Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915-1953

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Glosser, Chinese Visions 9/11/02 1:15 PM Page i

Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915–1953

Glosser, Chinese Visions 9/11/02 1:15 PM Page ii

ASIA: LOCAL STUDIES / GLOBAL THEMES Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, Kären Wigen, and Hue-Tam Ho Tai, Editors 1.

Bicycle Citizens: The Political World of the Japanese Housewife, by Robin M. LeBlanc

2.

The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography, edited by Joshua A. Fogel

3.

The Country of Memory: Remaking the Past in Late Socialist Vietnam, by Hue-Tam Ho Tai

4.

Chinese Femininities/Chinese Masculinities: A Reader, edited by Susan Brownell and Jeffrey Wasserstrom

5.

Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915–1953, by Susan L. Glosser

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Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915–1953

Susan L. Glosser Foreword by Linda Kerber

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley

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Los Angeles

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London

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University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England ©2003 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Glosser, Susan L., 1961–. Chinese visions of family and state, 1915–1953 / Susan L. Glosser. p. cm. (Asia: Local studies / global themes ; 5) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 0-520-22729-8 1. Family—China—History. 2. Family policy—China. 3. Domestic relations—China. 4. China—History—Republic, 1912–1949. 5. China—History—1949–1976. I. Title: Chinese visions of family and state, 1915–1953. II. Title. III. Series ds774 .g57 2002 951.04—dc21 2001001397 Manufactured in the United States of America 12

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The paper used in this publication is both acid-free and totally chlorine-free (tcf). It meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

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Contents

List of Tables and Figures

vii

Foreword

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Acknowledgments

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Chronology Introduction: Evolve or Perish 1. Saving Self and Nation: The New Culture Movement’s Family-Reform Discourse 2. Making the National Family: The Statist Xiao Jiating 3. Marketing the Family: You Huaigao and the Entrepreneurial Xiao Jiating 4. Love for Revolution: Xiao Jiating in the People’s Republic

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27 81 134 167

Conclusion: The Malleability of the Xiao Jiating Ideal

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Notes

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Bibliography

249

Glossary

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Index

267

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Tables and Figures

tables 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Age of Jiating Yanjiu Survey Respondents Chen’s Survey, Unengaged Men: Who Should Choose Your Wife? Chen’s Survey, Married Men: My Wife’s Satisfactory Qualities Pan’s Survey: Men’s Ranking of the Purposes of Marriage Pan’s Survey: Women’s Ranking of the Purposes of Marriage Pan’s Survey: Important Qualities in a Wife Pan’s Survey: Important Qualities in a Husband Grounds Women Used to Sue for Divorce, and Outcomes Grounds Women Used to Sue to Live Apart, and Outcomes Occupations of Visitors to the Marriage Questions Desk

35 66 71 76 76 76 77 114 114 181

figures 1. 2.

Chen’s survey: age of married and engaged respondents Pan’s survey: marital status and age of male respondents

58 59 vii

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3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

Tables and Figures

Pan’s survey: occupations of male respondents Pan’s survey: occupations of female respondents Chen’s survey: actual versus ideal age at marriage Choreography of an ideal Nationalist wedding Choreography of a new-style Shanghai wedding Participants in a Nationalist group wedding Chen Yunlong and Wang Ximei “Freedom of marriage, a life of prosperity and happiness” “Protecting the interests of women and children” “Widows have a right to remarry” “Marrying at the proper age”

60 61 65 88 90 130 144 187 188 189 190

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Foreword

Whether we credit it to globalism or cosmopolitanism, the need to reach out of the archives of a single nation and to explore themes that are shared across cultural boundaries has invigorated much recent scholarship. Marxist historians led the way. Perhaps this was because Marxist theory offered a structure for explaining the historical relation of worker to capitalist that refused to see the differences between national histories as absolute. Practitioners of this sort of history thought in terms of structures that allowed for a shared and comparative history; the same theoretical apparatus could be employed whether the labor relations were in Buenos Aires or Boston, Milan, or Manila. Feminist scholars, on the trail of patriarchy, followed suit. They have found it increasingly interesting to cross boundaries of time and space and engage in dialogue with those concerned with common questions but different epochs and locales. Patriarchy has flourished in wildly disparate societies, and, like class and race, gender is permanently in the process of social formation. Hungry for analytical strategies, feminist scholars have reason to read outside their disciplinary and geographical and temporal “fields,” and they have often done the first of these things (it is no accident that so many feminist scholarly journals are interdisciplinary), though less commonly the latter two.1 1. For good introductions to moves to internationalize the history of women and of gender, see Karen Offen, Ruth Roach Pierson, and Jane Rendall, eds., Writing Women’s

