance to forming women’s groups, many women’s organizations emerged in the early twentieth century, providing new opportunities beyond individual/family networks for women to engage with the public realm. The most common types were anti–foot binding, anti–opium smoking, patriotic, educational, and speech societies. Their major activities most often involved making speeches, publishing newspapers and magazines, organizing charitable fundraising, and petitioning the governments for their respective causes. However, most of these societies existed for only a short time (the Chinese Women’s Association discussed in chapter 1 probably lasted the longest—about three years) and lacked systematic organizational rules and procedures to maintain steady memberships.1 On the other hand, not many women who were interested in social charity had the abilities and organizational power of Zhu Qihui, or a large amount of money to set up private schools, as did Ma Qingxia. In addition, many of the charitable activities in which Chinese women participated in the late Qing, or even the Republican era, were initially organized to address social emergencies such as famine, flood, or paying off national indemnity. Therefore they tended to be short-lived campaigns or movements. Venues where ordinary women could find sustained opportunities to regularly engage in charitable, philanthropic, and civic activities remained to be discovered or created. The unstable social and political situation in early twentieth-century China determined that long-lasting women’s organizations were often

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religious in nature, in part because of the ability of religious organizations to invoke a devout sense of commitment among their members. The YWCA in China, an international social service organization, is the focus of this part. Along with the women’s branches of many indigenous redemptive societies—in particular, the Daoyuan and its charity wing, the Red Swastika Society (the focus of part 3)—it provided an institutional outlet and systematic programs for many women to engage in social philanthropy and charity for several decades. The YWCA and the Daoyuan are also worth investigating because the former represented an attempt to introduce an important Western model of mobilizing women for social service and novel methods of fundraising to China, and the latter exemplified an effort to carry out social relief in the modern era through reconfiguring indigenous Chinese gender and religious traditions. These two types of civic organizations also represented two distinct ways of involving women with public life. The former, at least theoretically, adopted a Western model for recruiting women in which they were defined as individuals rather than part of a larger collective. The latter, by contrast, encouraged women’s participation as a member of their family unit, which, as I will show, had a mixed impact on their agency. Scholars have long assumed that the major constituency and audience of the YWCA in China were the so-called new women. Consequently, they have tended to single out young women with modern educations—such as the organization’s prominent secretaries, both Western and Chinese, or its lay leaders—and interrogate how they played so crucial a role in the YWCA’s work.2 Neglecting to look beyond these particular actors has limited our understanding of this organization and its significant contributions to the public lives of many different types of Chinese women. According to a study of the YWCA in China written in 1930 by its two secretaries, Tsai Kuei and Lily K. Haass, the organization had modified its program to meet the needs of “the overwhelmingly large groups of women in the home” since being introduced to China in 1890, whereas in Western countries it had been “primarily a movement for women not in the home—students, business girls, working women.”3 Statistics show that in the YWCA’s heyday in China, its urban associations’ major attraction was to middleclass “home women” of relatively older ages. Around 1930 eleven reports from city associations (two failed to send in figures) showed

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a total membership of 4,390, of whom 45 percent were “women in the home,” 31 percent were students, and 22.2 percent were “professional women.” In addition, 48.8 percent were Christians and 51.2 percent were non-Christians, with only three centers—Hong Kong, Wuchang, and Jinan—showing a preponderance of Christians. Only 18 percent of urban memberships were provided to women between eighteen and twenty-five years of age, which indicates that few “young” women were in the association.4 A detailed study of the Beijing membership file for 1928 showed that 80 percent were married, which “is believed probably to be typical.”5 Therefore, until the early 1930s, what the YWCA survey and reports referred to as “home women,” “women in the home,” or “homemakers” still constituted the bulk of urban memberships. Although the documents did not give specific definitions of these terms, we know that “women in the home” was used as a category opposite to “professional women.” The YWCA had primarily focused on adult activities and programs to meet the demands of this type of woman.6 To be sure, some overlap existed between home women and moderneducated women. Married women with modern educations could be women in the home as well. Elizabeth Littell-Lamb’s dissertation on the YWCA in China centers on a small group of women who shared elite backgrounds and Western-style educations and became involved with the YWCA, either as civic volunteers or as lay leaders, instead of becoming career women.7 These women will not be the focus of this part. Instead, chapter 3 considers the unique appeal of the YWCA to home women without modern educations, particularly given its foreign religious nature. It examines the major programs and activities of the YWCA in which these women participated. Historians have discussed the YWCA in China from the perspective of the so-called women’s movements and have evaluated its contribution by asking how it aided feminist struggles. As a result, we often neglect the fact that the YWCA was one of few organizations open to home women in early twentiethcentury China; it deserves credit for gradually engaging married, noncareer, older women with the larger world beyond their homes. By examining the interactions between Chinese homemakers and the YWCA branches in local societies, chapter 4 shows how some resourceful home women played a crucial role in helping the YWCA indigenize its fundraising and networking methods, thus ensuring the

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foreign organization’s survival and development in Chinese society. During this process, women reconfigured and transferred certain legacies of their pasts, such as their educations at home and their domestic experiences and skills in managing large extended families into new institutional settings in ways that facilitated their adaptations to the local public world, a sphere that some of them believed to be different only in size from their domestic realm. Meanwhile, home women also pushed the YWCA as a civic organization to redefine its public presence in local society in ways familiar to them, further blurring the boundary between the public and the private. We know very little about early twentieth-century Chinese homemakers’ engagement with the public arena, in part because they left few written documents. YWCA sources, which previous scholars have generally neglected, can be invaluable in this regard. The YWCA left detailed accounts about some of the Chinese women with whom its foreign social workers interacted locally. The organization’s modern system of regular staff work reports, most of them written in English by foreign workers in China, are a particularly rich source of information about otherwise little-known nonprofessional Chinese women. Through curious and observant foreign eyes, we are able to see their interactions with these women. In addition, personal papers and correspondence left by former YWCA social workers like Maud Russell (1893–1989), an American, help us to examine and trace the activities of the prominent women with whom they worked. I will discuss the interactions of three foreign secretaries (including Russell) with a Mme. Zuo of Changsha as a case study in chapter 4. The YWCA sources lack the voices of the women themselves, limiting our ability to fully comprehend how they characterized themselves and articulated their selfidentities. I have searched elsewhere for this information, but the findings remain limited. Apart from staff reports and personal papers, a variety of YWCA publications—from its monthly magazine, The “Green Year” Supplement, to national surveys about the organization, leaflets, and pamphlets—are used as supplemental materials to offer a broad picture of the programs of this organization that engaged so many Chinese women.

3 REACHING OUT TO WOMEN IN THE HOME

THE YWCA IN CHINA AND ITS CONSTITUENCY The rise of the YWCA as a Protestant women’s social service organization was influenced by the religious “perfectionism” prevalent in the early nineteenth century in both the United States and Great Britain: “a revivalistic belief spurring Protestants not only to improve themselves, but to improve others as well.”1 Because women represented a majority of Protestant church congregants in many locales, this doctrine encouraged their participation in a range of social movements. Meanwhile, further acceleration of the Second Industrial Revolution produced growing social concern over the welfare of women working in large cities. After the first branch of the YWCA was established in Britain in 1855, similar concerns led to the appearance of YWCAs in North America—first in New York City in 1858, and then in Boston in 1866. In 1894 the North American and the British YWCAs united to form the World’s YWCA and extended its branches to include Norway, Sweden, Canada, Italy, and India. At the same time, with the expansion of Western imperialist powers abroad, women played a growing role in massive overseas missionary campaigns. American and English Protestants strongly emphasized Asia and Africa as spheres for Christian social missions throughout the nineteenth century and into the twentieth. At some point between 1860 and 1900, women came to constitute the majority of foreign missionary workers, gravitating especially to those areas where the position of their gender was reputed to be

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lowest.2 Not surprisingly, China topped the list of “backward” lands needing to be transformed. In addition to “evil” habits such as opium smoking and poor personal hygiene, Chinese customs such as female infanticide, foot binding, concubinage, and slavery attracted the attention of missionary societies and became early targets of the YWCA’s work in China. Throughout its history in China, the YWCA oscillated between its religious goals and its social service agenda, in response to the needs of different times. It started in major Chinese cities and was first staffed by foreign secretaries supported by their own associations abroad. The first branch was established in 1890 in the Hongdao Girls’ School of the American Southern Presbyterian Mission in Hangzhou. As it began to expand around 1911, the organization stipulated that non-Christian women were also welcome to join. Subordinating spirituality and religion to an emphasis on social work and the enhancement of women’s opportunities quickly distinguished the YWCA from other, more typical missionary organizations in China.3 Throughout the Republican era, the YWCA emphasized its social service rather than Christian agenda and conducted gradual yet significant work to push for social and economic changes for women. The YWCA in China developed two major divisions: city associations and student associations. From 1915 to 1924 student membership rose from around 2,824 to 6,000, at ninety-one schools. Membership in the bigger city associations ranged from 300 to 500; in the smaller ones, from 100 to 200. In 1924 the total membership of city associations reached 3,000.4 Before the war with Japan began in 1937, the YWCA had organized about nineteen city associations nationwide and realized that without indigenizing the organization, it would be unable to survive in a foreign land. Thus it gradually increased Chinese participation in terms of both staff and policy making. By 1930, 95.3 percent of members were Chinese. There were eighteen city associations and ten thousand members in 1937.5 It was arguably the largest women’s organization in China from the early 1920s to the mid-1930s.6 An article in Shenbao in 1936 called the YWCA in China “the most organized, with the longest history, and one of the most important” of contemporary Chinese women’s organizations.7

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It would be misleading to evaluate the YWCA’s influence in Republican China based purely on the number of its members. A large number of women volunteered or participated in its programs, campaigns, and classes without formally becoming members. Many Chinese felt that it was unnecessary to profess a religion or feared that if they did become Christians, they would be regarded by other local residents as accomplices of foreign imperialists. It is impossible to know exactly how many women were involved in the organization’s activities, but we do know that many participated in YWCA programs without actually joining the association. During a Health Week in July 1922, for instance, the Changsha YWCA held an outdoor meeting with talks and movies that at least five hundred women attended—nearly three times its regular membership.8 Furthermore, the idea of “social service” and the organizational model of the YWCA and its male counterpart, the YMCA, proved highly influential in early twentieth-century China. The YMCA became “the largest institution in China practicing ‘social reconstruction theology’” during the Nanjing decade (1928–38), and coined the Chinese term for “social service”: shehui fuwu.9 Its organizational model inspired others, such as the Young Men’s Buddhist Association (YMBA, Fohua qingnianhui), a major national organization of young lay and ordained Buddhists active in the 1920s. Additionally, the founding members of the Daoyuan (discussed in part 3) cited the example of YMCA membership rules when debating if they too should allow nonbelievers to join in the 1920s.10 In fact, Whalen Lai notes that Christian social work might well be the modern missions’ “greatest triumph,” especially in comparison to the persistently low number of Chinese converts to the new faith. Many lives were touched by the likes of the YMCA, Christian colleges, and church hospitals, and many Chinese were impressed by these modern expressions of Christian charity.11 The YWCA, though separate from the YMCA in terms of organization and leadership, shared many of its programs, beliefs, and ideals, and the two organizations continuously cooperated with each other in social service during their years in China. Scholars have paid particular attention to the YWCA’s industrial and rural achievements in the 1930s and 1940s, from providing recreational

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activities for female factory workers and helping develop their leadership skills to changing public opinion and labor laws to maintain humane working conditions and eliminate child labor.12 But not enough attention has been paid to fully recognize the organization’s role in gradually “initiating a sense of social responsibility” (in the words of the YWCA) among the “home women” on whom the YWCA’s urban associations had focused from its beginnings until the 1930s. As Maud Russell, a long-time foreign secretary of the Changsha YWCA, stated in 1933, “Our work [in Changsha] began, in 1919, among women in homes, women who had not yet themselves [sic] a part of society in general and for whom our movement was one factor in helping them come out and fit into the new day in China. Our work these ten or twelve years has been much in terms of these home women.”13 According to Elizabeth Littell-Lamb, World and American YWCA leaders consciously steered the Chinese association away from its early involvement with factory women. In both the United States and Britain, the YWCA’s early work grew in response to working women’s needs in the course of industrialization—from boarding houses to vocational training and prayer groups. Early twentieth-century China experienced many of the same socioeconomic and ideological upheavals that the West faced in the initial phases of industrialization. The staff of the YWCA in China eagerly adopted many of the programs developed by the American and British associations to cope with similar circumstances. However, when the World YWCA general secretary Clarissa Spencer visited the Chinese association in 1907, she turned it away from an industrial focus, believing that China “lacked the resources to create the type of programs needed by the women workers.” Moreover, she feared that industrial work might blind the association to the important work done among “women of leisure.” Meanwhile, the U.S. YWCA executive Harriet Taylor, who also visited China in 1907, similarly emphasized the importance of establishing strong city associations by working with “upper-class women.”14 This decision, Littell-Lamb believes, helped “insure [the] Association’s survival in a socially conservative missionary community and a Chinese culture that remained essentially traditional and still uncertain about women’s engagement in public life.” 15 In the association’s later years, from the 1930s onward, as more in the younger generations grew up to become professional

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women, an increasing number of them became involved; they were often younger than the core membership.16 Meanwhile, as the organization’s emphasis changed from individual development to that of an entire society, its branches expanded from urban to rural areas, and its membership reached beyond the upper and middle classes to include working-class and rural women. Although the core membership of the YWCA in China was often described as “middle class,” the social and economic backgrounds of YWCA city members varied greatly depending on location. In Shanghai in late 1920s, then the most cosmopolitan city in China, the association reached a wide range of women, as the extract below from foreign secretary reports shows: The file of present members is an interesting mixture of people; there are women from the wealthiest, idlest families in Shanghai, with too much money and leisure; there are poor women who can only afford half the usual membership fee, there are students from mission schools; a few doctors and nurses; the matrons of two hospitals; one business woman (this is a very new development in China); returned students; women with no idea of modern hygiene or child raising; women whose families of eight and nine are a credit to any mother; the wives of two of China’s famous young men; a large number from the family of one of China’s most famous men of the last generation; one actor’s wife, an ardent Buddhist and vegetarian of twenty years standing; a school principal or two; the wives of some Young Men’s Christian Association secretaries; some young girls with only old style education; some others with modern education and good English; some old, old ladies who like to come to all the meetings and parties but leave their young daughters-in-law at home; some Christian women who are standing out against their whole non-Christian families and winning them over; and oh! So many more varieties! And they come from Peking, Canton, Fukien, America, Hong Kong, Honolulu, Australia, Changsha and many other provinces and cities in China.17

This degree of variety probably did not define every YWCA city branch. By around 1929 the thirteen city associations ranged from

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conservative cities like Shenyang (then Mukden), Yantai (Chefoo), and Chengdu (an inland city in the Southwest)—where professional women were few and most married women still remained domestically focused and thus home women became the majority of the local branch—to treaty ports like Tianjin, Nanjing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Canton, which featured a diversity of membership, and in-between cities such as Wuchang, Changsha, Hangzhou, and Beijing, which had a different mix ratio. Regarding itself as a progressive organization, the YWCA developed a policy against admitting concubines to membership. The secretary conferences of 1913, 1916, and 1919 initially recommended “secondary wives” not be admitted to membership.18 By 1923, at the first National Convention—attended mostly by “first wives”—national YWCA leaders recommended that the association “take a definite stand against the system of concubinage and that every member do all in her power to further this purpose.”19 Concubines by this period were viewed not only as women of a lower social class, since many of them were former prostitutes, but also as a symbol of a traditional, even backward Chinese civilization. The YWCA was merely one of many contemporary women’s organizations that banned concubines. In the 1920s the American traveler Grace Seton learned that the Tianjin Chinese Woman’s Patriotic Association, whose members included “several hundred educated ladies and wives of the most intellectual families in the city,” had announced that no concubines were eligible to join the club. Though this had “caused much discussion in Chinese society and has involved unpleasant consequences, as many of the concubines are personal friends, even relatives, of the members,” the association was prepared to “stand by its decision and forgo the support of thousands and thousands of concubines who as a rule are wealthy and generous.”20 The organization’s declaration of 1921 explained that taking in any concubines as members would permit, among other things, “the good name of the Association” to be “tarnished” and “the reputation of its members sullied.”21 In addition, Louise Edwards points out that most of the era’s women’s suffrage groups included a call for the abolition of concubinage in their manifestos and prohibited concubine membership. She provides another example, the Guangdong United Women’s Association (Nüjie

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lianhe hui), which conducted a heated discussion about concubines becoming members in late January 1920. The central concern seemed to be “maintaining the high personal character of the membership.” Many members perceived concubines to be of low moral worth, more problematic and threatening to their membership than poor or factory women. They feared the association’s mission to “develop women’s morality” would be compromised by the participation of concubines.22 Class issues thereby, if unintentionally, created division rather than unification in women’s public engagement. Actual practices, however, varied among the YWCA’s branches. In most cities concubines were debarred but in some they were admitted. Foreign secretaries often noticed what they called “class loyalties”: first wives were willing to work on behalf of concubines but not with them, since working together in public might tarnish the reputation of main wives as “good” women from respectable families. Again, we see that traditional class consciousness among these women remained strong, even in an international social service organization like the YWCA. Some local associations thus excluded “second wives.” Others occasionally discouraged first wives from attending meetings because “their presence inhibited the concubines who were the more committed and active members.”23 Overall, there was little mention of concubines’ activities in the YWCA records and reports, probably because even foreign secretaries who had worked with these women did not want to reveal to their supervisors, considering the organization’s official ban on concubines. One door closes; another opens. As I will show in part 3, various popular redemptive societies opened their doors to thousands and thousands of concubines owing to their generally conservative nature and their participation mode of family as a unit.

LEADERSHIP: COMMITTEE, BOARD, AND SECRETARIES An examination of the administrative structure of the YWCA demonstrates further why married homemakers had a stronger and more enduring influence on the organization than did young professional women. The organization of the YWCA consisted of a national

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committee, secretaries (national and local), and boards of directors for both city and student associations. It was commonly understood within the organization that “committee and board were a very crucial part of the organization and were generally the decision makers and administrators, whereas secretaries’ major responsibility was as organizers, and they were usually entrusted the task of execution, particularly with reference to program.”24 The high turnover rate of secretaries, both Chinese and foreign, made them a less stable and consistent influence in the organization than the women serving on committees and boards. Secretaries were employed, salaried officers who worked full time. The majority were young and single, and they often quit their jobs once they had married, although some remained involved as volunteers. Some of the most well-known Chinese women in the Republican period, such as Song Qingling (the widow of Sun Yat-sen), Song Meiling (Madame Chiang Kai-shek), and Li Dequan (the wife of the “Christian General” Feng Yuxiang), worked in the YWCA in their early years but left after marriage.25 As of 1930, 56 percent of ex-secretaries had served for only one year. Usually the secretary was a college graduate who worked for one or two years and, just when she had become familiar with the work, left the association for good. The association had to train someone new to take up her work, only to repeat the process a short time later. Those who did not leave and later became important leaders often remained single for their entire lives, such as Ding Shujing (1890–1936), the first Chinese national general secretary, and Deng Yuzhi (1900–1996), a onetime industrial secretary of the YWCA who emerged as an important Christian leader after 1949. The YWCA’s leaders realized that “this constant shifting and redrafting is most uneconomical and in one sense, weakens the morale of the Association.”26 In contrast to the “migratory” secretaries were Chinese women who served on boards and committees and were regarded as the “abiding” members of the community. We know far less about them (see chapter 4’s case studies on Mme. Zuo and Mme. Nie) than we do about the secretaries, except that most of the women serving on committees and boards were married women in the home. In 1929, of eleven city associations, six had an “overwhelming proportion” of women in the home on their boards. Only in places like Shanghai, Tianjin, and Hong Kong

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were there relatively more professional women. Among the resident members of the National Committee, a survey indicates that 66 percent were women in the home, 13 percent were home women also giving time to professional duties, and the remaining 20 percent were professional workers. “Wage-earners and students are as yet not represented,” their leaders realized. The survey committee believed that heavy representation of women from the home was due “partly to the difficulty of adjusting a meeting time so as to fit the convenience of professional women, free only late in the day, and of mothers, who need to be home after school hours.” The association was also fully aware of the significance of acquiring “the support and leadership of influential women who would form a firm foundation for the Association.” 27 The women who made up the YWCA’s National Committee tended to be married women who had received modern/Western educations but had chosen to be civic volunteers rather than career women. Since membership was open to all nationalities, a good number of foreigners joined in the early days; it was not until 1919 that a Chinese woman, Mrs. Zhu Hu Binxia (a.k.a. Hu Bingxia, Hu Pingsa, Mrs. C. T. Chu, 1888– 1931), a Wellesley graduate, was elected chair. In the next ten years, two other Chinese women held this office: Mrs. H. C. Mei and Mrs. C. L. Hsia. In five years, the ratio of Chinese to Westerners on the National Committee shifted from 12:18 in 1915 to 17:13 in 1920. 28 Though both Christians and non-Christians could become members, non-Christians were usually excluded from decision-making circles. Only “active members”—those belonging to evangelical churches—had the privilege of voting and holding office. Finally, most women who served on the executive committee were Western-educated because, judging from the English conference minutes extant, fluent English was required for discussions with foreign secretaries. These women cannot be easily classified. Ye Weili regarded Hu Binxia as “a woman of yesterday and today” and a representative of the second cohort of American-educated Chinese women.29 Born in 1888 into a wealthy official-gentry family in Wuxi, Hu shared with other elite women of the late Qing a family background that had emphasized education for generations. In 1902 she left to study first in Japan and later, with a government scholarship, in the United States, graduating from Wellesley College around 1914. Littell-Lamb’s study of the YWCA in

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China focuses on women like Hu. In terms of their modern educations, these women closely resembled the New Culturalist ideal of “new women.” But they did not share the radical elements of this ideal. In an editorial published in the influential Ladies’ Journal in 1916, titled “New Women of the Twentieth Century,” Hu Binxia described three American women she encountered in the United States and chose as role models of the new women of China. All three were quite different from the independent career women that New Culturalist Hu Shi chose as representatives two years later. Mrs. Mei, Mrs. Meng, and Mrs. Nan were all consummate homemakers, while two of them engaged in civic activities outside the home as an avocation. All three were college educated and unassumingly and effortlessly combined several roles in one person: wife and helpmate to husband; mother, teacher, and friend to children; and volunteer worker for society. The ideal woman Hu embraced comprised the following indispensable ingredients: scientific management of the modern home; a democratic spirit in children’s education; companionship like that provided by the three American wives to their husbands; participation in volunteer work to serve society; and dedication to the beautification of the home. As for her own education: the more, the better. In a word, she must be an allaround woman who chose to play her central role within the domestic sphere while conducting social work outside of it—not for her own economic benefit but to serve society. Importantly, she finds no contradiction between her domestic and public activities.30 Though we tend to view a gender ideal with a domestic focus as essentially conservative, Hu Binxia’s work reminds us that some Chinese women then preferred this model of Western womanhood and believed it to be the most suitable way to modernize Chinese gender roles. In addition to the National Committee, every local YWCA chapter had its own board of directors that fully reflected Chinese women’s involvement in the decision-making process. The local board was usually composed of ten to fifteen persons elected by members and serving for a term of three years. The board decided all questions of policy, finance, property, secretariat, and programs independently of the National Committee.31 In Shanghai, despite the sizable foreign population of the International Settlement, the chapter board was almost entirely Chinese in 1911, and completely so by 1919.32

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Figure 3.1  Board members of the Tianjin YWCA. Tianjin jidujiao nüqingnianhui huiwu baogao (Tianjin Young Women’s Christian Association yearbook), July 15, 1937, 10–11. Box 58, YWCA of the U.S.A. Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College.

Although few sources remain about the Chinese board of directors, foreign secretaries’ reports suggest that they played an instrumental role in the organization’s local development. YWCA publications occasionally show their photos with names but without any further introduction. Far more Chinese women without modern educations sat on local boards than sat on the National Committee. They often mingled and cooperated with other types of women, and their work sometimes went beyond the confines of the organization itself, as seen from Tsai and Haass’s study on the YWCA from 1930: The Tientsin [Tianjin] board members include many loyal, understanding “old timers” who bear ably the burden of responsibility, together with some representatives of the younger progressive type of women and some of the more conservative element. They write

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of the most happy relationship of service and sharing that exists between the board and staff and claim “that it would be hard to find a more congenial Association family anywhere.” This spirit of cooperation has grown beyond the bounds of the Association and these board members have unconsciously, as it were, become leaders of usefulness in every important movement in the city—relief measures, church and club activities and all kinds of reform.33

Although it is unclear whether “old timers” here refers to women of advanced age or women who had been involved with the YWCA for a long time, the very process of mingling together and cooperating with other social groups gave homemakers plenty of chances to interact with and learn from a variety of women through public engagement, an experience that would not have been easily available had they chosen to remain domestically sequestered. Moreover, sources suggest that outside groups—religious and women’s organizations, educational organizations and recreation groups, and organizations—often used the local YWCA association headquarters for social welfare and other social purposes.34 This space sharing provided opportunities for women to make contact with a broader social world. The YWCA was particularly proud of its overall influence in improving Chinese women’s leadership abilities, calling it “one of the greatest contributions of the Association.” It served as an informal training institute for homemakers interested in stepping into the public arena but lacking a modern education and the proper public skills to do so. Tsai and Haass’s report specifically discussed the type of training they received: Those who have watched the development of boards and committees cannot but feel that here lies one of the greatest contributions of the Association. Person after person, place after place, gives evidence on this subject. Practically every place had witnessed the evolution of countless board and committee members, unacquainted with parliamentary procedure, timid about “speaking in meeting,” absolutely inexperienced in group action, who have in the course of time learned to function together. If it is true that one of China’s greatest problems is learning to work together in co-operative effort, then

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the function of the Association in this field cannot be overestimated. Whereas in western countries hundreds of women’s clubs of various varieties serve for this purpose, in China the YWCA has been outstanding as an organization outside of educational institutions which has retained stability, kept on enlisting new recruits, contributed toward the understanding of community needs and issues, helped to train them in group action, and last but not least, has given them a sense of hopefulness in dark and troublesome days, that through voluntary effort some social gains could be made. Those who are prone to scoff at organization, or to groan under its demands, should not overlook the fact that its opportunities for self-expression and its discipline as well as its inspiration are serving to put China’s woman power at the disposal of the nation.35

Such a statement suggests an instrumental, often neglected reason that the YWCA attracted women in the home: few women’s organizations at the time offered public training opportunities like those offered by the YWCA. Most modern schools were set up primarily for young girls without bound feet, for they represented China’s future. As for other clubs of various kinds, not only were their overall numbers in China far smaller than in the West, most of them were filled with modern- or Western-educated women who took their inspiration from women’s clubs in the West. It was no surprise that many of what the foreign secretaries called “home women” gravitated to the YWCA.

TRANSFORMING LEISURE THROUGH SOCIAL SERVICE The YWCA also appealed to many homemakers by providing a regular institutional outlet for women to spend leisure time outside the home. The YWCA quickly found among these women a potential audience to promote their “social service” ideology since they generally provided more receptive ears than did busy working-class women. Foreign secretaries of the YWCA saw a problem in “the inadequacy of planned leisure-time activities in the average Chinese community.” By “average,” they meant the middle- and upper-class urban women with

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whom they interacted—not the majority of rural women living in poverty. One foreign secretary, Miss Harriet Rietveld, explained: In America it is easy to have too many outside interests. There are generally so many calls for one to do social service work, community welfare, church work that these things sometimes become a burden to a busy home maker. In China this home maker has nothing outside her home to take her interest. She is generally not allowed to meet her husband’s friends, she probably cannot read or if she can [has not] developed the taste for much reading so she learns very little about the affairs outside her home. To her a class or a committee means a widening of her circle of friends and a larger outlook on life in general. She gets inspiration from these meetings and from the exchange of ideas with other women that she has never known before. The YWCA strives to create these opportunities for Chinese women and has in the atmosphere of her city associations accomplished this thing.36

The YWCA was not the only women’s organization that saw Chinese women’s leisure as a “problem.” The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) in China, an international women’s organization similar to the YWCA but smaller in scale and influence, shared similar views. Begun as a middle-class American women’s movement targeted at alcohol consumption, it broadened its appeal to include positions against opium smoking, gambling, foot binding, and concubinage when it was transplanted to China in 1886 (four years earlier than the YWCA). In the 1920s the WCTU’s Chinese leaders added women’s education, child welfare, and women’s economic independence to its mission. The organization’s official organ, Jiezhi jikan (Temperance quarterly), claimed that a major shortcoming of the Chinese was their inability to make good use of leisure (yuxian), and the fact that many used their leisure time for “evil” (e’lie) habits such as smoking. In this way, the meaning and value of leisure was lost. On the other hand, the WCTU argued, Westerners used leisure time to enjoy “civilized entertainment” (wenming de yule) and develop “aesthetic ideas” (meiyu de sixiang). Consequently, their lives were “exceptionally beautiful and fulfilled” (youmei yuanman) and their

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characters “noble” (gaoshang).37 The attitudes of the YWCA and WCTU bear a clear resemblance to the general sentiments of the Protestant work ethic and contemporary popular culture critiques of leisure circulating in both Europe and the United States. For Chinese women of the leisure class, the YWCA further argued that problems lay in “the lack of places to meet and opportunities to learn.”38 It chose education as its main way to attract urban homemakers, owing to the social consensus on education’s importance and broad appeal. Consequently this line of emphasis became more pronounced in the YWCA in China than it was in the United States.39 The YWCA presented a wide range of classes to attract a variety of women: Chinese and foreign cooking, sewing, candy making, English conversation, the domestic arts, typing, first aid, and nursing. Other types of institutional education existed as well. Shanghai conducted a half-day school for several years, serving older women who wished to do a little study, and providing a wide range of subjects and levels. Although some Chinese women might have disagreed with the YWCA secretaries’ view that leisure should be filled with plenty of well-planned rather than spontaneous activities, there is no denying that the YWCA offered a variety of practical classes, learning opportunities, and options to those women interested in spending their leisure time beyond the confines of home and enlarging their social circles. In particular, married urban women, young and old, who did not qualify for government schools, gained new opportunities to regularly learn and enrich their daily lives. The YWCA also created a “home betterment” program, addressing problems specific to women and the home. Better Home Institutes and Family Clubs dealt with generational and other conflicts that arose in modern urban environments. Additionally, a strong emphasis on health existed in almost every city group, with mothers’ clubs, kindergartens, baby welfare and children’s clinics, and women’s clinics. Better-baby contests were often held to illustrate approved methods of infant care by awarding prizes to the healthiest entries. As late as 1928 the association still held that the “distinguishing features” of the YWCA in China, compared to those in other countries, was “a tendency . . . to concentrate upon the interests and problems of

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homes,” despite the increasing efforts in industrial and rural work that characterized its later years.40 This lasting impression resulted mostly from the fact that the majority of its urban members were homemakers. The YWCA believed the solution to the leisure problem lay in introducing new ideas to Chinese homemakers’ lives—in particular, the concept of social service, which the YWCA saw as an “easy first step to a life of bigger interests.” They defined social service as “the associated effort of those seeking to promote justice and opportunity for their fellow men and to make possible the individual’s development by establishing a right social order.”41 By bringing “women of few interests who had no other outlet in social life but ‘mahjong’ ” to the YWCA, the staff hoped that “the personal friendliness” they found there could entice the women into helping others.42 Foreign secretaries of the YWCA singled out mahjong, as had previous reformers, as a nonbeneficial female recreation—further suggesting the game’s popularity among homemakers during this period. The YWCA hosted hundreds of lectures on problems of current interest: Chinese social life, international questions, art, and culture, which they believed to “have widened the horizon of the thousands who have listened.” Further efforts were made to put home women in touch with broader society; in 1919, for instance, the Shanghai branch featured “social service institutes with visits to cotton mills, orphanages, industrial schools, and institutions for the helpless, together with classes in home nursing and hygiene and lectures on opium, eugenics, and women in industry.” Apart from the informal social service institutes, the YWCA opened a training course for social workers, in cooperation with Yenching University, to fully introduce the concept of social service. Students received field practice in the city of Beijing in what was said to be “the first of its kind to train for social work in China.”43 The goal was to encourage Chinese women to use the spirit of social service to tackle the country’s “social problems.” The meaning of social problems in the eyes of progressive YWCA foreign secretaries can be gleaned from the following excerpt of a report from Changsha in Hunan Province:

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But there is much unhappiness because of the large number of concubines, and the habit of gambling is very widespread in this city. They are also having to fight continually the gross ignorance of the simplest rules of health and hygiene, as well as superstition and slovenliness, both from the poor and some of those who should be their helpers.44

The targets of social service thus included a broad spectrum, from religious beliefs (or what they called “superstition”), social customs (such as foot binding and concubinage), and substance abuse (smoking, drinking, and opium addiction) to education and personal hygiene. Although the issue of concubinage was again raised in this report from Changsha, it did not give specific information to indicate what percentage of local married women were concubines. Other foreign secretaries’ reports did not either. Nor did they say whether the YWCA did anything concrete beyond promoting an anticoncubinage position. Historian Thomas Dubois argues that the early twentieth century (particularly the period between the two world wars) was “characterized by an overwhelming confidence in the ability of states or civic groups to transform the human spirit.”45 Civic groups like the YWCA, YMCA, and WCTU represent this zeal, as they attempted to convince or force individuals to surrender their will to the process of transforming. The YWCA’s ideal of social service seems to have interested many Chinese women. The zeal for social service was so acute that almost every city association had a social service committee. The quotation below gives an idea of other types of social service work (in addition to the aforementioned typical social problems) that some social service committee members conducted in the 1920s. In Canton [Guangzhou] the membership volunteered for a piece of definite helpfulness and began an “Old Women’s Christian Association” among the destitute. Here too they visited hospitals and prisons, carrying on quite an extensive piece of evangelistic work in the latter. One Association cooperated for years in a women’s Social Service League, which among other things made a study of the industries of the city. Nanking [Nanjing] has pioneered in running a

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bath-house, visited by the women of the city of all classes. At least two Associations—Changsha and Tientsin [Tianjin]—have conducted work rooms where needy women were taught forms of sewing and embroidery sufficient to earn a living. The desperate need of unprotected young women in the big cities required the opening of hostels. Canton, Changsha, Tientsin, Peking and Shanghai in particular have found this a needed service. In the latter city the growing number of young business women has led to the purchase of a large building to be used primarily for dormitory purposes. 46

In sum, it seems that some types of YWCA social services aimed to directly satisfy the emotional and spiritual needs of the neglected, often combined with varying degrees of Christian teaching. Other social services were responding to changing social demands by meeting women’s new needs—providing places to stay, for instance, to the growing number of young women traveling to big cities in search of work. YWCA leaders fully admitted the religious purpose inherent in their social service work, but they were careful not to over emphasize it, lest they alienate those Chinese women not comfortable with a foreign religion. As Foreign Secretary Edith Sawyer put it: “We do not believe in a Religious Work Department, as we conceive of all of our work as being, in the truest sense, religious and we are eager to discover how our spiritual purpose can be expressed through all of our activities.”47 This downplaying of the religious element helped ensure the organization’s broad social appeal, although it was sometimes criticized from within the Christian community for not paying sufficient attention to religious pursuits and putting itself in danger of “losing its identity in church and community.”48 In addition to regular categories of social work, temporary disaster relief became an important part of social service. Although the association publicly described its function “in terms of character building and social reconstruction rather than in terms of relief and philanthropy,”49 judging from its many secretaries’ reports, disaster relief frequently occupied the attention of YWCA workers. For example, in Changsha, its foreign secretaries reported that

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floods, famines and wars frequently diverted the Association almost entirely from its routine program. . . . The floods came and the waters lay over the land. The homeless numbered thousands. Immediately our membership was busy joining in with others raising money, attending to the homeless, the hungry, helping to provide shelter, clothing, food—numberless, untold thoughtfulness for necessities and comforts. This was their mission too, and they accepted it.50

The “courageous” emergency relief program of the Wuchang (Hubei Province) YWCA in response to the central China flood in November 1931 was the story mentioned most frequently in YWCA reports. According to Foreign Secretary Irene Dean’s report from Wuchang, the initial impulse for a temporary home for refugee widows and orphans was given by “Buddhist friends with whom the YWCA Relief Staff had been cooperating.” Soon the abbot of a local monastery offered its temple as a disaster relief site, while writing a “hearty” letter of endorsement to accompany an appeal for help from the Hubei branch of the National Flood Relief Commission. The $5,000 secured in relief funding provided food, fuel, service, and equipment for a period of five months. Approximately $14,537 was given to the YWCA National Committee—$9,912 of it from other association chapters and friends throughout China, the rest from sources abroad. When the Hung Shan Refugee Widows’ and Orphans’ Shelter opened, it admitted 384 people: 109 were widows, 118 were girls, and 157 were boys.51 During the refugees’ stay at the camp, which lasted for about a year, the staff seized the opportunity to educate. Not only was a literacy class offered to all members over eight years of age; “health and character education” was carried out as well. The example of the Wuchang YWCA working together with a Buddhist monastery and Hubei’s official relief organization suggests that the YWCA’s emphasis on social service without a compulsory religious element facilitated cooperation with non-Christian groups, attracting their participation and support. Still, despite the YWCA secretaries’ attempts to downplay the Christian underpinnings of their social service work, that religious foundation sometimes revealed itself. Often Chinese observers and participants interpreted the YWCA’s zeal in social service as based on Chinese

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religious and cultural beliefs. In response, Irene Dean complained from the Hung Shan refugee camp at Wuchang: It has been difficult for them to understand why the staff who are neither of their families nor their clan villages are willing to go to such pains to care for them. Though it has been explained and reiterated numerous times that the motive is one of “sharing” with one’s fellow-human beings—that, after all “All under Heaven are one family,” there are many who have doubtless come to the conclusion that the motive is to “acquire merit.” On several occasions remarks like this have been made: “Ah! you teachers will surely go to heaven because of all the virtuous deeds you have done for us!” And one woman wistfully added, “Have you not some way to take us with you?52

Here we can see the continuation of a Chinese Buddhist belief in accumulating religious merit by conducting charity, held since imperial times. Chapter 6 will discuss further how some indigenous Chinese religious and charitable groups, such as the Daoyuan, utilized this familiar idea of religious merit, as well as the concept of female benevolence, to motivate its female members to devote themselves to charity.