ix

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Still, if the work is compelling enough, even the biggest gulfs of time or space are obstacles that can be overcome. And Susan Glosser gives historians of the United States, Europe, Africa, and Latin America a good reason to read about China. She also adds to a growing body of evidence within feminist historiography for the need to find new ways to integrate, on an equal footing, tales about gender and tales about politics. In the early 1970s, when the history of women was being reinvigorated, political history was generally understood to be a subject innocent of gender. (A collection of historiographical essays commissioned by the American Historical Association herded women’s history into the same chapter as family history.) For Susan Glosser, though, as for many other recent writers on related themes, family history and gender history are necessarily linked to national political history. She argues, in the chapters to come, that the construction of gender is integral to a nation’s understanding of itself, and gender identities are substantially constructed inside families. In listening to Chinese men arguing in the 1920s about the qualities of the perfect wife, we hear gender ideologies being shaped. We can also find, perhaps to our surprise, arguments we have heard before—in the United States in the era of the American Revolution, in Italy during the Risorgimento. That is in part because Chinese men imported these lines of reasoning from abroad, in part because similar lines of reasoning emerged from congruent political goals. The struggles against traditional Confucian values that took place in early-twentieth-century China can seem far removed from those American Revolutionaries waged against conservative ideologies in the eighteenth century, but there are some eerie resemblances—some of which Glosser explicitly notes in her study. Chinese reformers challenged a Confucian tradition that required upper-class women (and in some cases those of non-elite status as well) to be metaphorically and literally secluded in their homes, their mobility restricted by the pain of bound feet. Chinese reformers condemned footbinding both for principle and for practice, and expanded their condemnation of tradition into an assertion of women’s entitlement to knowledge so that they could be better wives and mothers. (Because “the trope of the powerless and victimized” woman was useful to reformers, Glosser argues, they generally ignored the real power that women—especially as mothers-in-law—could wield in the traditional elite

History: International Perspectives (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991); and Ida Blom, Karen Hagemann, and Catherine Hall, eds., Gendered Nations: Nationalisms and Gender Order in the Long Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Berg, 2000).

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household.) As Chinese reformers warmed to their task, Glosser explains, they offered a vision of the modern woman that calls up the image I named the “republican mother” in a work published more than two decades ago. We also see the contours at some moments of what might be called—to play on both terminology used by other historians of gender interested in the West and a slogan bandied about in contemporary China—a cult of domesticity with Chinese characteristics.2 The ideology of republican motherhood, which flourished in the era of the American Revolution, located politicized, educated women as contributors to the stability and vitality of the state. Such a mother was an informed citizen who transmitted her well-grounded opinions to her children, educating her sons and daughters to lead patriotic and virtuous lives. Moreover, before she was a republican mother she was a republican wife, choosing a virtuous man for her husband and correcting her husband’s lapses from civic virtue. Against the founders’ fear that republics were fragile, dependent on the virtuous choices of the generation that created them, unlikely to be retained when the revolutionary generation was replaced by descendants who had not experienced the moral crises that drove the founders, the republican mother inserted herself. She promised to nurture successive generations of virtuous citizens. Like Glosser’s New Culture reformers, she agreed that the nation “needed healthy, educated mothers to produce citizens sound in mind and body.” Hemmed in at every turn by the old law of domestic relations, republican motherhood could legitimize only a minimum of political sophistication and interest. The republican mother did not vote or participate directly in politics; she could be spared the sharp criticism normally directed at intellectually active women because she placed her learning at her family’s service. Like the ideology of xiao jiating (literally, the small family), the ideology of republican motherhood claimed a modest space

2. For elaboration of the concepts of the republican mother and the cult of domesticity, see Linda K. Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: Institute of Early American History and Culture for the University of North Carolina Press, 1980); Ronald Hoffman and Peter J. Albert, eds., Women in the Age of the American Revolution (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1989); Jan Lewis, “The Republican Wife,” William and Mary Quarterly, ser. 3, vol. 44, no. 4 (October 1987): 689–721; Jeanne Boydston, Home and Work: Housework, Wages and the Ideology of Labor in the Early Republic (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); and the most recent edition of Renate Bridenthal et al., eds., Becoming Visible: Women in European History (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998). An important effort to trace similarities and differences between Chinese and Western visions of domesticity is Susan Mann, “The Cult of Domesticity in Republican Shanghai’s Middle Class,” Jin dai Zhongguo funü shi yanjiu (Research on women in modern chinese history) 2 (June 1994).

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for the individualism of the wife, altering the female domain in which most women lived out their lives, and justifying middle-class women’s claims to be part of the civic culture.3 Some of the similarities across time and space just alluded to are intentional; Glosser tells us that New Culture radicals of the 1910s and 1920s looked to the Western nuclear family as a modern alternative and made Nora of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House their model. They dreamed of companionate marriage; they linked individual happiness to the welfare of society; and although they did not claim “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” as explicit goals, entitlement to personal happiness resonated through their writings. Access to divorce was necessarily part of the companionate ideal; petitioners for divorce in China at the end of the decade of the 1930s (not unlike petitioners for divorce in Revolutionary America or France) were overwhelmingly women. By the 1930s the xiao jiating ideal had imploded to include “rational” consumer choices as part of the way “women fulfilled their civic duties,” along with educating their children and making the home comfortable for their husbands. There were many differences, of course. The ideology of xiao jiating, Glosser tells us, was embedded in an attack on traditional family systems. In the United States, those who articulated the ideologies of republican motherhood and companionate marriage had included women as well as men; Chinese reformers seem to have been almost all male and uninterested in female subjectivity. It was their own individualism they were prepared to heighten. As Glosser puts it, “Men took it for granted that it was their happiness at stake.” Moreover, in China, to an unusual degree, due to a mixture of political factors, the power of an invasive state ended up being bolstered by family reform rhetoric. In general daily usage, at least in the United States, the languages of marriage and of family life are thought to describe private life, a sphere of experience guarded against state intrusion. We habitually contrast the