ADULT WOMEN’S EDUCATION In addition to social service, the YWCA’s program of adult education attracted many home women. It not only appealed to a Confucian mentality on the importance of continuous learning and lifelong selfcultivation but also filled in for the lack of institutions and programs geared to women who did not qualify for government schools. When the Mass Education Movement headed by Zhu Qihui and the YMCA’s James Yen spread across the country, the YWCA seized the opportunity to expand its work and influence. Through the movement, the YWCA also began to broaden its focus from the middle to the working classes, and from urban to rural areas, reaching out to more and diverse Chinese women. The significant role played by the YWCA in rural reconstruction and the Mass Education Movement deserves more scholarly attention. “A student of social affairs” reviewing the

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YWCA in the 1920s gave her opinion: “It is the organization for adult education of women in China.”53 When we discuss women’s education in early twentieth-century China, we tend to focus on modern girls’ schools, where the new women emerged. We will gain a deeper understanding of the transformative power of education if we include adult women who were no longer young enough to be admitted to these newstyle schools, or whose bound feet were viewed as backward, thus disqualifying them from admission. What if they wanted to learn, too? The foreign staff of the YWCA recognized that this type of popular education implied a different agenda in China from that in the West: “To the Western mind the words ‘Popular Education’ bring visions of entertaining lectures on subjects of general interest, but to the dwellers in China they are beginning to represent the movement for making China a literate nation. When only one fourth of the men and less than one-tenth of the women can read or write their own names, the problem of education assumes huge proportions.”54 In 1923 the YWCA’s National Convention decided to start the movement first in the city associations. Changsha and Yantai pioneered the first Mass Education campaigns.55 James Yen’s One-Thousand-Character Primer was used extensively as the textbook. Within a year seven city associations were active in the Popular Education Movement, and by 1927, 814 women had learned to read in YWCA classes.56 The story of Mrs. Z., a middle-class, illiterate woman in Shanghai around 1923, can give us an idea of the difference that adult education made in urban women’s lives. According to Elizabeth Morrison, an American YWCA secretary there, “the class has meant all about the happiness she [Mrs. Z.] has at present.” Mrs. Z. left her husband’s home because he treated her badly after he took a concubine. She had two children, a boy of fourteen and a girl of twelve, who lived with the father and concubine. The husband allowed Mrs. Z. $15 a month, which the concubine “doles out” to her. Mrs. Z., living in a rented room, “has nothing to do.” Before she heard of the YWCA’s school, she “spent her time in playing mahjong.” After some studying, she became “a devotee of education”: She is thirty-seven but had never studied a word before. Naturally she is very slow, but she perseveres through all discouragements. Each day she comes an hour before class time. She has missed only one day

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of school, and that almost broke her heart. The teacher of the class made friends with her, and since then she has almost lived at the teacher’s home. Apparently she was starved for someone to take an interest in her. I think part of her interest in education is because she hopes her children will respect her more if she can read and write, and will come to see her oftener. She is interested in Christianity, but says her husband has threatened to cut off her $15 if she goes to a church. She asks a lot about the teachings of Jesus, and says emphatically that they are the true teachings. It is a pleasure to see the new lease on life that she has taken since coming to the class. It is these new leases on life that we hope will come out of the Popular Education classes—whether it be aspirations toward education or health standards or better citizenship or new friendship.57

It seems that the education Mrs. Z. received through the YWCA brought hope and happiness to her daily life, in addition to knowledge. The program also brought her closer to Christianity, something that the YWCA staff expected to see in their work, although social and familial pressures often prevented women from going any further, as they did in this case. Stories like this may sound trivial when compared to the dramatic changes that radical revolutionaries, such as the Communist leader Xiang Jingyu (1895–1928), deemed worthy for women’s liberation. Xiang was quite critical of the YWCA in 1923, regarding the gradual changes it brought to Chinese women irrelevant in the new revolutionary era and labeling the organization “a tool of foreign capitalism.” But as her knowledge of the YWCA’s activities in Shanghai increased, she began to acknowledge its commitment to social activism and organizational capacity, commenting that it surpassed what she had seen in at least a dozen other women’s groups in Shanghai. 58 Xiang’s criticism represented an influential line of thinking and a standard that has long been used, even by scholars, to evaluate the YWCA in China: how much did it contribute to the “women’s movements” and to “feminist rights,” and what impact did it have on women’s liberation? These are important questions. But we should not so easily dismiss the YWCA just because, at least up to the 1930s, it focused instead on gradual personal development. The everyday sorrows and joys of ordinary women in

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early twentieth-century China were real. A “middle-aged woman” at a meeting at the Shanghai association once described what adult education meant to her life: “You think it’s so wonderful for these children to learn to read . . . but think how I feel when after all these years I can go into a railroad station and read enough to be sure I am getting on the right train!”59 The empowering effect of the YWCA’s adult education program further explains the organization’s special appeal to women in the home with little school education. In other words, despite the fact that it failed the radical criteria for social change, the YWCA in China made important contributions to women’s lives, particularly in providing a training ground for Chinese homemakers, in broadening their horizons and assisting their gradual adjustment to an increasingly open, public world. Moreover, local chapters of the YWCA provided channels for women to form peer groups and to effect changes in socially acceptable ways. Scholars have pointed out that Chinese Christian women often adopted liberal thinking, a belief system that supports the idea that society can be changed through changing individuals and is thus compatible with the Confucian view of the relationship between the individual and society.60 Many home women preferred moderate reform to radical revolution, although Communist feminists regarded the latter as the only way to truly emancipate women from institutional and systematic oppression. These women probably shared a view more in keeping with YWCA workers than with radical revolutionaries when it came to the specific abilities and skills of women—cooperation, “self-expression and discipline,” “parliamentary procedure, public speaking, public relations, and fundraising”—skills that could “be employed in other organizations and sometimes even prompted the exploration of related career fields.”61 What the YWCA celebrated as “contributions” were consistent with its belief in the importance of individual development, and its goal of “character building” was something that clearly resonated with many Chinese women as well. * * * Several factors were crucial to attracting many women in the home to the YWCA in China. The central ideals and programs of the YWCA, such

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as “adult education” and “character building,” resonated well with the value that Confucian teachings placed on lifelong self-cultivation, facilitating Chinese women’s comfort with and understanding of this foreign organization. The scarcity of well-organized women’s institutions in early twentieth-century China made the YWCA stand out. Its adult educational program offered older women learning opportunities that few other organizations did. Its leadership training, through committees and boards, helped home women learn new public skills. In addition, it deliberately downplayed its religious underpinnings and promoted the idea of “social service” to encourage women to give new meaning to their leisure time through helping to gradually improve society. By shifting our focus to homemakers and the YWCA’s programs and activities designed for them, we are able, first, to gain a new understanding of an important function that the association played in China: it offered married, noncareer women new public places to meet and opportunities to learn. Consequently, these women broadened their scope and found new meaning and value in life beyond the confines of their households. We also notice that relatively older married women tended to be more active in the YWCA than were younger women, primarily because the older women had more time and considerably greater freedom than did younger ones, who were often occupied by work or domestic chores. Furthermore, by shifting our focus to married nonprofessional women, we are able to move beyond the familiar historical narratives that concentrate on modern-educated Chinese/foreign women as the leaders of civic organizations such as the YWCA, and young working women and students as its sole audience. Instead, we are able to see women in the home not merely as passive targets needing reform but as instrumental actors in the survival and development of this international organization. I will demonstrate this point further in the following chapter.

4 WOMEN INTERACTING WITH THE YWCA

I

n 1930, when the Western women of the YWCA celebrated the contributions made by Chinese women, they singled out a certain Madame Zuo for praise:

Madame Tso [Zuo] is a born leader herself, descending from a family of high officials. She seems to have in her blood a good deal of their ability, of organizing power, ripe judgement, wise and most adorable tactfulness in all her ways and doings. We should not be where we are in the YWCA work had it not been for Madame Tso’s most untiring services, her warm interest and her wise, quiet way of getting the new ideas of a YWCA over to her innumerable relatives and friends. I believe we sometimes have meetings where most of those present probably were here because of her kind invitations given personally or through letter.1

It seems that the YWCA especially appreciated how Mme. Zuo used her social networks instrumentally to help promote the association’s work among local women. A closer look at the fifth Madame Zuo of Changsha (Hunan Province), one of the local elite women who served on the Changsha YWCA committee and board, will help give us an idea of what home women did for the YWCA. Despite the lack of existing Chinese sources on Mme. Zuo (including her full name), three Changsha YWCA foreign secretaries’ reports shed crucial light on this woman and her importance to the local association. Mme. Zuo’s case demonstrates the

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continued influence and social capital that an elite Chinese home woman without modern education could wield even up to the 1930s. This chapter further shows the important roles that many more home women played in the survival and indigenization of an international social service organization, the YWCA, in local Chinese society. To be sure, the process of home women emerging into public life was not without its challenges. As this chapter will also reveal, some faced a variety of obstacles when given opportunities to publicly engage with a new civic organization.

MADAME ZUO Mme. Zuo was the widow of the fifth son of the first son of Zuo Zongtang (1812–1885), descendants of the Qing statesman and military leader who served the Qing dynasty illustriously in the Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864) and after. Because her husband was the fifth son born in the clan in his generation (Zuo Zongtang had twelve grandsons), that number served as his title in the family; his wife bore his title and so was always known as “the Fifth Madame.” Soon after Maud Russell, an American, and her new YWCA colleagues from Sweden, Ingeborg Wikander and Ruth Nathorst, arrived at Changsha around 1919 to establish the first Changsha branch of the YWCA, they befriended Mme. Zuo.2 Russell referred their hostess as Tso Wu Lao T’ai T’ai (Old Madame Zuo the Fifth), since by then Mme. Zuo was already a grandmother despite being only about forty years old. Wikander called her “the leader of the big Tso family” and regarded her as “perhaps the best illustration of the old and the new mingling together into a new world, most perplexing in its many sided aspects.”3 Wikander provides additional information about Zuo: Madame Tso was brought up a Confucian, and has a good Chinese education, reads and writes well, has a gift for painting, and has a good business head. She never believed in idols or superstitious customs. But she has seemingly tried to live after the high and sound human moral code that Confucius taught. She has never gambled, as most Chinese women of her position do. . . . Madame Tso had no

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connections with missions or missionaries until we met. Now she goes calling on her new foreign friends, the members of our advisory committee and others, just as naturally and ladylike as she is among the women of her own people. She is not a confessing Christian; the Christian teaching is all so new in her life, though she knew something about it from a few weeks’ stay in the house of her relative, Madame Nieh [Nie] in Shanghai [the youngest daughter of Zeng Guofan (1811–1872), another leading Qing military official who suppressed the Taiping Rebellion]. She comes regularly to all our Sunday meetings; she hardly ever misses one of them. And I know she takes it all in, thinking over it and believing in the truth of it, and practicing it in her life. She gives a beautiful, shining example of unselfish service to us all, and is a real inspiration and comfort to some of us.4

A woman with Confucian learning, Mme. Zuo seems also to have been interested in moral cultivation, which might help explain why she found some affinity in the teachings of Christianity and regularly attended YWCA’s Sunday meetings. One of the most important contributions that Mme. Zuo made to the Changsha YWCA was her invitation to the three foreign secretaries to establish the YWCA headquarters on the Zuo family temple grounds. Their designated section had rooms upstairs and downstairs—“six or eight rooms all together,” Russell recalled. In the same building (where the YWCA secretaries lived), but in a separate section, three of the families, descendants of the duke Zuo Zongtang, lived: “Madame Zuo the Fifth,” “Madame and Mr. Zuo the Second,” and “Madame the First,” with the family of the grandson of the Fifth family—father, mother, and eight children. The other nine families lived in other sections of the large compound.5 “This is the most unique place used for YWCA work that I have seen in the world,” said Mary Dingman, a staff member of the World YWCA, when she visited Changsha.6 The Zuo family’s extensive residential compound (“about the size of several city blocks”) included a magnificent ancestral home, gardens, private theater, and a granary to which the peasants brought their rice payments, in addition to the temple grounds. About four hundred members of the Zuo clan lived there.7

Figure 4.1  Madame Zuo and YWCA foreign secretaries, Changsha, Spring 1919.

Left to right: Mme. Zuo (China), Grace Coppock (U.S.A.), and Ingeborg Wikander (Sweden).

Box 67, Maud Russell Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.

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The Changsha YWCA signed a six-year contract with the Zuo family. Several paragraphs were included in Wikander’s report, and they provide a rare window into the detailed spatial arrangements that allowed for the peaceful coexistence of Chinese ancestral worship and Western Christianity in a single location: The Tso Family, for the sake of friendship and public welfare, are willing to rent a part of the Tso Memorial Temple to the Young Women’s Christian Association of Changsha, the following terms being mutually agreed on: 1 Place: From the East door of the Tso Memorial Temple to the West door, including the chair hall and the garden, but excluding the ceremonial hall, where the ancestral tablet is placed, and the court and small rooms immediately in front of this hall. 7. Ceremonies of the Tso Family: The Tso Family retains the full right to use any and all parts of the Temple and premises even those specially rented to the YWCA at any time, for family ceremonial purposes. It is however agreed that a three days notice of any such ceremony will be given to the YWCA. 8. Ceremonial Hall: It is understood that the Temple-keeper of the Tso Family is free at any time to enter the premises for the purposes of burning incense and lighting the lamp in the Temple. There will also be provided for the said keeper, within the premises, living and cooking quarters.8

To the above, Wikander added: “Such ceremonial feasts are seldom given nowadays. As long as I have been in Changsha I have heard of no such clan ceremony given here. But the paragraph is inserted to satisfy the old members of the family to whom the long past times still are living realities, and to make sure that this right of using the whole place still belongs to the Family.”9 In this way, Mme. Zuo was able to exercise her role while maintaining her cultural heritage, even in a nominally Christian association. When Russell, Nathorst, and Wikander moved into the Zuo compound, the Zuo family took a further step to ensure their religious and cultural freedom. According to Russell, the family elders imposed one additional condition: “Do not put any pressure on us to send our

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children to Christian schools. . . . The Christian schools do not teach Chinese culture. They take all their illustrations from the West; they try to impose a foreign culture on us. We do not want our children subjected to that.”10 The three agreed not to proselytize among the Zuo family and thus enjoyed the advantages that the location and the connection to the elite family provided. Russell also suspected that the Zuo family took them in because they “want[ed] the protection that the presence of foreigners gives.” She “doubt[ed] very much if we would be in this ideal location if it were not for the upset condition of affairs that has prevailed in Hunan province these last years.”11 By this she must have been referring to the fighting and scrambling among different factions of warlords for control in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province. Nonetheless, the YWCA women were quick to seize the unique opportunity. The grounds and buildings afforded space for a hostel, school, athletic yard, and living quarters for the three foreign women.12 In this way, Madame Zuo embraced the Western women and their organization. She “drew them into her own family life, where they became her children’s loving ‘aunties,’ and furnished their living quarters and offices with treasures from the Zuo family storerooms.” In the second year, between twenty and thirty of the Zuo children attended local Christian schools.13 According to Russell, it was not because of proselytizing but the result of the children’s interactions with “the Chinese teachers from the Christian schools that came as volunteer workers in the YWCA.” Russell recalled that because of these teachers, the people from the Zuo clan would visit the Christian schools. “They got to know the Christians in town, the Christian activities.”14 Madame Zuo and the three Western secretaries formed a supportive sisterhood. With her endorsement and encouragement, other Chinese women soon joined the YWCA, and Mme. Zuo became the chair of the Changsha YWCA Social Service Committee, composed “mostly of married ladies of the gentry or scholar class.”15 During this period, if not earlier, Mme. Zuo probably at least met Zhu Qihui (who grew up in Hunan and still maintained many local ties) at a reception hosted by the Changsha YWCA for Mme. Xiong Xiling. Maud Russell wrote in June 1921, “Wednesday afternoon we had a reception for Mrs. Shiun [Xiong]— the wife of the ex-premier—and about seventy of our members turned

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out to hear her. She and her husband are immensely wealthy and do a great deal of philanthropic work. We are hoping she will give the local YWCA some money!”16 This event may have been facilitated by the connection through the Chinese secretary of the Changsha YWCA, a “Miss Chu (Zhu),” who was a niece of Zhu Qihui. We do not know if Zhu Qihui donated to the Changsha YWCA, but along with Mme. Zuo, she and other local taitai who were present that day clearly shared their interest in social work. Before long, another local welfare organization—the Hunan Welfare Society—asked the women of the Changsha YWCA Social Service Committee to assist it in establishing and supervising a new institution, where it planned to educate some of the younger women of “the destitute class” to make them “useful members of society” as home servants. The male leaders in the Hunan Welfare Society elected all the women who served on the YWCA Social Service Committee to become members of their society, investing them with full voting power and eligibility to hold office. Wikander wrote with excitement, “For the first time some of our ladies have met with men in a committee, in a joint effort of regaining some of their lost sisters to a new and better life. To friends in the homeland this probably does not sound very remarkable, but to us in an inland city of China it seems a stirring experience and a very significant sign of a new time.”17 Wikander was particularly impressed with the “natural leadership ability” of Mme. Zuo and amazed by the fact that her abilities derived from an education at home: It is a thrilling experience to sit together with pioneer women like these who are of the first generation of women to carry any responsibility outside of the direct home duties. It sometimes seems like a wonder to have a chairman leading our committee meetings in a most graceful and capable way and know that her whole education was given her in a secluded Chinese home, where the ladies were never allowed even to meet any men but the ones of the nearest family circle. She sometimes opens our meeting with prayer, though she has not yet been able to take the step of becoming a church member. While I listen to her earnest prayer I cannot help remembering

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the altars in her large family compound where the incense is burnt daily in front of the ancestral tablets and where she herself still has to perform the time honored rites of falling down before the family altar on the special days of birth and death of her fore-fathers.18

Several YWCA women, both foreign and Chinese, expressed the view that legacies from their past enabled women like Mme. Zuo to better cope with the challenges of the present. A YWCA secretary in Shanghai, Ella MacNeil from Australia, took note of “the poise and the freedom from self-consciousness” as “a marked characteristic” of the educated Chinese women she encountered. Trying to explain this phenomenon, she described a “distinguished visitor” to the YWCA commenting to “a brilliant Chinese woman”: “I cannot get over my surprise at the way your women who have always been accustomed to seclusion have suddenly emerged into public life, with so little sense of confusion or self consciousness.” To this, the woman replied, “The Chinese woman has always been part of a community, and not an isolated individual. When a bride comes into a new family, she needs all her training, tact, courtesy and self-possession, to meet the difficult position of learning to be an acceptable member of the big new family. Nothing could be a harder ordeal than this. To come into public life simply means practicing these qualities in a larger sphere.”19 In other words, the Chinese woman quoted here believed that aside from its size, the public sphere was not so very different from the domestic sphere. The practical qualities and skills a woman gained while navigating a complicated big family were not irrelevant but could be applied to the outside world. Of course, such families were often manageable only for elites. In her speech in 1926 to the Peking American College Women’s Club entitled “The Changing Chinese Women,” YWCA leader Hu Binxia praised “the heritage and training handed down from the immemorial past to the Chinese woman of the present day: ability, forbearance, willingness for service, purity of purpose.” Though American educated, Hu believed that “the ability of our women is more due to native powers than to training or education.” In particular, she argued that “the old social structure—the family system—has fostered in women some qualities which enable them to act and render them serviceable in the new surroundings.” “The cultured home in the past,” she explained,

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“is much like a court, which has its charms, splendor, refinement and good manners, but which is also a place of intrigues, jealousies, adjustments, sorrows and tragedies. Any woman who has successfully passed through that life must be experienced and tactful, full of tactics, and wonderfully calm.” Therefore, she concluded, “the women of a nation that have had charge of such large households for centuries cannot but be capable; they have acquired an unusual degree of tact, a strength of character that meets difficulties smilingly and with ease, and a consciousness of duty unwavering even unto death.”20 Hu described the traditional extended family as a training ground for Chinese women; navigating it required and imparted skills that were then transferable to public life. True or not, such beliefs, as they were promoted by Hu, could empower home women to reposition themselves in public with more ease and less anxiety. Meanwhile, this advantage played out especially for older elite women, since they tended to already have accumulated significant experience in managing big families. In this sense, Mme. Zuo’s work with the YWCA could be easily perceived as an extension of her domestic sphere, since the organization was literally headquartered in her home. What challenged some home women, according to the YWCA’s reports, was “parliamentary procedure, timid about ‘speaking in meeting,’ absolutely inexperienced in group action.” 21 Chinese extended families had a distinct hierarchy that left decision making mostly in the hands of their most senior members. Women in relatively junior positions within the domestic hierarchy often dared not or had no chance to speak out. On the other hand, the “social housekeeping” ideas promoted by the YWCA and other Christian groups proved compatible during this period with Chinese understanding of the relationship between family and society, further facilitating women’s adaptation to public life. Around the turn of the century, a new image of women as “social housekeepers” was imported from the United States, significantly influencing Chinese Christian women.22 The WCTU was a strong advocate of this argument. Based on a strain of biological essentialism, it advocated that as mothers of the human race, women were destined to be the custodians of social mores internationally just as they were at home, and that they should work for temperance, religion, social justice, relief, and peace.23 In other words, this expanded vision of women required that

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they think of themselves as keepers not merely of the home but also of society. The nation was seen as a macrocosm of the home, needing women’s special abilities to straighten out its problems.24 Many American missionary women embraced the discourse of social housekeeping and popularized the idea in China. Susceptibility to this idea in China was probably the result of the Confucian idea that described society as composed of many individual families, and family life as a training ground for public life. In addition, many Chinese women believed that females were innately loving and compassionate and thus more suitable for social service, preferring social work and charity to the independent careers pursued by men. This Western conception of womanhood thereby offered Chinese women a familiar yet modern ideal that could help them reconceptualize women’s domestic roles in a way that justified their entrance into the public realm. The prominent first Chinese chairwoman of the YWCA in China, Hu Binxia, provides an excellent example of the ways Chinese women adopted the idea of social housekeeping. When Grace Seton, the American writer who met Zhu Qihui in Beijing, interviewed Hu in Shanghai in 1922, Hu was holding various executive positions in civic and educational organizations. In addition to being the first Chinese chairwoman of the National Committee of the YWCA since 1919, she was also president of the Children’s Education Study Club, a founding member of China’s Professional Education Society, secretary of the Shanghai Woman’s Social League (an organization aimed at studying the family), and a member of the executive committee of the Women’s Suffrage Alliance. Seton noticed that Hu was as busy as an “American business woman” and asked how she managed. Hu replied that it was “not unlike keeping a house.”25 Rather than seeing her public activities as a self-fulfilling career in the modern sense, Hu domesticated her public engagements and viewed them essentially as an extension of her activities in the domestic sphere. This line of thinking reminds us not only that public and private spheres were never as separate and independent from each other in China as they might have been in some Western countries, but also that some Chinese women, like Hu and Zuo, perceived their public activities as an extension of those in the domestic sphere and therefore did not see their public engagement as a radical and drastic reconfiguration of conventional gender roles.

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Mme. Zuo’s zeal for social service seems to have continued into her later years in Communist China. When Russell returned to China in 1959, she searched for the Zuo family. By that time, Mme. Zuo had moved from Changsha to Shanghai; the Zuo family temple had been torn down and replaced with a “beautiful workers’ club.” When Russell met her in Shanghai, Mme. Zuo was already about eighty years old. She asked Russell to stop calling her “Madame Tso” and repeatedly said, “I am now Comrade Chiang” (using her maiden surname). She praised the Communist government for turning the Zuo family temple into a workers’ club, saying that more people would thereby be able to make use of it. She remained active in her community work as well.26 Another case that can further illustrate the instrumental role played by local elite women in the development of the YWCA was that of Mme. Zuo’s relative, Mme. Nie Zeng Jifen (1852–1942, commonly called Mme. Nie), the daughter of the Qing Confucian scholar and general Zeng Guofan. Much like Zuo, Mme. Nie brought the Shanghai YWCA into the orbit of a socially prominent and generous family. More important, she served as a local ambassador for the association and used her personal connections to help it gain and maintain members. In addition, her son, who was a cotton mill owner, allowed the YWCA to run a playground for his workers’ children in the garden of his European-style home in the International Settlement of Shanghai.27 Unlike Zuo, Mme. Nie was a fully converted Christian, a prominent member of the Shanghai YWCA and, later, on the National committee. After her husband Nie Zhongfang died in 1911, she became the matriarch of a big family, presiding over four generations with more than one hundred members in total. According to her autobiography, she had once been a Buddhist but had converted to Christianity in Shanghai in 1915, together with her son Nie Yuntai (also Nie Qijie, 1880–1953) and her daughter-in-law. They were not the first converts from the Zeng family, several of whose elders played a key role in their family members’ conversions.28 One of Zeng Guofan’s grandsons, Zeng Jirong (1875–1923), was the first convert, and Zeng Guofan’s great granddaughter Zeng Baosun (1893–1978)—later an active YWCA member—became the second, under the influence of her Christian uncle. Mme. Nie’s religious and charitable activities may have arisen from her children’s frequent illnesses. When her son Yuntai was seriously

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sick in 1910, Mme. Nie had a deep conversation with Zeng Jirong, who opened her heart to Christianity. Her father’s and her husband’s active engagement with charitable activities as Confucian scholarofficials during the late Qing influenced her, as did Chinese Buddhism’s emphasis on doing good to accumulate religious merit for family members. After her husband passed away, Mme. Nie presided over several important family land donations to build local public schools in Shanghai, designated one-tenth of family wealth as a fund to support charitable works following the biblical prescription, and used its annual interest to make contributions to a local church and various disaster relief efforts. Consequently, her charitable reputation spread.29 The activities of Mme. Zuo and Mme. Nie suggest that some elite women in the home played instrumental roles in introducing the YWCA into existing local women’s social networks and helping the organization develop in local societies. These women were able to exercise their roles while maintaining their cultural heritage, even in a nominally Christian association. They successfully transferred some legacies of their pasts—from their home educations to the leadership abilities they had acquired in managing large extended family—into a new institutional outlet. They used the YWCA as a platform to negotiate a regular engagement with the public world, a realm that they often perceived as not fundamentally different from or contradictory to their domestic arena, satisfying their needs of socialization and spiritual/moral cultivation. A crucial part of their influence and agency derived from their senior membership within local illustrious families: the Zengs and the Zuos. The social capital amassed by these families over several generations empowered their female members to act effectively in the public world despite being domestically oriented women.

THE CHALLENGES OF PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT Few Chinese women possessed the ease, leadership abilities, and freedom Mme. Zuo or Mme. Nie had to interact with the YWCA. The foreign secretaries’ reports suggest some of the various challenges that women in the home faced when they sought to associate with and participate in this foreign organization. We can see these challenges, for

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instance, in the foreign secretaries’ accounts of their membership calls, an important way they reach local women through visiting their homes to initiate personal contact, recruit new members, seek potential donors, and build social connections. Although Chinese secretaries alone could sometimes carry out this duty, foreign secretaries remained deeply involved with this routine from the YWCA’s beginnings in China up to the 1930s. For local YWCA chapters located in poor areas or existing on limited budgets, foreign secretaries did most of the calling, except for first-time visits when they would bring along a Chinese staff member. Harriet Smith, an American secretary at Chengdu, a remote capital city in Southwest China, explained the reasons for this: We have learned that membership calls are so expensive, the caller having, according to custom, to take a present of some kind with her and also to tip the servants of the hostess, that we simply cannot ask our Chinese friends to do membership calling, but must undertake as much as possible ourselves, as secretaries and foreigners who, as such, may break custom and be forgiven.30

For branches located in more prosperous cities, if the association budget could afford to set aside sufficient institutional money for gifts, their foreign secretaries had more flexibility, including making more frequent calls. Edith May Wells, an American secretary at Tianjin, a treaty port city in northern China, explained in her report in 1924 that she sometimes called alone to homes she had already visited, but whenever possible and affordable she went with a Chinese secretary or an association member, having learned that “a Chinese who is herself interested in the Association can recommend it and explain its purpose much better than the foreigner, who is apt to be something of a curiosity.”31 Wells’s detailed report from Tianjin gives us a glimpse not only of some sequestered home women rarely seen in historical documents but also of the potential difficulties they faced in coming out to join the YWCA. One day Wells and a Mrs. C., a woman whose large shoes concealed her little bound feet (as did Zhu Qihui’s), rode in a small horse-drawn carriage and first stopped at Mrs. Y.’s large, two-story,

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foreign-style house. The gatekeeper recognized Mrs. C. and ushered them at once into a reception room furnished in a Western style. They speculated that the man of the house must have studied in America, but his wife “had bound feet and was the typical old fashioned woman of high class who did not go out except to pay family visits on special occasions.” Her three daughters, Wells discovered while playing with them, had studied English and had many new ideas, which made her wonder whether “perhaps the mother is not so old fashioned as she seems or the father may have seen the advantages of modern education even for women.” At the end of the conversation, realizing that Mrs. Y. needed more time to consider her involvement in the YWCA, Wells asked the mother if she would allow her girls to visit Wells’s home sometimes, in the hope of getting to know each other better. The mother agreed.32 It is not difficult to understand why Mrs. Y. was hesitant to agree to a foreign stranger’s direct invitation to join a foreign social service organization during their first meeting. She seems to have been more comfortable interacting in more personal ways and building friendships through her children. Indeed, as I will show later, direct membership calls without the foundation of personal friendship were not the most effective way to appeal to local Chinese women. In addition to hesitation from women themselves, husbands sometimes prevented their wives from engaging with the outside world. On the same day, Wells and Mrs. C. also called on a Mrs. T., but her husband politely refused to let them meet his wife, saying that she was “too old fashioned.” Mrs. C. knew Mr. T. and commented to Wells privately: “He will not let his wife go anywhere or have any pleasure but I thought he might let her see you and that would be something to interest her.” Wells concluded that Mr. T. “was afraid of this unknown American and the new ideas which she might give his wife.” She added, “There are many men like him, fairly well educated, going out among all kinds of people but wishing to keep their women folks shut safely within the compound walls. We sometimes think that we shall have to start a campaign of education for these men if we are to reach their wives and daughters.”33 Clearly, patriarchy still operated as an obstacle for some homemakers to venture out. The foreign religion associated with the YWCA also made some interested women uncomfortable with being seen publicly as connected to

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the organization. Genevieve Lowry of the Hangzhou YWCA recorded the following story in 1923: Our other members may come or not, but Gyien T’ai T’ai is always ­present. . . . Her arrival follows a set form which we have come to know. First Miss Gyien arrives at the outer door and peers anxiously up and down the street. Soon a black closed chair carried swiftly on the shoulders of its stalwart bearers swings up the steps. Cries to clear the way part the incoming crowd. In the court the chair is gently lowered. Miss Gyien hastens forward, unfastens the curtain and out steps our youngest member—her grandmother—age, eighty-three. . . . I would give much to know what experiences have given the strength and serenity to her countenance. She is a woman whose every feature and motion speaks of power. We go to pay her court. She accepts our homage and respects, indifferently, as a matter of course. . . . She never takes part in any of our meetings though one is conscious that she is following what is taking place. We wonder why she comes. She has never answered our polite queries. All we know is that Gyien T’ai T’ai is always present. Her departure follows a [similar] set form which we have come to know.34

Gyien taitai was probably an elite woman brought up Confucian but later interested in Christianity as well. For a woman from a respectable family, being seen associating with the YWCA could arouse gossip among local conservatives hostile to foreigners and foreign religions, which could damage her and her family’s social reputation. It is also possible that somebody in her family would have disapproved of women’s engagement with foreign religious organizations and that Gyien taitai was being careful, recruiting her granddaughter to be her eyes and ears outside the home. However, her persistence and willingness to take the risk also indicates that the YWCA activities must have satisfied her certain needs—spiritual, social, or both. Local women, particularly the younger ones, sometimes struggled to decide on their own whether to attend public social events held by the YWCA. As daughters or daughters-in-law, they tended to occupy the lower rank of the domestic hierarchy and had many daily domestic chores to complete. Harriet Smith, the American secretary at Chengdu,

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realized that a young woman’s whole family had always to be taken into account when sending her an invitation. The invitation had to include old and young, as the entire family would typically decide whether she would be allowed to join the association, to take part in activities, or to attend a conference. This suggests another reason that married older women found it easier to engage with the organization, though even for these home women, the home usually had to take priority when their domestic and public duties came into direct conflict. Smith learned, for instance, that “guest calling” in Chinese circles was “an allday affair,” creating uncertainties about Chinese women’s presence at organizational events. Smith explained that because “the receiving and proper caring for guests ranks in importance above all other responsibilities. Thus, no matter how fervently and honestly a Chinese lady promises to be present at an important committee meeting, if a caller appears she will unquestioningly resign herself to stay at home the rest of the day, and there is no recourse.”35 Some homemakers had difficulty understanding the need to attend YWCA meetings or events on time. The foreign secretaries of Chengdu complained in their reports that local Chinese women lacked a “reference to a set time,” and “any social event requires the entire day.” This is not surprising, especially in Chengdu. China had only just begun its modernization and industrialization in the late nineteenth century, with the focus of its industrial development concentrated on southeast coastal regions. By the 1920s the majority of the inland Sichuan Province population was still agricultural. Many residents had not yet adjusted to the tempo of modern clock life, as the foreign secretaries quickly realized: “These ladies are not indifferent, nor do they mean to be rude or to cause inconvenience, but they have never heard, much less experienced, the habit of several engagements in one day nor are they in the least used to living by the clock.” This same rule applied if they were invited for a banquet or party: “final preparations for the feast will not be even begun until the last guest has arrived, which may be one, two or three hours late.” Often the last guests to arrive were the most important. The “most valuable and the most fundamental” lessons they learned from these experiences, Smith concluded, were “patience and understanding,” despite the fact that “a dozen times each day our western habits of mind rebel.” The foreign secretaries were

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conscious that their acquiescence was for a purpose: “if by any means, we may win some.”36

INDIGENIZING FUNDRAISING AND NETWORKING For social service or philanthropic organizations, fundraising is essential to keep the organization running. An investigation of the YWCA’s fundraising process reveals the crucial role that homemakers played in helping the foreign organization to indigenize its operations according to local customs. The YWCA’s second National Convention, held in 1928, stipulated that the association’s funding be collected by local organizations. Having defined itself as “a popular organization,” the association believed that while its funding should be “donations from the populace, the minority part can be donations from political figures or wealthy people.” The convention also suggested two methods of fundraising. One was to follow the potential donor’s interests and try to explain why dealing with that issue required a particular type of service; to explain what the YWCA did or wanted to do in that area; and then to mobilize an individual or family to donate for it. The other method was to arouse people’s interest in the YWCA’s work based on their friendships with people already involved.37 While the YWCA acquired a small amount of income from classes, hostels, and membership fees, it relied on a “finance campaign” for most of its revenue. The campaign was essentially a foreign method that the YWCA staff was trying to apply in China and teach Chinese women to implement. A campaign usually lasted for a period of two to four weeks. Participants were organized into teams “with captains and emblems,” members went out “armed with interview cards, subscription blanks and receipt books,” and sometimes “campaign luncheons and rallies are held, at which the work of the Association is set forth in eloquent speeches and by visible demonstrations.”38 Competition was routinely used to spur the participants in finance campaigns to greater efforts: “a chart in a conspicuous place shows how fast the camel, the donkey, the airplane, etc. (emblems of various teams), are approaching their goal.”39 Secretaries’ reports stated that Chinese women, mostly staff and committee members of the

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association, adopted the foreign method of fundraising “with alacrity,” “appointing Captains, identifying teams with symbols, colors, and totemic mascots, producing maps and graphs of progress.”40 In 1926 the Tianjin association raised $3,000 in a campaign to construct new homes for 280 war refugees, much of it given by the wives of military officials. At the same time, a spring campaign for $9,000 was under way. Five teams each chose one of the five sacred mountains of China as a symbol. Edith Wells’s report noted “the usually fine spirit” of the board and members in facing the campaign even against all the military difficulties.41 For many Chinese women, fundraising training was a new and exciting experience. Tsai and Haass’s study of the YWCA, based on a national survey conducted in 1930, notes: Many a Chinese woman will tell you of her trepidation in first going into a public place to solicit funds, or even approaching a friend; many a secretary can relate tales of ardent workers who appeared on her doorstep early in the morning with a bright new idea concerning a possible subscriber. That most of these women had never before been responsible for the financing of a social organization, nor even belonged to one, gives an idea of the kind of training they were getting.42

The YWCA proudly viewed the Western fundraising process itself as a kind of “training” for Chinese homemakers, requiring that fears be conquered in order to show up in public places, approach strangers, and solicit money—activities that women living in domestic seclusion had little experience with. In Chengdu, foreign secretaries incorporated “the gentlemen” in their finance campaign once, to spur a different type of competition. Their reports added, “One always does count on men in finance efforts, but one generally gets at them through finance calls,” instead of asking for their direct participation in finance campaigns. The secretaries picked five male “Captains,” all “tried and trusty friends of the Association,” and let them form their own teams. Meanwhile, they also organized five teams of women. In the beginning, they feared that men “would get more than their share and the women with their

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smaller gifts would be swamped and discouraged,” since they believed that men “held the purse-strings in most cases, and that also they would be more accustomed to the thought of public giving than the women have yet become.” It did not work that way. The women’s teams, all five of them, “did nobly and kept well ahead in the race throughout the whole Campaign.”43 Early finance campaigns frequently surpassed their goals—reporting, “campaign funds over-subscribed”—but as time went on fundraising became increasingly difficult. In addition to the generally unconducive social environment (including the frequency of wars and disasters) and the YWCA’s foreign religion, the association singled out different Chinese attitudes toward fundraising as a cause. Many foreign secretaries believed that because old Chinese religious institutions such as Buddhist monasteries were supported by endowment instead of popular subscription, “the Chinese people were not accustomed to ‘systematic giving’ and thus the repeated return for an annual subscription became to many ‘a source of embarrassment.’ ”44 In addition, some secretaries held that the Chinese understood and practiced family giving but lacked the spirit of community giving. This was a view shared among many foreigners of this period, elaborated by Charlotte Neely, a YWCA secretary in Shanghai: Chinese people do understand giving, in connection with personal relationships, but not, I think, in relation to many institutions, especially such as are preventative and future-building, rather than engaged in immediate relief work. The latter needs press so close, especially now, that time and again they come up in discussion of our program: would not more concrete service work, help the community to see the ultimate purpose of the association? I never cease to be surprised when I discover how wide and how deep is the sense of financial responsibility toward family connections, even unto the Nth Cousin; but the idea of community giving is bound to come with the new national consciousness and social life.45

Indeed, lineage charity, long known as the most representative type of charity in China, mostly extended to its members rather than to strangers. But beginning with the national crisis in the late Qing, a growing

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national consciousness stimulated donation movements beyond local areas, either for disaster relief or for national indemnity (as discussed in chapter 1). This new trend was facilitated by the introduction of modern newspapers, new transportation, and communication technologies, which were lacking previously. Gradually, under the guidance and advice of local women, the YWCA became more adept and effective at fundraising. The guidance and advice proved to be particularly helpful for branches located in cities far less cosmopolitan than Tianjin and Shanghai. Under the suggestion of the Changsha Board of the YWCA, foreign secretaries there changed their fundraising strategy in 1922 from the usual method of asking for subscriptions to offering three days worth of entertainment in exchange for funds. It proved to be “a grand success” since Changsha was “wild over [American] movies.”46 While making plans for a membership campaign in Shenyang in northeastern China, a YWCA member suggested to a foreign secretary, “When you have a meeting for the new people do not say anything about finance, it just frightens them away; they do not understand that members ought to help to support the Association and they think you want their money, not them.”47 The annual report from a 1926 “all-Chinese” YWCA at Chengdu states: “We get our money by what we might, by very free translation into English term a Finance Campaign, but it is so Chinese in its conception and methods that it is hard for even the local foreign secretaries to feel themselves of great value to it and the prohibitive distance is not the only reason we do not ask for help from any of the traveling foreign staff.”48 As YWCA foreign secretaries gradually realized that they “labored under the double handicap of knowing too little of China,—its social structure, mental habits, etc.,” and relying too heavily on the fundraising methods used in their own country, seeking out the right Chinese women to serve as board members became an important part of the association’s work.49 These board women proved crucial to the indigenization of the YWCA’s fundraising and networking methods. From the beginning, the YWCA leadership was aware of the paramount significance of making the organization truly “Chinese.” When the World YWCA general secretary Clarissa Spencer visited the Chinese association in 1907, she placed the highest priority on the organization’s

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indigenization in addition to turning it away from an industrial focus toward “women of leisure”: “We must make our work as Chinese as possible, bringing Chinese women onto the committees as fast as they are ready for the work, and calling Chinese secretaries as we can find the suitable women.”50 The learning experiences of Harriet Smith, the American secretary at Chengdu, provide an illuminating example. In the 1920s there was still not “a mile of railway” in the province; Chengdu was not a commercial city, and “officialdom” controlled what money there was. Because the city’s Christian community was fairly small, the foreign secretaries initially “sweat[ed] blood” trying to set up an all-Chinese board; eventually they succeeded. Smith admitted: “By what Chinese womanleadership the city can produce, the Association literally rises and falls, and always has.” Smith noticed that the problems arising for the board were “Chinese problems, and so different from any that we have been used to meeting in the West.” Only after she and her coworkers successfully found a local Chinese woman to help were they able to make progress. Sitting through board meetings was a “hard piece of work” for her, and she found it difficult as a foreigner to follow the thinking as well as the actual results. But doing so helped her learn a lot about “the ins and outs of Chinese social life,—its demands, its taboos, its prejudices and its not-to-be-defied customs,” all of which were implicated in the success or failure of the association’s work. Smith particularly singled out a “senior Chinese secretary” for praise, calling her “the most outstanding personality on the staff.” In the early days, when Smith and the other foreign secretaries were still “studying the situation” and “making contacts,” this “very charming and clever Chinese woman” was their “guide, philosopher and friend,” despite the fact that she spoke no English. She had interpreted the association to its membership and the Chinese community at large, for she knew how to “weave it into a Chinese pattern as no foreigner ever could.” Gradually, Smith and other foreign secretaries realized that despite their eagerness to “lick things into shape” by planning activities according to their own ways and schedules, they had to learn how to subordinate things to the Chinese staff, for “so much that is in our dreams for the Association does come to pass, in its own time and way.”51

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The Chengdu YWCA’s finance campaign organizing committee was set up in 1924 entirely by Chinese women who cleverly and deliberately left many seats open for what they called social “honoraries.” Warlord Yang Sen (1884–1977) was appointed their honorary general team captain, in whose honor they threw an elaborate all-Chinese dinner party. Both sides seemed aware that “each title of course carrying with it the assumption of a goodly contribution for the sake of ‘face’ if nothing more.” A certain Mrs. Hu, president of the campaign organizing committee, and a Mrs. Feng, the executive secretary, so impressed the foreign secretaries as social “assets” to the dinner party or any other group that the foreign secretaries felt themselves to be of little value to the campaign. 52Afterward, General Yang not only signed an order for $500 but also attended their finance campaign opening meeting— designed especially to be “as grand and flourish[ing]” as possible—and sent his military band to “arouse the attention of the audience.”53 Besides Sichuan, other provinces also testified to the importance of local Chinese women in securing financial support for the YWCA from local political leaders. In Jinan, Shandong Province, the local YWCA secured a gift of $20,000 from Zhang Zongchang (1881–1932), the warlord and military governor of Shandong, to put up a new building of their own. Again, one of the Chinese women on the board turned out to be of great help. She had not only connections with the yamen (local bureaucrat’s office) but a brother working at one of the governor’s offices as well. Through these connections, they made a “most formal call upon the governor,” and their entire staff went to visit him. Their cards were arranged on the red-covered table before the Governor’s chair, in the order in which they were seated around the formal audience-chamber. General Chang [Zhang] showed a very keen interest in the education of women in Shandong and in addition to his voluntary and quite surprising gift of $20,000 spoke of the desirability of there sometimes being a YWCA in Tsingtao [Qingdao].54

The YWCA foreign secretaries in both Jinan and Chengdu learned another important thing from their Chinese board members when seeking donations from local political leaders: obtain the money as soon as possible. In an era when officials were “here today and gone

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tomorrow,” if they did not “chase around” to get the promised or signed order cashed, the promises were “apt to be scraps of paper when their brief day is over.”55 Local women also advised the foreign secretaries in Chengdu that raising funds required making personal contacts with locals. The foreign secretaries were told that “direct methods” must never be used in “either approaching or settling any question, and that the indirect, though seeming to take more time, really saves in the end that which otherwise have to have consumed in explanations and apologies.”56 Indeed, Smith and other foreign secretaries noticed “the preponderant significance of personal connections” for fundraising in Chengdu. Although fundraising had always been tied to personal relationships, no matter where it occurred, the high degree of what the YWCA’s foreign secretaries referred to as “personalism” in an interior Chinese city still amazed them: “There are no usual ‘methods’ for finance work, and no ‘appeal’ except the personal appeal.” Smith wrote in 1924: “It was as impossible to get an impersonal business interview with anyone in Chengdu, as to call unintroduced and unsponsored at the Court of St. James.”57 Chinese social occasions such as marriage and birth, foreign secretaries learned, provided great opportunities to socialize and cultivate personal relationships—to make contact in more “personal” ways. In addition, these occasions directly connected the YWCA secretaries to existing local women’s social networks. Therefore attending such events was often a better way of furthering the YWCA’s work than making direct membership calls or organizing the kinds of “committee meetings” emphasized in the West. Maud Russell, of the Changsha YWCA, reported similar cases in 1921: “We tried during this past month to start the custom of having once a week open house for our Chinese friends, but have found that it does not draw them. We are rather thinking it is much better to invite groups to stay for tea after the Sunday afternoon meetings; they do seem to enjoy coming then.”58 To build personal connections, they found gift giving to be highly significant and often a large portion of the association’s budget, though not without rewards. Because Chinese women regarded invitations to the secretaries’ homes as a much greater honor than an invitation to the association, the secretaries relocated entertaining to their homes. They

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served foreign (American) food, having discovered that “nine-tenths of our Chinese friends are as enthusiastic about that as we are about their delicious cooking,” and that it left them less liable to social blunders. Indeed, because local homemakers liked to gather at a “residence” rather than an office, they resisted foreign secretaries’ early efforts to follow Western custom and gather at a designated public place. The Chengdu YWCA foreign secretaries once rented a house in the center of the city, planning to use it as their “building” according to their own custom, but soon found that “except for a specially called meeting or a specially invited group nobody ever came near it.” Gradually, the foreigners discovered that the YWCA was an “anomaly”— “in the eyes of our constituency, being neither a school nor a family abode, the only two institutions which they [the local Chinese women] could understand as having any connection with themselves.” Hence they turned their organization into a little bit of both, not only starting a school but also finding the right woman, a Mrs. Yang, to live there and hostess in her own Chinese way.59 This hostess/secretary turned out to be “the most necessary member” of the Chengdu YWCA staff. She helped the foreign secretaries turn their office into a “home” and used her personal charm to attract many local women to visit. Consequently, the staff learned to adjust their work plan in flexible ways that integrated work and entertaining: It is a way that quite get on our foreign nerves, sometimes, especially because nine-tenths of the callers, instead of using the attractive and quite informal little guest-room prepared for them, congregate in Mrs. Yang’s bed-room, or visit with us in our offices! But they do come, more and more of them, which is the main thing, and it is a pretty good, if difficult lesson to have to learn, to be reasonably systematic and responsible, and yet to be the gracious hostess at all times. It may mean asking the guest to participate in the staff prayermeeting, or whatever else is scheduled to take place at that particular hour and place, but why not? 60

The fact that more and more women came to the association’s building (now also Mrs. Yang’s home) suggests that changing the nature of

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the gathering’s location worked well with local women. In a similar way, local women’s affinity for a “school” also prompted the foreign secretaries in Chengdu to change their regular cooking programs into a “Cooking Institute.” Noticing that many Chinese women loved to learn Western cooking, especially “baked things” such as breads, cakes, and cookies, the secretaries began to use the inevitable waiting time during baking to socialize. They used their own Chinese cook to demonstrate and explain, under the guidance of a foreign secretary. Instead of having the class meet every week on a certain day, as they had initially and unsuccessfully tried, they held a “Cooking Institute” every afternoon for a fixed number of days. It was a great success, since even conservative families felt it proper for women to learn cooking in a “school.” The oven was fired for the whole afternoon, and there was no sense of hurry. The women not only learned “the new things” but also had “a grand social time in the process.” This educational “institute” worked so well that they began to label as many of their programs as possible “schools” or “institutes”—“not only the so-called Finance Campaign, but our Baby Welfare Week in the spring; Better Homes Institute in the fall; Student Conference in the Chinese New Year holidays and Religious Education Institute in the summer, have all gone to the proving of this.”61 The adaptation made by the Chengdu YWCA reveals in another and detailed way how local Chinese women’s guidance in (and sometimes resistance to) the work of the association proved crucial to its success. When needed, Chinese and foreign staff worked together to flexibly transform the local association into something that could be easily understood by local people. In this way, not only did the appeal of the organization increase, but local homemakers found it easier to explain and justify their activities beyond home to their family members: visiting the association office became as normal as visiting the Chinese hostess friend’s “home,” save for the several foreign women who also happened to be there, organizing activities. Meanwhile, participating in the YWCA’s various programs could be interpreted as akin to attending a local “school”—hardly a controversial activity. These reveal to us how these home women helped push to redefine unfamiliar public places and clock time in ways that connect to their existing world.

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Consequently, the operation of a new civic organization like the YWCA was remade in local Chinese society. * * * The YWCA foreign secretaries’ reports enable us to watch interactions between local homemakers and the YWCA unfold in ways we never knew existed. Some elite women, such as Mme. Zuo and Mme. Nie, played crucial roles in the survival and development of the YWCA in China. They, as local women’s leaders, were instrumental in introducing the foreign organization into existing local women’s networks and thus made it easier for it to connect to local people. Meanwhile, many lesser-known women, in their own ways, provided guidance and advice in indigenizing the operation of local YWCA branches: assisting the organization in building personal connections, recovering from early blunders, and learning local social customs. To some extent, the agency of home women as well as their value to the YWCA came from their broad social connections and knowledge of local society, unlike the “new women” who relied mostly on modern educations and independent endeavors. This further problematizes the liberal notion of agency, rooted in individualism, which has generally influenced our studies of modern Chinese women’s history. Examining the interactions between these women and the YWCA sheds new light on the indigenizing process that the YWCA underwent in China. Previous studies of its indigenization tended to narrowly focus on how foreign secretaries incorporated Chinese staff and taught young Chinese women to become leaders, rather than how they adjusted their work methods to Chinese social conditions. This study highlights how some local YWCA branches adapted to local ways of fundraising and networking while transforming their organization into something resembling what was most familiar to the local community. The YWCA’s foreign methods of fundraising were initially seen as a novelty and were enthusiastically embraced by its Chinese members, who gained important public experience by soliciting funds for the organization. But this was a strategy that thrived early on and mostly in more cosmopolitan cities. In interior cities such as Chengdu and Changsha, the organization relied heavily on the guidance of local married home

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women to make adjustments. As a civic organization, it had to navigate the overlapping public and private arenas and cater to existing modes of sociability and institution building that practically connected it to local women. The Chengdu YWCA chose to become both a “home” and a “school” for local women, while the Changsha YWCA benefited tremendously from becoming part of Mme. Zuo’s “family.” These types of indigenization not only proved significant in attracting local women and securing the long-term survival and development of the YWCA in China but also serve as a concrete illustration on how local home women contributed to shaping the formation and development of local public sphere. Still, the foreign religion associated with the organization—­ Christianity—remained a barrier for other women’s full engagement with its various activities. Some women chose or were pressured by family members not to join the association as members and thus participated only as volunteers. Others were afraid to be seen visiting the organization. And one category of women—concubines—was denied membership eligibility, though some concubines actively interacted with the YWCA despite lacking detailed documentation. As we will see in part 3, some indigenous Chinese religious charitable organizations such as the Daoyuan operated beyond all the above-mentioned limits to engage women, though not without constraints of their own.

Part III WOMEN IN THE SCHOOL OF THE WAY

F

rom 1923 until his death in 1937, Zhu Qihui’s husband, Xiong Xiling, served as director of one of China’s largest indigenous religious charitable organizations, the Red Swastika Society (Hong wanzihui), the charitable wing of the Daoyuan (School of the Way), which was a leading redemptive society in Republican China. Because Zhu regarded herself as a progressive activist and stood staunchly opposed to any traditional Chinese religions, she never directly involved herself with the organization. Four years after Zhu’s death in 1931, Xiong remarried and immediately enlisted his new wife to take charge of the women’s branch of the Red Swastika Society. Part 3 presents a case study of these female members of the Daoyuan. Labeled as “superstition” by Chinese nationalist regimes and largely overlooked by scholars until the late 1990s, many redemptive societies could trace their roots to China’s sectarian and syncretic popular religious traditions while, in the Republican period, adopting a universalist posture by incorporating the Five Teachings of Laozi, Confucius, Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad. Despite their large popular followings in cities, the female members of these societies, who often joined with their husbands to seek spiritual cultivation and personal salvation, have been little studied until now. Some of the largest and best known of these organizations are the Teaching of the Abiding Principle (Zailijiao, established in 1913), the Moral Studies Society (Daode xueshe, 1916), the Fellowship of Goodness (Tongshanshe, 1917), the Worldwide Morality Society (Wanguo

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daodehui), the School of the Way (Daoyuan, 1921), and the New Religion to Save the World ( Jiushi xinjiao, 1925). Most of these societies were urban in origin, though some, such as the Tongshanshe, experienced significant development in rural Sichuan and Guangdong. Others, such as the Daoyuan, spread from urban centers to counties, impressing contemporary observers of Chinese society and religions by the size of their followings.1 According to an incomplete estimate, the Tongshanshe claimed thirty million followers in 1929. The Red Swastika Society, which Xiong Xiling headed for fourteen years, had about thirty thousand members nationwide in 1927, and seven to ten million followers in 1937.2 During the Sino-Japanese War period, it was China’s largest charity.3 Because progressive intellectuals often dismissed these groups as superstitious and conservative, it hardly occurred to historians that their women’s branches were arguably the largest sustained indigenous women’s charitable groups in Republican China. An investigation of the charitable activities of their female members will, among other things, reveal little-known details of married nonprofessional women’s gradual adaptation to and active engagement with the new urban public world. Prasenjit Duara is the only scholar who has examined the personal narratives of the “middle-class women” in the Wanguo daodehui, showing how some of them used the very gender ideology that constrained them to empower themselves, carving out a space for their public activities and financial independence. This empowerment was achieved, according to Duara, by “the continued usage of an older language that has come to signify a different, newer meaning” in the women’s own interpretations.4 The women on whom he focuses were mostly the society’s twenty-five female lecturers, who received payment for traveling to lecture on the society’s teachings, which, in one sense, made them professional women, even though this was not their main means of support. These lecturers and other women members probably also participated in establishing, managing, or contributing money to their thousands of “virtuous and chaste girls’ schools,” a major project of the Wanguo daodehui.5 To advance our understanding of more of the women in these indigenous new religious and charitable groups, I chose to focus on nonprofessional women’s charitable activities and investigate the Shandong women’s branches of the Daoyuan and its charity wing, the Red Swastika Society. Shandong Province was not only where the Daoyuan

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originated but also where it had the most women’s branches and the most active and thus best-documented branches. Additionally, at least three redemptive societies—Daoyuan, Tongshanshe, and Wanguo daodehui—all originated in this province. This is less surprising if we consider the fact that Shandong was known to retain a strong religious streak throughout Chinese history. It is a pivotal cultural and religious site for Daoism, Chinese Buddhism, and Confucianism. Mount Tai, which bordered Jinan to the north, is the most revered mountain in Daoism and has one of the longest histories of continuous religious worship in the world. The Buddhist temples in the mountains to the south of Jinan, the capital city, were once among the foremost Buddhist sites in China. The city of Qufu, eighty-one miles south of Jinan, is the birthplace of Confucius and was later established as the center of Confucianism. In the 1890s Shandong was also the place of origin for the famous Boxer Uprising. Joseph Esherick has demonstrated how this uprising was closely related to Shandong’s long tradition in martial arts and popular cults: “Shandong had a long tradition of heterodox religious activity . . . it is clear that by the end of the nineteenth century, . . . the line between orthodox and heterodox was exceedingly difficult to draw.”6 As we will see, the religious beliefs and practices of the Daoyuan clearly manifested the mixed influences of both orthodox and heterodox traditions. Most Daoyuan women were domestic-focused, middle-aged or older married women without modern educations: precisely the type of women that are this book’s focus. Many were the wives and concubines of merchants, from less illustrious family backgrounds and barely literate. They attached great importance to conducting charity as part of their efforts to cultivate themselves and achieve salvation. To better understand their engagement with the Daoyuan, chapter 5 explicates the sacred texts aimed at them—mostly gods’ exhortations—and demonstrates that, unlike the Wanguo daodehui that Duara studied, the Daoyuan’s reconstruction of Confucian gender doctrines was much more thorough and able to accommodate the challenges of modern gender ideologies. Many gender-subjugating contents were removed, but its basic conservative outlook was maintained by essentializing gender difference. This close textual analysis of the reinterpreted gendered teachings of one major redemptive society reveals what current scholarship does not address: the assumption that these groups’ gender

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ideologies were basically the same traditional and conservative Confucian norms as the imperial times, and that only through women’s own interpretations did they acquire room to maneuver.7 Chapter 6 first examines one leading Daoyuan family in Qingdao, Shandong Province, mostly through oral history interviews. Their story gives us a rare personal perspective on the significance of charity in the lives and world of the men and women who participated in it. The chapter further contextualizes Daoyuan charitable teachings for women in the antisuperstition discourses of early twentieth-century China and examines how these discourses contributed to shifting charity to the center of the organization’s work. Because men and women mostly joined the Daoyuan together as family units, part 3 sheds further light on the collective/collaborative nature of women’s agency and the significant roles men played in simultaneously enabling and constraining women’s ability to exercise that agency. Part 3 relies primarily on three types of sources: (1) written regulations, conference records, and membership lists mostly from archives in Shandong; (2) published journals of the Daoyuan, such as Daode zazhi (Morality magazine) and Daode yuekan (Morality monthly); and (3) oral history interviews. Among these sources, an unusual type of account is the gods’ exhortations to members of the Daoyuan, an organization that placed a high value on communication between humans and deities. These messages were acquired through the important ritual ceremony of spirit writing (fuji) at the male branch of the Daoyuan and were supposed to be obeyed by all members. Spirit writing was a key method of divination for worshippers seeking practical aid and advice from the deities through the planchette in ancient times. Lay Daoists in China had long used it to seek advice from the immortals on alchemical cultivation, and it became popular even among the gentry during the Qing dynasty.8 Its continued popularity in modern China was a striking example of how some Chinese elites made Chinese tradition more respectable by appropriating the category of “science.” By the early twentieth century, spirit writing had unexpectedly gained a new layer of scientific authority after Chinese overseas students noticed its connection with some contemporary Western (mostly French and British) ways of spirit communication, such as the Western academic field of “psychical research” on paranormal phenomena. These students

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imported the field of lingxue (spiritual studies) to China by way of Japan, setting up dozens of associations in Shanghai and other large cities.9 Several redemptive societies such as the Daoyuan realized that lingxue provided a scientific discourse that could be applied to Chinese spirit writing and eagerly adopted it.10 In this way, they could claim either that their practices aligned with modern scientific standards, or that Chinese tradition was already compatible with, or even superior to, Western science. The practice of spirit writing left behind some valuably detailed documents on the Daoyuan’s gender doctrines and charitable teachings, which are crucial to our understanding of how women—even those in conservative religious organizations—were able to actively engage with public charitable activities. When the intended audience was female, these exhortations from a multitude of deities were often written in colloquial language, making them easier for less educated women to understand. This manner of exhorting women directly through deities, rather than by male leaders of the Daoyuan, made its teachings especially authoritative and powerful, thereby increasing the chance of their being followed and carried out by devout women in their daily lives. The mysticism involved in the ritual of spirit writing could create a highly religious, even awe-inspiring atmosphere for those present, unmatchable by any regular means of propaganda. It had the power to greatly increase the appeal of the Daoyuan and facilitate the process of conversion, especially among women seeking spiritual guidance on life’s challenges—from domestic strife to disease and death. Because the ritual was completely controlled by trained men (for the sake of efficacy, or ling), women could only be observers and passive recipients of the resulting sacred messages; it thus restricted their subjective experience of religious agency. Taken together, these Daoyuan sources contain much more information about the organization’s gender discourses and charitable teachings than they do about the specific activities of women themselves. Although some of this scarcity is compensated for in chapter 6 by way of my interviews with the grandson of the Cong family in Qingdao, this limitation of source material has required that this part be organized somewhat differently from previous sections.

5 REDEFINING CONFUCIAN GENDER DOCTRINES

SCHOOL OF THE WAY The Daoyuan as a religious organization explicitly promoted a universalist vision by adopting five major world religions, although its members mostly practiced a combination of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism.1 Its presence was especially prevalent in Shandong, Hebei, Anhui, and Jiangsu provinces, and Northeast China.2 Mostly known in public by its charitable wing—the Red Swastika Society (hereafter RSS), its involvement in charity far exceeded that of other redemptive societies such as Tongshanshe and Zailijiao. Compared to Wanguo daodehui, which focused primarily on building charity schools for the poor, RSS’s charitable engagement was more comprehensive and of broad coverage, ranging from disaster, war, and poverty relief (including burying corpses) to setting up schools, orphanages, and hospitals. In contrast to other redemptive societies, the Daoyuan’s origins lay squarely within the Republican era. The society originated around 1916 in a northeastern Shandong town as an informal group of spirit-writing enthusiasts, most of whom were county military commanders and magistrates. Within several years the society had moved to Jinan, where many of its members involved themselves in the newly founded Tongshanshe. In 1921, following the organizational model of Tongshanshe and adopting its meditation technique, a group of forty-eight disciples formally established the Daoyuan in Jinan, which became the mother association.3 Soon after, its leaders established a separate charitable

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wing, the RSS, on the belief that spiritual cultivation alone was incomplete and inadequate. In addition to sitting meditation, charity should also be an inseparable part of self-cultivation and the Dao’s outer manifestation. Practically speaking, RSS was also established to meet the urgent social demands for relief work in an era with unusually frequent natural disasters and wars, and to fight against the expansion of Christianity in China, whose relief work in disaster-stricken areas often resulted in massive conversion, thus expanding foreigners’ spheres of influence.4 Scholars have generally agreed that merchants, local officials, and gentry tended to be the top three Daoyuan constituencies, with merchants on average occupying half of all memberships.5 In fact, merchants often ran the organization. Owing to their political power and social connections, government officials and military men were crucial to the organization but tended to hold only honorary positions, since the RSS had strict regulations forbidding incumbent political officials from serving as leaders, in order to maintain an apolitical position as a charitable organization. In addition to Xiong Xiling, major warlords in the early Republican period—such as Wu Peifu (1874–1939), Cao Kun (1862–1938), Zhang Zuolin (1875–1928), and Qi Xieyuan (1885– 1946)—were all honorary Daoyuan members, with their own religious names conferred on them by spirit writing. The Daoyuan’s powerful membership rolls made the organization capable of carrying out relief work with little interference in local society. These men most likely became members of the Daoyuan in their pursuit of religious merit and individual salvation rather than out of a desire for personal fame.6 On the other hand, David Ownby argues that warlords often patronized redemptive societies like the Daoyuan for both practical and symbolic reasons, “as many warlord regimes lacked well-articulated, institutionalized relations with either elite or mass; offering support to a selfproclaimed redemptive society was one way for a warlord to suggest that his regime aspired to moral legitimacy.”7 Merchants were another significant social group that had aspired to moral legitimacy since the imperial period. Usually regarded as less cultured than Confucian scholars—as men polluted by a greedy desire for money and interest—they tended to be more eager than typical scholar-officials to demonstrate that they too upheld Confucian moral

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principles and thus deserved social respect. With the abolition of the Civil Service Exam in 1905, the traditional option of purchasing exam degrees and official titles to earn the scholar-official distinction was no longer available to merchants. Meanwhile, merchants also lacked modern degrees, the newly valued symbols of education. Consequently, many of them found the means to express their social ambitions by way of networks centered on the Chambers of Commerce they organized nationwide to form religious-style charitable societies, promoting their moral ideals.8 Looking beyond Shandong Province, connections with high-level Beiyang government officials proved crucial to the Daoyuan’s expansion nationwide. Xiong Xiling played an instrumental role in this process. As the former premier and a Buddhist, he used his connections to help the society establish itself in Beijing in 1922. The RSS, its charity wing, spread rapidly throughout the 1920s, and by the end of the decade it appeared in nearly every province in China; by 1931 it had established 238 branches nationwide.9 Emulating the model of the International Red Cross Society, it took the name Red Swastika, which referred to a Buddhist symbol. The Red Swastika Society quickly became the public face of the Daoyuan and enjoyed widespread public recognition. During this period, the organization developed a sophisticated relief system and began to organize relief activities on “a monumental scale.”10 In addition to raising money for food and clothing, typical relief activities included organizing teams of volunteers (mostly male) to travel to disaster areas to provide specialized assistance to refugees. The organization ran schools and war hospitals as well. Taking an apolitical position, it was able to go beyond the Chinese border to offer help, with the intention of spreading its beliefs on a broader scale. This transnational dimension can also be seen from the word “world” (shijie) in the official name of the RSS. Influenced by the proselytizing style of Christianity, the Daoyuan intended to save the postwar world through Eastern spiritual teachings. The RSS provided relief efforts in Tokyo after the huge earthquake of 1923 (and thereafter established a branch in Kobe, Japan) and donated 100,000 yuan to the Los Angeles earthquake in 1933.11 It had offices in Paris, London, and Tokyo, and professors of Esperanto within its membership. We know very little about

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the activities of its overseas branches. During the Second Sino-­ Japanese War (1937–1945), its connections with Japan also enabled the RSS to continue its relief work in China without Japanese military interference, and it served as one of the three major organizations in charge of burying corpses after the Nanking Massacre.12 However, the Daoyuan’s charitable work did not prevent the newly established Nationalist government from taking a significantly less favorable view of it than had the Beiyang regime. Once the Nationalist regime consolidated its rule in 1928, its government quickly banned the Daoyuan and several other redemptive societies as superstitious organizations, accusing them of being tools of warlords and local gentry to expand their influence under the cover of religious and philanthropic activities, and of spreading superstition and retarding progress. While banning the society’s religious branch (the Daoyuan), the government meanwhile fostered the activities of its separately named, ostensibly independent charitable wing—the RSS. The RSS still had to be very careful, instructing its women members not to conduct any typically superstitious activities, such as incense burning or temple visiting, as discussed in chapter 6. Still, throughout the antisuperstition campaign, the Nationalist government showed more lenience toward the Daoyuan than it did toward other redemptive societies because of the Daoyuan’s well-known reputation for social relief, an area in which the central government desperately needed help. In this way, the Daoyuan continued to operate and even expand under the protection of its charitable wing until being severely attacked and finally eradicated after the establishment of the CCP regime in 1949.

WOMEN’S BRANCHES OF THE DAOYUAN To understand women’s charitable activities carried out through the Daoyuan, we first need to examine the organizational system of its female divisions. Like its men’s branches, the women’s branches of the Daoyuan had two wings. In the Women’s Morality Society (Nü daodeshe, hereafter WMS), women practiced spiritual self-cultivation; in the Women’s Red Swastika Society (hereafter WRSS), female members conducted charity, which was regarded as an inseparable part of

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self-cultivation. Members of the charitable branch had to be members of the religious branch as well. Usually a religious branch was established first and the charitable branch followed. Sometimes, in small areas, the religious branch served both functions. Approximately ten big cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Jinan, had separately organized charitable branches. In smaller locations, charitable activities usually operated in the name of Women’s Morality Society or under the leadership of the local (male) RSS.13 Essentially, the WMS and WRSS were one, and the two names were often used interchangeably. The teachings of the WMS emphasized that the most important matter in life was self-cultivation.14 The organization claimed that its overall ambition was to “cultivate women’s virtues, improve family education.” The guidelines of the WMS specifically stated its goals as “grasp the truth of Scripture of the Polar Singularity (Taiyi zhenjing, a Daoist classic), implement the true essence of five religions, expound the Great Way (dadao), and promote women’s virtues.” Each member had her own religious name (daoming), said to be given by the gods through spirit writing. In addition to studying scripture, members also spent time studying techniques of sitting meditation. According to the general regulations of the WMS, each society needed a room for “certifying achievement” (zhenggong shi), where members could obtain certificates of their levels of achievement in self-cultivation, and another room for “reflecting mistakes” (xingguo shi), where members could regularly go to list the time and frequency of their “mistakes.” Illiterate women were allowed to draw one black line under the calendar date to represent one mistake, rather than writing down the character of “making mistakes” (fanguo), as did literate members.15 Shandong Province had the most women’s branches of the Daoyuan, as well as its most active branches. The first women’s branch was probably established in Jinan in 1922, just one year after the establishment of the first men’s branch of the Daoyuan in the same city. It is said that the original motivation was to commemorate the wives and mothers of several major Daoyuan leaders. Around 1924, within Shandong, eight other branches existed at Jining, Yidu, Tai’an, Weixian, Liaocheng, Laiwu, Yexian, and Yucheng. As for its charity wing, the WRSS, the first branch was probably established around 1926 in Beijing, where its men’s branch also started.16 The Jinan WMS went on to become the national mother society in 1931. The WMS at Jinan and Qingdao (established

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around 1930) were especially active and left behind the most source material. The WMS’s expansion usually began at the city level and then the provincial level, most likely through merchants’ social and business networks. The Daoyuan generally required that there be over thirty women members to open a new branch. By the end of 1924 about fortythree women’s branches had opened nationwide, some of them in major cities where the YWCA also established its local chapters, such as Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Hangzhou.17 However, unlike the YWCA, the Daoyuan had far more women’s branches in small counties and towns, as the eight other WMS branches in Shandong indicate. By 1927 the overall number of women’s branches increased to fifty-one. After the Nationalists took control, the women’s branches seem to have developed faster and more steadily, despite official hostility; by the end of 1935, there were 148 branches nationwide.18 In 1935 the WMS held a twelve-year anniversary national conference at Jinan. The records of this conference are among the society’s few sources extant today. Few materials remain from the post-1935 development of the women’s branches of the Daoyuan. The general atmosphere in which women’s branches of the Daoyuan originated and thrived was conservative. Shandong Province was known to be far more conservative than many other Chinese areas in early twentieth century. Foreign secretaries of local YWCAs often pointed this out. For example, Miss Alice Holmes described the city of Yantai in 1928: A town where hundreds of women have bound feet, but still a town of factories where these same women trudge bravely home at dusk on their tiny feet; a town where all the young married women who are not working are prone to remain within their own walls, and yet a town where a few have caught the vision of unselfish living and of community spirit. Amahs are rare and the homes are few and far between where servants are employed,—and so the women remain at home busy with their children and with the multitudinous round of household cares.19

This description suggests that there were few professional women and a great number of women at home in Yantai. Even women of the lower

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classes, who had to work for a living, had bound feet. Indeed, women at home seemed to be the major constituency of the women’s branches of the Daoyuan in Shandong. Most of these women seemed to be family members of the male members of the organization. This was sometimes the case for the YWCA and YMCA members as well, such as James Yen and his wife Alice Hui, but it appears to have happened less frequently than for the Daoyuan and was seldom singled out for emphasis. The family connection was especially obvious for leaders of the WMS, whose relationships with male members were emphasized in Daoyuan records as an important part of the women’s identities. For example, the catalogue of leaders and staff of the Qingdao WMS lists titles for various positions; the date individual women became members and the date they assumed a given position; and a final category noting whose wives (qi), concubines (qie), and daughters (nü) they were. However, there are no data indicating the respective percentage of wives, concubines, and daughters that made up the female membership of the Daoyuan in different regions. Middle-aged and senior women (by contemporary Chinese standards) composed most of the membership of the WMS in Shandong Province, though the official regulations state that it would accept any member truly devoted to the Dao—regardless of race, nationality, religion, or social class.20 For example, the name list for the Qingdao WRSS includes fifty-nine members in 1934, of whom only 18 percent were under thirty years old; over 62 percent of the members were in the age range thirty to thirty-nine; 20 percent were fifty to sixty-nine. Similarly, the Jinan WRSS had about thirty-seven female staff in 1930, of whom only 3 percent were under thirty years old; over 59 percent were in the age range thirty to forty-nine; 38 percent were fifty to sixtynine.21 These ages suggest that the majority of Daoyuan women were already mothers or grandmothers and that they were not modern-educated, if they were educated at all. Beyond Shandong Province, few records remain to show the membership makeup in other regions. I was able to locate only a staff list for the Department of Temporary Relief and Service (Linshi jiuji fuwu bu) of the Shanghai women’s branches of the Red Swastika Society. Probably drafted around 1935–1937, this list provides a different perspective on the backgrounds of its female staff. The head secretary (zong ganshi) of this temporary relief department was a woman named

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Xiong Mao Yanwen furen, who was none other than the moderneducated new wife of Xiong Xiling. Her background is key to understanding the women on this list. In February 1935 she and Xiong married in a grand wedding ceremony at a Protestant church in Shanghai, which indicates that as a Daoyuan member, Xiong embraced multiple religions simultaneously. Immediately following their marriage, Mao quit her teaching job and was enlisted by Xiong to become head of the Women’s RSS and assist him in RSS affairs, beginning with the Xiangshan Children’s Home.22 With Mao as department head, the Department of Temporary Relief and Service was staffed with modern-educated women as secretaries (ganshi). Eight out of its eighteen secretaries (44 percent) had graduated from universities in the United States. Seven of these were graduates of the University of Michigan, which was Mao’s alma mater (she earned her M.A. degree in education in 1931) and indicates the crucial role her personal social networks played in recruiting. The only secretary who graduated from a different American university was a woman named Zhu Xi, who was none other than Zhu Qihui’s niece, Mao’s high school classmate, and matchmaker for Mao’s marriage to Xiong. Most of these women, including Mao, lived in foreign concessions of Shanghai, as shown by their listed addresses. Although the ages of the women remain unclear, we can tell that eight of them were married, as their husbands’ surnames are prefixed before their natal family surnames, and they used the furen (Mrs.) form of address at the end of their names, as in Xiong Mao Yanwen furen. The staff backgrounds of the Shanghai women’s branch were most likely quite exceptional and did not represent the majority of women’s branches nationwide. Shanghai was, after all, the most cosmopolitan city in Republican China. The coincidental connections that shaped the membership components of the Shanghai branch of the WRSS could not be easily replicated elsewhere. Sources show that excepting the branches in Shanghai, Tianjin, Beijing, and Nanjing, the majority of the 148 women’s branches nationwide in 1935 were not in major coastal cities where modern and Western influences were strongest. Instead, most were located inland, in small towns and counties of North China where the general social atmosphere tended to be conservative and few modern-educated professional women emerged. In addition, the list

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was only for staff (and thus leaders) of a temporary women’s relief group under the WRSS, rather than a regular membership list (though staff were themselves generally part of the membership). It seems that the majority of female staff of the Shanghai branch were recruited through Mao’s personal connections. Her identity as the wife of RSS director Xiong Xiling was the factor that, more than any other, put her in the important position of national head of the WRSS. There was no evidence suggesting that before she married Xiong she was involved with the RSS in any way. This raises a crucial issue when examining a modern-educated woman such as Mao: if we fail to see beyond her individual agency and fail to put her into the context of her family and marriage, we cannot not truly understand her social and public engagements and achievements. Her case further reminds us of the importance of collective/collaborative agency, not only for home women but for “new women” as well. Regardless of regional variations on the membership issue, the encouragement of male family members probably played a key role in turning women from diverse locations into members, again demonstrating the significant role men played as enablers. Daoyuan teachings assert that involving female family members in practicing self-cultivation, together with their men, fulfills the classic Chinese principles of yin (female) and yang (male) complementing each other, producing mutually reinforcing and ameliorative effects. As explained by one instruction from the Lotus Sage, the highest deity of the WMS: “One yin and one yang is the Way (dao), if [there is] only male but without female, then yin and yang will not be balanced, and the truth of the Great Way (Dadao) will be lost. Then how can we even speak of expanding [the society]?”23 Thus was women’s participation believed to be beneficial for the self-cultivation of their male family members (and vice versa, though that seems to have been less emphasized). In contrast to the YWCA and YMCA, family rather than the individual was regarded within the Daoyuan as the more crucial unit for religious practices (as well as charitable activities, as I will demonstrate in the next chapter). Beyond the common practice of praying for blessings for family members, each individual’s personal religious practice was believed capable of strengthening other family members’ cultivation— reaching even ancestry. Consequently, women’s engagement with the

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Daoyuan was not only allowed but highly encouraged by male family members. Because the family unit commonly participated together, going to the Daoyuan did not require that women engage independently with the public sphere, a fact that could both facilitate and limit women’s public experiences. In contrast to the YWCA’s independence from the YMCA, the women’s wing of the Daoyuan never officially registered itself with the government as an independent organization, neither in the name of the WMS nor as the WRSS. It remained permanently affiliated to the Daoyuan. The guidelines for the RSS from 1931 explained that if both the men’s and women’s branches registered using the name Red Swastika, there would then be two separate organizations, which was “inappropriate” and “against propriety (Li).” In addition, they stated: “Our [Chinese] society is currently at the tide of reform (weixin), if applying for separate registrations, it would be too ‘eye catching’ (chumu).”24 These concerns, on the one hand, indicate the organization’s conservative nature and possibly its fear of attracting too much unnecessary public attention, since it already operated under the cover of a charitable organization during the Nationalist regime. On the other hand, this decision may have also resulted from its leaders adhering to the traditional theoretical principle of gender relations: yin’s subordinate position to yang. This implied that the women’s wing should be subordinate to the men’s and should focus mainly on the inner sphere rather than the outer one.25 Official registration would require that female members have direct interactions with the government and the public in general, in contradiction to these ideals. The organizational dependence of the women’s branches limited the scope of women’s engagement with the public world while offering a convenient way for male members to supervise women’s public activities. The many administrative positions and ranks of the WMS seem to reflect the domestic hierarchy of Daoyuan members. The list of leaders’ titles for its Qingdao branch shows that most administrative positions had at least a vice person and an assistant. This may be in part because most of these women were domestically oriented and could not be available for administrative duties whenever needed (the regulations state that staff meetings were to be held once a week). On the other hand, it is also likely that the multiple ranks arose from concubines’

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traditionally lower-class status. Since Daoyuan members  participated as a family, traditional domestic hierarchies often defined members’ relationships. A main wife, as the records show, was often placed in a higher position than the concubine(s)—especially when the concubine was a member of her own family—despite the fact that, more often than not, concubines tended to be the more active, educated, or capable members, as the case of the Cong family in the next chapter will demonstrate. The WMS programs were divided into “inner” and “outer” categories, indicating the traditional framework by which the society operated. The inner programs included four fields, mostly related to inner spiritual cultivation: sitting meditation (xizuo), scripture ( jingji), bookkeeping (wenzang), and general affairs (shuwu). The outer programs had six bureaus (bu) in charge of actual practices: charity, propaganda, embroidery, sericulture, cooking, and sewing. This structure differed from the YWCA’s, which lacked a separate religious department. As for the WRSS, because it served as the wing focused exclusively on charity, it had a separate administrative system composed of five categories (gu). Except for general administration (zongwu) and accounting (chuji), the other three all related to charitable affairs: the Relief Bureau ( jiuji) was in charge of disaster relief matters; the Charity Bureau (ciye) was in charge of establishing schools, orphanages, and institutes for pregnant and poor women; and the Networking Bureau ( jiaoji) was in charge of not only raising funds but also advocating frugality, social harmony, and recruitment of new members.26 Unlike the YWCA, which paid its secretaries, the Qingdao RSS stated in its regulations that the organization’s staff generally did not receive payment for their work. Only those too poor to serve otherwise would receive a subsidy for living costs, although those who traveled on the organization’s behalf would also be reimbursed.27 This pattern differed from the Wanguo daodehui, in which women lecturers were paid for their services. All these factors contributed to making the WRSS more of a purely volunteer organization. The WMS had a hierarchical system of deities, each of them in charge of a specific duty. Of the most popular deities, most were of Buddhist origin, except Meng Mu (Mencius’s Mother), a typical Confucian deity. This corroborates Prasenjit Duara’s observation that many women in

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the Wanguo daodehui were devout Buddhists who joined the society because they found its teachings to be compatible with their Buddhist faith.28 The highest deity in charge of the WMS was the Buddhist deity Lotus Sage (Liantaisheng). At least ten other deities below the Lotus Sage were in charge of different spheres; three were variations of Bodhisattva of Compassion (Cimin pusa) and had the word ci (compassion or charity) in their title, such as Bodhisattva of Spreading Compassion (Hongci pusa) and Bodhisattva of Lights of Compassion (Ciguang pusa). In addition to the major deities, local areas sometimes worshipped regionally specific deities. Generally, members were expected to follow the Lotus Sage’s instructions in all their activities. However, the sage herself showed flexibility regarding this precept: “Rules are made by human and deity together and thus should be obeyed by both. If man did not adhere to the rules, he should be presented to the higher level to be stopped. If a deity’s orders do not follow the rules, it is because of unclear spirit writing, and thus local societies should report the matter to the mother society to acquire new decrees.”29 The highest deity of the Daoyuan was Laozu (the Great Progenitor), and his approval was to be sought for life’s most important matters. He presided over the Five Teachers (Confucius, Laozi, the Buddha, Jesus, and Muhammad). The regulations of the WMS required that every society display statues of Laozu, the Five Teachers, the Lotus Sage, and ten Bodhisattvas. On the surface, Laozu represented the five major religions, but he actually seems to have been mainly a Confucian deity, not a Buddha. As Laozu himself allegedly said, “By Dao, I mean the Dao of Confucius and Mencius.”30 Overall, the Chinese religious tradition that the Daoyuan represented is a synthesis of Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism, without clear lines of demarcation.