3. It is interesting to note that in the United States in the 1790s, as Susan E. Klepp has argued, the ideology of republican motherhood developed in the demographic context of the “fertility transition” to smaller families. Free women, she writes, “applied egalitarian ideas and a virtuous, prudent sensibility to their bodies and to their traditional images of self as revolutions inspired discussion and debate. . . . On the household level, restricted fertility and high rates of literacy or years of education were persistently linked: the higher the educational attainment of women, the lower fertility rates.” See Susan E. Klepp, “Revolutionary Bodies: Women and the Fertility Transition in the Mid-Atlantic Region, 1760– 1820,” Journal of American History 85 (1998): 916, 915. It is also worth pointing out that the xiao jiating ideology, as Glosser suggests, not only limited the amount of space carved out for the individualism of the wife—the same was true for the husband.

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family and the state, the public and the private. And yet, the family is basic to a society’s system of political communication; patterns of family authority intersect with the general political culture, here as well as in places that are sometimes assumed to be unusually oriented toward familial units. Among the vocabularies for the expression of state power are the rules of marriage. Many elements of marriage and family life are shaped by state policy: the ceremony itself registered in state offices; parental obligations to support and protect children enforced; divorces framed by public law; police invited to interrupt domestic violence; inheritance law controlling what can be handed to heirs and who, in the event of intestacy, those heirs will be. Men and women, whether or not they are married, whether or not they are heterosexual, shape their relationships to each other within the boundaries of the state’s expectations for their behavior. Simultaneously, the state’s own vision of itself often depends as much upon family behavior as on public law. For example, practices of child raising precede formal schooling and can situate children variously for participation in societies that expect greater or lesser degrees of selfgovernment and civic participation. These practices can change over time. Before the American Revolution, divorce was rare and when it occurred, custody of young children invariably went to the father; by the 1830s, the ideology of republican motherhood had contributed to a new configuration of women as appropriately the nurturers and educators of their children, and the old rule began to crumble. A generation ago, Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba envisioned political socialization as a process in which an individual develops a definition of self as related to the state.4 In the talk—and there is a lot of good talk in Glosser’s book—about what husbands and wives owe to each other, to their families, and to the community, we can hear educated Chinese men of the first half of the twentieth century struggling to articulate new relations of marriage. We also hear them, sometimes explicitly, sometimes implicitly, struggling to articulate new claims for their own selffashioning, for their relations with their wives, and for new relations between the private family and the public order. That they hesitated to challenge the public order as they inherited it would constitute their tragedy. But Glosser has retrieved the voices of men of modest fame and enabled us to listen in as they reflect on the 4. Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963).

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most intimate relations of their lives. Their state would be listening. If the public sphere presses so heavily on the private, then historians of the public order cannot avoid the history of the family and of ideas about it. Reading across borders, in an effort to tie together histories of gender and histories of politics, all this suggests, is something that is well worth doing for many different kinds of reasons. And for students of Western histories looking for some way to get a sense of the stakes involved in Chinese debates on the family and public life, the pages that follow by Susan Glosser are an excellent place to start. Linda K. Kerber

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Acknowledgments

Writing these acknowledgments has been an edifying experience. Until now I have not had to face up to the fact that over the past decade and a half I have importuned and inconvenienced dozens of people who have generously agreed to help me in all kinds of ways. In the course of my researches I have benefited from the unstinting kindness of Annie Chang and her staff at the Center for Chinese Studies Library at the University of California, Berkeley, and the patience of the staff at the Hoover Institute’s East Asian Collection at Stanford University. Bruce Williams is the ghost in the machine at Berkeley’s East Asiatic Library and has helped me track down all sorts of things over the years. The folks in the Interlibrary Loan Department at Lewis & Clark College have kept me supplied with much that I’ve needed. I owe a great deal to the staff of the Shanghai Municipal Library, the Shanghai Municipal Archives, and the Number Two Archive in Nanjing. Two people in particular helped me get the materials I needed to write this book. They know who they are and I hope they also know how much their efforts have meant to me. In Taipei the staff of the National Historical Archives, the Nationalist Party Archives, the History Institute, and the Bureau of Intelligence Library went out of their way to guide my research and provide me with the materials I needed. I hope these people and their institutions will accept my heartfelt thanks in exchange for all they’ve done for me. Various organizations and foundations have funded my research, and I am happy to have the opportunity to acknowledge them here. A Mellon xv