REINVENTING CONFUCIAN GENDER DOCTRINES An examination of the Daoyuan’s gender teachings suggests that the organization reinterpreted fundamental, traditional gender concepts to make them compatible with modern gender ideologies. The new teachings for women included a redefinition of key Confucian

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gender concepts such as the “inner and outer” (neiwai), “talent and virtue” (cai yu de), and “three followings and four virtues” (sancong side). Significantly, while maintaining a Confucian gendered theoretical framework, redefinition helped remove many gender-subjugating elements that did not square with the new era. Additionally, it made connections with Western science in order to appear modern, as I will show below. First, with regard to the old rule that “men manage external affairs and women internal affairs” (nan zhuwai, nü zhunei), the proclamation of the WMS states that this fits “the modern theory of the division of labor” (xiandai zhiye fengong zhishuo): Since the influence of Europe spread to the east, the doctrine of women’s rights is prevalent in society, and voices on emancipation and reform can be heard without end. Is it known that actually the Sage’s decree [on nei and wai] thoroughly fits with the modern theory of the division of labor, and thus does not mean gender inequality? . . . it is merely because that with regard to family matters, men and women are different. However, in terms of charity, there was no difference even between China and foreign countries [not to mention between sexes], therefore we established the women’s wing of the RSS.31

As seen above, WMS leaders were acutely aware of the ongoing ­feminist and women’s rights movements taking shape around the world, and probably also of the sharp attacks mounted by progressive intellectuals on Confucian gender traditions. As a response, they offered new justifications to defend women’s role in the family: the historic separation of men’s and women’s spheres was interpreted as having nothing to do with gender inequality and everything to do with gender difference, which could be backed up even by Western science. The emphasis on gender difference did not always function in as backward a way as we might expect, even if it envisioned a fundamentally domestic role for women. Many social reformers of the early twentieth century, such as the YWCA leader Hu Binxia, advocated similar ideals as an alternative vision of gendered modernity. Some were even able to use this conservative ideology to justify their public engagement, such as

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female missionaries and the YWCA women who applied the concept of social housekeeping to their social work (as discussed in chapter 4). The Daoyuan developed this strategy of recasting Chinese tradition further still when they justified women’s public education without invoking the Western concept of natural rights. The following exhortation from a deity replaced the old belief that “ignorance is a virtue in a woman (nüzi wucai bianshide)” with a reconsideration of the relationship between “talent” and “virtue”:32 From past to present, few women in history had both talent and virtue. For those with virtue but no talent, the worst that can happen is just to be known as narrow and limited. However, if a woman has talent but no virtue, she will take actions violating the rules. Once that happens, she will exhibit a variety of debauched, extravagant, idle, evil and arrogant behaviors. As a woman, if she acts like this, how can she fulfill her natural duty? Even though she has talent, she is just going to use it to do evil deeds. Therefore ancient people have the saying that “ignorance is a virtue in a woman.” However, what is wrong with women having talent?! Only if she merely has talent but no virtue should we worry that evil deeds will be carried out through talent, and in that case talent is not worth having.33

In other words, the new teaching suggested that it was fine for women to receive an education, so long as they remembered to cultivate their virtues. By reanalyzing an ancient saying and concluding that there was nothing wrong with women having talent, the new doctrine cleared away the theoretical obstacles to women receiving an education. But before going any further, the deity added that women’s “true learning” and “true kongfu” (usually refers to any skill achieved through hard work and practice) was invariably within the home, which returns us to the conservative idea that women’s primary sphere should be domestic. The deity continued to highlight the significance of the domestic sphere, elaborating that if a woman could properly take care of her domestic responsibilities, then relationships among family members would be truly virtuous. Such a family would become a model for the world.34 In other words, women are supposed to be the anchor of family relationships. This directly echoes the ancient and imperial

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focus on women being responsible for harmony in the family. In this way, the teachings of the Daoyuan supported women’s education, thereby appearing modern while simultaneously ensuring that its women members not neglect their primary duties to the family and become the type of individualistic new women promoted by May Fourth intellectuals. In addition to the traditional theoretical concepts of “inner and outer” and “talent and virtue,” the new teachings also reinterpreted the well-known Confucian gender doctrine of “three followings and four virtues,” viewed by many intellectuals during the reformist era of the early twentieth century as one of the most oppressive elements of the Confucian gendered code of conduct that subjugated women to men. Originally, “three followings” (sancong) meant that a woman should obey her father before marriage, her husband upon marriage, and her son upon the husband’s death. However, the newly interpreted three followings became “up to the older generation, be filial to parents, and respect parents-in-law; within the same generation, be at peace with sisters-in-law and other relatives through marriage; down to the lower generation, be benevolent to sons and loving to daughters.”35 The element of “following” disappeared in this new interpretation. The fundamental goal of the “three followings,” another deity explained to members of the WMS, was to “assist” (fuzhu) their husbands in administering the family and the country. This did not mean that women held less power (quanli) than men and should be subordinated to them.36 The exhortation added that improving family relationships was the key reason for reforming the family, which was a woman’s most important duty. This reinterpretation essentially shifted away from a single-sided emphasis on obedience to men and toward an emphasis on the significance of cultivating good relationships between the men and women in a family, demonstrating its basic consistency with Confucian core values about family life. The Daoyuan’s new version of the “four virtues” also cast off that notion’s previous emphasis on gender inferiority and hierarchy, instead focusing more on women’s harmonizing roles. During the Han dynasty, the well-known female historian Ban Zhao (45–116) summarized the four virtues in The Lessons for Women (Nü jie): proper virtue (fude), proper

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speech (fuyan), proper countenance (furong), and proper conduct (fugong). Proper virtue once required a woman to “not distinguish herself in talent and intelligence”37 but was now changed to being “chaste, still, with personal integrity” (zhenjing caoshou). Proper countenance used to mean that women should not seek to be “outwardly beautiful or ornamented”; it now meant “to be solemn and respectful (zhuangsu duanjing).” Proper speech, which previously required a woman to “not sharpen her language and speech,” now referred to a woman who “speaks modestly and in a friendly way (yanqian yuhe).” Finally, proper conduct was changed from insisting that women not outperform others in skill and cleverness but that they be productive: “managing the home frugally, and being diligent in cooking and sewing.”38 These new interpretations of women’s virtues may not appear, on their surface, to signal a radical departure from the past. However, they contained subtle but important changes. In particular, rules requiring women to be self-effacing were mostly deleted, thus removing obstacles to their becoming more active in both family and society. The revised doctrine of three followings and four virtues now emphasized women’s obligation to bettering family relationships and managing domestic duties, rather than strictly adhering to a domestic hierarchy. These changes gave women room to maneuver. Nevertheless, despite the elimination of some egregious phrasing, given shifts in acceptable gender norms, the new emphasis remained conservative in nature in its reliance on gender difference for justification. The Daoyuan did not directly address the question of gender inequalities. In fact, some aspects of the organization betrayed a clear and continued assumption that the female was the inferior sex, from the dependent status of the women’s wing to a portion of its religious teachings (see chapter 6). The Daoyuan was not the only redemptive society that redefined gender norms during this period. The Wanguo daodehui and its leader Wang Fengyi (1864–1937) also responded to the challenges of modern ideologies, though not in writing. In 1930 Wang was invited to meet the fifth concubine of warlord Zhang Zuolin (who had been assassinated by the Japanese two years prior). She told Wang that she had read nearly all his books and agreed with most of his teachings. However, she thought the notion of the three followings was “not compatible with the current time” (buhe shidai) and should be deleted. Wang replied, “I

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have already broken the rule of the old three followings. The new three followings that I am teaching now are: nature follows the principles of heaven (xingcong tianli), heart follows the principles of the Dao (xincong daoli), and body follows the principles of emotion (shencong qingli). These are the true three followings!”39 It seems that the new three followings were no longer related to gender and could be used by both men and women. While attempting to redefine traditional gender doctrines, the Daoyuan’s leaders perceived that the fundamental problems for Chinese families lay in the interpersonal relationships among family members. This was different from the diagnosis of the Chinese family made by the New Culturalists, who saw the authority of the family clashing with individual freedom and thus strongly urged women to seek personal independence and freedom by walking out of the feudal and oppressive family. It also differed from the issues that YWCA women such as Hu Binxia identified as needing reform—matters of poor hygiene and ignorance of scientific management, which could be fixed only by women becoming modern-educated housewives.40 The Daoyuan’s proposed solution was less radical and technical than it was moral, centering on cultivating better personal virtues. If people, mostly women, treated other family members better, grievances would be reduced and harmony increased. In this sense, Hu Binxia and Daoyuan leaders both highlighted the crucial role that women need to play in reforming the Chinese domestic realm, encouraging them to be more active in the new era. Their engagements with the public realm, no matter whether they were educational, religious, or charitable, could be conducive in bringing beneficial changes in the domestic realm, an arena that women were believed to be innately better at and thus most responsible for. Because the core of the WMS’s revised gender doctrines still held that women’s true calling lay in the home, it is not surprising that its teachings evinced disapproval of the New Culturalist gender ideology that “abetted” women in walking out of their homes in the pursuit of individual freedom and liberation. From the perspective of the WMS, individual liberty too often came at a high cost: the loss of morality and virtue for women. The WMS was not alone in holding this moralitycentered standard. As historian Zhao Yancai has pointed out, the idea

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of moral regeneration pervaded every corner of political discourse in early twentieth-century China.41 Many Chinese elites believed that political and social crises were born of moral decay—a belief with historical precedents. The late Ming and High Qing were the two most recent historical periods when similar moral concerns were prevalent, particularly at moments when commercialization produced status anxieties among elites.42 Not surprisingly, by the late Qing and early Republican periods, when social and political crises were acute once again, this way of thinking resurfaced. Daoyuan leaders believed that strained interpersonal relationships caused fundamental problems within the Chinese home for a host of reasons. To begin with, Confucianism had always emphasized the importance of five basic ethical relationships, three of them intrafamilial.43 In this sense, the focus on harmonizing domestic relationships can be seen as a shift of emphasis within Confucian gender ideology, from hierarchy to harmony, rather than the adoption of an entirely new doctrine. Second, the leaders and members of the Daoyuan tended to have traditional families—with wives, concubines, and members of the older and younger generations living together—a fact further corroborated by my study of the Cong family of Qingdao in chapter 6. This means not only that Daoyuan members tended to be well to do (with the ample resources necessary to contribute to charity) but also that they were familiar with the daily tensions and strife resulting from many people living under one roof. Stories about strained relationships between mothers-in-law and daughters-in-law, or among daughters-in-law, had long been common. In suggesting that Daoyuan women focus on cultivating more harmonious domestic relationships, Daoyuan leaders were probably motivated by practical concerns in their own daily lives. The relationship between a main wife and concubines had always been delicate, tricky, and even violent in some cases. Anthropologist Maria Jaschok points out that within the household, women often faced women as rivals “for emotional hold over ‘key’ males” and notes the important role that the women’s different backgrounds played in causing conflict. Clashes between the values and attitudes of, for instance, an ex-prostitute concubine and an upper-class wife added another dimension to their conflicts over emotional and material resources.44

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This type of class conflict clearly caused disharmony within the Cong family of Qingdao, as we will see in chapter 6. We can also get a sense of the prevalence of domestic conflicts through the exhortations to female members of the WMS by the Lotus Sage, which frequently mention women’s supposed shortcoming of “being suspicious and jealous.” The sage counseled women to learn how to love every family member45 and not think always of “taking advantage of others” (zhan pianyi), a habit that could “put themselves at a disadvantage” (chikui) in the long run.46 Daoyuan religious texts’ frequent references to women’s jealousy echo the constant admonitions in didactic literature of the ancient and imperial times against women with such emotions. Duara’s study of the women in Wanguo daodehui in Manchuguo also suggests that domestic relationship issues were a major motivation for many women who joined the society. He notes that many “women with much grief” in their domestic lives were the society’s members. These women “either had children that died young, or were ‘locked in loveless marriages,’ or were seeking solace because a concubine had been brought in to replace them; or if they were the concubines, they were bullied by older wives and in-laws.” The Mrs. Zhao whom Duara cites as an active member was a “wife number two” (er taitai) who became sad when people called her that until she learned to “live with her fate (tianming).” The in-laws of another woman, Mrs. Liu, brought in a “little sister” (a concubine), which “made her painfully realize that she must have not been very filial and obedient to her husband.” Duara believes that these societies offered “a rationalization or justification of their fate, a means of coping with their difficult lives, and, often, spiritual solace.”47 Following Western models, the Republican legal code of 1930 did not recognize the legal existence of concubines. But in practice, as Lisa Tran points out, the Nationalist Party’s placement of concubinage under the adultery laws, with all their loopholes, left the custom largely intact.48 Since adultery is not bigamy, it was mostly regarded as a morality issue. Although a wife could demand a divorce on the grounds of her husband’s adultery, she would probably end up losing more than she gained. Without being legally punished, the husband could go ahead and marry the new concubine and turn her into a main wife, if he desired. In any case, the law was implemented only in some major

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cities, and a widespread discrepancy existed between code and practice in different regions. In conservative areas, such as Shandong Province and Northeast China, where the redemptive societies were most popular, concubinage remained a prevalent custom. It is said that when Wang Fengyi, founder and spiritual leader of the Wanguo daodehui, was preaching in Shenyang in 1930, the fifth concubine of Zhang Zuolin invited him over and asked: “Now it is the era of gender equality, and thus a husband cannot have more than one wife. Why is Old Master [lao xiansheng, referring to Wang] still teaching about the ‘proper rule between wife and concubines’ (dishu dao)?” Wang replied: “I originally did not want to talk about this doctrine, however, for families with many taitai, the most painful thing is the disharmony between the main wife and the concubines (dishu buhe), and thus they are extremely distressed. If I do not make them understand the proper rule between wife and concubine, I cannot save them from suffering and help them achieve happiness!”49 The attention to conflicts between wives and concubines in early twentieth-century texts (including those of the Daoyuan) might also be due in part to the decline of households in which multiple married brothers lived together (especially in cities). As a result, sister-in-law tensions, seen often in the texts of previous centuries, became less of a concern, while wife/concubine tensions remained. Though more concrete evidence is needed, I suspect that the shift might also have resulted from the rise in the actual domestic status of some concubines in this changing historical period, one in which the old rules governing status hierarchies were being broken and newly introduced rules such as monogamy were not yet completely established, leaving room for concubines who possessed the favor of the husband to maneuver and upset the status quo. Indeed, some concubines played a much larger role both at home and in public affairs during this era than was previously possible. One such example is the fifth concubine of warlord Zhang Zuolin, Zhang Shouyi (1898–1966), mentioned earlier. Zhang Zuolin had one main wife and five concubines. Shouyi was the fifth concubine brought into the household and was thus commonly addressed as wu yitai (wife number five). As Zhang’s favorite and the only one with a modern highschool education, Shouyi was designated manager of the entire Zhang

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household. Because this clever and capable woman excelled at handling interpersonal relationships—always making sure that other taitai received proper, generous, and fair treatment in terms of money and respect—Zhang’s wives lived in relative harmony compared to those in many other families. Meanwhile, being a Buddhist, she regularly donated money to local Buddhist temples and, together with the wife of Zhang’s eldest son, Zhang Xueliang (1901–2001), to women’s patriotic organizations as well—making her popular with the local population.50 She also helped Zhang Zuolin with his official duties, such as hosting banquets to entertain guests and comforting troops when needed. One scholar argues that she played a significant role in covering up Zhang’s death (from a Japanese train bomb) in 1928 from the prying Japanese press and diplomats in order to win enough time for Zhang Xueliang to return to Shenyang and succeed his father; if so, she helped stabilize the political situation in Northeast China.51 Shouyi’s case gives us a glimpse of what a favorite and capable concubine could do in the Republican period if given permission and a public platform. This type of circumstance was rarely seen in the imperial period. * * * In contrast to the YWCA in China, the Daoyuan saw the family rather than the individual as the primary unit for participation in the ­organization—a creed that allowed men to both enable and constrain female members’ exercise of their own agency in the public world. This chapter has shown how both paths were justified within a traditional Chinese theoretical framework. By emphasizing the complementary and mutually reinforcing effect of yin and yang, Daoyuan teachings promoted the belief that women’s participation was beneficial to male members’ self-cultivation, thereby offering women organized, collective opportunities to engage with the world beyond the home. On the other hand, when women began venturing out of familiar territory, they needed the help of a network or social group, which often included men, such as their husbands, fathers, or brothers. Meanwhile, resorting to the traditional yin and yang theory allowed female members to be treated only as affiliates of male members, their relationships with male members often singled out for emphasis in the

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organization. Furthermore, among other factors, yin’s supposedly subordinate position to yang led to the women’s wings never being officially registered with the government, leaving them unable to organize public activities on their own and limiting the scope of their activities. Finally, largely to accommodate challenges from modern gender ideologies, the Daoyuan’s redefined Confucian teachings removed many elements that had been historically complicit with female subjugation, but the organization continued to stress the belief that women’s primary sphere was domestic. These strategies helped to ensure that female members, though encouraged to participate in more charitable activities through a public organization, could still be kept under control and remain family focused rather than becoming radical, individualistic new women. The next chapter will show how the simultaneously enabling and limiting role of male members of the Daoyuan played out in concrete cases and specific activities. If the gods’ exhortations to female members of the Daoyuan were based on the ideas of its male leaders, then what these teachings presented was an elite view that differed from those of the radical modernizers regarding Chinese gender traditions in the past and future. In this view, Chinese tradition was not an outdated and stagnant obstacle to modernity that could become incompatible with modern scientific principles. Daoyuan leaders saw the possibility of a continuous vitality and validity in Confucian gender doctrines, with some necessary changes that would allow the tradition to evolve and the women who embodied the tradition to evolve as well. Their basic strategies of reinventing Chinese gender traditions were compatible with their other attempts to modernize this religious organization, such as their defense of the ritual of spirit writing, and thus should be recognized as an integral part of their overall goal to find a respectable position for Chinese tradition within the emergence of global modernity.

6 WOMEN, SUPERSTITION, AND THE REORIENTATION TOWARD CHARITY

THE CONG FAMILY OF QINGDAO The name list of the Qingdao women’s branch of the Red Swastika Society reveals several members who shared the same family name: Cong. The Congs were an illustrious merchant family active in the Qingdao RSS in the 1920s and 1930s but were later forgotten, partially as a result of their being labeled “feudal bourgeois” during the Mao Zedong era. The family head was Cong Liangbi (1868–1945, known within the Daoyuan by his religious name, Tingmeng), who was not only a leading merchant—as a major founder of the match industry of Shandong in the 1920s—but also president of the Qingdao RSS. His wife Cong Jingshu (1867–1950; religious name, Xuannan) was president of the Qingdao women’s branch of the RSS, and his concubine Cong Wanying (1889–1953; religious name, Shijian) was vice president. In recent years Cong Liangbi has gradually been excavated from historical records by the Shandong media as a leading local merchant in an effort to construct a historical image of Shandong as a province with a long history of strong merchant networks, perhaps even comparable to those of the better-known Shanxi merchants. However, the Cong women’s stories are still barely known, even to historians. I interviewed one of Cong Liangbi’s grandsons—Cong Zhaohuan, born in 1931 and currently a retired Kunqu opera performer living in Beijing—about his family’s story and their involvement in the RSS.1 His account contains valuable personal details about some of the women involved in the

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society; combined with other sources, it gives us a glimpse of a merchant family’s active engagement with a local indigenous religious and charitable organization. Born in 1868 to a poor rural family in Penglai County, Dengzhou Prefecture, Shandong Province (nowadays part of Yantai City), Cong Liangbi went on to become the founder of the family fortune. The youngest of four sons, he had several years of home education before becoming an apprentice for a business firm (shanghao), Dongshuntai, in Yantai when he was about eighteen years old. Liangbi’s move around 1885 from countryside to city proved timely. With the defeat of the Qing Empire in the Opium Wars, Yantai had functioned as a designated international trading port since around 1861.2 Owing to Yantai’s close proximity to Japan, Dongshuntai, based at Yantai with branches in Osaka and Tianjin, specialized in Sino-Japanese trade.3 Its owner, surnamed Jin from the Mouping area east of Yantai, was soon impressed by Liangbi’s intelligence, ability, and diligent work ethic. After a year Liangbi was sent with the firm’s shipping fleet to Osaka, which broadened his horizons. After Jin quit the business, he introduced several important shareholders to Liangbi, enabling Liangbi to continue trading as the new director of the company, exporting Chinese products such as silk and peanut oil and importing Japanese-made cotton yarn, matches, and other miscellaneous goods. This capable young man spent significant time in Japan over the next twenty years, becoming so successful that he served as president of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce at Osaka, where he met Sun Yat-sen. In response to Sun’s call to save the Chinese nation by engaging in industry, Liangbi decided to return to his homeland to establish China’s own match industry in Shandong, with the knowledge and skills he gained in Japan. In 1913 he raised funds from Chinese merchants (making sure not to accept foreign capital) from Shandong and Tianjin as shareholders, bought land in Jinan, and established a match company named Zhenye (meaning “invigorating industry”). This period provided golden opportunities for Liangbi’s business success. The outbreak of the First World War shifted foreign capitalists’ attention back to Europe from China, and the May Fourth Movement in 1919 resulted in waves of boycotts of Japanese goods. With a dramatic decrease in foreign competition, China’s native match industry developed rapidly.

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Within several years, Liangbi’s match company had become such a success that he opened branches at Jining and Qingdao, ending Shandong’s reliance on foreign-made matches. Before long he also opened a dye company in Jinan and two more firms in Jinan and Qingdao.4 Following this success, Liangbi moved his family to Qingdao in 1922 and became one of the city’s leading merchants. According to Cong Zhaohuan, his grandfather owned one of only three private cars in the city.5 In the 1920s Liangbi engaged in various charitable activities. For instance, he set up “Liangbi Elementary Schools” in his hometown of Penglai in 1924 and donated three thousand silver dollars for disaster relief in Northwest China in 1926. In 1927 he established the RSS Qingdao branch, and two years later he began establishing a series of “Ciji” (charitable relief) elementary schools and Ciji hospitals, as well as continuing to organize frequent disaster relief activities in Shandong. It is said that he used his business networks to recruit members and expand his charitable organizations. Several top leaders of the Qingdao, Jinan, and Yantai RSS were also leaders of their local Chambers of Commerce,6 and a certain Song Jianzhang was the vice chairman of Cong’s match company while he and his family members were also active in Qingdao Daoyuan.7 During the Japanese occupation period (1937–1945), Liangbi repeatedly rejected Japanese invitations to cooperate, expressing interest only in going to the Qingdao Daoyuan daily to practice sitting meditation.8 By then he had already passed on his position to his son Cong Guanyi, who had received years of business management education in Japan as preparation. However, Liangbi’s social influence continued. One heroic story that was popularly circulated featured Liangbi saving thousands of lives of local people from Japanese hands. In the winter of 1942 Japanese troops massacred more than five hundred villagers in the Mashishan area of Weihai city in Shandong. The Communist guerillas of the Laoshan area organized a retaliation campaign soon after and annihilated the entire Japanese squad. Infuriated, the Japanese local authority arrested more than two thousand people on a tip from a local collaborator and put them in a gymnasium in Qingdao, interrogating and torturing them to try to identify the Communists among them. Hostages died daily from the shortage of food and water. Upon hearing the news, Liangbi and his Daoyuan friends began looking for

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ways to save the hostages while raising money to send in food. Eventually he used his Japanese connections and pledged his own life, successfully transferring the survivors in three groups to the Daoyuan. There they were offered food, medicine, and eventually money to return home.9 Liangbi earned the gratitude of many people for his actions. It was said that when he died in 1945, after Japan’s defeat, his funeral was the biggest ever held in Qingdao, and that more than a thousand beggars organized themselves to see him off. Liangbi’s main wife and his second concubine (the first was a Japanese concubine, who remained in Japan) became leaders of the women’s branch of the Qingdao Daoyuan. His wife’s maiden name was Chi Jingshu (1867–1950); she was illiterate, had bound feet, and also came from Penglai. She married Liangbi in 1887, around the time that he started making business trips to Japan as an apprentice for Dongshuntai. They had three daughters within their first ten years of marriage and eventually a son, Cong Tongmen (1904–1969). Tongmen married Sun Yaran (1905–2000) in 1921. Her father was also from Penglai and had studied in Japan; he thus knew Liangbi. Tongmen had two daughters and three sons, the second of which was Cong Zhaohuan, who told me the Cong family story. According to Zhaohuan, his grandfather had a Japanese concubine named Gaoqiao Xingzi while he was sojourning in Japan. They signed a ten-year marriage contract, agreeing that if she gave birth to sons, they would belong to the Cong family, and if daughters, she would keep them. Xingzi gave birth to two sons: Zhengmen in 1902 and Liumen in 1906. When Liangbi took the two sons back to his Shandong home in 1908 to raise them, his wife was unhappy. Moreover, she had unexpectedly given birth to her own son, Tongmen, in 1904 and thus was unwilling to take care of the two sons from Japan. Liangbi’s older brother adopted the eldest son, Zhengmen. Liangbi’s second concubine, Cong Wanying, took in the younger son, Liumen, as her own, thereby helping to secure her position within the family. In this way, from 1902 to 1906 Liangbi went from having zero sons to three. He was very grateful for this favor from “heaven.” It is said that a mysterious friend told him that it was indeed a blessing from gods in heaven and that more benevolent activities would be required of Liangbi in return. In other

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words, this personal circumstance seems to have contributed to his devotion to charity, adding to his patriotic and religious motivations. Originally surnamed Liu, Liangbi’s second concubine Wanying was born in Tianjin in 1889 and became an opera singer and storyteller in Jinan. There she met Liangbi and became his concubine in 1912, partly to serve as a mother to Liangbi’s sons by Xingzi. Wanying had learned sufficient characters to read novels and had unbound her feet. Without children of her own, she lived in a separate house in Qingdao with Liangbi and the arranged wife of their son Liumen. After traveling to France to study horticulture, Liumen brought his French wife back to China, where he lived separately from his original wife. Liangbi, Wanying, and Liumen’s arranged wife had about ten servants taking care of them. It can be surmised that Liangbi’s main wife, Jingshu, did not get along well with Wanying, and thus Wanying lived separately. Not only was Jingshu twenty-two years senior to Wanying, but Wanying had worked as an entertainer, suggesting that she belonged to a traditionally low social class. But within three years of marrying Wanying, Liangbi had four grandsons, and he regarded her as auspicious, favoring her more and more. As the vice president of the Qingdao women’s branch of the RSS, Wanying was much more actively involved in the organization’s affairs than Jingshu, the president. At the National Conference of the Women’s Morality Society in 1935, the Lotus Sage singled out Wanying along with several other active female members for praise as “resolute and devout” ( jiancheng) members “with foresight (xianjue).”10 Nonetheless, after Liangbi’s death in 1945 and the establishment of the Chinese Communist regime four years later, Wanying was labeled a “bourgeoisie’s concubine” (zichan jieji de yi taitai) in political struggles and suffered serious mistreatment. She had to bribe her previous servant, who had become a proud proletarian, to cook for her. Wanying died of disease in 1953. Zhaohuan remembers having a room called a fotang (Hall of Buddha) in the Cong family house that made their home a major site for daily religious activities. Despite the fact that most Cong women, and Zhaohuan’s grandfather Liangbi, were all “Buddhists” (in Zhaohuan’s words), it was not a statue of Buddha that was worshipped there but a tablet of

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Laozu, the highest god of the Daoyuan, together with the ancestral tablets for three to five generations. This might seem contradictory to those who are used to monotheistic traditions, but it was natural in a Chinese religious culture with a long history of syncretism. During worship, men and women all went to the hall and stood in the order of family seniority. This kind of worship had taken place regularly since Zhaohuan was young, and he had seen women in his family wearing Buddhist beads (suzhu) on their necks and hands. However, they were not vegetarians. Sometimes for an important event, such as the “Sand Opening” (kaisha) ceremony to acquire the gods’ instructions, women and men would go to the male branch of the Daoyuan but stand on separate sides, since there was no “Sand Plate” (shapan, the instrumental medium for spirit writing) in the women’s branch. According to Zhaohuan, most women of the Cong family were members of Qingdao WRSS.11 I confirmed this fact using the name list of the Qingdao WMS in the local archive. These women usually visited the society four times a month—on the first, eighth, fifteenth, and twentythird day. Each time, they put on clean clothes and recited sutras, did sitting meditation, and discussed relief for the poor and for disasters. Zhaohuan recalls his mother, Sun Yaran, telling him that many of the women who participated were older and jiating funü (housewives). Few professional women joined the organization, and most of the members were what Zhaohuan calls “bourgeoisie taitai or xiaojie (Misses).” This confirms my archival research regarding the membership. His mother also told Zhaohuan that sometimes the main wife led several yi taitai (concubines) in doing charity together. When people met face to face, they felt it impolite to call these concubines directly yi taitai—a term that by their era had accumulated a negative, backward connotation— but instead added their husband’s’ surname in front of taitai, such as “Zhang taitai.” To address a main wife (yuanpei), one could add the character lao (old, original), thus calling the main wife “Lao Zhang taitai.” The men of the Daoyuan would inform women in their families about recent national and regional disasters and call on them to donate their pin money (sifangqian) to help. In addition to money, making cotton-padded clothes (mianyi) was a common way to offer help in winter,

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whereas giving porridge to the poor was the regular summer charitable activity. Zhaohuan recalls that particularly in the fall and winter, the Cong women would first pledge a certain amount of winter garments and quilts and then begin making these relief supplies at home, as did his mother and sisters. The RSS staff would distribute the raw materials to the women in advance. After finishing a fair number of garments, female members would give the supplies to local male RSS members to send on to the refugees in afflicted areas. Women were not supposed to travel for disaster relief activities, despite being encouraged to contribute to charity. This advice arose in part from the inconvenience and strictures on women being away from home overnight. But it also existed because the women’s branch was not registered with the government, and women were not supposed to carry out their charitable activities in direct interaction with the public. The women’s branches nationwide participated in most of the organized relief activities of the RSS, as demonstrated by the many testimonials (zhengxinlu) in local Chinese archives with women’s names and donation amounts listed. Except for its prominence, the Cong family represents a typical Daoyuan family in early twentieth-century Shandong. The family head was a merchant under whose leadership the entire family joined the Daoyuan to seek spiritual salvation together. Their religious beliefs aligned more closely to Buddhism than to any other religion. The tension between Cong’s concubine and main wife testifies to the existence of interpersonal conflicts within a Daoyuan family and helps explain Daoyuan teachings’ repeated emphasis on the importance of harmonizing domestic relationships. On the other hand, happy events in the Cong family’s private lives, such as the birth of sons and grandsons, strengthened their devotion to charity for karmic retribution. While male members’ activism was able to extend throughout their business networks, female members’ activities were mostly limited to their local area and often supervised by male family members. Their activities were regular and structured, and the Daoyuan as an organization played an important guiding role in their daily lives—fulfilling needs of spiritual solace, socializing, and public engagement to varying degrees.

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MOTIVATING WOMEN FOR CHARITY Some of the most elaborate instructions for Daoyuan women conducting charity come from the texts produced through spirit writing during the First National Conference of the Women’s Morality Society held in Jinan in 1935. The leaders deliberately chose the time of the traditional Chongyang Festival, usually observed on the ninth day of the ninth month in the Chinese lunar calendar (October 6 of that year). According to the oldest Chinese classical divination text, Book of Changes, nine is a yang number; the Daoyuan leaders selected this date because it was double yang. The conference was the biggest-ever congregational event held by this society, as far as we can tell, and it left valuable information regarding the organization’s beliefs and activities. One of the central goals of this conference was to encourage more women to step out of their inner quarters, to broaden their horizons, and to promote both the Way (Dao) and charity (ci). The Lotus Sage, the highest deity of WMS, issued a statement: “In the past, local WMS branches all relied on the Daoyuan, which is understandable since it was the beginning period. However, in the future, if this continues, these Women’s Societies will inevitably develop the habit of dependency. Once women have this habit, even though the affairs of the Societies were established a long time ago, it would become difficult to develop further.” The Lotus Sage took advantage of the opportunity that this meeting represented to opine that it was time for women to learn to “take responsibility” and “carry out tasks on their own and no longer exclusively rely on the male Daoyuan.” She added that if women could competently play more active leading roles, Laozu could well issue instructions to change the name of women’s society (she) to women’s Daoyuan, thereby raising the women’s wing to an equal level with the men’s. If this change occurred, the society could finally stop the criticism that it had been favoring the yang force over the yin (yinyang youpian).12 The statements suggest that the leaders of the Daoyuan once considered the possibility of gradually equalizing the status of its female and the male branches, in much the same way as the YWCA and the YMCA operated. Spiritually, the way for women to improve themselves was to learn “the true kongfu” by studying the society’s general guidelines (dagang).

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Once women knew its rules (xize) and instructions from the altar (tanxun), they would be able to take on important responsibilities.13 Because not many women members were literate, a representative from the Yingshang branch of Anhui Province proposed in the national conference that Daoyuan should select leaders who were eloquent and knowledgeable to visit local branches, give speeches, and explain the gods’ exhortations—thereby helping members with their selfcultivation.14 This was similar to the duty upheld by women lecturers in the Wanguo daodehui. The national conference approved this proposal, announcing that lecturers would be sent to local branches on a monthly basis. We do not know whether this plan existed on the same broad scale as the Wanguo daodehui’s lecture system. However, both of the organizations’ systematic efforts to spread their teachings to a wider population suggest the possible influence of the proselytizing style of Christian missionaries. As Chinese religious historians put it, in this era even Confucians and Buddhists had grand plans for converting Europe and America.15 In terms of “outer practices,” the way for women to exercise self-­ cultivation was to conduct charity. The Daoyuan’s teachings valorized charity and social service. In this respect they resembled the teachings of the women’s branch of the Wanguo daodehui, although Prasenjit Duara’s study does not explain how they justified its new valorization. In the case of the Daoyuan, its teachings often used the traditionally popular concept of “women’s benevolence” to encourage women to do charity, arguing that benevolence was part of women’s nature and that they should thus be especially good at it. Similarly, in response to the commonly held opinion that many women were “confined, illiterate and not intelligent enough” to take on the important responsibility of promoting the Dao and carrying out charity, the Lotus Sage pointed out that women’s “natural aptitude” for “benevolence” and “compassion” gave them a unique advantage: “In terms of charitable relief, neither men nor women can do without the word ‘benevolence’ (ren). Nevertheless, the word ‘benevolence’ for women just stands for their ‘natural knowledge and natural aptitude’ (liangzhi liangneng). ‘Women’s benevolence’ (funü zhiren) is a phrase that everyone knows about. With this ren, [women] possess the true foundation for applying benevolence and doing charity.” Thus, the Lotus Sage exhorted, instead of sitting at

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home believing themselves to be useless, women should take advantage of the fact that they were especially suited to carry out public charity. “The true meaning of cultivating the Dao” is merely to “uncover and recover (huifu) women’s ‘natural knowledge and aptitude’ from mundane affairs (chensu).”16 The Daoyuan’s encouragement of women participating in public charity and social service stemmed mostly from seeing women’s involvement in charity as an extension and manifestation of their inner benevolence, rather than seeing it as a separate public realm into which women should enter. The outer world was viewed as essentially secondary and supplementary to the inner, at most as an expansion of the inner field, rather than as a parallel sphere of equal importance. This idea of an expanded inner sphere bore a close resemblance to the “social housekeeping” theory promoted by Christian women and the YWCA. Both advocated expanding women’s scope of activism according to women’s “natural” abilities (thus replicating a kind of gender essentialism), rather than their equal rights. Nevertheless, as we will see, it did facilitate women to think and act beyond the confines of their domestic worlds. In addition to the age-old concept of “women’s benevolence,” the Lotus Sage used the theory of Buddhist rebirth (lunhui) to persuade women to care less about money and to donate generously to charity. She explained that money was often the source of evil, and that donating money could help reduce old sins and grudges. Moreover, if a woman donated, she might be able to transform from a female to a male during her next life—a good outcome as it involved transforming from yin to yang. Turning from a man into a woman was a bad outcome, representing heavenly retribution (yinguo) for misdeeds. There were reasons why women were female during their current lives, and if they did not start self-cultivation (xiuxing) and conducting widespread charity, they might have the bad fortune to become female again in their next lives.17 In this area, Daoyuan teaching did not regard the two sexes as equal in status. Apart from avoiding the debacle of being reborn as the inferior sex again in the next life, another attractive reward offered benevolent women was the promise that religious merit could be transferred to their relatives and ancestors. During the 1935 conference, the Lotus

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Sage appealed to women members, asking them to donate or help raise funds to renovate the building of the mother branch (mushe) in Jinan. The incentives were listed in detail: those who raised 500 yuan would earn their ancestral spirits a promotion one level higher than their previous merit rank (guowei); those who donated 1,000 yuan, two levels; for over 2,000 yuan, the ancestral spirits (xianling) of both a woman’s natal family (niangmen) and her marital family (benmen) could be raised (chaosheng) three levels higher. Once the money was received, donors would write down the names of several generations of ancestors (and ranks if they had any), send the names in, and await decisions on their new ranks, which would then be inscribed on new tablets for enshrining at the Room of Bodhisattva (Pusa shi) at the Daoyuan. This resembles an old feature of Chinese Buddhism—the idea that a person can be filial as a Buddhist by transferring merit to his or her ancestors— that remained important to making Buddhism appealing in a Chinese context. The Lotus Sage repeatedly emphasized that money could be a source of evil, but that, used for good, it could benefit women’s selfcultivation and foster later blessings. If it were not used properly, it would create evil, causing people to fall into a bad rebirth.18 The organization designed a thoroughgoing reward system of Buddhist hierarchical ranks in the afterlife for ancestral spirits to attain salvation, thereby providing a means to publicly quantify members’ good works. The ranks ranged from lower levels such as Upāsaka (masculine) or Upāsikā (feminine) (youpoyisai in Chinese)19 to higher levels such as Arhat Buddha (Aluohan pusa).20 It was believed that the higher the rank ancestral spirits achieved, the greater the power they could wield to protect their descendants. This reward system of religious merit was used not only for fundraising, but also for other kinds of encouragement. For instance, to encourage more women to attend and participate in the 1935 national conference, the Lotus Sage encouraged their male relatives to accompany the women traveling to Jinan. The men and women who attended the conference were promised that their ancestral spirits would be rewarded with a higher rank on both sides of their families. The Buddhist merit reward system designed by the Daoyuan can help us understand why the relief work carried out by the YWCA foreign secretaries was so frequently interpreted by their Chinese

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recipients as an effort to acquire religious merit for themselves, rather than to demonstrate God’s universal love as the secretaries tried repeatedly to explain. In addition, the meticulously quantified reward system could redirect women’s “superstitious” tendencies to productively engaging in charitable outreach, serving as a source where they could derive agency from, and further demonstrating the significance of charity as a primary channel for women to display devotion.

OTHER CHARITABLE ACTIVITIES In addition to its focus on disaster relief, the WRSS chose to make widows and pregnant women a central concern. The Qingdao branch set up the Affiliated Institute for Poor Widows and Pregnant Women (Chipin lichan jiujisuo) within the WRSS. All institute staff were also members of the Qingdao WRRS, including one director, four to six members of the board of directors, one accountant, and several “investigators” (diaochayuan) in charge of identifying women in need. All were volunteer positions without salaries. The institute’s founding proclamation states: The saddest and most painful thing in life is to be left alone. Among those who are left alone, widows’ and pregnant women’s lives are the hardest. Giving birth is a very dangerous thing. . . . On the other hand, being a widow is especially sad . . . for she has nobody to rely on. . . . Therefore, taking care of widows and pregnant women are the most urgent charities, and are particularly closely associated with our women compatriots in the women’s world (nüjie tongbao). Therefore, we launched the Affiliated Institute for Poor Widow and Pregnant Women, seeking for donations of clothes, medicine, money, and rice for their relief, so as to maintain social mores (fenghua).21

We know that widows had long been a favorite object of Confucian charity during the imperial period. By discouraging widows from remarrying, the government intended to promote the virtue of loyalty. The Daoyuan’s proclamation rhetoric, however, seems to have differed from previous rationales of the imperial period. Rather than widows

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and pregnant women being depicted as morally threatened, they were now mostly seen as lacking social, emotional, and economic support— having been left alone and thus living in poverty. The WRSS remained focused on widows, but its major concern shifted from female chastity to poverty relief. We can see this shift from the selection criteria for aid and relief, which stress women’s economic difficulties rather than the necessity of their being morally chaste, as had previous versions. The WRSS focused now on extremely poor widows who had decided to never remarry and thus would not acquire new husbands’ material support (the only area potentially related to chastity), poor pregnant women who were giving birth soon, poor women who had given birth within the previous month, sick widows, and women facing other difficulties.22 From the institute’s founding in April 1930 to October 1932, it distributed flour every month on the first and fifteenth days to these women. Each person was given twenty jin; thirty bags of flour were distributed in monthly increments. Every year the budget was 1,000 yuan,23 which indicates a small scale of relief. In addition, the institute appears not to have maintained a special place for widows to stay, so the system of confinement to ensure chastity was not implemented, and needy women only regularly received relief directly to their homes. The decreased attention to widows’ chastity had to do with changes in the new era. During the Nanjing decade (1928–1938), social reformers often criticized imperial-period women’s shelters, such as Halls for Chaste Widows, as “feudal dregs” (fengjian zaopo). Even the government believed that the way these institutions encouraged women to be faithful to their dead husbands “does not match the new thoughts of the age” (yu shidai sixiang buhe) and should be banned.24 But in an era filled with wars and natural disasters, more women were left widowed and poor, struggling to support their parents-in-law, and to raise their young children. Since the Nationalist government no longer singled out chaste widows to receive awards for their virtue, those who did not have other sources of support (from their lineages, for instance) could be living difficult lives. The WRSS realized that donations alone could not fundamentally address the issue of poverty. Women needed to learn the skills to make a living on their own. A representative from Rugao ( Jiangsu Province)

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to the conference in 1935 proposed establishing a professional school for unemployed women, teaching basic characters and sewing. WMS members could serve as teachers, and classes could therefore be offered at no cost. The proposal passed unanimously, although we do not know if it was later implemented.25 Establishing elementary schools for girls was another type of philanthropy for the WRSS. The Jinan WRSS established an elementary girls’ school inside the location of its WMS in February 1927. In the beginning it had only one class of 40 students at the beginner’s level. By 1930 there were five classes with a total of 144 students. In 1932 it merged with another elementary school established by the Jinan Daoyuan, but boys and girls remained in separate classes. Over the years, its student numbers fluctuated because of wars and other disasters. By 1939 it had 275 boys and 101 girls.26 It is possible that the WRSS recruited its student membership through these elementary schools, much like the YWCA. WRSS general regulations stipulated that the membership include students. However, RSS schools probably did not offer exclusive religious education, as the Nationalist government opposed requiring religious courses. According to some former students’ recollections, the schools performed certain rituals to impart religious consciousness, such as the ritual of worshipping Laozu every Monday morning. 27 Similarly, in his Xiangshan Children’s Home (later affiliated with the RSS), Xiong Xiling (whose religious name was Miaotong, ingenious and open), established a Three Sages Hall (Sansheng tang), giving equal reverence to Confucius, Buddha, and Jesus Christ. Overall the percentage of female student members in the WRSS must have been low, judging by the age statistics of the Qingdao and Jinan WRSS membership discussed in chapter 5. There is also no evidence to suggest that the organization had any regular recruiting activities within local government schools, as did the YWCA.28

SAVING “SUPERSTITIOUS FEES” FOR CHARITY In 1932, after a disastrous flood hit the southern provinces, the RSS called on members to raise funds for relief. Qingdao WRSS members

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decided that they could not just “watch indifferently” (moran shizhi) but instead “should hurry to catch up and not fall behind.” They set up a Women’s Frugality Relief Committee ( Jiejian chouzhenhui), proposing that every member save money by reducing the amount spent on entertaining guests, clothes, food and so on. After three months they would send their collected savings to afflicted areas through the Daoyuan. The proclamation claimed that such frugal and charitable activity was virtuous, “of greatest merit” (gongde), and beneficial to self-cultivation.29 The existence of the Women’s Frugality Relief Committee further confirmed an important tendency examined in chapter 1. Following the late Qing, charity gradually became one of the few legitimate ways for religious women to spend money to express their beliefs, particularly in the eyes of progressive intellectuals. This discourse of cutting religious spending and channeling the money to charity, especially to disaster relief, continued into the Republican era, when writers often singled out elderly women as targets and used the new discourse of “antisuperstition” (instead of merely targeting “waste”) to justify their views. The author of a Shenbao article written in October 1920—“Saving Superstitious Fees to Help With Disaster Relief”—mentioned the fact that some northern provinces were suffering from natural disasters and that compatriots could not just idly watch refugees dying. The author proposed cutting “superstitious fees,” particularly from the following four categories: fees for hiring Buddhist and Daoist monks for death rituals (sengdao fei); fees for joss paper (mingqian fei); fees for flattering the Buddha (ningfo fei); and fees for religious processions (saihui fei). Among the four, he believed that fees for flattering the Buddha were especially incurred by the extravagant spending of “superstitious women” nationwide and “elderly Buddhist women” (nianlao fopo) in particular. He described these women as always idle, flocking to temples and monasteries, praying to deities and reciting Buddhist sutra, spending large amounts of money on burning incense and buying candles every year. It would be better, he argued, if they applied this money to disaster relief and to benefit starving refugees. He cited the ancient saying: “burning incense at remote places cannot compete with doing good nearby” (yuanchu shaoxiang buru jinchu zuofu). Much like the late

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Qing author mentioned in chapter 1 who encouraged women to donate to charity so as to channel their religious zeal away from “wasteful” activities, this author appealed to women by promoting the belief that charity brought the highest reward of religious merit. This time it was arrayed against the more powerful and modern framework of “superstition.” 30 Indeed, elderly women tended to be fervent religious believers. They constituted the majority of members in the Daoyuan women’s wing, particularly in Shandong. Scholars have noted elsewhere the real power that some of these religious women amassed. During the 1931 antisuperstition campaign in Gaoyou, Jiangsu Province, for instance, it was a group of local “temple attendant grandmas” (daopo nainai), rather than angry gentry or monks, who led several hundred people in protests against the local party officials who had ordered the destruction of the local City God Temple. In just over ten days, according to historian Rebecca Nedostup, they “mobilized contributions from across the city and four neighboring villages to restore the temple to its original purpose.” Over the subsequent year, “some ten thousand people contributed funds to refurbish the site.” Even then provincial governor Chen Guofu “marveled at the organizational ability and social tactics of these ‘old grandmas,’ ” all of them more than fifty years of age.31 Apart from the gendered antisuperstition discourse, calls to save for disaster relief and the establishment of a Women’s Frugality Relief Committee by the WRSS can also be understood as part of a broader nationwide “frugality movement” ( jieyue yundong) targeting the extravagance of certain traditional, popularly practiced customs. “Frugality Society” (Congjianhui) became the organizational manifestation of this spirit in the early Republican period, popular among both women’s and men’s circles nationwide. We can see the spirit of this trend in another Shenbao article from around December 1921 that proposed frugality on a broader scale for the purpose of disaster relief. Unable to fall asleep at night owing to the flood devastating the South, the author proposed three ways to reduce spending in order to aid disaster relief: cutting banquet costs for weddings and funerals, cutting costs on superstitions, and cutting costs for worshipping ancestors.32 By his definition, “superstitious” activities typically included incense burning, Buddha

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worship, and liturgical services but not ancestor worship, which was singled out in a different category. In particular, he noted that donating “superstitious fees” to charity could help donors acquire “endless merit” (gongde wuliang). Since the late Qing, ordinary people had responded to similar calls, often with the expectation of acquiring merit from making donations, as suggested by the large number of donation posts in Shenbao.33 Social notables were not exceptions, either. On his sixtieth birthday (around 1913), the well-known philanthropist, entrepreneur, and politician Zhang Jian (1853–1926) decided to save expenses on banquets and donate the excess money, along with the gifts he received from relatives and friends, toward building the first eldercare home in his hometown of Nantong, Jiangsu Province.34 It is unclear whether accumulating religious merit was one of his motivations, though it seems highly likely. Zhang’s mother was a Buddhist opposed to extravagant spending on funerals, and Zhang himself frequently associated with Buddhist masters, especially in his later life. By the late 1920s and 1930s, the Nationalist government had taken charge of this frugality movement and expanded it to a national scale. It began by targeting the wastefulness of the Ghost Festival (traditionally held on the fifteenth night of the seventh month), particularly its major activities such as ritualistic food offerings, burning incense and joss paper. In the rhetoric of government officials, the call for frugality was often phrased in economic language condemning the drain on the national economy and expressing concerns over China’s struggles with poverty, rather than emphasizing the urgent need for disaster relief.35 Although the Daoyuan would be accused of and classified as a “superstitious” organization by nationalist regimes and progressive intellectuals throughout the twentieth century, its leaders shared with intellectuals like Liang Qichao the idea that religion could be stripped of harmful superstition. In her study of the “invention” of religion in modern China, Rebecca Nedostup argues that this common understanding “formed the key to the cultural reform” of the twentieth century.36 What Daoyuan leaders and progressive intellectuals disagreed about was whether certain specific rituals, such as spirit writing, should be classified as “religious” or “superstitious.” Other

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than that, Daoyuan leaders seem generally to have internalized the antisuperstition discourse. Like many other organizations seeking to gain legitimacy as religious groups in the Republican era, the Daoyuan completely omitted texts about liturgical services that had long been regarded as vital religious services but were now labeled as “superstition.” As for the controversial practice of spirit writing, the Daoyuan’s repeated insistence on its “scientific” dimension suggests an uneasy attempt to distance it from superstition. We can also see how it carefully distinguished religion from superstition in the spirit-writing text quoted below, attributed to the Songdynasty Buddhist monk Jigong and published in 1922 in the Daode zazhi (Morality magazine): [ Jigong]: Sit down and listen. What you refer to as superstition is not those beliefs and practices to which we devote ourselves. Those people whom our elders [fuzi] refer to as superstitious include both ignorant men and women [yufuyufu] who engage in idolatry [bai ouxiang], as well as those who claim to believe in gods and buddhas but fail to live by their teachings. Today, we adhere to the true principle [zhenli] of the sages, immortals, and buddhas. We incorporate the Five Teachings as one great way [dadao], practicing internal and external cultivation, saving ourselves while also providing salvation for others. As such, we hardly compare to those who blindly engage in various practices. What do you have to say to that?37

In addition to worshipping idols, women members were especially instructed to refrain from practicing other superstitious activities. In addition to calling on women to be frugal in order to save money for disaster relief, which was of the “greatest merit,” one deity pointed out that harmonizing domestic relationships could be more beneficial to self-cultivation than superstitious activities such as burning incense in temples, taking elixir, and practicing qi.38 In another spirit-writing text, the Lotus Sage warned female members against blindly following the “popular practices” (su) she regarded as “superstitious” (mixin) without inquiring into their “origins” (laiyuan). Since these practices are groundless (wuben), she explained, they represented a kind of “blind

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cultivation” (mangxiu xialian) that contributed nothing to their world or family and could not even be relied on to protect them from life’s catastrophes (zaihai).39 These instructions resonated with contemporary, common understandings of what constituted superstitious activities, as well as with the belief that charity incurred the greatest religious merit. According to this teaching, rather than visit temples to pray for sons or blessings for their families, as did many women during the imperial period, Daoyuan women were expected to achieve these goals through charitable activities and self-cultivation. The Daoyuan leadership had grasped exactly the newly imported category of mixin (superstition) that the Nationalist government used to justify their ban. The frequent use of this pejorative neologism in their teachings served a purpose: by labeling and discrediting spiritual practices they deemed undesirable, irrational, and suspicious, they simultaneously claimed legitimacy for their own organization. * * * An examination of the Cong family of Qingdao shows us the practical implications of the Daoyuan method of family-unit participation. Not only did women not need to justify their engagement or ask for permission to participate, but the Daoyuan in turn did not need to expend extra efforts like those expended by the YWCA to ensure that interested women understood its nature and saw its connection to themselves. The family participation mode allowed women to see their public religious and charitable activities as an extension of their domestic duties, since even when they prayed, meditated, and donated, the religious merit they acquired was for the entire family—not only their marital but even their natal families. Unlike the YWCA, whose foreign secretaries had to turn their local offices into something like a home in order to appeal to local women, the Daoyuan directly carried the home dimension into everything it did. This made it easier for women to become regularly involved in the organization. And yet the Daoyuan also allowed for less individual freedom and initiative since its female members were often under the supervision and influence of their male relatives.

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Historian Thomas Dubois has pointed out that the reorientation of redemptive societies around social charity and away from previous “sideline” positions was due to the rapid growth of the “charitable sphere” in Republican China, which outpaced even that of religion and changed the direction that new religions would take.40 I would add that this reorientation toward charity also had much to do with these religious groups’ pursuit of alternative ways to accumulate religious merit and practice self-cultivation without conspicuously engaging in what were officially labeled as “superstitious” activities. As the Nationalist government grew increasingly suspicious of spiritual activities, charity became one of the few sanctioned fields for redemptive societies to engage in, a field that had also been long regarded as most conducive to religious merit accumulation.41 Consequently, what we find in Daoyuan religious texts is an omission of superstitious-looking liturgical services and frequent warnings, especially to women, against temple visiting and incense burning, along with a meticulous quantification of the hierarchical ranks of religious merit associated with charity, suggesting a significant shift in means to achieve the same end: spiritual salvation. What did this reorientation mean for female members of the Daoyuan? It probably had more direct impact on the lives of women members than of men, since most of the “superstitious” activities the Daoyuan criticized were precisely those that had provided women with opportunities to go out, such as visiting temples, burning incense, and worshipping idols. Chinese historian Zhao Shiyu has demonstrated that during Ming and Qing times, women frequently used the pretext of participating in just these kinds of religious activities to satisfy their desire to go out for entertainment. The fact that government officials issued so many orders banning these activities but could not stop them is our best evidence of their popularity and importance. Zhao also notes that a total ban on these activities never worked because women took upon themselves an important part of the religious work for the whole family, including expiating the sins of their husbands and other male kin.42 During the Republican period, Daoyuan women continued their religious work for the family. However, with many superstitious activities under increasing scrutiny, charity became one of the few legitimate channels left for them to accumulate religious merit and engage

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with the outside world, either in their weekly visits to the Daoyuan branches, in gathering together for administrative meetings, discussing relief for disasters, or helping poor and unfortunate widows in local communities. In the relatively limited world of the Daoyuan women, charity had become a major mechanism for them to express their devotion.

EPILOGUE

I

f this book interests scholars enough for them to further pursue the charitable and philanthropic activities of a variety of Chinese women (including but not limited to female students, working-class women, and even prostitutes), I hope my analysis of the sources has shown both the challenges and opportunities they pose. Historical figures who have been excavated from leftist official historical narratives to become “local notables” are easier to trace, to be sure, but their excavation served certain purposes that should make historians wary. Take the two prominent women philanthropists discussed in this book, Zhu Qihui and Ma Qingxia. Three years after my initial research trip to China (in 2011), I learned that the Henan Traditional Opera Troupe, under the order of provincial propaganda officials, had created a new Henan-style opera (yuju) based on Qingxia’s life, praising her as a “Xinhai revolutionary.” Henan officials intended to use Qingxia to help shake off the province’s poor and backward stereotype, to replace it with a positive image of Henanese as “revolutionary,” and to attract economic investment.1 Owing to the broad impact of this opera, Qingxia is now much better known (but mostly for her revolutionary contributions) in China than when I first investigated her in 2011. Her residential place in Kaifeng has been set up as a public museum for tourism. Meanwhile, in Xiong Xiling’s hometown in Fenghuang County, Hunan Province—a prefecture-level city with large Miao and Tujia ethnic populations—the name Zhu Qihui is now often mentioned as part of a popular story of traditional

Epilogue  203

scholar-beauty romance centered on Xiong to attract tourists to their remote but “exotic” county. (Xiong’s final marriage, to Mao Yanwen, a modern-educated woman who was twenty-eight years his junior, was a sensational piece of news nationwide in 1935.) The former residence of the Xiong family, with its unique traditional Miao style of architecture (Xiong’s mother was of Miao ethnicity), has already become a focal point of tourism.2 The point of emphasis in Zhu Qihui’s story, packaged for tourists to consume, rather than anything she accomplished in public philanthropy, is how impressed she was by Xiong’s talent in poetry, prompting even her selection of him to be her husband. In the cases of both Zhu Qihui and Ma Qingxia, historical figures’ actions and attitudes were translated and remade for a new era, a process with both good and bad news for historians. In addition, I hope the stories captured in this book will help us to think differently about Chinese women, charity, and history in general. The much-studied “new women” were not the only category of women who were active in the urban public sphere in late Qing and early Republican China. If we focus exclusively on their public experiences, we miss an enormous amount about changes in the lives of a significant number of women in this period. Through the perspective of philanthropy and charity, I have shown the ways in which married home women, too, moved increasingly, by different means, away from strict domestic seclusion and into a range of activities in public. By bringing the stories of a number of long-forgotten women to light, I have highlighted the connections of their public activities to broader developments in modern Chinese history; some of them made significant contributions to contemporary social political movements, educational reforms, and disaster relief activities. They became successful philanthropists or social activists in a changing era without ever entirely repudiating the legacies of their pasts, without becoming professional women or deserting their domestic duties like Henrik Ibsen’s Nora, that unlikely icon of female emancipation. Stories of their gradual repositioning in the public world are too often left out in historical accounts that privilege radical, highly individualistic stories of emancipation. On the other hand, the increased desirability of philanthropy and charity as potential public activities for these women (and the opportunities that were thereby opened to them) is noteworthy,

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especially in the face of a growing critique of women’s “wasteful” and “superstitious” activities. This calls our attention to the significance of charity in Chinese women’s lives and world, which is why I have suggested that philanthropy/charity is a promising entry point for a reexamination of modern Chinese women’s history and deserves more scholarly attention as a critical field of inquiry. This study has stressed the diversity of Chinese women in public from the 1870s to the 1930s. Although many of those examined in the book are typically lumped together and loosely referred to as taitai, there were in fact distinctive groups among them, and the venues and ranges of their charitable activities differed. The differences among these women resist simplistic historiographical homogenization. Each group navigated between continuity and change in an era at their own pace and on their own path. Their distinctive social backgrounds, personal lives, and worlds shaped their choices of charitable engagements and the ways they contributed to them. Among the three groups of women presented in this book, the elite women discussed in part 1 were mostly scholar-officials’ wives or came from scholar-official family backgrounds and thus were the most resourceful and best educated. Their broad social networks, often by virtue of their husbands’, brothers’, or fathers’ connections, enabled them to organize nationwide and to play leadership roles in various charitable campaigns and initiatives of the late Qing. The wealthiest of them could even afford to use their family fortunes to establish girls’ schools on their own, rather than merely donating to existing educational projects. Compared to the women in the YWCA and the Daoyuan, the elite women from scholar-official families tended to have the strongest nationalist concerns and often appeared in public places, such as markets and teahouses, to raise funds for paying off China’s indemnities. They sometimes used their charitable campaign gatherings as opportunities to express their political opinions and to further participate in national politics by making their voices heard through petitions. As long as they retained a chaste and respectable reputation, their public charitable activities could be justified— praised as a kind of “sacrifice” for the public good. Influenced by the social reformers in their families, many of them, such as Zhu Qihui and Ma Qingxia, were also quite progressive on certain social and political

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issues. They strived to demonstrate that their contributions could equal those made by male citizens. Their rhetoric on gender equality focused more on having the same obligations as male citizens rather than the same rights. Although some of them longed to see their individual identities recognized, their dependent social status and the collaborative nature of the projects they undertook with their husbands have prevented them from receiving proper recognition by some of their contemporaries as well as the public memories of later generations. The women of the YWCA tended to have middle-class origins— though with diverse social backgrounds, depending on their locations— rather than having all descended from scholar-official families. Most of them acted and operated on local levels with regard to charitable and social service projects, since they possessed less of the national organizational power, connections, and other resources enjoyed by elite women from scholar-official families. In addition to shared concerns on education and disaster relief, these women engaged through local branches of the YWCA with progressive social service programs targeting gambling, smoking, foot binding and so on. YWCA reports also provided rare details on the many challenges and obstacles women encountered during their interactions with the public world, details that make the interference they faced from their husbands and other family members more visible to us. They found affinity in the idea of “social housekeeping” promoted by the YWCA, which couched the issue of gender equality in terms of gender difference, though often in a uniquely empowering way. Furthermore, many ordinary home women engaged with the YWCA were far less in tune with contemporary social and political issues than were the elite women discussed in part 1; they needed and received training from a variety of well-organized YWCA programs intended to improve their leadership abilities and other public skills that adult women could not easily learn from enrolling in comparable contemporary Chinese educational institutions. However, their local connections, networks, and familiarity with local social customs made them instrumental and effective agents in the indigenization of this foreign social service organization in China. Furthermore, women who regularly interacted with the YWCA could gain more cosmopolitan and diverse public experiences than could the Daoyuan women, since they had frequent opportunity to work with foreign and professional

206 Epilogue

women, which could broaden their horizons and facilitate their conceptualization of new models of womanhood. Compared to women in the YWCA, women in the Daoyuan were more often treated as adjuncts of male family members than as individual members in their own right. The majority of these women did not come from scholar-official families and were significantly less educated. Their world and social circles were considerably narrower than the worlds inhabited by the other two groups of women. Their religious devotion tended to be stronger, and they mostly followed orders and instructions issued by male members of the organization (including through spirit-writing texts) rather than taking their own charitable initiatives. The dependency of the women’s branches further restrained them from directly engaging with the public world. Consequently, the venue and range of their public activities were not as broad as those of the YWCA women. Their charitable activities, such as disaster relief and educational projects, were conducted mostly in local Daoyuan branches or at their homes. They were also far less nationalist and political than the elite women discussed in part 1. Neither were they very concerned about the kinds of social issues that the YWCA women were called on to tackle. They were more exposed to and indoctrinated with conservative rather than progressive ideas through the Daoyuan, whose religious teachings explicitly deemed women the inferior sex and implicitly condoned the institution of concubinage. Rather than directly address the issue of gender equality, the Daoyuan’s mobilization of women relied on redefining the principles of gender difference within a Confucian framework. This reinterpretation of gender difference encouraged women to be more active in charity while simultaneously confining their focus to domestic matters, unlike the YWCA’s largely empowering idea of “social housekeeping.” Overlaps and similarities also existed among the three groups presented as case studies in this book. All three groups of women participated in educational charity and disaster relief, which suggests that these two arenas were the most widely accepted and least contentious social charities for women at the time. None of them interpreted their active engagement with the public sphere as a radical and drastic reconfiguration of conventional gender roles. Some even viewed the public sphere as not so different from the domestic sphere, except for

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its size. Moreover, although all three groups of women were aware of the idea of gender equality circulating at the time, none of them immediately and publicly demanded the full package of it. Instead, their charitable activism was largely justified by empowering reinterpretations of gender difference and patriotism. Finally, there were some overlaps in terms of the social backgrounds of groups one and two. For example, Mme. Zuo and Mme. Nie of the YWCA were also elite women from scholar-official families. On the other hand, all the cases in this book demonstrate that the agency these women exercised through public charitable activities was far from what we would call “individualistic.” In this sense, this study also raises two other interpretive points. First, if we recognize the ways in which the women of this book’s focus had multiple (not merely individual) identities and were integrated into spousal or family charitable projects, then we must pose important interpretive challenges to the discipline of “women’s history.” We cannot completely separate women from the men in their lives in order to examine and fully understand their agency and accomplishments. This further suggests the need for historical narratives that see women clearly within their broader webs rather than merely—and therefore partially—analyzing them as independent individuals. Writing histories of these women requires that we analyze their relationships with the influences felt by and resources received from the key men in their lives and acknowledge that it is sometimes impossible to pinpoint women’s “individual” or “authentic” identities. Second, although few sources elaborate on how these charitable women met, sustained their relationships, and communicated with one another, we should not neglect the importance of women’s networks of support and activism. By shifting our focus from individuals to collectives, we should acknowledge not only men’s roles in the important collectives but women’s as well. The stories in the book have underlined the critical role of collaboration among women. For example, one major reason women like Mme. Zuo and Mme. Nie were so instrumental to local YWCA branches’ work was that they could quickly and directly introduce new YWCA foreign secretaries into existing local women’s social networks through their personal connections. Soon these foreign secretaries also learned to indigenize their network-building

208 Epilogue

efforts through cultivating long-lasting personal friendships with local women. The newly indigenized networking strategies included accepting local women’s invitations to attend their celebrations of birthdays, weddings, and holidays, hosting banquets at secretaries’ own residences rather than the YWCA office, taking cooking lessons together, and so on. These strategies often proved to be much more effective in building their local connections than the far less personal Western methods of organizing committee meetings, open houses, and direct membership calls that the foreign secretaries initially tried. It is difficult to imagine how the YWCA could have survived and carried out its work in local societies without networking with local women in personal ways. However, divisions or hierarchies also existed among women that sometimes prevented them from uniting together to act in the public world. These could be class divisions, as we have seen from the ways that the wife/concubine relationship affected both the YWCA and the Daoyuan. The YWCA viewed itself as progressive but did little to address the issues of class hierarchies between women. It merely advocated the abolition of the institution of concubinage and tried to exclude concubines from its membership, limiting the opportunities for their public engagement and consequentially (if unintentionally) denying proper recognition of their charitable contributions. Unlike the YWCA, the conservative nature of the Daoyuan meant that it accepted both concubines and wives as members, but that it also allowed the domestic hierarchy between them to be brought into its administrative ranks, further perpetuating divisions among women working together for social charities. Furthermore, the Daoyuan’s redefined gender teachings offered no new principles or methods to effectively address domestic class conflicts among women, other than repeatedly emphasizing the importance of maintaining domestic harmony. Meanwhile, we have also seen the moral challenges of public life that faced many women, particularly those from respectable families, and the distance consequently created among women. Their chaste reputations remained the key to making their public charitable activities acceptable and praiseworthy. Maintaining that respectability sometimes prevented them from uniting together: some women refused to work with concubines, to avoid tarnishing their reputations; others quickly drew clear boundaries from certain fellow members of the

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same organization when the chastity of those women became questionable, as we saw in chapter 1 through the love letter incident that happened to the Du family of the Chinese Women’s Association. In addition to the wife/concubine class hierarchies, we also see that young and older women enjoyed different degrees of freedom in the public sphere. Younger women often needed family elders’ approval to go out and tended to be sexually more vulnerable in public, whereas older mothers-in-law had more leisure and authority to act on their own and participate in the YWCA, leaving their young daughters-inlaw at home attending to chores. Therefore age and life-stage issues represented further divisions that cannot be neglected in a discussion of women’s public activities. The cases presented in this book call on historians to give further analytic attention to the intersections of class, age, marital status, and gender, and how these elements combined influenced individual women’s sense of identity and agency in public and caused divisions and hierarchies, in addition to unity, within women’s charitable/philanthropic groups.

NOTES

INTRODUCTION 1. Paul Bailey, “ ‘Women Behaving Badly’: Crime, Transgressive Behaviour and Gender in Early Twentieth Century China,” Nan Nü: Men, Women and Gender in China 8, no. 1 (2006): 156. 2. Zhan Xiaobai, “Cong yulun dao xingdong: qingmo Beijing nübao jiqi shehui zitai,” Shilin 107, no. 4 (2008): 46. 3. Ibid. 4. Vincent Goossaert, “Irrepressible Female Piety: Late Imperial Bans on Women Visiting Temples,” Nan Nü: Men, Women and Gender in China 10, no. 2 (2008): 219–20. 5. Wang Di, Street Culture in Chengdu: Public Space, Urban Commoners, and Local Politics, 1870–1930 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2003), 180–81. 6. Ibid., 184. 7. Articles and books on different types of “new women,” to name a few, include Joan Judge, “Between Nei and Wai: Chinese Women Students in Japan in the Early Twentieth Century,” in Gender in Motion: Divisions of Labor and Cultural Change in Late Imperial and Modern China, ed. Bryna Goodman and Wendy Larson (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 121–43; Ye Weili, Seeking Modernity in China’s Name: Chinese Students in the United States, 1900–1927 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001); Paul Bailey, Gender and Education in China: Gender Discourses and Women’s Schooling in the Early Twentieth Century (London: Routledge, 2007); Wang Zheng, Women in the Chinese Enlightenment: Oral and Textual Histories (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999); Lien Ling-ling, “Searching for the ‘New Womanhood’: Career Women in Shanghai, 1912–1945” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Irvine, 2001); Louise Edwards, Gender, Politics, and Democracy: Women’s Suffrage in China

212 Introduction

8. 9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008); Christina Gilmartin, Engendering the Chinese Revolution: Radical Women, Communist Politics, and Mass Movements in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Yan Haiping, Chinese Women Writers and the Feminist Imagination, 1905–1948 (New York: Routledge, 2008); Ma Yuxin, Women Journalists and Feminism in China, 1898–1937 (Amherst, N.Y.: Cambria Press, 2010); and Hu Ying, “Naming the First New Woman: The Case of Kang Aide,” Nan Nü: Men, Women, and Gender in China 3, no. 2 (2001): 196–231. Bryna Goodman, “The Vocational Woman and the Elusiveness of ‘Personhood,’” in Goodman and Larson, Gender in Motion, 265–86. Bailey, “ ‘Women Behaving Badly,’ ” 194. On prostitution, see Gail Hershatter, Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth-Century Shanghai (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); and Christian Henriot, Prostitution and Sexuality in Shanghai: A Social History, 1849–1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). On female actresses, see Weikun Cheng, “The Challenge of the Actresses: Female Performers and Cultural Alternatives in Early Twentieth Century Beijing and Tianjin,” Modern China 22, no. 2 (1996): 197–233; and Luo Suwen, “Gender on the Stage: Actresses in an Actor’s World,” in Goodman and Larson, Gender in Motion, 75–95. On working women in factories, see Emily Honig, Sisters and Strangers: Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills 1919–1949 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1986); Gail Hershatter, Workers of Tianjin, 1900–1949 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1993); Susan Mann, “Women’s Work in the Ningbo Area 1900–1936,” in Chinese History in Economic Perspective, ed. Thomas Rawski and Lillian Li (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 243–70; and Lisa Rofel, Other Modernities: Gendered Yearnings in China After Socialism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009). Gail Hershatter, Women in China’s Long Twentieth Century (Berkeley: Global, Area, and International Archive, University of California Press, 2007), 57. For more on rural women, see Gail Hershatter, “Local Meanings of Gender and Work in Rural Shaanxi in the 1950s,” in Re-Drawing Boundaries: Work, Households, and Gender in China, ed. Barbara Entwisle and Gail Henderson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 79–96; Gail Hershatter, The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China’s Collective Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013); and Kenneth Pomeranz, “Women’s Work and the Economics of Respectability,” in Goodman and Larson, Gender in Motion, 239–63. On women (not just home women) as consumers, see Karl Gerth, China Made: Consumer Culture and the Creation of the Nation (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Asia Center, 2004), chap. 7. On the growing women’s presence in teahouses and other places of leisure, see Wang Di, Street Culture in Chengdu, 180–81. Fang Qin also examines women’s mobility in Tianjin in terms of public transportation and leisure activities, in “Beauty and a Broken City:

Introduction  213

14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21.

22.

Women and Their Publicity in Tianjin, 1898–1911” (Ph.D. diss., University of Minnesota, 2011), chap. 3. On women traveling for family duties, see Susan Mann, “The Virtue of Travel for Women in the Late Empire,” in Goodman and Larson, Gender in Motion, 55–74. Myron Cohen, “Cultural and Political Inventions in Modern China: The Case of the Chinese ‘Peasant,’ ” Daedalus 122, no. 2 (1993): 151–70. Hu Ying, Tales of Translation: Composing the New Woman in China, 1899–1918 (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 2000), 6. Nanxiu Qian’s latest research suggests that in contrast to male reformers like Liang Qichao, female reformers in the 1890s, such as Xue Shaohui, held a different view on Chinese women’s classical education and believed that educated women could play a much expanded role by revitalizing the xianyuan (worthy ladies) tradition. See Nanxiu Qian, Politics, Poetics, and Gender in Late Qing China: Xue Shaohui (1866– 1911) and the Era of Reform (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2015). Liang Qichao, Yinbingshi heji-wenji, vol. 1 (Shanghai: Zhonghua shuju, 1936), 37–44. Liang Qichao, “Xinmin shuo si (di shisi jie): Lun shengli fenli,” Xinmin congbao (1902): 14–15. Susan Mann, Precious Records: Women in China’s Long Eighteenth Century (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997). Mary Backus Rankin, “State and Society in Early Republican Politics, 1912– 18,” in Reappraising Republican China, ed. Frederic Wakeman and Richard L. Edmonds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 8. For a summary of these debates, see Frederic Wakeman, “The Civil Society and Public Sphere Debate: Western Reflections on Chinese Political Culture,” Modern China 19, no. 2 (1993): 108–38. See, for example, Susan Mann, “Grooming a Daughter for Marriage: Brides and Wives in the Mid-Ch’ing Period,” in Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society, ed. Rubie S. Watson and Patricia Ebrey (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 204–30; Mann, Precious Records; Dorothy Ko, “The Complicity of Women in the Qing Good Woman Cult,” in Family Process and Political Process in Modern Chinese History, compiled by Institute of Modern History (Taibei: Academica Sinica, 1992), 451–88; Dorothy Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994); Charlotte Furth, “The Patriarch’s Legacy: Household Instructions and the Transmission of Orthodox Values,” in Orthodoxy in Late Imperial China, ed. Liu Kwang-Ching (Berkeley: University of California Press 1990); and Francesca Bray, Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China (New York: ACLS History E-Book Project, 2005). The text in Daxue is as follows: The ancients who wished to illustrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their

214 Introduction states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. . . . Their persons being cultivated, their families were regulated. Their families being regulated, their states were rightly governed. Their states being rightly governed, the whole kindom was made tranquil and happy. (Translated by James Legge, in The Chinese Classics, vol. 1 [Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1960], 357.)

23. Gail Hershatter, “Making the Visible Invisible: The Fate of ‘the Private’ in Revolutionary China,” in Going Public: Feminism and the Shifting Boundaries of the Private Sphere, ed. Joan Scott and Debra Keates (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 310. 24. Qiu Jin is the most studied; see the best-known English-language literature by Mary Backus Rankin, “The Emergence of Women at the End of the Ch’ing: The Case of Ch’iu Chin,” in Women in Chinese Society, ed. Margery Wolf and Roxane Witke (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1975), 39–66. On Lü Bicheng, see Grace S. Fong, “Alternative Modernities, or a Classical Woman of Modern China: The Challenging Trajectory of Lü Bicheng’s (1883–1943) Life and Song Lyrics,” in Beyond Tradition & Modernity: Gender, Genre, and Cosmopolitanism in Late Qing China, ed. Grace Fong, Nanxiu Qian, and Harriet Thelma Zurndorfer (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 12–60. Fang Qin also discusses the public activities of Lü Bicheng and her two sisters in “Beauty and a Broken City,” chap. 3. Finally, about the suffragist Tang Qunying, see Edwards, Gender, Politics, and Democracy; and David Strand, An Unfinished Republic: Leading by Word and Deed in Modern China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). 25. On the term nüjie, see Qin Fang, “Xincihui, xinshijie: Qingmo minchu ‘nüjie’ yici tanxi,” Qingshi yanjiu 4 (2014): 89–99. 26. Gail Hershatter, “Getting a Life: The Production of 1950s Women Labor Models in Rural Shaanxi,” in Beyond Exemplar Tales: Women’s Biography in Chinese History, ed. Hu Ying and Joan Judge (Berkeley: Global, Area, and International Archive, University of California Press, 2011), 50. Christina Gilmartin has shown that female Communist Party members commonly held their positions owing to their love/family connections to men in the party. See Gilmartin, Engendering the Chinese Revolution. 27. Cheng Yu, Qing zhi minguo xuqie xisu zhi bianqian (Shanghai: Shanghai shiji chuban gufen youxian gongsi, 2006), 321–22, 398, 319. 28. Xia Shi, “Just Like a Wife?: Concubines on Public Stage in Late Qing and Early Republican China” (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies, Oxford, Miss., January 13–15, 2017). 29. From April to July 1930, according to historian Margaret Kuo, the Nationalists’ reform effort sparked a “deliberate,” “thoughtful,” and quite “radical” (including the option of eliminating surnames altogether) debate among lawmakers, legal experts, intellectuals, feminists, newspaper editorial

Introduction  215

30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38.