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Acknowledgments

Foundation Grant and a Graduate Humanities Research Grant supported pre-dissertation research in 1991 and 1992. A grant from the Education Department of the Republic of China and a Dissertation Fellowship from the Committee for Scholarly Communication with the PRC funded a year of dissertation research in Shanghai and Nanjing during the 1992–1993 academic year. A semester of junior sabbatical from Lewis & Clark College helped me revise the book manuscript. Thanking all the people who have enriched my life is a delight. My family has been an important touchstone through the years. James Clune shared the many years of school and work that eventually produced this book. I am honored to count him among my friends. John Chaffee is really to blame for getting me started in this profession. He lured me into Chinese History with his course “Mandarins and Samurai,” kept me there with his patience and encouragement, and launched me on my life’s work with the simple words “You could learn Chinese.” Thank you. I owe a great debt to my professors at Berkeley, especially Wen-hsin Yeh, Frederic Wakeman Jr., Irwin Scheiner, Mary Ryan, and Elizabeth Perry. I want to offer special thanks to Wen-hsin, who has continued to inspire me with her intellectual rigor, creativity, and sense of fun. Over the years Susan Mann’s example and kind words have given me great encouragement. I am blessed with friends who understand fun both intellectual and otherwise. Thank you to Lyell Asher and Ben Westervelt for their unparalleled lunchroom conversation, Carlton Benson for his dry humor and willingness to eat ganbian siji dou every night for a year, Annie Chang for her gracious and generous help with long-distance research, Lisa Claypool for turning up all over the place and for turning up some last minute citations, Alan Cole for conversation, Sherry Fowler for general hilarity, especially in the middle of the Taklimakan Desert, Mark Halperin for his friendship, Jane Hunter for her kindness, Susan Kirschner for wonderful dinners, Todd and Christa Little-Seibold for their joie de vivre, Robby and Gary Roy for taking me in and Robby for the endless garage sales, Carol Schrader for advice and listening, Teri Silvio for her humor and her Play-Doh art, and Patty Stranahan for shopping and encouragement. Beth Haiken stands in a class of her own—she made a world of difference. I have been deeply touched by the generosity of those who have taken hours out of their own projects to help me with mine. Lyell, Beth, Carlton, Robby, two anonymous readers for the University of California Press, and Ken Pomeranz, also a reader for the press, read the entire manuscript at one time or another and made invaluable comments. I am grate-

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ful to them for challenging my arguments and saving me from many gaffes and infelicities. Any that remain are my own fault. Much credit is due Jan Spauschus, whose excellent eye and ear made this a much better book than it otherwise would have been. I am grateful to Sheila Levine for taking an interest in my work and guiding me through the publishing process and to Julie Brand and Mary Severance for getting the book to press. Many thanks to Lihua Wang and Meiru Liu, who provided advice on translation and transcription, and to Sherm Cochran, who responded quickly and generously to my queries about currencies. To Miya Barnett, Sukey Hunter Bernard, Tracy Leithauser, Willow McCormick, Stacy Skiftenes, and Amber Spradlin, all of whom took wonderful care of Livy while I finished the copy-editing, I owe great peace of mind. Olivia deserves to be included at the last minute because she is teaching me the meaning of efficiency. Like a book she will soon have a life of her own. Unlike a book, she took only nine months from start to finish. And finally, again and always, Lyell. Thank you is a paltry phrase to offer for a life richer than I thought possible.

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Chronology

1895 1898 1911 1912

1915

1915–1923

4 May 1919

Sino-Japanese War ends in China’s humiliating defeat. Yan Fu publishes Tianyan lun (On evolution). Qing dynasty (founded in 1644) collapses. Republic of China is established on 1 January and Sun Yatsen is voted provisional president. In February, the presidency is passed to former Qing general Yuan Shikai. In January, Yuan Shikai accepts Japan’s “Twenty-One Demands,” giving Japan extensive economic power in China’s northeast. In September, Chen Duxiu publishes “Jinggao qingnian” (Call to youth) in the magazine Xin qingnian (New youth). The article ignites the New Culture Movement. The New Culture Movement absorbs China’s educated urban youth in a vehement attack on traditional Chinese culture. Beijing University students protest the articles in the Treaty of Versailles that, citing a secret treaty between Britain and Japan, remove Chinese territories in Shandong province from German control and give them to the Japanese. The protest, which becomes known as the May Fourth Incident, swiftly spreads to other cities and involves a broad spectrum of Chinese society. xix

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1920

1921 1923 1925 1927

1931 1934

1936

1937

Chronology

Sun Yatsen reforms the Guomindang. (Guomindang is translated as the Nationalist Party and abbreviated as GMD. In alternate romanization systems, the party’s name is transliterated as Kuomindang and abbreviated as KMT.) Yi Jiayue and Luo Dunwei establish the Family Research Society and begin publishing the periodical Jiating yanjiu (Family research). The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is formed. The Nationalists and Communists link their parties in the First United Front. Sun Yatsen dies and Chiang Kaishek seizes control of the Nationalist Party. Chiang Kaishek purges the Communists from the Nationalist Party and establishes his capital in Nanjing. The Communists flee to the countryside of southeastern China, where they pursue land reform and some family reform among the peasants. In May, the Nationalists promulgate their New Family Law. In October, the Communists, forced out of southeastern China by Nationalist encirclement campaigns, begin the Long March. A year later they arrive in the far northwestern province of Gansu. They soon establish headquarters in Yan’an. This will serve as their headquarters until 1947. In December, in what will later be known as the Xian Incident, the Communists and some of Chiang Kaishek’s own officers hold him hostage until he agrees to stop trying to exterminate the Communists and instead turn his attention to fighting the Japanese. He agrees and the Communists and Nationalists form the Second United Front. You Huaigao begins to publish Jiating xingqi (Family weekly). In August, the Japanese invade Shanghai. After three months of fighting they occupy the Chinese part of the city. In December, the Japanese take Nanjing, raping, murdering, and looting for seven weeks. The