39.

writers, and others. The public expressed a wide range of opinions and explored a variety of unconventional alternatives to the surname question. Although the outcome of surname legislation affirmed customary surname practices (i.e., a married woman should prefix her husband’s family name to her own family name) and thus was not strictly gender equal, it had progressive overtones allowing flexibility (married couples who did not wish to follow this rule were given the freedom to do as they wished). Nevertheless, Kuo also notes that many contemporary women’s rights advocates were dissatisfied with the resulting surname law and spent the rest of the 1930s debating it and calling for revision, arguing that “taking a husband’s surname is women’s galling shame and humiliation.” See Margaret Kuo, “The Legislative Process in Republican China: The 1930 Nationalist Family Law and the Controversy Over Surnames for Married Women,” Twentieth-Century China 36, no. 1 (2011): 65, 61. Ibid., 58. Wang, Women in the Chinese Enlightenment, 20. Goodman, “The Vocational Woman,” 265. Tiesheng (pseud.), “Wo de nüzi canzheng guan,” Shangbao, April 7, 1921, translation provided. For example, Elizabeth Littell-Lamb’s dissertation focuses precisely on this group of elite, Western-educated women who were actively engaged with the YWCA in China. See Elizabeth Littell-Lamb, “Going Public: The YWCA, ‘New’ Women, and Social Feminism in Republican China” (Ph.D. diss., Carnegie Mellon University, 2002). Another example is Kate Merkel-Hess’s study of Li Dequan (1896–1972), the wife of warlord Feng Yuxiang. Li was educated in missionary schools and served as secretary of the student division at the Beijing YWCA before her marriage. Merkel-Hess argues that Li’s public philanthropic activities helped soften her husband’s factional, militaristic public image. See Kate Merkel-Hess, “A New Woman and Her Warlord: Li Dequan, Feng Yuxiang, and the Politics of Intimacy in Twentieth-Century China,” Frontiers of History in China 11, no. 3 (2016): 431–57. Lao She, Lao She duanpian xiaoshuo xuan (Beijing: Renmin wenxue chubanshe, 1956), 135–40. Goodman, “The Vocational Woman.” “Luzhi fujia taitai de richang shenghuo,” Shenghuo, bound vol. 1, April 18, 1926. Mahjong derived from several older games and was originally played with pasteboard cards rather than tiles. For more about the history of the game, see Maggie Greene, “The Game People Played: Mahjong in Modern Chinese Society and Culture,” Cross-Currents: East Asian History and Culture Review 17 (2015): 1–25. Hu Shi, “Manyou de ganxiang,” in Hushi wencun disan ji (Taibei Shi: Yuanliu chuban shiye gufen youxian gongsi, 1986), 36–38. Actually, mahjong became

216 Introduction

40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

45. 46. 47. 48.

49. 50.

51. 52.

very popular in the United States in the 1920s. See Mary Greenfield, “ ‘The Game of One Hundred Intelligences’: Mahjong, Materials, and the Marketing of the Asian Exotic in the 1920s,” Pacific Historical Review 79, no. 3 (2010): 329–59. Tiesheng, “Wo de nüzi canzheng guan.” Jia Qinhan, “Wanwu sangzhi?—majiang yu jindai zhongguo nüxing de yule,” Xueshu yuekan 43, no. 1 ( January 2011): 141–42. Grace Seton, Chinese Lanterns (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1924), 272; emphasis mine. Xia Mingfang, Minguo shiqi ziran zaihai yu xiangcun shehui (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2000), 78–79, 400–402. Kenneth Pomeranz, “Calamities Without Collapse: Environment, Economy and Society in China, ca. 1800–1949,” in Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire, ed. Patricia McAnany and Norman Yoffee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 71–110. Andrea Janku, “Sowing Happiness: Spiritual Competition in Famine Relief Activities in Late Nineteenth-Century China,” Minsu quyi 143 (2004): 89–118. Kathryn Edgerton-Tarpley, Tears from Iron: Cultural Responses to Famine in Nineteenth-Century China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), xvii. Janku, “Sowing Happiness,” 101. One of China’s leading historians of philanthropy, Zhou Qiuguang, argues that the transformation toward “modern philanthropy” ( jindai cishan) started after the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895. He also argues that there are five key features of this modern philanthropy: the emergence of philanthropists as a group, the variety of philanthropic organizations; broad resources for philanthropy; advanced measures for social relief, and the vast areas of the relief’s coverage. See Zhou Qiuguang and Zeng Guilin, Zhongguo cishan jianshi (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2006). David Palmer, Glenn Landes Shive, and Philip L. Wickeri, Chinese Religious Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 141. A full text search of the word cishan in Shenbao (1872–1949) and on dacheng data, which provides access to scanned image files of articles from over six thousand kinds of journals published in the late Qing and Republican periods, supports this conclusion. Zhou Qiuguang points out that the first time cishan came into being as one term with the meaning of “benevolent” was probably during the Southern and Northern Dynasties (420–589). See Zhou and Zeng, Zhongguo cishan jianshi, 3. Joanna Handlin Smith, “Benevolent Societies: The Reshaping of Charity During the Late Ming and Early Ch’ing,” Journal of Asian Studies 46, no. 2 (1987): 311. Robert A. Gross, “Giving in America: From Charity to Philanthropy,” in Charity, Philanthropy, and Civility in American History, ed. Lawrence J. Friedman and Mark Douglas MacGarvie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 31.

Introduction  217 53. Raymond Lum, “Philanthropy and Public Welfare in Late Imperial China” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1985). Pierre Fuller’s dissertation continues this theme but with a focus on the warlord period. See Pierre Fuller, “Struggling with Famine in Warlord China: Social Networks, Achievements, and Limitations, 1920–21” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Irvine, 2011). 54. Joanna Handlin Smith, The Art of Doing Good: Charity in Late Ming China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009). 55. Smith, “Benevolent Societies,” 310. 56. On male elites’ philanthropy, see Mary Rankin, Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China: Zhejiang Province, 1865–1911 (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1986); Keith Schoppa, Chinese Elites and Political Change: Zhejiang Province in the Early Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1982); and William Rowe, Hankow: Commerce and Society in a Chinese City, 1796–1889 (Stanford, Calif: Stanford University Press, 1984). 57. Smith, “Benevolent Societies,” 330. 58. Angela Leung, “To Chasten Society: The Development of Widow Homes in the Qing, 1773–1911,” Late Imperial China 14, no. 2 (1993): 1–32. 59. Fuma Susumu, Zhongguo shanhui shantang shi yanjiu (Beijing: Shangwu yinshu guan, 2005), 644. 60. Vivienne Shue, “The Quality of Mercy: Confucian Charity and the Mixed Metaphors of Modernity in Tianjin,” Modern China 32, no. 4 (2006): 411–52. 61. Representative research includes Kathleen McCarthy, Lady Bountiful Revisited: Women, Philanthropy, and Power (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1990); F. K. Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980); Barbara Corrado Pope, “Angels in the Devil’s Workshop: Leisured and Charitable Women in Nineteenth-Century England and France,” in Becoming Visible: Women in European History, ed. Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koontz (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), 296–324; Bonnie Smith, Ladies of the Leisure Class: The Bourgeoisie of Northern France in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1981); Catherine Prelinger, Charity, Challenge, and Change: Religious Dimensions of the MidNineteenth-Century Women’s Movement in Germany (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987); Maria Luddy, Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); Adele Lindenmeyr, “Public Life, Private Virtues: Women in Russian Charity, 1762–1914,” Signs 18, no. 3 (1993): 562–91; and B. J. Gleeson, “A Public Space for Women: The Case of Charity in Colonial Melbourne,” Area 27, no. 3 (1995): 193–207. 62. See, for example, Prochaska, Women and Philanthropy in Nineteenth-Century England. 63. Leung, To Chasten the Society, 22; Jerry Dennerline, “Marriage, Adoption, and Charity in the Development of Lineages in Wu-hsi from Sung to Ch’ing,” in Kinship Organization in Late Imperial China, 1000–1940, ed. Patricia Buckley Ebrey and James L. Watson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 191–94.

218 Introduction 64. Leung, To Chasten the Society, 22. 65. About the “personalistic model of leadership” by officials’ wives and the role of these wives in the New Life Movement, see Sun Xiaoping, “Powerful Husbands and Virtuous Wives: The Familial Structure in the Leadership of the New Life Movement, 1934–1938,” California Digital Library eScholarship Repository, February 2007, http:​­//repositories​­.cdlib​­.org​­/csw​­/thinkinggender​ /TG07_Sun. 66. Frederic Wakeman, “A Revisionist View of the Nanjing Decade: Confucian Fascism,” in Wakeman and Edmonds, Reappraising Republican China, 177. 67. Li Xiujuan, “Kangzhan shiqi zhongguo funü weilao zonghui de kangshu fuwu gongzuo,” Mianyang shifan xueyuan xuebao 33, no. 12 (2014): 98–118. 68. Zhou and Zeng, Zhongguo cishan jianshi, 376. 69. Vincent Goossaert and David Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011, 91. 70. Prasenjit Duara, “Of Authenticity and Woman: Personal Narratives of Middle-Class Women in Modern China,” in Becoming Chinese: Passages to Modernity and Beyond, ed. Wen-Hsin Yeh (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 343. Duara’s use of the term “redemptive societies” is not without its drawbacks. Paul Katz points out that the term “runs the risk of creating a false distinction between different religious groups that shared similar values and practices.” See Paul Katz, Religion in China and Its Modern Fate (Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2014), 184, n. 72. 71. Goossaert and Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China, 91. 72. The new republic founded in 1911 promised freedom of religion and association (at least on paper) and thus abolished centuries of regulation and persecution of various “heresies.” 73. Thomas DuBois, “The Salvation of Religion? Public Charity and the New Religions of the Early Republic,” Minsu quyi 172 (2011): 91. 74. About Taixu, see James Carter, Heart of Buddha, Heart of China: The Life of Tanxu, a Twentieth Century Monk (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014). 75. Rankin, Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China, 100. 76. Marnie Anderson has pointed out in her study of Japanese female activists in the nineteenth century the problem of what she calls “literary agency”: evidence of literary ability has been the determining factor in evaluating women’s activism in Japanese historiography. The historiography on Chinese women has similar problems. See Marnie S. Anderson, “Women’s Agency and the Historical Record: Reflections on Female Activists in Nineteenth-Century Japan,” Journal of Women’s History 23, no. 1 (2011): 38–55. 77. Barbara Mittler, A Newspaper for China? Power, Identity and Change in Shanghai’s News Media, 1872–1912 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2004), 248.

1. Beyond a Personal Virtue  219

PART I. ELITE WOMEN AND CHARITY 1. Louise P. Edwards, Gender, Politics, and Democracy: Women’s Suffrage in China (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008), 8.

1. BEYOND A PERSONAL VIRTUE 1. Zhang Wen, “Minjian cishan: Funü canyu shehui huodong de youxiao tujing— lizuyu songchao de kaocha,” Xinan shifan daxue xuebao (Renwen shehui kexue ban) 31, no. 3 (2005): 119–23. 2. Li Youning and Zhang Yufa, Jindai Zhongguo nüquan yundong shiliao, 1842–1911 (Taibei: Longwen chubanshe, 1995), 1360. For more memorials on charitable women, see 1360–73. 3. Ibid., 1360–61. 4. Wang Wanxiang, “Juanrun zhuzhen qi,” Shenbao, October 1, 1881. 5. Liu Yushi, “Quan guige zhuzhen qi,” Shenbao, December 26, 1879. 6. Andrea Janku, “Sowing Happiness: Spiritual Competition in Famine Relief Activities in Late Nineteenth-Century China,” Minsu quyi ( Journal of Chinese ritual, theater, and folklore) 143 (2004): 91, 93, 95–97, 98. 7. “Shu Lu Wang shi xiangjin zhuzhen xinhou,” Shenbao, March 9, 1880. 8. Ibid. 9. Li and Zhang, Jindai Zhongguo nüquan yundong shiliao, 1360. 10. In addition to Mrs. Hao, who was in charge of the Beijing affairs of the bureau, three other women, Mrs. Zhang (Shanghai), Miss He, and Mrs. Wang (Anhui), were in charge of the other three regional headquarters. 11. “Guige zhenjuan ce,” Shenbao, April 23, 1890. 12. “Anhui guige zhenjuan zongju: Shuchengxian fangwai xinnü Sun Mingyi you luzhou fu fenju qinshou zhenkuan qingdan,” Shenbao, July 16, 1890. 1 wen = 0.01 liang, the standard copper unit of account. 13. “Shu guige zhenjuanshi,” Shenbao, October 17, 1890. 14. “Wei guige xiude quanzhu mianyiqi,” Shenbao, October 14, 1890. 15. Timothy Brook, Praying for Power: Buddhism and the Formation of Gentry Society in Late-Ming China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), 189. 16. “Zhongguo furenhui zhangcheng fujilüe,” Zhongguo xinnüjie 3, reprinted in Li and Zhang, Jindai Zhongguo nüquan yundong shiliao, 949. 17. R. Keith Schoppa, Chinese Elites and Political Change: Zhejiang Province in the Early Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1982), 8. According to Charlotte Beahan, Chen Xiefen (1883–1923), a female journalist and writer from a scholar-official family, was the first who related the idea of “grouping,” the need to organize in groups, to the problems of Chinese women. See Charlotte Beahan, “The Women’s Movement and Nationalism in Late Ch’ing China” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, 1978), 217.

220  1. Beyond a Personal Virtue 18. For a brief survey of the variety of women’s groups in the late Qing, see Xia Xiaohong, “Wan Qing de nüzi tuanti,” Hangzhou shifan xueyuan xuebao 1 (1996): 13–18. 19. Qin Fang, “Xincihui, xinshijie: Qingmo minchu ‘nüjie’ yici tanxi,” Qingshi yanjiu 4 (2014): 90. 20. According to Caroline Reeves, the first Chinese Red Cross Society was officially established in 1904 during the Russo-Japanese War by a group of Chinese business and political leaders (all men). These men viewed its establishment as “a benchmark of civilization.” See Caroline Beth Reeves, “The Power of Mercy: The Chinese Red Cross Society, 1900–1937” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1998). 21. Li and Zhang, Jindai Zhongguo nüquan yundong shiliao, 945–49. 22. Liu Ningyuan, “Zhongguo furenhui yu Beijing nüjie zhenzai,” Beijing shehui kexue 4 (2009): 95–98. 23. An Jian (Ying Lianzhi), “Wen Beijing Zhongguo furenhui quanjüanshi yougan ershu,” Dagong bao 1659, February 24, 1907. 24. “Zhongguo furenhui zhi faqi fushi,” Dagong bao 1379, May 10, 1906. 25. “Qu Jiang yuanhan,” Beijing ribao, February 27, 1907. 26. Xia Xiaohong, Wan Qing nüxing yu jindai Zhongguo (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2004), 49. Xia uses this case to illustrate the dilemma of “new education versus old morality” and to contrast the conservative North versus the open-minded South in the late Qing. She points out that Qu’s bold behavior probably was due to the fact that he was from the South (Zhejiang Province), and he majored in English at the Imperial University. Indeed, Qu not only compared the more conservative Beijing social atmosphere with that of the more open South when discussing gender segregation in his letter but also later defended himself after his love letter was publicized by citing Western customs of gender interactions as a “civilized” model. Joan Judge briefly mentions this incident in her discussion of the importance of female virtue as “social capital.” See Joan Judge, The Precious Raft of History: The Past, the West, and the Woman Question in China (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008), 82–83. 27. Jiang Weitang and Liu Ningyuan, Beijing funü baokan kao, 1905–1949 (Beijing: Guangming ribao chubanshe, 1990), 70. 28. Beahan, “The Women’s Movement and Nationalism,” 294. 29. Paul Bailey, Women and Gender in Twentieth-Century China (Hampshire, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 25. 30. “Huixing nüshi wei nüxue xisheng,” Shenbao, December 30, 1905. 31. Ibid. 32. Jimmy Yu, Sanctity and Self-Inflicted Violence in Chinese Religions, 1500–1700 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012). 33. Zhao Erxun, Qing shigao (Taibei: Mingwen shuju, 1985), vol. 509, Biographies 296, Exemplary Women 2.

1. Beyond a Personal Virtue  221 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

“Baqi xieling gongcheng,” Huixing nüxuebao 4, September 9, 1908. Du Xinyan, “Wan Qing nüxing siwang de xushi,” Dushu 4 (2004): 11–18. Xia, Wan Qing nüxing yu jindai Zhongguo, 223–47. “Ji Huixing nüjie weixue xunshen shi,” Dagong bao, March 14, 1906. “Ni qing daizou wei huixing nüshi qingjing zhegao,” Dagong bao, July 19, 1906. Xia Xiaohong, “Wan Qing nüxing dianfan de duoyuan jingguan,” Zhongguo xiandai wenxue yanjiu congkan 3 (2006): 28, 36. Xia, Wan Qing nüxing yu jindai Zhongguo. Jiangnan usually refers to the Yangtze delta, the richest area of the Qing Empire, densely populated by Han Chinese. “Huixing nüshi wei nüxue xisheng,” Shenbao, December 30, 1905. Reeves, “The Power of Mercy,” 28–33. Zhan Xiaobai, “Cong yulun dao xingdong,” Shilin 107, no. 4 (2008): 44. Zhan Xiaobai, “Cong yulun dao xingdong,” 44. 1 liang = 1 tael = 1 ounce of silver. “Jiwen yi,” Huixing nüxuebao, vol. 6, October 1908, quoted in Xia, Wan Qing nüxing yu jindai Zhongguo, 236. Guilin, “Hangzhou Qicheng wei huixing nüshi kai zhuidaohui yanshuo,” Huixing nüxuebao, vol. 2, June 1908, quoted in Xia, Wan Qing nüxing yu jindai Zhongguo, 238. “Qingkan Nüjie Bulute’e zheteshi juanzhu xuekuan erwan wuqian qibailiang,” Shuntian shibao, December 6, 1906, reprinted in Li and Zhang, Jindai Zhongguo nüquan yundong shiliao, 1365–68. Chen Yuxuan, “Yinglianzhi shiqi Dagong bao yu Wan Qing nüzi xingxiang de jiangou” (M.A. thesis, Anhui University, 2007), 38. “Nüxue fada,” Dagong bao, April 3, 1906. Xia, Wan Qing nüxing yu jindai zhongguo, 251. Joan Judge briefly mentions the case of the Manchu widow Huixing to illustrate her point on chastity as a “singular source of female social capital.” See Judge, Precious Raft of History, 36–37. Paul John Bailey, Gender and Education in China: Gender Discourses and Women’s Schooling in the Early Twentieth Century (London: Routledge, 2007), 72. With the defeat of the Qing government by the Eight-Nation Alliance Intervention following the Boxer Uprising, 450 million taels of silver, more than the Chinese government’s annual tax revenue, was required to be paid as an indemnity over a course of thirty-nine years to the eight nations involved. Beahan, “The Women’s Movement and Nationalism,” 282. Advertisement: “Nüzi guominjüan zhi rechen,” Dagong bao, July 12, 1912. “Jijie zhi guominjuan,” Shenzhou ribao, June 12, 1912. “Changban nüzi guominjüan,” Dagong bao, April 29, 1906. Beahan, “The Women’s Movement and Nationalism,” 205. For the importance of public speeches, see David Strand, “Citizens in the Audience and at the Podium,” in Changing Meanings of Citizenship in Modern

222  1. Beyond a Personal Virtue

60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65.

66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71.

72.

73.

China, ed. Merle Goldman and Elizabeth Perry (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 44–69. Li Xiaoti also notes that the direct goal of many public speeches during this period was to seek public donations for causes such as disaster relief, though speakers also intended to enlighten the general public. Li Xiaoti, Qingmo de xiaceng shehui qimeng yundong, 1901–1911 (Shijiazhuang: Hebei jiaoyu chubanshe, 2001). Advertisement: “Tianjin Puyu nüxuetang daishou guominjüan yanshuohui zhanting guanggao,” Dagong bao, December 6, 1906. Current affairs: “Liyuan jinbu,” Dagong bao, June 10, 1906. Joan Judge, “Citizens or Mothers of Citizens? Gender and the Meaning of Modern Chinese Citizenship,” in Goldman and Perry, Changing Meanings of Citizenship in Modern China, 42. Vincent Goossaert and David Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 50. Judge, “Citizens or Mothers of Citizens?,” 40. Wu was best known as one of the best friends of the revolutionary martyr Qiu Jin and was responsible for giving her a proper burial after her execution. See Ying Hu, “Writing Qiu Jin’s Life: Wu Zhiying and Her Family Learning,” Late Imperial China 25, no. 2 (2004): 119–60; and Hu, Burying Autumn: Poetry, Friendship, and Loss (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, 2016). “Wu Zhiying zhi Shanghai zongshanghui gonghan,” Da gongbao, April 6, 1906. Ren Caihong, “Ershi shiji chunian de nüzi guominjuan yundong,” Gannan shifan xueyuan xuebao, no. 1 (2004): 101. Lü Bicheng, “Lun Mou Duzha youzhiyuan gongwen,” Nüzi shijie, 1904, 9. “Chuanlu fengchao pianpian,” September 1, 1911, Minlibao, reprinted in Li and Zhang, Jindai Zhongguo nüquan yundong shiliao, 1338. “Jiangzhe nü daibiao nangui zhi xiangqing,” January 8, 1908, Shuntian shibao, reprinted in Li and Zhang, Jindai Zhongguo nüquan yundong shiliao, 1331. It is noteworthy that during this donation movement, women of Han ethnicity often dominated the various local branches of the “assistance societies” (xiezanhui), and their calls for donations to the revolutionary armies, in the form of either money or jewelry, often carried a strong anti-Manchu sentiment. Tang led a group of more than twenty women and marched into the interim parliament several times during 1912, famously smashing the windows and slapping the face of Song Jiaoren (1882–1913), the parliament leader. These radical actions were in direct imitation of the British suffragists who had conducted extensive window-smashing raids in central London not long before. For more about Tang, see Strand, An Unfinished Republic. Louise Edwards, “Zhang Mojun,” in Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women: The Twentieth Century, 1912–2000, ed. Lily Xiao Hong Lee et al. (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003), 686.

2. Being Female Philanthropists  223 74. Luke Kwong, “Whatever Happened to Tan Sitong’s Wife?—A Footnote in Modern Chinese History,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 5, no. 3 (1995): 378, 379, 384. 75. “Xinban xiangju Tan Sitong jijiang shangyan, kan xiangju jinxi huihuang,” http:​­//yule​­.sohu​­.com​­/20140515​­/n399594473​­.shtml, accessed June 26, 2015. 76. Kwong, “Whatever Happened to Tan Sitong’s Wife?,” 382.

2. BEING FEMALE PHILANTHROPISTS 1. Pearl Buck, Tell the People: Talks with James Yen About the Mass Education Movement (New York: John Day, 1945), 24. 2. Wang Weizhen, “Liu Qingxia kaijuan jiuguo shishi ji yuanyin tanxi,” Henan daxue xuebao 43, no. 1 ( January, 2003): 19–24. Jinshi literally means “presented scholar,” a graduate of the palace examination, administered in the capital immediately after the metropolitan examination every three years. Thus it was a very high honor and frequently led to political office. 3. Weishi wenshi ziliao (Cultural and historical records on Weishi County, hereafter WSWSZL), 101–2. 4. Ibid., 110–11. 5. Shui Lishu and Peng Yang, “Baiguan kaimo Ma Piyao de yisheng yiji weiguan sixiang,” Kexue jingji shehui 1 (2013): 189–92. 6. Li Yujie, “Liu Ma Qingxia yu Qiu Jin bijiao yanjiu,” Zhongzhou xuekan 5 (September 2011): 26. 7. WSWSZL, 3–4. 8. The fact that Qingxia’s husband did not bring in a concubine to help give birth to a son could be a sign that the couple had an affectionate marriage and thus he was unwilling to take in another woman. However, there is not enough evidence to prove this. 9. In the late Qing widows generally had custodial control over all their husbands’ property. They lost this right around 1930 according to the Republican new law but could directly inherit as a legitimate heir. For more, see Kathryn Bernhardt, Women and Property in China (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1999). 10. So far no evidence suggests that she had worked together with her husband on managing their family business, so it is highly likely that after his death, she had to start to learn everything from the beginning from their employees. 11. WSWSZL, 89, 73–77, 83. 12. Ibid., 67. 13. Ibid., 70–72. 14. Ibid, 59. Despite all these revolutionary efforts, Henan Province was never able to claim independence during the Xinhai Revolution due to the strong

224  2. Being Female Philanthropists

15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

conservative forces there. It was the home province for Yuan Shikai, a powerful major late Qing official who went on to declare himself emperor in 1915. WSWSZL, 58. Ibid., 61. Two months later, however, she decided to resign, claiming in the newspaper that she was only “an ignorant woman” who could not take such a great responsibility, and “there are so many talents in Henan, and it is not necessary to have a woman like her to participate public affairs.” This statement contradicts her earlier claims. It seems that she probably resigned for political reasons: Yuan Shikai’s cousin then was appointed as military governor of Henan and started to arrest and kill revolutionaries. See ibid., 57. Originally on Ziyoubao, November 20, 1911, reprinted in WSWSZL, 37. Lam Kai Yin, “Liu Qingxia,” in Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women: The Qing Period, 1644–1911, ed. Lily Xiao Hong Lee et al. (Florence: Taylor and Francis, 2015), 260. WSWSZL, 93–94. Later in 1933 the Nationalist government in Henan returned the leftover Liu family property to one of the Liu family descendants who remained in Henan. Ibid., 95. Chang Quanxi, “Jinguo yingjie Liu Qingxia,” Lishi jiaoxue 11 (2007): 96–98. WSWSZL, 92. Ibid., 112. Xiong Xiling, Xiong Xiling xiansheng yigao (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian chubanshe, 1998), 5:5165. Xiong Zhi (Nora Xiong), “Wo de muqin.” Thanks to Charles Hayford for kindly sharing with me a scanned copy of this handwritten essay that he found during his research on James Yen and the Mass Education Movement. As a Chinese metaphor, dragon has been usually used to describe highestclass, extraordinary men, whereas the phoenix stands for highest-class women. These terms originally exclusively referred to emperor and empress. Zhou Qiuguang, Xiong Xiling yu cishan jiaoyu shiye (Changsha: Hunan jiaoyu chu ban she, 1991), 31. Li Yu-ning, “Chu Ch’i-hui and Her Family,” Chinese Studies in History 25, no. 2 (1991): 69. Originally from interview with Rose Xiong; see ibid., 70. Ibid., 72. Hu, Pingŝa (Mrs. T. C. Chu), The Changing Chinese Women (Peking: Peking leader Press, 1926), 9. Hu’s husband, T. C. Chu (Zhu Tingqi), was a relative of Zhu Qihui. Xiong Xiling, Gu Tinglong, and Zhu Qingzuo, Mingzhige yizhu (Shanghai: Shanghai yuandong chubanshe, 1995), 1113. Li, “Chu Ch’i-hui and Her Family,” 84. Ibid., 77. According to Li, Zhu Qihui was against foot binding. Henrietta Harrison points out that having unbound feet was the symbol of Republican

2. Being Female Philanthropists  225

35. 36. 37. 38.

39. 40.

41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53.

citizenship for women during this time in China, which was probably a major reason that Zhu concealed her bound feet. Henrietta Harrison, The Making of the Republican Citizen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 40. Liang Qichao and Zhu Qiqian later became, respectively, minister of justice and minister of the interior in the cabinet that Xiong organized in 1913 at Yuan Shikai’s request. Originally from interview with Rose Xiong; see Li, “Chu Ch’i-hui and Her Family,” 75. Hu, The Changing Chinese Women, 9. David Strand, “Mediation, Representation, and Repression: Local Elites in 1920s Beijing,” in Chinese Local Elites and Patterns of Dominance, ed. Joseph Esherick and Mary Backus Rankin (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 229. Li, “Chu Ch’i-hui and Her Family,” 75. James Yen told Pearl Buck in an interview, “All those years while he was in the Cabinet, people said it was really Madame Hsiung [Xiong] who was the brains, the ‘man behind the gun.’ ” See Buck, Tell the People, 23. Grace Seton, an American writer who traveled in China around 1922, also heard while living in Beijing that “it has been widely recognized that Madame Hsiung has been a very great help to her husband and that during his premiership, her firm, capable hands often guided the Ship of State.” See Grace Thompson Seton, Chinese Lanterns (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1924), 271. Li, “Chu Ch’i-hui and Her Family,” 72. The cabinet got this name in part because it included prominent intellectuals. See Jia Shiyi, Minguo chunian de jiren caizheng zongzhang (Taibei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1967). Li, “Chu Ch’i-hui and Her Family,” 74. Susan Mann, Precious Records: Women in China’s Long Eighteenth Century (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997), 76–120. Originally from interview with Rose Xiong; see Li, “Chu Ch’i-hui and Her Family,” 77. Zhou, Xiong Xiling yu cishan jiaoyu shiye, 43. Charles Hayford, To the People: James Yen and Village China (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 42. Norman Apter, “Saving the Young: A History of the Child Relief Movement in Modern China” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 2013), chap. 1. I thank Apter for sharing this draft chapter with me. Xiong Zhi, “Wo de muqin.” Li, “Chu Ch’i-hui and Her Family,” 80. Yu Jinxiao, “Jingyi yuan yu xiangshan ciyouyuan,” in Wenshi ziliao xuanbian, vol. 29, ed. Zhongguo renmin zhengzhi xieshang huiyi (Beijing: Beijing chuban she, 1986), 197. Seton, Chinese Lanterns, 274. Ibid., 271–72.

226  2. Being Female Philanthropists 54. Charles Hayford acknowledges, “If anyone was qualified to line up ‘kingpins’ [of the MEM], it was Mme. Hsiung.” Hayford, To the People, 50. Gao Baishi is rare in giving Zhu Qihui credit. See Gao Baishi, Xinbian guchunfenglou suoji (Beijing: Zuojia chubanshe, 2003). 55. Hsiung Chu Child Welfare Foundation Society, Historical Sketch of Madame Hsiung’s Work in Mass Education Movement (Peking, 1932), 1. 56. Ibid. 57. Li, “Chu Ch’i-hui and Her Family,” 80. 58. Grace Seton reported that “Madame Hsiung Hsi-ling wastes little time at long board meetings. She acts, and she has the kind of executive mind which makes others act.” Seton, Chinese Lanterns, 270. 59. Hayford, To the People, 50. 60. National Education Association of the United States, Journal of the National Education Association, vol. 17 (Washington: National Education Association of the United States, 1928), 236. 61. Hayford, To the People, 50. 62. Buck, Tell the People, 23. 63. Li, “Chu Ch’i-hui and Her Family,” 78. 64. Hayford, To the People, 25. 65. Buck, Tell the People, 26; emphasis mine. 66. See Dorothy Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in SeventeenthCentury China (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994); and Mann, Precious Records. 67. Buck, Tell the People, 41–47. 68. Pierre Stephen Robert Payne (1911–1983) was a novelist, historian, poet, and biographer. He was known to have traveled to China and visited with and interviewed Mao Zedong in Yan’an in the summer of 1946. Xiong’s second daughter, Rose Hsiung [Xiong], became Payne’s first wife in 1942. They divorced in 1952. 69. Robert Payne, The Revolt of Asia (New York: John Day, 1947), 199. 70. Li, “Chu Ch’i-hui and Her Family,” 82. 71. Buck, Tell the People, 24–25. 72. Hayford, To the People, 43. 73. Buck, Tell the People, 26. 74. Payne, The Revolt of Asia, 200. 75. Buck, Tell the People, 24. 76. Hayford, To the People, 30. 77. Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers, 13. 78. Li, “Chu Ch’i-hui and Her Family,” 76.

3. Reaching Out to Women in the Home  227

PART II. THE YWCA IN CHINA AND “WOMEN IN THE HOME” 1. Zhang Lianbo, “Ershi shijie chu de funnü tuanti,” Shixue yuekan 2 (1991): 53. 2. Emily Honig’s study of Deng Yuzhi (1900–96), a one-time industrial secretary of the YWCA who later emerged as an important Christian leader after 1949, and Karen Garner’s study of Maud Russell (1893–1989), an American YWCA secretary working in China from 1917 to 1943, are two of the many examples. See Emily Honig, “Christianity, Feminism, and Communism: The Life and Times of Deng Yuzhi,” in Christianity in China: From the Eighteenth Century to the Present, ed. Daniel H. Bays, 243–62 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996); and Karen Garner, Precious Fire: Maud Russell and the Chinese Revolution (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003). In addition, Nancy Boyd studies the collective engagement of American YWCA secretaries as “agents of American Feminism” with many women in the Third World countries such as China, India, Mexico, and Nigeria at different historical periods. See Nancy Boyd, Emissaries: The Overseas Work of the American YWCA 1895–1970 (New York: Woman’s Press, 1986). 3. Tsai Kuei and Lily K. Haass, “A Study of the YWCA of China, 1890–1930,” 39, Box 325, The YWCA of the U.S.A. Records (YWCAUSA), Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College. To be sure, the YWCA in the United States also had programs to take care of the needs of married women at home, such as its Y-wives program in the 1920s. For more, see Nina Mjagkij and Margaret Spratt, Men and Women Adrift: The YMCA and the YWCA in the City (New York: New York University Press, 1997). 4. Tsai and Haass, “A Study of the YWCA,” 165. 5. Ibid., 155. 6. National Committee of Young Women’s Christian Association of China, “The Y.W.C.A. of China, 1933–1947,” 80, Box 57, Maud Russell Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Foundations. 7. Elizabeth A. Littell-Lamb, “Going Public: The YWCA, ‘New’ Women, and Social Feminism in Republican China” (Ph.D. diss., Carnegie Mellon University, 2002), 11.

3. REACHING OUT TO WOMEN IN THE HOME 1. Alison Drucker, “The Role of the YWCA in the Development of the Chinese Women’s Movement, 1890–1927,” Social Service Review 53, no. 3 (1979): 424. 2. Ibid. 3. Emily Honig, “Christianity, Feminism, and Communism: The Life and Times of Deng Yuzhi,” in Christianity in China: From the Eighteenth Century to the

228  3. Reaching Out to Women in the Home

4.

5. 6.

7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

Present, ed. Daniel H. Bays (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996), 248. Earlier the student members mainly came from missionary schools; later, from government schools as well. See Chinese Triangles (Shanghai: National Committee of the YWCA of China, 1924), 3, The YWCA of the U.S.A. Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College (hereafter YWCAUSA). Elizabeth A. Littell-Lamb, “Going Public: The YWCA, ‘New’ Women, and Social Feminism in Republican China” (Ph.D. diss., Carnegie Mellon University, 2002), 462. Pui-lan Kwok, Chinese Women and Christianity, 1860–1927 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 126. Kwok does not mention during what period the YWCA was the largest women’s organization. My estimate is that the status of being the largest organization lasted up to the mid-1930s. Around 1930 the YWCA started to decline in prominence for a combination of reasons. The antireligion movements, which started around 1922, included only small direct attacks on the YWCA, but their “reflect effect” was believed to be considerable—“it ceased to be honorable or progressive to be Christian, as had been previously thought.” Meanwhile, the growing awareness of “imperialism,” frequent wars, and social instability hampered fundraising in China. Internationally, the Great Depression of the 1930s reduced its financial support from foreign associations as well. See Tsai Kuei and Lily K. Haass, “A Study of the YWCA of China, 1890–1930,” Box 325, YWCAUSA, 72. “Nüqingnianhui huiyuan zhengqiuhui,” Shenbao, June 5, 1936. Maud Russell to Folks, July 7, 1922, Box 1, Maude Russell Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library (hereafter MRP). Charles Keller defines the YMCA’s “social reconstruction theology” as a type of theory that “embraced the idea that Chinese modernization depended upon the reformation of society to include progressive Christian values by rectifying the character of individuals.” He also argues that the programs of citizenship training, mass education, war work, and social service were all part of the YMCA’s participation in social reconstruction during the Nanjing decade. See Charles Keller, “Making Model Citizens: The Chinese YMCA, Social Activism, and Internationalism in Republican China, 1919–1937” (Ph.D. diss., University of Kansas, 1996), 8. Gao Pengcheng, Hong wanzihui jiqi shehui jiuzhu shiye yanjiu (1922–1949) (Hefei: Hefei gongye daxue chubanshe, 2011), 53. Whalen Lai, “Chinese Buddhist and Christian Charities: A Comparative History,” Buddhist-Christian Studies 12 (1992): 5. For a historiographical overview of the research on the YWCA and YMCA in China, see Zhou Yao, “Jin sanshinian lai Zhongguo jidujiao qingnianhui yanjiu zongshu,” Leshan shifan xueyuan xuebao 27, no. 3 (2012): 118–21. Maud Russell to the Asilomar Division, February 5, 1933, Box 3, MRP. Littell-Lamb, “Going Public,” 86.

3. Reaching Out to Women in the Home  229 15. Ibid., 111. 16. The “Green Year” Supplement, April 1932, 4–5, YWCAUSA. In 1927 the YWCA broadened its approach to include “girls of the home, industrial girls, country women, and professional workers, and slave girls.” See Nancy Boyd, Emissaries, the Overseas Work of the American YWCA 1895–1970 (New York: Woman’s Press, 1986), 143. 17. Tsai and Hass, “A Study of the YWCA,” 14. 18. Ibid., 17. 19. Young Women’s Christian Association of China, First National Convention, October 19–25, 1923, 30–31, YWCAUSA. 20. Grace Thompson Seton, Chinese Lanterns (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1924), 225. 21. Tyau Min-ch’ien, China Awakened (New York: Macmillan, 1922), 61–62. 22. Louise P. Edwards, Gender, Politics, and Democracy: Women’s Suffrage in China (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2008), 99, 115–16. 23. Boyd, Emissaries, 250. 24. Tsai and Hass, “A Study of the YWCA,” 18. 25. Compared to the famous Song sisters, there is little historical scholarship on Li Dequan. See Kate Merkel-Hess, “A New Woman and Her Warlord: Li Dequan, Feng Yuxiang, and the Politics of Intimacy in Twentieth-Century China,” Frontiers of History in China 11, no. 3 (2016): 431–57. 26. Tsai and Hass, “A Study of the YWCA,” 160–62. 27. Ibid., 151, 149, 37. 28. Ibid., 65. 29. Weili Ye, Seeking Modernity in China’s Name: Chinese Students in the United States, 1900–1927 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2001), 136. 30. Hu Binxia, “Ershi shiji zhi xin nüzi,” Funü zazhi 2, no. 1 (1916): 2549–61. 31. The Blue Triangle in China: Annual Report and Directory of the YWCA, 1921, 1, Box 59, YWCAUSA. 32. Shanghai Association of the YWCA of China, Report for 1911, 2, YWCAUSA. 33. The “Green Year” Supplement, 1926, 18, Box 60, Folder 15, YWCAUSA. 34. Tsai and Haass, “A Study of the YWCA,” 181. 35. Ibid., 153. 36. “A Talk with American Girls About a Few Things in China,” Young Women’s Christian Association of China, First National Convention, October 19–25, 1923, 5, Box 331, YWCAUSA. 37. “Weihe dizhi xiangyan bing ruhe dizhi zhifa,” Jiezhi jikan, 1922; quoted in Ma Yanyan, “Zhonghua jidujiao funü jiezhi xiehui shiye yanjiu” (M.A. thesis, Shandong University, 2012), 27. 38. Littell-Lamb, “Going Public,” 91–92. 39. Ruth Woodsmall Papers, China, 1930–1948, 2, Box 72, Folder 7–10, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College. 40. National Committee of the YWCA of China, Women in Changing China, 1928, 1, YWCAUSA.

230  3. Reaching Out to Women in the Home 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61.

Littell-Lamb, “Going Public,” 93. Tsai and Haass, “A Study of the YWCA,” 40. Ibid., 38, 39–40. The “Green Year” Supplement, 1926, 17–18, Box 60, Folder 15, YWCAUSA. Thomas Dubois, Religion and the Making of Modern East Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 76. Tsai and Haass, “A Study of the YWCA,” 39. Edith Sawyer, Staff Reports, 1917–1922, Shanghai, Summer and Autumn, 1922, Box 331, Folder 5, YWCAUSA. Drucker, “The Role of the YWCA,” 430. Lily K. Haass, “Young Women’s Christian Association,” chap. 14, 12–13, Box 58, YWCAUSA. Tsai and Haass, “A Study of the YWCA,” 20. Irene Dean, “Far-sighted Policies of the YWCA in Flood Devastations,” The “Green Year” Supplement, April 1932, 20–23, YWCAUSA. Ibid., 24–25. Tsai and Haass, “A Study of the YWCA,” 43. Elizabeth Morrison, “Popular Education for Women in Shanghai,” in Staff Year Book (Shanghai: National Committee of the YWCA of China, 1923), 54–58, Box 59, YWCAUSA. Tsai and Haass, “A Study of the YWCA,” 39. YWCA of China, Chinese Triangles, 4; National Committee of the YWCA of China, Women in Changing China. Elizabeth Morrison, “Popular Education for Women in Shanghai,” 58, YWCAUSA. Christina K. Gilmartin, Engendering the Chinese Revolution: Radical Women, Communist Politics, and Mass Movements in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 92. “The Report,” microfilmed records, reel 50, 24, YWCAUSA. Kwok, Chinese Women and Christianity, 132, 251. Tsai and Haass, “A Study of the YWCA,” 65.

4. WOMEN INTERACTING WITH THE YWCA 1. Kuei Tsai and Lily K. Haass, “A Study of the YWCA of China, 1890–1930,” 39, Box 325, The YWCA of the U.S.A. Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College (hereafter YWCAUSA), 65–66. 2. Sources rarely discuss in detail how the foreign secretaries located and made connections with local women. It was probably due to personal contacts. For example, in Changsha, one of the Chinese YWCA secretaries probably introduced the foreign women to Mme. Zuo, one of the local elite women.

4. Women Interacting with the YWCA  231 3. Ingeborg Wikander, “In Changsha,” in The YWCA in A Changing China (Shanghai: National Committee of The YWCA of China, 1924), 50, Box 59, YWCAUSA. 4. Tsai and Haass, “A Study of the YWCA,” 66. 5. Maud Russell and Donald MacInnis, Maud Russell (St. Paul, Minn.: Midwest China Oral History and Archives Collection, 1980), 48–49. 6. Karen Garner, Precious Fire: Maud Russell and the Chinese Revolution (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), 41. 7. Russell and MacInnis, Maud Russell, 41, 43, 49. 8. Wikander, “In Changsha,” 50. 9. Ibid. 10. Russell and MacInnis, Maud Russell, 49. 11. Maud Russell to Californians, August 14, 1920, Box 1, Maud Russell Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library (hereafter MRP). 12. Russell and MacInnis, Maud Russell, 49. 13. Garner, Precious Fire, 42–43, 50. 14. Russell and MacInnis, Maud Russell, 49–50. 15. Wikander, “In Changsha,” 52. 16. Maud Russell to Folks, June 10, 1921, Box 1, MRP. 17. Wikander, “In Changsha,” 52. 18. Ibid., 53. 19. Ella MacNeil, “The Modern Chinese Woman,” in Staff Year Book (Shanghai: National Committee of the YWCA of China, 1923), 23, Box 59, YWCAUSA; emphasis mine. 20. Hu Pingsa, The Changing Chinese Woman (Peking: Peking Leader Press, 1926), 9. 21. Tsai and Haass, “A Study of the YWCA,” 153. 22. Pui-lan Kwok, Chinese Women and Christianity, 1860–1927 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1992), 108. 23. Emily Rosenberg, “Missions to the World: Philanthropy Abroad,” in Charity, Philanthropy, and Civility in American History, ed. Lawrence Friedman, and Mark McGarvie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 244–45. 24. Kwok, Chinese Women and Christianity, 108. 25. Grace Thompson Seton, Chinese Lanterns (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1924), 231. 26. Russell and MacInnis, Maud Russell, 44. 27. Garner, Precious Fire, 53. 28. Sun Shangyang, “Zeng Guofan jiazu yu jidujiao,” Zhongguo nongye daxue xuebao 1 (2009): 122. Sun also notes that there were two more family members of the same generation as Zeng Baosun who later converted. 29. Zeng Jifen, Thomas Kennedy, and Micki Kennedy, Testimony of a Confucian Woman: The Autobiography of Mrs. Nie Zeng Jifen, 1852–1942 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1993), 90–91. 30. Harriet Smith, “From a Report,” in Staff Year Book 1923, 6, Box 59, YWCAUSA.

232  4. Women Interacting with the YWCA 31. Edith May Wells, “The Gentle and Ancient Art of Calling,” in The YWCA in a Changing China, 44. 32. Ibid., 45. 33. Ibid. 34. Genevieve Lowry, “From a Report,” in Staff Year Book 1923, 12. 35. Smith, “From a Report,” 68. 36. Ibid. 37. Zhonghua jidujiao nüqingnian hui, Dierci quanguo dahui jilu, July 5–12, 1928, 55, Box 60, YWCAUSA. 38. Tsai and Haass, “A Study of the YWCA,” 20. 39. Ibid. 40. Originally from Maud Russell’s interview; see Boyd, Emissaries, 62. 41. “In the City Associations,” in The “Green Year” Supplement, April 5, 1926, 12, Box 60, Folder 15, YWCAUSA. 42. Tsai and Haass, “A Study of the YWCA,” 20. 43. Harriet Smith, “Financing in the Orient,” in The YWCA in a Changing China, 37. 44. Tsai and Haass, “A Study of the YWCA,” 20. 45. “From the Lyon Letters,” The “Green Year” Supplement 14, January 4, 1928, 9, Box 58, YWCAUSA. 46. Maud Russell to Californians, September 24, 1922, Box 1, MRP. 47. “In the City Associations,” The “Green Year” Supplement, April 5, 1926, 16. 48. Harriet Smith, “Except Chengtu—An All-Chinese YWCA,” in The “Green Year” Supplement, April 5, 1926, 7. 49. This applies to the YWCA’s branches in other countries as well. Boyd discusses some of the errors that the YWCA made in other non-Western countries, such as India. For example, because some of their secretaries knew so little of the Indian culture in the beginning, one of them one day poured a bottle of insect repellent down a well that was supposed to be Holy Water for the Hindus to drink, hoping to cut down on mosquitoes. See Boyd, Emissaries, 44. 50. World, China, Box 396, Folder-File Reports 1907–1909, Spencer reports, Hong Kong, 1907. Quoted in Littell-Lamb, “Going Public,” 102. 51. Smith, “Except Chengtu,” 5, 6. 52. Ibid., 8. 53. Smith, “Financing in the Orient,” 37–39. 54. “In the City Associations,” in The “Green Year” Supplement, April 5, 1926, 12–13. 55. Smith, “Financing in the Orient,” 39. 56. Smith, “From a Report,” 68. 57. Ibid. 58. “Report from Maud Russell,” February 20, 1921, Box 331, Folder 5, YWCAUSA. 59. Smith, “Except Chengtu,” 8. The YWCA records do not have any further information about Mrs. Yang. It is possible that she was widowed or was living away from her husband, which suggests a way in which the YWCA provided opportunities for women’s autonomy. I thank Bryna Goodman for bringing this detail to my attention.

5. Redefining Confucian Gender Doctrines  233 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid.

PART III. WOMEN IN THE SCHOOL OF THE WAY 1. For example, see Paul de Witt Twinem, “Modern Syncretic Religious Societies in China,” Journal of Religion 5, no. 5 (1925): 463–82. 2. Prasenjit Duara, “Of Authenticity and Woman: Personal Narratives of Middle-Class Women in Modern China,” in Becoming Chinese: Passages to Modernity and Beyond, ed. Wen-Hsin Yeh (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 344. 3. Vincent Goossaert and David A. Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 79. 4. Duara, “Of Authenticity and Woman,” 359. 5. For more about these women and especially the post-1949 development of the Wanguo daodehui in Taiwan, see Luo Jiurong, Qiu Huijun, and Zhou Weipeng, Cong dongbei dao Taiwan: Wanguo daodehui xiangguan renwu fangwen jilu (Taibei: Zhongyang yanjiuyuan jindai shi yanjiusuo, 2006). 6. Joseph Esherick, The Origins of the Boxer Uprising (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 38–39. 7. Duara, “Of Authenticity and Woman,” 359. 8. Goossaert and Palmer, The Religious Question, 95. 9. Ibid., 103. 10. For the important role of spirit writing in the Red Swastika Society, see Chen Minghua, “Fuji de zhiduhua yu minguo xinxing zongjiao de chengzhang— yi shijie hong wanzihui daoyuan weili (1921–1932),” Lishi yanjiu 6 (2009): 63–78.

5. REDEFINING CONFUCIAN GENDER DOCTRINES 1. There were some Christians in the Daoyuan. For example, the American missionary Gilbert Reid (1857–1927) was an important member. He was also an honorary president of the Wanguo daodehui. 2. Sung Kwang-yu, “Minguo chunian zhongguo zongjiao tuanti de shehui cishan shiye—yi shijie hongwanzihui wei li,” Guoli Taiwan daxue wenshi zhexue bao 46 (1997): 249. 3. Vincent Goossaert and David A. Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 101. 4. Sung Kwang-yu, “Shishen, shangren yu cishan: minguo chunian yige cishanxing zongjiao tuanti: ‘shijie hong wanzi hui,’ ” Furen lishi xuebao 9 (1998): 141–79. 5. Li Guangwei, “Minguo daoyuan ji shijie hong wanzihui de yuanqi yu fazhan shulun,” Lilun xuekan 1 (2010): 108.

234  5. Redefining Confucian Gender Doctrines 6. Sung Kwang-yu, “Cishan yu gongde—yi shijie hong wanzihui de ‘zhengan gongzuo’ wei li,” Kaogu renlei xuekan 57 (2001): 1. 7. David Ownby, Falun Gong and the Future of China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 37. 8. For the important role of Chambers of Commerce in early twentieth-century China, see Chen Zhongping, Modern China’s Network Revolution: Chambers of Commerce and Sociopolitical Change in the Early Twentieth Century (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2011). Keith Schoppa notes that in Zhejiang Province, Chambers of Commerce often played an important role in charitable relief. Member merchants not only were expected to contribute money for charity but also were repeatedly enlisted to sell grain at cost and to participate in rice distribution in times of famine. See R. Keith Schoppa, Chinese Elites and Political Change: Zhejiang Province in the Early Twentieth Century (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1982), 92. 9. Thomas David DuBois, “The Salvation of Religion? Public Charity and the New Religions of the Early Republic,” Minsu quyi 172 (2011): 81. 10. Ibid., 94. 11. Ibid.,116. 12. According to Sung Kwang-yu, the other two were the Red Cross and Cong Shan Tang (Hall of Following Good). See Sung Kwang-yu, “Minguo chunian Zhongguo zongjiao tuanti de shehui cishan shiye—yi shijie hong wanzihui wei li” (Philanthropic works of the Republican period: A case study on the Red Swastika Society), Guoli Taiwan daxue wenshi zhexue bao 46 (1997): 259. Some branches of the Daoyuan, especially those in Northeast China, collaborated with the Japanese during the Manchuguo era (1934–1945). See David Ownby, Falun Gong and the Future of China (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 35–36. 13. Guo Dasong, “Jinan daoyuao ji hong wanzihui zhi diaocha bianzheng,” Qingdao daxue shifan xueyuan xuebao 22, no. 3 (2005): 22. 14. “Cimin pusa lin Shanghai Daoyuan xun nüshe xiufang,” Daode zazhi 3, no. 2 (1923): 21, Shanghai Library (hereafter SHL). 15. “Nü daodeshe shegang banshi xize,” n.p., Qingdao Municipal Archive (hereafter QMA). 16. Li Guangwei and Guo Dasong, “Minguo nüdaodeshe ji shijie funü hong wanzihui shishikao,” Minguo dang’an 2 (2009): 74–75. 17. “Nü daodeshe yilanbiao,” Daode zazhi 4, no. 4 (1924): 1–3, SHL. 18. “Shilue: Jinan nü daodeshe shi’er zhou baogao,” 1–13, QMA. 19. The “Green Year” Supplement 14, January 4, 1928, 17. 20. Considering the early marriage age and shorter life expectancy of Chinese women at the time, a woman above age thirty was often regarded as middle aged. 21. “Jinan funü hong wanzihui zhiyuanbiao,” J162-01-15-3, Shandong Provincial Archive.

5. Redefining Confucian Gender Doctrines  235 22. Lo Chiu-jung, “Mao Yanwen,” in Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women: The Twentieth Century, 1912–2000, ed. Lily Xiao Hong Lee, A. D. Stefanowska, and Sue Wiles (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2003), 399–401. 23. “Siyue bari lianshengxun,” in Nü daodeshe diyijie gonghui yishilu ( Jinan: Jinan mushe, 1935), QMA. 24. “Ersinian bayue sanshiri wanzihui huiyiyimu,” 63-1-10-2, QMA. 25. “Daoci wenda,” Folder 247, Catalogue 1, vol. B63, QMA. 26. Ibid. 27. “Shijie funü hong wanzihui Qingdao fenhui jianzhang,” 63-1-247, QMA. 28. Prasenjit Duara, “Of Authenticity and Woman: Personal Narratives of MiddleClass Women in Modern China,” in Becoming Chinese: Passages to Modernity and Beyond, ed. Wen-Hsin Yeh (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 353. 29. “Nü daodeshe shegang banshi xize,” QMA. 30. Lü Liangjian, Daoci gaiyao (Longkou: Longkou Daoyuan, 1938), 1:32. 31. “Shijie funü hong wanzihui xuanyan,” QMA. 32. Only toward the end of the Ming dynasty was this doctrine discovered or invented. It is worth pointing out that some salient points of oppressive doctrines of Confucianism were mostly created from the tenth century onward by Neo-Confucian scholars, under the influence of Buddhism. 33. “Jiuyue chushiri tesheke hufa weituoxianqu dao, fengming chuanxun,” in Nü daodeshe diyijie gonghui yishilu, QMA. 34. “Bayue chuba sheke liansheng xun,” in Nü daodeshe diyijie gonghui yishilu, QMA. 35. Xie Guanneng, Daode jinghualu xubian (Taibei: Taiwan daoyuan, 1960), 7:8. 36. “Jifo lin jinan nüdaodeshe xun,” Daode zazhi 3, no. 11 (1924): 31. 37. Thomas Lee, Education in Traditional China, a History (Leiden: Brill, 2000), 470. 38. Xie, Daode jinghualu xubian, 8. 39. Wang Fengyi, Zheng Zidong, and Wang Lüren, Wang Fengyi yanxing lu (Beijing: Zhongguo Huaqiao chuban she, 2010), 283. 40. There were other intellectuals and reformers who promoted home economics and shared Hu Binxia’s view on women’s important role as modern professional household managers. See Helen Schneider, Keeping the Nation’s House: Domestic Management and the Making of Modern China (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2011). 41. Zhao Yancai, “Qingmo minchu daode jiushi sichao de lishi kaocha,” Zhejiang luntan 1 (2016): 79–83. 42. For the late Ming, see Jerry Dennerline, The Chia-Ting Loyalists: Confucian Leadership and Social Change in Seventeenth-Century China (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1981); for the high Qing period, see Susan Mann, Precious Records: Women in China’s Long Eighteenth Century (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997). 43. These five basic ethical relationships defined by Confucianism were (1) ruler and subject; (2) father and son; (3) elder brother and younger brother; (4) husband and wife; and (5) friend and friend.

236  5. Redefining Confucian Gender Doctrines 44. Maria Jaschok, Concubines and Bondservants: A Social History (London: Zed Books, 1988), 25, 27–28, 32. 45. “Liantaisheng lin jinan nüdaodeshe xun,” Daode zazhi 4, no. 4 (1924): 25. 46. “Liantaisheng lin jingzhao Daoyuan xun nüshe xiufang,” Daode zazhi 3, no. 1 (1923): 25. 47. Duara, “Of Authenticity and Woman,” 353. 48. Lisa Tran, Concubines in Court: Marriage and Monogamy in Twentieth-Century China (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015). 49. Wang Fengyi et al., Wang Fengyi yanxing lu, 283–84. 50. Dou Yingtai, “Dongbei diyi jiazu de shiji chijiaren,” Zong heng 3 (2001): 40; also see Grace Thompson Seton, Chinese Lanterns (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1924), 230. 51. Dou, “Dongbei diyi jiazu,” 41.

6. WOMEN, SUPERSTITION, AND THE REORIENTATION TOWARD CHARITY 1. The interviews were conducted on September 30 and October 27, 2011, and June 26, 2014, at Cong Zhaohuan’s home in Beijing. 2. Originally a small fishing village, after the defeat of the Qing in the Opium War in the late nineteenth century Yantai became a treaty port and its name was Romanized as Chefoo, from the Chinese name Zhifu. Then, with the rise of Germany’s power over the Shandong peninsula in the early twentieth century, Yantai was controlled by Germans for about twenty years. After the Germans were defeated by Allied forces in World War I, Yantai, as well as Qingdao, were handed over to the Japanese until Japan’s defeat in World War II. After 1949 the town was renamed Yantai (Beacon Tower). 3. Japan opened to trade in 1859, and Osaka became an open port in 1868. 4. Lü Letian, “Cong Liangbi xingban shiye,” in Penglai wenshi ziliao, ed. Penglaixian zhengxie wenshi weiyuanhui (Penglai Xian: Penglai Xian zhengxie wenshi weiyuanhui, 1986), 2:183–84. 5. In 1897 German troops seized and occupied Qingdao. German rule lasted until 1914, when Qingdao was occupied by the Japanese after Japan’s declaration of war on Germany. The failure of the Allied powers to restore Chinese rule to Shandong after the war triggered the May Fourth Movement in 1919. In 1922 the city reverted to Chinese rule. The Cong family moved there afterward. In 1938 Japan reoccupied Qingdao. 6. In addition to Cong Liangbi, Hou Yanshuang (1871–1942; religious name, Sushuang) was the Jinan Daoyuan leader, and Daitai Yutian (1872–1959) was the Yantai Daoyuan leader. However, we know little about these men’s activities related to the Daoyuan.

6. Superstition and the Reorientation Toward Charity  237 7. In 1935 Song Jianzhang and his business friends raised a large sum of money to build a large building for the Qingdao RSS. The design of the building combined Chinese, Christian, and Islamic elements. The first floor was designated as office space, the second and third as free hospitals, and the fourth as a library. 8. About Liangbi’s interaction with the Japanese occupying force, see Cong Zhaodong, “Jujue chongdang weishizhang—yi zufu Cong Liangbi,” in Penglai wenshi ziliao (1989), 5:88–92. However, this article should be taken with a grain of salt. Cong Zhaodong, the eldest grandson of Cong Liangbi, was only about eight years old when the Japanese came to visit his grandfather. The vivid details he provided in 1989 do not sound like what an eight-year-old boy might remember. Second, in 1989 it was still dangerous (and shameful) to admit any family connections with the Japanese occupying forces to interviewers who were often sent by the Communist Party to compile Wenshi ziliao. 9. Zhang Rui, “Jindai lushang Cong Liangbi,” Jinan wenshi, accessed May 20, 2015. http:​­//ws​­.jnzx​­.gov​­.cn​­/html​­/2013​­/renwucq_0722​­/69​­.html 10. “Jiuyue chushiri tesheke hufa weituoxianqu dao, fengming chuanxun,” in Nü daodeshe diyijie gonghui yishilu ( Jinan: Jinan mushe, 1935), Qingdao Municipal Archive (hereafter QMA). 11. This was the case except for Zhaohuan’s younger sister, Cong Xiuyun, who became a Catholic and went to a missionary school. 12. “Jiuyue chusi sheke lianheng xun,” in Nü daodeshe diyijie gonghui yishilu. 13. Ibid. 14. Yingshang Branch, “Nüshe yingou daoyuan gongtui chidejuzui shenmingdaozhi shouling anqi qianwang yanjiang bing yanshu xunwen yiqi jinzhan an,” in Nü daodeshe diyijie gonghui yishilu. 15. Vincent Goossaert and David A. Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011), 76. 16. “Jiuyue chusiri liantaisheng xun,” in Nü daodeshe diyijie gonghui yishilu. 17. “Jiuyue chushiri tesheke hufa weituoxianqu dao, fengming chuanxun,” in Nü daodeshe diyijie gonghui yishilu. 18. Ibid. 19. They are from the Sanskrit and Pāli words for “attendant.” In modern times they have a connotation of dedicated piety that is best suggested by terms such as “lay devotee” or “devout lay follower.” 20. There are four progressive stages of enlightenment in Buddhism, from Sotapanna to Sakadagami, Anagami, and Arahat. The last one indicates full enlightenment. 21. “Qingdao funü hong wanzihui fushe chipin lichan jiujisuo zhi chengli,” vol. 1-1, Catalogue 1, Category B63, QMA. 22. “Shijie funü hong wanzihui Qingdao fenhui fushe xuli xuchan zhangcheng,” 1930, vol.247, Catalogue 1, Category B63, QMA.

238  6. Superstition and the Reorientation Toward Charity 23. “Shijie funü hong wanzihui qingdao fenhui banli ciye chengji gaikuang ji tongjibiao,” October 1932, vol. 333, Catalogue 1, Category B63, QMA. 24. Zhao Bao’ai, “Shandong nüdaodeshe de cishan huodong jianlun,” Zhonghua nüzi xueyuan Shandong fenyuan xuebao 1 (2005): 67. For a study of homes for chaste widows and the Confucian solution to the problems of women’s welfare in a rapidly changing urban environment around the turn of the century, see Ruth Rogaski, “Beyond Benevolence: A Confucian Women’s Shelter in Treaty-Port China,” Journal of Women’s History 8, no. 4 (1997): 54–90. 25. “Qingqiu tongxing gedi nüshe sheli zhiye xueshu bujiu shiye funü zimou shenghuo an,” in Nü daodeshe diyijie gonghui yishilu. 26. Sung Kwang-yu, “Minguo chunian Zhongguo zongjiao tuanti de shehui cishan shiye—yi shijie hong wanzihui wei li,” Guoli Taiwan daxue wenshi zhexue bao 46 (1997): 266. 27. Gao Pengcheng, Hong wanzihui jiqi shehui jiuzhu shiye yanjiu (1922–1949) (Hefei: Hefei gongye daxue chubanshe, 2011), 122. 28. The YWCA started recruiting students first within missionary schools; only later did its recruitment expand to government schools. 29. “Chuangli Jiejian Chouzhenhui huanxing nütongbao,” in “Qingdao nüwanzihui chouzhen,” 63-1-10-2, QMA. 30. Zhu Si, “Jie mixinfei yi zhuzhen,” Shenbao, October 30, 1920. 31. Rebecca Nedostup, Superstitious Regimes: Religion and the Politics of Chinese Modernity (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Asia Center, 2009), 112–13. 32. Yu Yinlu “Jiefei zhuzhen tan,” Shenbao, December 19, 1921. 33. For a study on charitable donation posts in Shenbao, see Wang Ling, “Cong Shenbao (1872–1911) de cishan wenlun kan wanqing cishan sixiang de bianqian” (M.A. thesis, Henan University, 2004). 34. Zhou Qiuguang and Zeng Guilin, Zhongguo cishan jianshi (Beijing: Renmin chubanshe, 2006), 126. 35. Nedostup, Superstitious Regimes, 244. 36. Ibid., 8. 37. “Lunshuo: Jizu pochu mixin bian,” Daode zazhi 2, no. 8 (1922): 48; translation quoted from Paul Katz, Religion in China and Its Modern Fate (Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2014), 34. 38. Xie Guanneng, Daode jinghualu xubian (Taibei: Taiwan daoyuan, 1960), 7:104. 39. “Liantaisheng lin jinan daoyuan xun nüshe xiufang,” Daode zazhi 3, no. 9 (1924): 23. 40. Thomas David Dubois, “The Salvation of Religion? Public Charity and the New Religions of the Early Republic,” Minsu quyi 172 (2011): 90–91. 41. For a detailed discussion of the belief on charity’s important role in accumulating religious merit since the Song dynasty, see Sung Kwang-yu, “Cishan yu gongde—yi shijie hong wanzihui de ‘zhengan gongzuo’ wei li,” Kaogu renlei xuekan 57 (2001): 21–26.

Epilogue  239 42. Zhao Shiyu, Kuanghuan yu richang: mingqing yilai de miaohui yu minjian shehui (Beijing: Sanlian Shudian, 2002), 270–71. On how late imperial officialdom specifically tried to ban women’s temple visiting, see Vincent Goossaert, “Irrepressible Female Piety: Late Imperial Bans on Women Visiting Temples,” Nan Nü: Men, Women and Gender in China 10, no. 2 (2008): 212–41.

EPILOGUE 1. “Qi nüzi dengshang wutai, Henan dazao jingpin yujü Liu Qingxia,” March 22, 2012, http:​­//henan​­.china​­.com​­.cn​­/news​­/henan​­/201203​­/42875​­.html. 2. “Xiong Xiling de sanwei furen: Liaoshi, Zhu Qihui, Mao Yanwen,” June 11, 2012, http:​­//www​­.fenghuanggucheng​­.org​­/html​­/5085​­.html.

GLOSSARY

aiguo xin 愛國心 Aluohan pusa 阿羅漢菩薩 bai ouxiang 拜偶像 Baihua bao 白話報 ban kaitong 半開通 Ban Zhao 班昭 Bao Shufang 葆淑舫 Baoshan 寶山 baozu zhi 保族志 Beijing nübao 北京女報 Beijing nüzi canzheng tongmenghui 北京女子參政同盟會

Beijing nüzi fazheng xuexiao 北京女子 法政學校

Beijing nüzi xuewu weichihui 北京女 子學務維持會

beiyang 北洋 benmen 本門 bing 病 bu 部 bubian 不便 buhe shidai 不和時代 buke xishu 不可細數 cai yu de 才與德 cainü 才女 Cao Kun 曹錕 Changde 常德 Changsha 長沙

chaosheng 超升 Chen Xiefen 陳擷芬 Chengdu 成都 chensu 塵俗 chikui 吃虧 Chipin lichen jiujisuo 赤貧嫠产救濟所 chongyang 重陽 chouhuan guozhai 籌還國債 chuji 出計 chumu 觸目 ciguang pusa 慈光菩薩 cimin pusa 慈閔菩薩 cishan 慈善 cishanjia 慈善家 Cixi 慈禧 ciye 慈業 Cong Jingshu (Xuannan) 叢靜淑 (萱南) Cong Liangbi (Tingmeng) 叢良弼 (廷夢) Cong Liumen 叢柳門 Cong Shan Tang 從善堂 Cong Tongmen 叢通門 Cong Xiuyun 叢秀雲 Cong Zhaohuan 叢兆桓 Cong Zhengmen 叢政門 Congjianhui 從儉會 da taitai 大太太 dadao 大道 dagang 大綱

242 Glossary Dahe shushe 大河書社 Daitai Yutian 澹台玉田 Daode xueshe 道德學社 Daode yuekan 道德月刊 Daode zazhi 道德雜誌 daoming 道名 Daoyuan 道院 Daxue 大學 Deng Yuzhi 鄧裕志 diaochayuan 調查員 Ding Shujing 丁淑靜 Ding Xian 定縣 dingwu qihuang 丁戊奇荒 dishu buhe 嫡庶不和 dishu dao 嫡庶道 Dong Shuntai 東順泰 Du Chengshu 杜成淑 Du Xinyan 杜新艳 duli ren’ge 獨立人格 duxie qize 獨卸其責 e’lie 惡劣 er taitai 二太太 Fan Zhongyan 范仲淹 fanguo 犯過 fangwai xinnü 方外信女 Feng Yuxiang 馮玉祥 fenghua 風化 fenghuang 鳳凰 fengjian zaopo 封建糟粕 fenlizhe 分利者 fohua qingnianhui 佛化青年會 fotang 佛堂 fude 婦德 fugong 婦工 fuji 扶乩 funü 婦女 Funü kuangxue hui 婦女匡學會 funü zhiren 婦女之仁 furen 夫人 furen zhiren 婦人之仁 furong 婦容 fuyan 婦言 fuzhu 輔助

fuzi 夫子 ganshi 幹事 ganying 感應 gaoshang 高尚 Gaoyou 高郵 gongde 功德 gongmin 公民 gongyi shiye 公益事業 gu 股 Guaerjia Huixing 瓜爾佳惠興 Guanchang xianxingji 官場現形記 Guangxu 光緒 guige 閨閣 Guige zhenjuan ju 閨閣賑捐局 guishen 鬼神 guixiu 閨秀 guizu funü 貴族婦女 gukao 故考 Guo wenbao 國聞報 guojia 國家 guomin 國民 guowei 果位 guoxi 國戲 He Miaoling 何妙齡 Hong lou meng 紅樓夢 Hong wanzihui 紅卍字會 hongci pusa 弘慈菩薩 Hou Yanshuang (Sushuang) 侯延爽 (素爽) Hsiao Yui-lan (Xiao Yaonan) 蕭耀南 Hu Binxia 胡彬夏 Hu Shi 胡適 Huaying 華英 huifu 恢復 Huixian 慧仙 (surname: Ezhete 额者特) Hung Shan 洪山 hutu 糊塗 Jia Qinhan 贾钦涵 jiancheng 堅誠 jiaoji 交際 jiazu zhuyi 家族主義 Jiejian chouzhenhui 節儉籌賑會 jielie fu 節烈婦

Glossary  243 jiemixin fei yi zhuzhen 節迷信費以 助賑

jieyue yundong 節約運動 Jiezhi jikan 节制季刊 Jigong 濟公 Jijie 妓界 jin nüzi guomin zhi yiwu 盡女子國民之 義務

Jinan 濟南 jingji 經籍 jinguo wanren 巾幗完人 jinguo yingxiong di 巾幗英雄第 jingzheng zhuyi 競爭主義 Jining 濟寧 jinyiwu 盡義務 jiuji 救濟 jiuren yiming shengzao qiji futu 救人 一命勝造七級浮屠

Jiushi xinjiao 救世新教 Junxiang 軍餉 kaisha 開沙 Kang Youwei 康有為 Kuigong 刲肱 Laiwu 萊蕪 laiyuan 來源 lao 老 Lao She 老舍 lao xiansheng 老先生 Laoshan 嶗山 Laozi 老子 Laozu 老祖 leshan haoshi 樂善好施 li 理 Li Dequan 李德全 Li Run 李闰 Li Yuanhong 黎元洪 Liang Qichao 梁啟超 liangzhi liangneng 良知良能 Liantaisheng 蓮台聖 Liao tai furen 廖太夫人 Liaocheng 聊城 Lienü zhuan 列女傳 ling 靈

Lingxue 靈學 linshi jiuji fuwu bu 臨時救濟服務部 Liu Dingyuan 劉鼎元 Liu Hengtai 劉恆泰 Liu Wanying (Cong Shijian) 劉婉英 (叢世儉) Liu Yaode 劉耀德 Liu Yu shi 劉俞氏 Longfengpei 龍鳳配 Lü Bicheng 呂碧城 Lu Muzhen 盧慕貞 Lu Wang shi 陸王氏 lunhui 輪迴 Luzhi 甪直 Ma Jizhang 馬吉樟 Ma Piyao 馬丕瑤 Ma Qingxia 馬青霞 mahjong 麻將 mangxiu xialian 盲修瞎練 Mao Yanwen 毛彥文 Mashishan 馬石山 Meiyu de sixiang 美育的思想 Meng Mu 孟母 mianyi 棉衣 miao 苗 miaotong 妙通 mingqian fei 冥錢費 mixin 迷信 moran shizhi 漠然視之 Mu Fengzhen 穆鳳貞 mushe 母社 nan zhuwai, nü zhunei 男主外，女主內 nanmin tu 難民圖 nanqiu beiliu 南秋北劉 nei 內 neiwai 內外 nianfo 念佛 niangmen 娘門 nianlao fopo 年老佛婆 Nie Zeng Jifen 聶曾紀芬 Nie Zhongfang 聶仲芳 Ningbo 寧波 ningfo fei 佞佛費

244 Glossary nü 女 nü daodeshe 女道德社 Nü guomin 女國民 nüguanzhang 女官長 nüjie 女界 nüjie 女傑 Nüjie lianhe hui 女界聯合會 nüjie tongbao 女界同胞 nuola zhuyi 娜拉主義 nüshi 女士 nüzi canzheng xiejinhui 女子參政協 進會

nüzi wucai bianshide 女子無才便是德 pa taitai 怕太太 Penglai 蓬萊 Pingmin qianzike 平民千字課 pusa shi 菩薩室 Puyu普育 qi 氣 Qi Xieyuan 齊燮元 qie 妾 Qingdao 青島 qingjie tang 清节堂 Qingshigao 清史稿 Qingyi bao 清議報 qinlao fendou 勤勞奮鬥 Qiu Jin 秋瑾 qi 妻 Qu Jiang 屈疆 Quanguo pingmin jiaoyu cujinhui 全国平民教育促进会

quanli 權力 qufu 曲阜 ren 仁 renjian de fojiao 人間的佛教 rexin yiwu 熱心義務 ru furen 如夫人 Ruanzhou 阮州 Rugao 如皋 Ruixing 瑞興 ruozhirou weibi jiwei qiangzhishi ye 弱之肉未必即為強之食也

saihui fei 賽會費

sancong side 三從四德 Sansheng Tang 三聖堂 sengdao fei 僧道費 Shangbao 商報 shangfeng baisu 傷風敗俗 shanghao 商號 shannian 善念 shannü 善女 shanshi 善士 shantang 善堂 shapan 沙盤 shehui fuwu 社會服務 shehui zhuyi 社會主義 Shen Fenglou 瀋鳳樓 Shenbao 申報 shencong qingli 身從情理 shenfo 神佛 shengui zhi ruoxi 深閨之弱息 Shenyang 瀋陽 Shenzhou nüjie gonghe xiejishe 神州女 界共和協濟社

shifen 十分 shifuma dajie 石駙馬大街 shifu 士夫 shiqian yu qiong liming zhong qu an zhong lai 施錢於窮黎明中去暗中來 shiye jiuguo 實業救國 shuwu 庶務 sifangqian 私房錢 sihai 四害 siren 死人 siren de fojiao 死人的佛教 Song Jianzhang 宋建章 Song Jiaoren 宋教仁 Song Meiling 宋美齡 Song Qingling 宋慶齡 su 俗 Sun Mingyi 孫明義 Sun Yaran 孫雅然 Sun Yat-sen 孫逸仙 suzhu 素珠 Tai’an 泰安 Taixu 太虛

Glossary  245 Taiyi zhenjing 太乙真經 Tan Sitong 譚嗣同 Tang Qunying 唐群英 tanxun 壇訓 Tao Xingzhi 陶行知 Taohuawu 桃花塢 tianfu renquan 天賦人權 Tianjin 天津 tianming 天命 tianxia weigong 天下為公 tongbao mengxing 同胞夢醒 Tongmenghui 同盟會 Tongshanshe 同善社 Tso Wo Lao T’ai T’ai 左五老太太 tuirang zhuyi 退讓主義 tujia 土家 wai 外 Wang Fengyi 王鳳儀 Wang taitai 汪太太 Wang Wanxiang 王畹香 Wanguo daodehui 萬國道德會 weibi huanbo 猥鄙儇薄 Weihai 威海 Weishi 尉氏 Weixian 濰縣 weixin 維新 wenming de yule 文明的娱乐 wenming xiyuan 文明戲院 wenming yanshuo 文明演說 wenzang 文藏 Wu Peifu 吳佩孚 Wu Tingfang 伍廷芳 wu yitai 五姨太 Wu Zhiying 吳芝瑛 wuben 無本 Wuchang 武昌 wujiao 五教 wuwei 無為 Wuxi 無錫 wuyi zhi feiyong 無益之費用 Xi Shangzhen 席上珍 Xia Mingfang 夏明方 Xia Xiaohong 夏晓红

Xi’an 西安 xiandai zhiye fengong zhishuo 現代職 業分工之說

Xiang Jingyu 向警予 xianggui 香閨 Xiangshan ciyouyuan 香山慈幼院 xianjue 先覺 xianling 先靈 xianmu 賢母 xianyuan 賢媛 xiaojie 小姐 xincong daoli 心從道理 xinfo 信佛 xingcong tianli 性從天理 xingguo shi 醒過室 Xingzi 幸子 Xinwu 新吳 Xiong Ding 熊鼎 Xiong Xiling 熊希齡 Xiong Zhi 熊芷 xisheng 犧牲 xiuxing 修行 xize 細則 xizuo 習坐 Xue Shaohui 薛紹徽 Yan Bin 燕斌 Yan Yangchu 晏陽初 yang 陽 Yang Jiwei 楊季偉 Yang Sen 楊森 yanqian yuhe 言謙語和 Yantai 煙台 Yexian 掖縣 yi 義 yi niang 姨娘 yi taitai 姨太太 Yidu 益都 yifen 一分 yin 陰 Ying Lianzhi 英斂之 yingjin zhi yiwu 應盡之義務 yinguo 因果 yinguo zhi shuo 因果之說

246 Glossary Yingshang 潁上 yinyang youpian 陰陽有偏 yipin mingfu 一品命婦 yitaitai 姨太太 yizhang fenghua 以彰風化 yizhuang 義莊 yizu xinjing 異族心驚 youju 有據 youmei yuanman 優美圓滿 youpoyisai 優婆夷塞 yu shidai sixiang buhe 與時代思想不和 Yuan Shikai 袁世凱 yuanchu shaoxiang buru jinchu zuofu 遠處燒香不如近處做福

yuanpei 原配 Yucheng 禹城 yuchun 愚蠢 yufuyufu 愚夫愚婦 yuju 豫劇 Yunjian 雲間 yuxian 餘閒 zaihai 災害 Zailijiao 在理教 Zeng Baosun 曾寶蓀 Zeng Guofan 曾國藩 Zeng Jirong 曾季融 zhan pianyi 占便宜 Zhang Jian 張謇 Zhang Mojun 張默君 Zhang Shouyi 張壽懿 Zhang Xueliang 張學良 Zhang Zhongduan 張鐘端