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Chronology

1941

1945

1949

1950 1953

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Nationalists flee inland, eventually settling in Chongqing, the city that will be their wartime capital. With the attack on Pearl Harbor in December and the United States’s subsequent entry into the war, the Japanese occupy the British- and American-dominated International Concession. In the wake of World War II the Second United Front dissolves and China sinks into civil war as the Nationalists and Communists fight for supremacy. Chiang Kaishek flees for Taiwan and continues his government there. On the first of October, Mao Zedong declares the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). In April, the PRC government promulgates the Marriage Law. The PRC launches a campaign to fully implement the Marriage Law.

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Introduction Evolve or Perish

Confronted with foreign aggression and internal chaos, in 1915 China’s young urban intellectuals launched a vociferous attack on traditional Chinese culture. Their radical reevaluation of China’s political and cultural institutions, a reevaluation later known as the New Culture Movement, lasted eight years and addressed almost every aspect of Chinese society. Blaming traditional institutions for China’s perilous circumstances, these young radicals proposed a number of Western-inspired reforms. Of these, one of the most important was family reform. In place of arranged marriage and patriarchal control, they promoted free marriage choice, companionate marriage, and economic and emotional independence from the family. In the following decades this debate expanded to include reformers and revolutionaries of all political stripes in a discussion that was ultimately as much about the nation as it was about the family. The New Culture Movement exploded with a force that made it seem unprecedented but, in fact, the groundwork for such iconoclasm was laid decades before. It is, perhaps, impossible to point to a single day, or even year, as the definitive moment that sends a nation in a new direction, but surely something like that may be said of the early days of 1895. Before pursuing this study of New Culture family reform and its legacy, let us turn to a moment some twenty years earlier when another generation of Chinese intellectuals also agonized over how to save the nation. One afternoon in January 1895, Japanese troops seized the defensive forts at the Shandong port of Weihaiwei. Using captured Chinese can1


2

Introduction

non from land and their own torpedo boats from sea, they proceeded to destroy half of the northern Chinese navy’s modern fleet. The battle not only sank China’s best ships, but also its last hopes of maintaining what many Chinese believed to be China’s unique cultural essence in the face of the capitalist imperialist onslaught that had begun with the Opium War almost sixty years before. Up to this point, China had pursued a policy of developing Western technology while maintaining its own values, culture, and social and political organization. The humiliating defeat at the hands of a people the Chinese liked to dismiss as “midget pirates” (wakÖ) caused a crisis of confidence among many of China’s intellectuals. Some wondered whether Chinese culture was intrinsically ill-suited for modernity. Perhaps, they suggested, China could not successfully adopt Western technology without also adopting some elements of Western culture. In the same year, Yan Fu (1853–1921), one of China’s intellectual lights, began translating Thomas Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics. His work, a combination of translation and commentary that promoted the views of the Social Darwinist Herbert Spencer, appeared as Tianyan lun (On evolution) in 1898. It electrified young intellectuals, who felt that Social Darwinism explained why China found itself at the mercy of invading forces after centuries of political and cultural preeminence and that it starkly illuminated China’s alternatives—evolve or perish.1 This confluence of political events and social theory, or empirical fact and discourse, if you will, shaped China’s future. China’s best and brightest resolved to take the future into their own hands and map their country’s road to survival. To equip themselves for the evolutionary struggle, they borrowed from the social, cultural, and political systems of their wouldbe conquerors—Japan, Britain, Russia, France, Germany, and the United States. For the next twenty years, Chinese reformers focused their efforts on China’s political, educational, and military bureaucracies. They also began to broach reform for women, especially with regard to education and physical fitness. A generation later, China’s intellectuals could only conclude that the situation in China had worsened. The Qing had collapsed in 1911, ending millennia of imperial rule, but the democratic republic that replaced it in 1912 was already dying. The former Qing general Yuan Shikai, to whom Sun Yatsen had relinquished the presidency, had quickly squelched China’s nascent democratic institutions and in the fall and winter of 1915 tried to revive the imperial institution and install himself as emperor. In the spring of 1916 he died a disappointed man, but the presidents who


Introduction

3

succeeded him could not control the military strongmen who had ensconced themselves in jealously guarded strongholds throughout China. In 1917 China collapsed into a welter of warlord territories and would remain divided until Communist victory in 1949. To make matters worse, foreign powers stood poised to—as the popular saying went—“slice China up like a melon.” In 1915 Yuan Shikai had acceded to Japan’s Twenty-One Demands, giving it extensive economic power in China’s northeast. Four years later China’s sovereignty was further eroded when the Treaty of Versailles, citing a secret agreement between Britain and Japan, awarded to the Japanese territories in Shandong that had been formerly controlled by Germany. On 4 May 1919, university and high-school students in Beijing staged a protest against the treaty. The protest spread swiftly to China’s other cities, engulfing Chinese of all classes and backgrounds. Despite this outpouring, the world ignored China’s demands that the international community respect its sovereignty. It was against this backdrop that young urban intellectuals launched a vehement attack on all of Chinese culture. Dating from roughly 1915 to 1923, the New Culture Movement—also referred to as the May Fourth Movement—was characterized by an intense intellectual ferment and iconoclasm that affected educated urban youth across China.2 All aspects of traditional Chinese culture—veneration for the past and the elderly, authoritarianism and hierarchy, elite literature, gender roles, family organization—felt its fury. These young radicals promoted an alternative vision that emphasized rational scientific thought, democratic political and social organization, and valorization of the young and the new. Like the generation before them, these men and women also looked to the West for new models of social and political organization. Many New Culture Movement radicals seized upon family reform as the key to unlocking the potential of China’s youth and rebuilding their shattered nation. They accused the traditional patriarchal family of sacrificing China’s youth on the altar of filial obligation, teaching them dependency, slavishness, and insularity, and robbing them of their creative energy. In its place they advocated the Western conjugal family ideal (xiao jiating, literally “small family”), an ideal that promoted free marriage choice, companionate marriage, and economic and emotional independence from the family (da jiazu, literally the “large family”). New Culture radicals believed that the conjugal family had made the countries of the West strong because it encouraged productivity, independence, and civic virtue.3 In short, they hoped to restore China by de-


4

Introduction

stroying the traditional family and rebuilding it according to Western blueprints. Although the Chinese looked to the United States and Europe for new models of family organization, they did not slavishly copy the West. Rather, Chinese reform ideals bore the firm imprint of Chinese cultural and political priorities. For the past two centuries, Western family ideals have, by and large, increasingly supported individualistic solutions to societal problems and defended a private sphere characterized by significant independence from the state.4 Moreover, whereas the Western conjugal family ideal promotes a vision of a privatized family, the Chinese vision of the conjugal family did not.5 The firm connection that reformers drew between family life and the polity was a product of both long-standing elements in Chinese culture and the political crises of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Susan Mann, writing about eighteenth-century China, points out that the concepts of “inner” and “outer” used to describe the world of the family and the world at large are different from the West’s private/public dichotomy: “The principle of bie—separate spheres—is invoked to stress that wives and mothers inside the home embody the moral autonomy and authority on which husbands and sons must rely to succeed outside. All are part of a family system that constitutes a seamless, unitary social order centered on the home and bounded by the outer reaches of the imperium.”6 What Mann observes for the eighteenth century holds true for the nineteenth and twentieth as well. In China, this understanding of the family’s place in society, coupled with concern for the nation’s survival, charged the conjugal family ideal with a significance quite different from that of its Western counterpart. Although the Chinese xiao jiating was sometimes described as a refuge from a harsh world, more often it resembled a training ground for national struggle. The primary purpose of the xiao jiating was to instill the independence, productivity, and civic concern that the beleaguered state needed. In targeting family reform as an important part of China’s strengthening, reformers drew on an ancient element in Chinese political culture that linked family and state order.7 William Rowe observes: Following the Great Learning (Da xue), that seductively elegant ancient text seen by most late imperial literati as the quintessential statement of ethical and political thought, the family was central to political ideology in at least three ways. First was the well-known homology between family and state. The state was the family writ large. . . . Well-governed families meant a wellgoverned state, and vice versa. Second, it was an article of faith that mani-


Introduction

5

festly virtuous households would have an exemplary influence on their neighbors and so contribute to a well-ordered, smoothly functioning society. . . . Finally, the polity was conceived as a composite of families, which served as the basic, inter-linked building blocks for the larger social, economic, and ritual order.8

In the Great Learning the ordering of the family and pacification of the state appeared as the final steps in an eight-part formula for peace in the realm. The extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things. For only when things are investigated is knowledge extended; only when knowledge is extended are thoughts sincere; only when thoughts are sincere are minds rectified; only when minds are rectified are our persons cultivated; only when our persons are cultivated are our families regulated; only when families are regulated are states well governed; and only when states are well governed is there peace in the realm.9