Zhang Zongchang 張宗昌 Zhang Zuolin 張作霖 Zhao Shiyu 赵世瑜 Zhao Yancai 赵炎才 Zhen Wen 貞文 zhenggong shi 証功室 zhengxinlu 徵信錄 zhenju 賑局 zhenli 真理 Zhenye 振業 zhi 志 Zhifu (Chefoo) 芝罘 Zhongguo funü hui 中國婦女會 Zhongguo funü weilao zonghui 中國婦 女慰勞總會

Zhongguo furenhui 中國婦人會 Zhongguo xinnü jie 中國新女界 Zhou qiuguang 周秋光 Zhu Jingnong 朱經農 Zhu Qihui 朱其慧 Zhu Qiqian 朱啓鈐 Zhu Qiyi 朱其懿 Zhu Xi 朱曦 zhuangsu duanjing 莊肅端靜 zichan jieji de yitaitai 資產階級的姨太太 zichen yishen xunxiao 自陳以身殉校 ziyou pingdeng 自由平等 Ziyoubao 自由報 zong ganshi 總幹事 zongjiao 宗教 zongwu 總務 Zuo Zongtang 左宗棠

WORKS CITED

Works frequently cited in the notes have been identified by the following abbreviations: MRP QMA SHL WSWSZL YWCAUSA

Maud Russell Papers, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library Qingdao Municipal Archive Shanghai Library Weishi wenshi ziliao (Cultural and historical records on Weishi County) The YWCA of the U.S.A. Records, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College

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INDEX

Affiliated Institute for Poor Widows and Pregnant Women (Chipin lichan jiujisuo), 192 agency, women’s, 29, 32, 36, 150, 209; collective/collaborative, 12, 167; “literary agency,” 218n76 ancestors/ancestral spirits, 23, 190, 191, 196 Anderson, Marnie, 218n76 Anhui Province, 42, 61, 159, 189 assistance societies (xiezanhui), 222n71 Association for Women’s Suffrage (Nüzi canzheng xiejinhui), 89 Australia, 23 Baihuabao (Beijing women’s vernacular magazine), 76 Bailey, Paul, 4 Ban Zhao, 173 Bao Shufang, Princess, 63 Beahan, Charlotte, 59, 60, 219n17 Beijing, city of, 63, 72, 106; “civilized theaters” (wenming xiyuan) in, 56; Women’s Red Swastika Society in, 163, 166

Beijing nübao (Peking women’s daily), 2–3, 53, 55, 56 Beijing Women’s Educational Sustaining Society (Beijing nüzi xuewu weichihui), 76 Beijing Women’s Suffragist Association (Beijing nüzi canzheng tongmenghui), 76 Beiyang period (1916–1928), 14, 70, 92, 162 benevolence, virtue of, 61, 72, 75 Better Home Institutes, 115 Big River Academy (Dahe shushe), 74 “Biography of Exemplary Women” (lienü zhuan), 52 bodhisattvas, 61, 170, 191 Boxer Uprising and indemnity, 58, 61, 155, 221n53 Boyd, Nancy, 227n2 Buck, Pearl, 91, 225n40 Buddha, the, 170, 194, 195 Buddhists/Buddhism, 10, 16, 26, 37, 41; accumulation of merit through charity, 120, 136; antisuperstition campaigns and, 195; Cong family and, 185, 187; Daoyuan’s religious

262 Index Buddhists/Buddhism (continued) synthesis and, 61, 159; disaster relief and, 39; famine relief and, 39; idea of karma, 44; influence on Neo-Confucianism, 235n32; liturgy and ritual services, 27–28; monasteries supported by endowment, 143; schools, 57; “superstition” and, 61; temples in Shandong Province, 155; theory of rebirth, 190; transfer of merit to ancestors, 23, 191; transformed into force for social charity, 27; Wanguo daodehui and, 170; Young Men’s Buddhist Association (YMBA), 103; Zhu Qihui’s rejection of, 81 Cao Kun, 160 capitalism, 122 “care for groups” (aiqun), 45 Chambers of Commerce, 161, 182, 183, 234n8 “Changing Chinese Women, The” (Hu Binxia speech, 1926), 132 Changsha, city of, 105, 106, 150; disaster relief in, 118–19; Madame Zuo in YWCA of, 125–27, 128, 129–36, 151; “social problems” in, 116–17 charity, 67, 155, 176, 200; Chambers of Commerce and, 161, 234n8; changing meaning of, 35; Christianity and, 20–21, 103; communist view of, 24; female and male investment in, 28; lineage, 93, 143; personal virtue connected to, 54; popular enthusiasm for, 12–13, 19–25; religious fervor channeled into, 42; scholarly attention to, 8; sources pertaining to, 28–29; women

motivated for, 188–92. See also philanthropy chastity, 18, 30, 35, 48, 50, 193; public approval of charitable activities and, 64; as source of female social capital, 221n51; suicide in defense of, 52 Chengdu, city of, 4, 106, 137, 151; Christian community of, 145; fundraising and networking in, 144–49 Chen Guofu, 196 Cheng Yu, 13 Chen Xiefen, 219n17 Chiang Kai-shek, 24 Children’s Education Study Club, 134 China: modernization of, 6, 25, 140; national crisis of, 35, 65, 143; non-Han minorities, 38; Western missionaries in, 102. See also Qing dynasty, late; Republican era; specific provinces and cities Chinese studies, 9 Chinese Women’s Association (Zhongguo furenhui), 44, 54, 61, 64, 97, 209; “fulfilling obligations” discourse, 45; goals of, 46 Chinese Women’s Republic Assistance Society (Shenzhou nüjie gonghe xiejishe), 63 Christianity, 20, 32, 122, 127, 139, 189; charity and, 20–21; Chinese ancestral worship and, 129; Christian members of YWCA, 99; Christian philanthropists, 63; conversion to, 135, 231n28; Daoyuan influenced by proselytizing style of, 161; as foreign religion in China, 151; New Life Movement and, 24;

Index  263 organizational model of, 26; RSS opposition to expansion of, 160 cishan (“benevolent”), 20, 216n50 citizenship, 35, 60, 62, 66 Civil Service Exam, 18, 72, 161 civil society, 9 Cixi, Empress Dowager, 79 Cohen, Myron, 6 communication technologies, 144 communism/communists, 15, 122, 135, 183; feminism and, 123; gambling activities banned by, 18 Communist Party, Chinese (CCP), 24, 30, 162, 214n26, 237n8; male-centered narratives of, 66; political struggles downplayed since 1980s, 70; revolution-centered histories of, 66, 68 concubines, 13–14, 72, 83, 117, 223n8; adultery laws and, 177–78; Confucian gender doctrines and, 176; in Cong family, 181, 184, 185, 187; lower-class status of, 168–69; relation to wives, 177–78, 186, 208, 209; WMS and, 165; YWCA and, 106–7, 151 Confucianism, 6, 9, 26, 27, 155; charitable activities and, 22, 23; classics of, 71; Daoyuan’s religious synthesis and, 61, 159; ethical relationships of, 176, 235n43; family and society seen in, 134; gender doctrines of, 155, 170–79, 180, 235n32; improvement of education and, 86; individual’s relationship to society, 123; modern gender roles and, 90; New Life Movement and, 24; rejection of, 1; virtues of, 38, 39, 44, 61, 75, 171; “women’s benevolence” (furen zhi ren), 22, 37, 45, 189, 190

Confucius, 61, 126, 153, 155, 194 Cong family, of Qingdao, 157, 169, 176, 177, 181–87, 199 Cong Jingshu (Xuannan), 181, 184 Cong Liangbi, 181–85, 236n6 Cong Liumen, 184, 185 Cong Shan Tang (Hall of Following Good), 234n12 Cong Tongmen, 184 Cong Wanying (Shijian), 181, 184, 185 Cong Zhaohuan, 181, 183, 185, 186, 187, 237n8 Coppock, Grace, 128 cultural capital, 69, 91 Dagong bao (Commonwealth daily), 46, 53, 57, 59 “Daily Life of Rich Taitai in Luzhi, The” (Shenghuo [Life] article, 1926), 17, 26 Daitai Yutian, 236n6 Daode xueshe (Moral Studies Society), 153 Daode yuekan (Morality monthly), 156 Daode zazhi (Morality magazine), 156, 198 Daoism, 26, 27, 37, 155; Daoyuan’s religious synthesis and, 61, 159; liturgy and ritual services, 27–28; spirit writing (fuji) and, 156; “superstition” and, 61; Zhu Qihui’s rejection of, 81 Daoyuan (School of the Way), 17, 28, 32–33, 98, 151; banned as superstitious organization, 26, 162, 199; Buddhist merit reward system and, 191–92; Confucian gender doctrines reinvented, 157, 170–79, 180; conservatism of, 208; constituencies of, 160–61; Five Teachers, 170; origins of, 159–60;

264 Index Daoyuan (continued) published journals of, 156; Red Swastika Society as charity wing of, 153, 154, 159; relief activities of, 161–62; sources left by, 30; women’s branches of, 162–70; YMCA influence on, 103; YWCA compared with, 167, 168, 169, 179, 199, 206. See also Red Swastika Society (RSS); Women’s Morality Society Daxue [The Great Learning] (Chinese classic), 9, 213–14n22 Dean, Irene, 119, 120 Deng Yuzhi, 108, 227n2 Dennerline, Jerry, 23 Dingman, Mary, 127 Ding Shujing, 108 “Ding Xian Experiment,” 86 disaster relief, 39, 40–41, 144, 201, 205; elite men and, 42; frugality and, 196; public speeches and, 222n59; in Shandong, 183; social service and, 118–19; “superstitious fees” redirected to, 194–99 Disaster Relief Bureau for Women of the Inner Quarters, 42, 59 Doll’s House, A (Ibsen), 7 domestic sphere, 8, 9, 10, 93, 133, 172; isolation in, 35; public sphere as larger extension of, 132, 134, 206–7. See also private sphere Donation Campaigns for Revolutionary Troops’ “Pay and Provisions” ( junxiang), 59 Dongshuntai business firm, 182, 184 Dream of the Red Chamber (Hong lou meng), 13 droughts, 38, 83 Duara, Prasenjit, 26, 154, 155, 169–70, 177, 189, 218n70 Dubois, Thomas, 27, 117, 200

Du Chengshu, 47–48, 49, 64, 209 Du Xinyan, 53 education, women’s, 36, 48, 56, 58; in Japan, 73; national self-strengthening and, 50; “prominent women” (nüjie) and, 57; public sympathy for, 67; reinvention of Confucian gender doctrines and, 172; for unemployed women, 194; WCTU and, 114; YWCA program for, 120–23 Edwards, Louise, 35, 106 Eight-Nation Alliance, 71, 221n53 elite women, 2, 4, 25, 29, 70, 90, 133; bound feet concealed by, 80; charitable tradition and, 37–42, 44; citizenship and, 62, 75; classical education and skills of, 6–7, 213n15; Confucian emphasis on education and, 86, 109; culture of domestic quarters and, 15; education of women and girls supported by, 49–50, 55, 66, 204; fundraising and, 44, 47, 49; as moral compass for husbands, 82, 94; move out of domestic seclusion, 31; nei/wai (inner/outer) dichotomy and, 93; public accomplishments versus domestic roles, 9–10; redefinition of Chinese tradition and, 6; YWCA and, 135, 136, 150, 205, 206, 207, 230n2. See also scholar-official families, women of England, 22, 23 Enlightenment, 21 Esherick, Joseph, 155 Europe, 80, 115, 171, 182, 189 Family Clubs, 115 famines/famine relief, 38, 42, 86, 93, 97, 119, 234n8; Buddhist accumulation

Index  265 of merit and, 39–40; Christian conversion and, 20; death toll from famine, 19; Great Leap Forward famine (1959–1961), 20; Incredible Famine [dingwu qihuang] (1876–1879), 20, 39, 42 Fan Zhongyan, 71 fashion, 15, 18 female infanticide, 71 feminism, 4, 8, 122, 171, 214n29, 227n2; Communist, 123; modern-educated women and, 11; “new woman” and, 15; YWCA and, 99 fengshui, 61 Feng Yuxiang, 78, 108, 215n34 fenlizhe (consumers, “profit dividers”), 3, 7 festivals, 2, 3, 41; Ghost Festival, 197; “superstition” and, 61 “feudal” class label, 69, 70 filial piety, 9, 30, 35, 51, 52, 54 floods/flood relief, 38, 42, 83, 97, 119, 194–95 foot binding, 6, 11, 97, 114, 121–22, 184; “four evils” of China and, 18; social service programs targeting, 205; Zhu Qihui (Madame Xiong Xiling) and, 80, 85, 137, 224–25n34 France, 23, 87 “frugality movement” ( jieyue yundong), 196–97 Fujian Province, 37, 42 Fuma Susumu, 22 fundraising, 29, 40, 97; controversy over public fundraising, 44–49; indigenized YWCA fundraising, 141–45; public speeches and, 60 furen (“husband’s person”), 13 gambling, 17, 18, 114, 117, 205. See also mahjong

Gaoqiao Xingzi, 184, 185 Garner, Karen, 227n2 gender difference, 174, 207; essentialized, 155; gender equality and, 205; redefined within Confucian framework, 206; separation of men’s and women’s spheres, 171 gender segregation, 4, 5, 220n26 General Discussions of Reform (Liang Qichao, 1896), 6 General Regulation on Women’s Citizens’ Donation, A, 61 Germany, 23 ghosts, belief in, 61, 197 Gilmartin, Christina, 214n26 girls’ schools, 11, 25, 49–58, 62, 93, 204; Huaying Girls’ School, 73–74; WRSS philanthropy and, 194 Goodman, Bryna, 4, 14, 16 Goossaert, Vincent, 26, 27 gossip, 4, 48, 139 Great Britain, 101 Great Depression, 228n6 “Green Year” Supplement, The (YWCA magazine), 100 Gross, Robert, 20–21 Guanchang xianxingji [Exposure of the official world] (satiric novel), 13 Guangdong Province, 37, 71 Guangdong United Women’s Association (Nüjie lianhe hui), 106–7 Guangxu emperor, 71 guige (ladies of the inner quarters), 15, 16, 42, 44, 59 guixiu (young unmarried elite women of inner quarters), 38 Guizhou Province, 38 Guowen bao (National news), 65 Gyien taitai, 139

266 Index Haass, Lily K., 98, 111–13, 142 Halls for Chaste Widows, 193 Han dynasty, 173 Hangzhou, city of, 106 Hayford, Charles, 92 healers, women as, 3 Hebei Province, 86, 159 He Miaoling, 63 Henan Province, 30, 39, 42, 71; drought in, 83; first private girls’ school in, 93; Henan-style opera, 202; revolutionary activities in, 74, 223n14 Hershatter, Gail, 9, 12 Historical Sketch of Madame Xiong’s Work in Mass Education Movement, 86 Holmes, Alice, 164 home women (women at home), 5, 8, 12, 164; collaborative agency of, 167; nonelite, 7; YWCA and public activities of, 30, 98–99, 104, 113–20 Hong, Emily, 227n2 Hongdao Girls’ School, 102 Hong Kong, 99, 105, 106, 108–9 hospitals, 4, 105, 117, 159, 183; church, 103; foundling, 71 Hou Yanshuang (Sushuang), 236n6 Hsia, Mrs. C. L., 109 Huaying Girls’ School, 73–74 Hubei, 119 Hu Binxia (Hu Pingsa; C. T. Chu), Mrs., 109, 110, 132–33, 134, 171, 175, 235n40 Hui, Alice, 165 Huixian, Ezhete, 57 Huixing, Guaerjia, 50–58, 60, 67, 86, 221n51 Hunan Province, 79, 116–17, 130 Hunan Welfare Society, 131 Hundred Days’ Reform (1898), 65, 79

Hung Shan Refugee Widows’ and Orphans’ Shelter, 119, 120 husbands, 17, 25; disapproval of wives’ public entertainments, 18, 40; spiritual cultivation with wives, 16, 26; women’s agency supported by, 31 Hu Shi, 18, 110 Hu Ying, 6 Ibsen, Henrik, 7, 203 imperialism, 63, 103, 228n6 incense burning, 3, 26, 129, 162, 196, 197, 198; ancestors and, 132; condemned by Nationalist government, 33; Daoyuan warnings against, 200; money spent on, 195; ridicule of, 61; seen as mistakenly benevolent activity, 41 Incredible Famine [dingwu qihuang] (1876–1879), 20, 39, 42 individualism, 12, 150, 207 intellectuals, progressive, 6, 16, 18, 91, 154, 171; Chinese women depicted as unproductive, 75; on lack of educated women, 50; on religion versus superstition, 26, 197; women criticized for “superstition,” 25–26 Ireland, 23 Janku, Andrea, 20, 39, 40 Japan, 10, 19, 157, 179; Chinese students in, 72, 73; defeat in World War II, 236n2; earthquake (1923) in, 161; full-scale invasion of China, 1; Sino-Japanese trade, 182; women’s education in, 73 Jaschok, Maria, 176 Jesus, 122, 155, 170, 194 Jiangsu Province, 38, 42, 159, 193, 196 Jia Qinhan, 18

Index  267 Jiezhi jikan (Temperance quarterly), 114 Jigong, 198 Jinan, city of, 99, 146, 159, 182, 191; Mount Tai and, 155; Women’s Red Swastika Society in, 163 jinshi scholarly degree, 65, 70, 71, 79, 223n2 Judge, Joan, 61, 221n51 Kang Youwei, 66 Katz, Paul, 26, 218n70 Keller, Charles, 228n9 kindergartens, 83, 115 Ko, Dorothy, 93 Kuo, Margaret, 214–15n20 Kwong, Luke, 65 Lady Huixing’s Tale (Zhang Zhanyun), 56 Lai, Whalen, 103 Lao She, 16 Laozu, 153, 167, 186, 188 leshan haoshi (fondness for charity), 41, 77 Lessons for Women, The [Nü jie] (Ban Zhao), 173–74 Leung, Angela Ki Che, 22, 23 Liang Jiang Education Office, 62 Liang Qichao, 3, 45, 66, 79, 80; criticism of elite women’s skills, 6–7, 213n15; on religion and superstition, 197; in Yuan Shikai cabinet, 225n35 Liao, Mme. (Liao tai furen), 44–46 Li Dequan, 108, 215n34 Lienü zhuan (Biographies of exemplary women), 82 lingxue (spiritual studies), 157 Li Run, 65 literacy, 1, 60, 86, 87, 119 Littell-Lamb, Elizabeth, 99, 104, 109–10, 215n34

Liu Dingyuan, 72 Liu family, of Henan, 71, 73, 74–78, 224n20 Liu Hengtai, 73 Liulichang festival fair, 46, 47, 49 Liu Ma Qingxia. See Ma Qingxia Liu Yaode, 71–72 Liu Yu, 40, 42 Li Xiaoti, 222n59 Li Yuanhong, 68 Lotus Sage (Liantaisheng) deity, 167, 170, 177, 185, 188, 189–90; Buddhist rebirth and, 190; on superstition, 198–99; women motivated for charity by, 190–91 Lowry, Genevieve, 139 Lü Bicheng, 10, 62 Lum, Raymond, 21 Lu Muzhen (Mrs. Sun Yat-sen), 63, 76 Lu Wang, “benevolent woman,” 40, 41, 42 MacNeil, Ella, 132 magazines, 97 mahjong, 15, 19, 80, 121; campaigns against, 17–18; history of, 17, 215n38; popularity in the United States, 215–16n39; YWCA opposition to, 116 Ma Jizhang, 70, 71, 72, 73, 78 male-centered narratives, 23, 94 Manchu–Han ethnic division, 50, 53, 54–55, 222n71 Manchus, 51, 56–57 Mann, Susan, 7, 82 Mao Yanwen, 81 Mao Zedong, 181, 226n68 Ma Piyao, 70, 71 Ma Qingxia, 30, 31, 63, 92–94, 97, 223n8; announcement in Ziyoubao (Freedom

268 Index Ma Qingxia (continued) Newspaper), 74, 76, 89; Confucian emphasis on education and, 86; first private girls’ school in Henan founded by, 73, 93; “Henanese Liu Ma Qingxia Disclosure,” 74; husband’s lineage and, 69–70; known as Liu Ma Qingxia, 68, 71, 95; opera based on life of, 202; as philanthropist widow, 70–78; plaques from Sun Yat-sen presented to, 68; progressive social/political views of, 204–5 marital status, 5, 13, 209 Mass Education Movement (MEM), 1, 13, 84, 86–92, 93, 120 matchmakers, 3 May Fourth Movement, 182, 236n5 May Fourth period (ca. 1915–1926), 8 Mei, Mrs. H. C., 109 Mencius, 169, 170 Meng Mu (Mencius’s Mother) deity, 169 merchants, 22, 160–61, 182, 234n8 Merkel-Hess, Kate, 215n34 midwives, 3 Ming dynasty, 3, 176, 200, 235n32; benevolent societies of, 21, 22; Buddhism and fundraising activities, 40 missionaries, Western, 20, 21, 101–2, 134 modernity, 16, 22, 171, 180 Morrison, Elizabeth, 121 Muhammad, 153, 170 Mulan, 54 Muslims, 26 Nanjing, 62, 65, 72, 87; social service in, 117–18; Women’s Red Swastika Society in, 166

Nanjing decade (1928–1938), 103, 193, 228n9 Nanking Massacre, 162 Nanxiu Qian, 213n15 Nathorst, Ruth, 126, 129 National Association for the Advancement of Education (Quanguo pingmin jiaoyu cujinhui), 89 National Flood Relief Commission, 119 national indemnity, payment of, 58, 61, 97, 144, 221n53 nationalism, 8, 45, 50, 54, 204 Nationalist government, 24, 162, 193; antisuperstition campaign of, 28, 200; frugality movement and, 197; woman’s surname issue and, 14, 214–15n20 Nationalist Party (Guomindang), 78, 92, 177 natural disasters, 27, 36, 83, 160; frequency of, 19; private relief efforts after, 20 natural rights (tianfu renquan), 75, 89, 172 Nedostup, Rebecca, 196, 197 Neely, Charlotte, 143 nei/wai (inner/outer) dichotomy, 9, 93, 169, 171 networking, 2, 31; of YWCA, 11, 32, 144, 145–50, 207–8; Zhu Qihui (Madame Xiong Xiling) and, 80, 81, 95 New Culture Movement, 14, 18, 110, 175 New Life Movement, 24 newspapers, 43, 50, 97 “new women,” 4, 77, 98, 150, 203; collaborative agency of, 167; defined through exclusions, 16; as New Culturalist ideal, 110; taitai as foil to, 14, 15, 16

Index  269 Nie, Mme. (Nie Zeng Jifen), 108, 127, 135–36, 150, 207 Nie Yuntai (Nie Qijie), 135–36 Nightingale, Florence, 55–56 North China famine, 42 Northern Wei dynasty, 54 nüjie (women’s world or realm), 12, 46, 59, 63 nuola zhuyi (“Nora-ism”), 7, 203 One-Thousand-Character Primer (Yen), 121 opera performances, 50, 57, 60, 66, 202 opium, 18, 91, 97, 102, 114 Opium Wars, 182, 236n2 oral history, 32, 156 orphanages, 22, 66, 83–84, 159 Ownby, David, 160 patriarchy, 15, 36, 69, 138 patriotism, 4, 35, 62, 207 Payne, Robert, 91, 92, 226n68 Peking American College Women’s Club, 132 Peking Orphanage, 84 Peking Women’s Sanitary Hospital, 46 Perovskaya, Sophia, 55 personhood, independent, 16 philanthropy, 44, 67; associated with the Enlightenment, 21; changing meaning of, 35; connection to personal virtue, 54; merit as contribution to the public, 77; “philanthropists” (cishanjia) as category, 20, 21; popular enthusiasm for, 12–13, 19–25; scholarly attention to, 8; sources pertaining to, 28–29. See also charity pilgrimages, 40, 41 Pingmin qianzi ke (One-thousandcharacter primer), 88

Popular Education Movement, 121 poverty relief, 193 private sphere, 8, 11, 35, 134. See also domestic sphere Professional Education Society, 134 prostitutes, 3, 5, 24, 59, 202 Protestantism, 101 Protestant work ethic, 115 public sphere, 4, 8, 31, 132, 199, 203; formation in China, 9; separate male and female spheres, 59, 171; unclear boundaries with private sphere, 11, 134, 206–7 Qianlong period, 28, 71 Qingdao, city of, 32, 156; Daoyuan in, 183; German control of, 236n5; Japanese control of, 236n5, 237n8; Red Swastika Society in, 169, 183, 192, 237n7; WMS in, 168. See also Cong family Qing dynasty, late, 1, 65, 82, 97, 176; abdication of Manchu emperor, 74; charitable institutions in, 22; citizenship in, 35; defeat in Boxer Uprising, 221n53; defeat in Opium Wars, 182, 236n2; growing public visibility of women, 2; “new education versus old morality” in, 220n26; Qing shigao (Draft history of the Qing dynasty), 52; reconstruction of Chinese traditions during, 6; strained finances of, 19–20; terms of address for women in, 13; urban public sphere of, 203 Qingyi bao (China discussion), 65 Qiu Jin, 10, 55, 68, 77, 222n65 Qi Xieyuan, 87, 91, 160 Qu Jiang, 47–49, 220n26

270 Index Railroad Rights Recovery Movement, 58, 62–63, 66, 93 Rankin, Mary, 8, 28 Red Cross Society, 46, 55, 84, 89, 220n20, 234n12 “redemptive societies,” 26, 218n70 Red Swastika Society (RSS), 98, 153, 154, 159, 167; Cong family and, 181, 186, 187; establishment of, 159–60; international branches of, 161–62; in Second Sino-Japanese War, 162; spread throughout China, 161. See also Daoyuan Red Swastika Society, women’s branch (WRSS), 162–69, 181, 186, 192–94; Women’s Frugality Relief Committee (Jiejian chouzhenhui), 194–95, 196; Xiong Mao Yanwen as head of, 81, 153, 166, 167 Reeves, Caroline, 55 Reid, Gilbert, 233n1 (ch. 5) religion, 17, 37, 81; modernization of Chinese religions, 25–28; women’s organizations and, 97–98; zongjiao as categorical term for, 17 Republican era (1912–1949), 1, 5, 8, 92; “charitable sphere” in, 200; legal code (1930), 177; terms of address for women in, 13; urban public sphere of, 203; YWCA in, 102–3 Revitalizing China Through Industry Movement (Shiye jiuguo), 71 Revolution, Republican (1911), 65, 93 revolutionaries, 24, 25, 55, 80 Rietveld, Harriet, 114 Rockefeller Foundation, 92 Roland, Mme., 53, 55 ru furen (like wife), 13 Ruixing (Hangzhou garrison commander), 52–53, 57, 58

Russell, Maud, 100, 104, 126, 227n2; on Mme. Xiong Xiling, 130–31; on networking activities, 147; return to China after Communist revolution, 135; on Zuo family elders, 129–30 Russia, 23 sacrifice, 47, 48, 204; emerging discourse of, 65; of Huixing, 51, 52, 54 San Francisco earthquake (1906), 45, 61 Sawyer, Edith, 118 scholar-official families, women of, 37, 38, 52, 63, 82, 204, 205. See also elite women Schoppa, Keith, 234n8 sericulture, 74 Seton, Grace, 84, 106, 134, 225n40, 226n58 sexual assault, 5 sexuality, 2 Shaanxi Province, 83 Shandong Province, 42, 83, 88, 146, 159; conservatism of, 164, 178; Daoyuan women’s branches in, 154–55; as pivotal religious site, 155; WMS in, 163–64, 165 Shangbao (Commerce newspaper), 15 Shanghai, city of, 105, 136, 157; International Settlement, 110, 135; as most cosmopolitan city in Republican China, 166; professional women in, 108–9; Women’s Red Swastika Society in, 163, 165, 166, 167; YWCA in, 110, 115, 122, 144 Shanghai Shenzhou Girls’ School, 63 Shanghai Woman’s Social League, 134 Shanren [A philanthropist] (Lao She, 1935), 16 shantang (halls of benevolence), 22

Index  271 Shanxi Bureau of Disaster Relief (zhenju), 40, 42 Shanxi Province, 39, 41, 83 Shenbao (Shanghai daily), 3, 14, 20, 40, 43; charitable announcements in, 42; donation posts in, 197; establishment of, 29, 38; on frugality and disaster relief, 196; on Huixing’s death, 51, 52; on “superstitious fees” channeled to disaster relief, 195; on the YWCA in China, 102 Shen Fenglou, Mrs., 62 Shenyang (Mukden), city of, 106, 178, 179 Shue, Vivienne, 22 Shuntian shibao, 57 Sichuan Province, 38, 63, 140, 146 Sino-Japanese War, First (1895), 59 Sino-Japanese War, Second (1937– 1945), 24, 162 Smith, Harriet, 137, 139–40, 145 Smith, Joanne Handlin, 20, 21–22 smoking, 114, 117, 205 social capital, 69, 95, 136, 220n26, 221n51 socialism, 75 socializing, female, 2, 19, 31 social service (shehui fuwu), 103, 113, 116, 124, 205; disaster relief and, 118–19; zeal for, 117–18, 135 Song dynasty (960–1279), 21, 37, 71, 198 Song Jianzhang, 237n7 Song Jiaoren, 222n72 Song Meiling (Madame Chiang Kai-shek), 24, 108 Song Qingling (widow of Sun Yat-sen), 108 Spencer, Clarissa, 104, 144–45 spirits, belief in, 61 spirit writing (fuji), 156–57, 180, 186, 197, 198

stereotypes, 16–17 suffragists, 4, 10, 63, 64, 77, 222n72 suicide, 4, 50–53, 55–57, 65 Sung Kwang-yu, 234n12 Sun Mingyi, 38, 42–43, 44, 59 Sun Yaran, 184, 186 Sun Yat-sen, 63, 64, 68, 73; in Japan, 182; Nationalist Party and, 78; Qingxia’s meetings with, 77 superstition (mixin), 3, 26, 33, 153; antisuperstition campaigns and discourse, 17, 28, 198; practices classified as, 61; redirected to charitable activities, 192, 194–99; religion contrasted to, 26, 197; as target of social service, 117 Taiping Rebellion (1850–1864), 22, 126, 127 taitai (Mrs.), 5, 13, 51, 177; “bourgeois,” 186; different groups among, 204; with modern education, 15–16; negative image of, 14–15, 25; relation to concubines, 177–78, 186; stereotypical leisure activities of, 17–19 Taixu, 27 Tang Qunying, 10, 25, 63, 64, 73, 89, 222n72 Tan Sitong, 65, 79 Tao Xingzhi, 87, 88 Taylor, Harriet, 104 teahouses, 2, 4, 204 temples, 2, 41; prohibition against women in, 3; temple visiting as “superstitious” activity, 26, 162, 200 theaters: “civilized theaters” (wenming xiyuan), 56; reappearance of female actresses, 5; traditionally reserved for men, 4

272 Index Tianjin, city of, 106, 182; professional women in, 108–9; shantang (halls of benevolence) in, 22; Women’s Red Swastika Society in, 166; YWCA in, 111–12, 111, 118, 137, 144 Tianjin Chinese Woman’s Patriotic Association, 106 Tianjin Puyu Girls’ School, 60 Tian Jiyun, 56, 57 Tongmenghui, 73 Tongshanshe (Fellowship of Goodness), 153, 155, 159 Tran, Lisa, 177 Tsai Kuei, 98, 111–13, 142 United States, 23, 101, 115, 166 Versailles, Treaty of, 26 Wakeman, Frederic, 24 Wang Di, 4 Wang Fengyi, 174–75, 178 Wanguo daodehui (Worldwide Morality Society), 153–54, 155, 169, 233n1 (ch. 5); Buddhist women in, 169–70; domestic relationship issues and, 177; lecture system, 189; reinvention of Confucian gender doctrines and, 174–75 Wang Wanxiang, 42, 44 Wang Zheng, 14 warlords, 78, 90, 146; Daoyuan members, 160; Mass Education Movement and, 91, 92 WCTU (Women’s Christian Temperance Union), 114–15, 117, 133 Wells, Edith May, 137–38, 142 Wenshi ziliao (Cultural and historical records), 30, 70 West, the, 26, 113; influence of, 1, 4; military defeats of China by, 19;

model of progress and civilization, 26–27; private/public distinction, 9 widows, 93, 192–93, 223n9 widows’ homes (qingjie tang), 22, 23 Wikander, Ingeborg, 126–27, 128, 129, 131–32 Willard, Frances, 55 women: age and life-stage issues among, 5, 69, 99, 165, 196, 209; Confucian gender doctrines and, 170–79; forms of address for, 13–14, 15, 186; “good women,” 47, 48; noncareer women, 12–19; pregnant, 192–93; “prominent women” (nüjie), 57; public arena opened to, 2; rights of, 60; as “social housekeepers,” 133–34; as subjects of charity, 22; surname issue, 14, 214–15n20; “talented women” (cainü), 46, 53, 62, 71; “transgressive” public behavior of, 4; Western, 3, 43, 55; working-class, 5, 7, 24, 25, 104, 202; young unmarried, 43. See also elite women; home women women, domestic seclusion of, 2, 24, 31, 32; fundraising “training” and, 142; identity and virtue associated with, 44; women’s moral standing and, 35 women, nonprofessional and without modern education, 5, 8, 10, 31, 69, 92, 124; drawn out of domestic seclusion, 32; in female branches of organizations, 26; ignored by historians, 6; limited information in press reports about, 29; moderate political reform and, 77 women, professional, 10, 25, 106, 124, 203; in Red Swastika Society, 154; small number of, 106, 164, 166, 186; “women in the home” as opposite of, 99; YWCA members, 99, 107, 109

Index  273 Women Citizens Donation Movement (Nüzi guominjuan), 58, 59, 61, 66, 76; “fulfilling obligations” slogan, 75; Speech Society, 60 Women’s Addressing Education Society (Funü kuangxue hui), 56 Women’s Fundraising to Repay Other National Debts (Chouhuan guozhai), 59 Women’s Morality Society [Nü daodeshe] (WMS), 162–64, 165, 168, 169, 186; Confucian gender doctrines and, 171, 173, 175; hierarchical system of deities, 169–70; Lotus Sage deity and, 167, 170, 177, 185, 188; motivation of women for charity, 188; women’s education and, 194 Women’s Republic Assistance Society (Shenzhou nüjie gonghe xiejishe), 76 Women’s Suffrage Alliance, 134 World War, First, 26–27, 89, 182, 236n2 World War, Second, 236n2 Wuchang Uprising (1911), 59, 74 Wu Peifu, 160 Wu Tingfang, 63 Wu Zhiying, 61–62, 63, 76, 222n65 Xia Mingfang, 19 xianggui (sequestered elite women), 39 Xiang Jingyu, 122 Xiangshan Children’s Home, 83–84, 85, 93, 166, 194 xianyuan (worthy ladies) tradition, 213n15 xiaojie (Miss), 14, 15, 186 Xiao Yaonan (Hsiao Yui-lan), 91 Xia Xiaohong, 53, 54–55 Xinhai Revolution, 74, 202, 223n14 Xiong, Rose, 79–80, 81, 95, 226n68 Xiong family, 80, 203

Xiong Mao Yanwen furen, 166, 167, 203 Xiong Xiling (Hsiung Hsi-ling), 68–69, 79, 81–83, 85, 166, 225n40; disaster relief and, 83; expansion of Daoyuan and, 161; Miaotong as religious name of, 194; Red Swastika Society and, 153, 154, 160; retirement from politics, 83, 94; scholar-beauty romance of Fenghuang County and, 202–3 Xiong Zhi (Nora Xiong), 84 Xiong Zhu Child Welfare Foundation Society, 86, 87 Xi Shangzhen, 4 Xue Shaohui, 213n15 Yan Bin, 73, 77 Yang Jiwei, 63 Yang Sen, 146 Yantai (Chefoo), city of, 88, 106, 182; foot binding in, 121–22; German control of, 236n2; Mass Education Movement (MEM) in, 121 Yan Yangchu, 86 Yen, James, 1, 86, 87, 91, 120, 165, 225n40; One-Thousand-Character Primer, 121; as Western-educated intellectual, 89; on Zhu Qihui, 90 Yenching University, 116 Ye Weili, 109 yi (righteousness), 44 Ying Lianzhi, 46–47, 48, 54 yi niang (aunt mother), 13 yin/yang philosophy, gender and, 3, 61, 168, 179–80, 188 yi taitai (aunt Mrs.), 13, 186 YMCA, 27, 87, 105, 165; Daoyuan compared with, 167, 168; “social reconstruction theology” of, 103, 228n9; zeal for reform and, 117 Yuan dynasty, 40

274 Index Yuan Shikai, 69, 82, 224n14, 225n35 YWCA, 5, 16, 123–24, 165, 228n6, 230n2, 232n49; adult women’s education program, 70, 120–23; Buddhist merit reward system and, 191–92; challenges of public engagement, 136–41; class hierarchies between women and, 208; constituency in China, 101–7, 229n16; Daoyuan compared with, 167, 168, 169, 179, 199, 206; history of, 32; “home women” in, 11, 98–99, 113–20, 150–51; indigenized fundraising and networking in, 141–50; leadership positions, 107–13, 111; Mass Education Movement and, 87; membership composition of, 98–99; middle-class women and, 32, 98–99; National Committee, 109, 111, 119, 134; “new women” and, 98; publications of, 100; recruiting activities in schools, 194, 238n28; as religious model of social service, 27; scholars’ study of, 98, 227n2; social housekeeping and, 134, 172, 205; Social Service Committee, 130, 131; system of work reports, 29–30; in United States and Britain, 101, 227n3 Zailijiao (Teaching of the Abiding Principle), 153, 159 Zeng Baosun, 135, 231n28 Zeng Guofan, 135 Zeng Jirong, 135, 136 Zhang Jian, 197 Zhang Mojun, 25, 63 Zhang Shouyi, 178–79 Zhang Xueliang, 179 Zhang Zhanyun, 56

Zhang Zhongduan, 74, 75, 94 Zhang Zongchang, 146 Zhang Zuolin, 160, 174, 178–79 Zhan Xiaobai, 2 Zhao Shiyu, 200 Zhao Yancai, 175–76 Zhejiang Province, 28, 38, 41, 63, 234n8 Zhen Wen Girls’ School, 56, 57 Zhili Province, 39, 42, 83 Zhongguo xinnüjie [Chinese new woman’s world] (magazine), 73, 77 Zhou dynasty, 82 Zhou Qiuguang, 216n50 Zhu Hu Binxia. See Hu Binxia Zhu Jingnong, 80, 87, 88 Zhu Qihui (Madame Xiong Xiling), 12, 31, 94–95, 97, 120, 134; bound feet concealed by, 80, 85, 137, 224–25n34; Changsha YWCA and, 130–31; death of, 92, 153; as forgotten figure, 68–69, 70; husband’s career guided by, 81–82, 225n40; Mass Education Movement and, 84, 86–92, 93, 226n54; philanthropist activities with husband, 78–83; progressive social/political views of, 1, 204–5; recreational activities of, 19; reputation as leading female philanthropist, 83–86; scholarbeauty romance of Fenghuang County and, 202–3; titles held by, 85–86; woman’s surname issue and, 14 Zhu Qiqian, 80, 225n35 Zhu Qiyi, 78–79 Zhu Xi, 166 Ziyoubao (Freedom Newspaper), 74, 76, 89 Zuo (Tso), Mme., 100, 108, 125–36, 128, 150, 207, 230n2 Zuo Zongtang, 126, 127