With its inclusion in the Neo-Confucian canon in the Song dynasty (960–1279), this causal linking of self-cultivation, family order, and state governance became a central prescriptive model for China’s elite. Although few twentieth-century reformers explicitly cited The Great Learning in their arguments for family reform, they drew on this familiar and central formulation when they explored critiques of the family, and women’s role in it, as a means of strengthening the state.10 The year after China’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese War, the prominent journalist Liang Qichao likened China to a decrepit mansion: Now here is a big mansion which has lasted a thousand years. The tiles and bricks are decayed and the beams and rafters are broken. It is still a magnificently big thing, but when wind and rain suddenly come up, its fall is foredoomed. Yet the people in the house are still happily playing or soundly sleeping and as indifferent as if they have seen or heard nothing. Even some who have noted the danger know only how to weep bitterly, folding their arms and waiting for death without thinking of any remedy. Sometimes there are people a little better off who try to repair the cracks, seal up the leaks, and patch up the ant holes in order to be able to go on living there in peace, even temporarily, in the hope that something better may turn up. These three types of people use their minds differently, but when a hurricane comes they will die together. . . . The nation is also like this.11

Because of the integral connection between family and state order, a collapsing house made an apt simile for a disintegrating China. The same logic moved the intellectuals of the New Culture Movement to describe


6

Introduction

their reforms as the means of strengthening the nation. This was the irony, and perhaps, ultimately, the tragedy, of the movement. It promised to recreate Chinese culture from the ground up—to build an entirely new structure that would withstand the oncoming hurricane. In fact, although they used new materials to “repair the cracks, seal up the leaks, and patch up the ant holes,” the reformers retained the framework and foundations of traditional Chinese political culture.

making women better mothers The groundwork for the New Culture critique of traditional Confucian family values can be found in the criticism of the restrictions that it placed on women. In the late nineteenth century some intellectuals began to promote reform for women, arguing that China needed healthy, educated mothers to produce citizens sound in mind and body. Traditional feminine ideals demanded that women remain secluded from the outside world and devote their energies and attention to the home. Footbinding further restricted their mobility. Although the daughters of wealthy families were often well educated, by and large, women’s education was limited to acquiring domestic skills.12 Reform advocates believed that by crippling women’s bodies and intellect, these customs weakened China. For example, Kang Youwei, a Confucian scholar and Late-Qing reformer (1858–1927), condemned footbinding in part because it “weakened the race,” and Liang Qichao traced China’s infirmity to women’s “parasitic” role in the family. These men advocated education and improved physical fitness for women, reforms that they hoped would produce future generations of strong, educated citizens.13 The transfiguration of women’s prescribed roles and the shift in the definition of nation occurred in tandem. In traditional imperial political culture, the people were subjects who owed obedience and service to an autocratic ruler. But by the late nineteenth century, elites began to conceptualize the nation as a community of citizens who contributed to the state through active social and political participation rather than unquestioning service.14 Men’s interest in educational and physical reforms for women grew out of this desire to maximize their own contribution to the nation.15 Thus, to the Neo-Confucian injunction to cultivate one’s self was added an explicit directive to women to improve themselves. The improvement, often described as the “civilization” (wenming) of women, was not an independent goal in itself but rather an adjunct to the desire to create a


Introduction

7

viable male citizenry. Reformers believed that men would never be able to make full use of their talents and abilities if they were burdened with unhealthy and uneducated women.16 From the beginning, then, most women’s rights advocates wanted to improve women’s lives for the sake of a stronger China. This same approach to reform for women continued as young elite men in the New Culture Movement shifted the emphasis from good mothers to ideal wives. A standard chronology of essays and events has begun to emerge out of the historiography on women in late-nineteenth- and early-twentiethcentury China.17 The first effort to improve women’s status is often marked with Kang Youwei’s Anti-Footbinding Society, founded in 1883. In 1896, Kang’s student Liang Qichao called for the advancement of women. He grouped reforms for women into three categories: productivity, education, and the cultivation of a strong and healthy body. He believed that China’s political weakness and women’s subordinate status both resulted from the fact that men produced but women only consumed. No matter how hard a man worked, he could not support all his dependents. (Some years later Liang recognized women’s reproductive labor as work.) Educating women so that they could work would cure China’s poverty and end women’s subordinate status, as well as broaden their horizons and equip them to educate China’s children. According to Liang, mothers in the West were responsible for 70 percent of their children’s elementary education. If Chinese women did likewise and educated their children in the basics before the age of ten, he reasoned, China would be better able to compete with Western nations. Finally, eugenics and Social Darwinism convinced many intellectuals that a mother’s health affected her children’s. For example, Liang urged improvement in prenatal care because he believed that women’s general physical health affected racial vigor.18 In addressing these three issues, Liang outlined three of the four major themes that would inform the debate on women’s education and status for the next century. Taken together, they underscore the importance of political economy in the minds of family reformers. The fourth theme was the degree to which gender was a cultural construction. It was first taken up in 1897 by Tan Sitong, one of China’s most original intellectuals, in Ren xue (On benevolence). In this philosophical tract, Tan attacked the hierarchical principles of Confucianism and suggested that gender differences were merely cultural accretions.19 The first Chinese girls’ schools opened in the following year, 1898. With the turn of the twentieth century, the call for women’s rights grew stronger. In 1902, the monthly Shanghai periodical Nüxue bao


8

Introduction

(Women’s studies journal) warned women against relying on men to free them and called on women to become independent and fight for their own rights.20 In 1903, the pamphlet Nüjie zhong (Women’s bell) claimed six rights for women and articulated eight goals for their education. The author, Jin Tianhe (1874–1947), insisted that women had the right to attend upper-level schools, have companionship, do business, own property, travel and move about freely, and marry men of their own choosing. He advocated an education for women that would allow them to realize their own potential, free them from oppression, develop their minds so that they developed male sensibilities, mold their spirits so they could lead other women of the world, make them physically strong so they might bear healthy children, make them virtuous so that they might set a standard for the country, make them civic-minded, and preserve their integrity.21 In these years, several prominent female feminists emerged on the scene. For example, Qiu Jin (1875–1907) electrified audiences when she appeared dressed in men’s clothing and called for the equality of men and women. (An avowed patriot, she was executed in 1907 for attempting to lead an uprising against the Qing government.) In 1907 the feminist and anarchist He Zhen established the Women’s Rights Recovery Association (Nüzi fuquan hui). The Association advocated the end of male privileges and prohibited submission to men. Its members could not become concubines or second wives. In return, the Association promised to help all members in their fight against oppression, whether it be within the home or in society at large. He Zhen also edited the feminist-anarchist journal Tianyi bao (Natural justice). She was one of the few feminists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries who refused to subordinate women’s struggle for equality to any other political goals or ideology.22 With the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911 and the establishment of the Republican government, some feminists pushed for suffrage. Tang Junying, a prominent leader of the women’s suffrage movement, led a small group of women in lobbying the National Council to include women’s right to vote and the principle of gender equality in the new constitution. When they were ignored, they broke into the meeting and, following the example of English suffragettes, broke windows and destroyed property until they were forcibly removed.23 Neither of the women’s proposals were included in the constitution. As we will see, during the New Culture Movement, the call for women’s rights grew in strength and broadened to include attacks on the traditional family. In January of 1916, Chen Duxiu (1879–1942), a lead-


Introduction

9

ing figure in the New Culture Movement and a future founder of the Chinese Communist Party, published his article “Yijiu yiliu” (1916), which called for a new family system and promoted the values of individualism.24 In that same issue Tao Menghe, a teacher who joined the New Culture Movement and mentored the young men who produced New Youth, published his essay “The Woman Problem,” which introduced a Western perspective on the women’s movement.25 The next month, Wu Yu (1872–1949), a vehemently anti-Confucian scholar and poet, attacked the family and clan system as the foundation of despotism.26 In 1918, Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House appeared in Chinese translation and soon became extraordinarily popular among New Culture radicals, providing young men with a forum for the discussion of women’s liberation and, perhaps more important, a metaphor for their own liberation—Nora’s slamming door.27

the xiao jiating Only with the rise of the New Culture Movement did the abstract, often nationalistic concern about the traditional family crystallize into personal discontent. Critiques of the traditional family by turn-of-the-century reformers like Yan Fu, Tan Sitong, Kang Youwei, and Liang Qichao remained abstract and theoretical.28 Kang Youwei, for example, went so far as to suggest that a marriage contract, renewable each year, replace the ideal of lifelong marriage. In 1907, anarchists launched a full-scale critique of the family and women’s oppression, but they remained on the geographical and ideological fringes of intellectual circles.29 New Culture radicals, on the other hand, gave voice to widespread dissatisfaction with the family and proposed concrete solutions. They rejected the traditional family ideal that celebrated “five generations under one roof,” condemning the authority of elders who subordinated the happiness of the individual to the well-being of the family and determined each member’s education, occupation, and marriage in light of its impact on the larger group. New Culture radicals saw an alternative in the West. They traced the root of Western strength, in fact, to the conjugal family, a form that they believed fostered individual independence and enterprise. In place of the traditional joint family, they proposed the xiao jiating, literally the “small family.” Predicated upon free marriage choice, economic independence, and physical separation from the joint family, the xiao jiating ideal promised fulfillment of individual potential. With its emergence as an impor-


10

Introduction

tant New Culture issue, family reform left the radical intellectual periphery and began to penetrate the consciousness of educated urbanites.30 A close examination of family-reform rhetoric reveals that New Culture radicals shared much with earlier advocates of self-strengthening, like Liang Qichao. Although the reformed family that New Culture radicals proposed represented a radical break from traditional ideals, they built their rationale for change upon the ancient foundations of Chinese political culture that linked family and state order. New Culture participants were iconoclastic in their rejection of the joint family ideal but remained traditional in their conception of state-society relations: a stable and strong society depended on a properly ordered family. Thus, in this instance of cultural transformation and influence of the West we see a scenario much more complex than the collapse of cultural faith that Joseph Levenson has described.31 The New Culture radicals’ family-reform discourse reveals that although they had lost confidence in their culture’s content, they retained faith in its form. They no longer believed the traditional joint family capable of ordering society, but still assumed that societal order began with the family. The New Culture Movement presented itself as a thoroughly radical political and cultural movement and historians have treated it as such, focusing on its iconoclasm. But this focus has overshadowed the debt to traditional political culture so clearly manifest in the fundamental connection that the movement maintained between family order and state order. It is the reason why New Culture radicals saw that connection as obvious, necessary, and beneficial.32 The power of New Culture discourse on the family derived largely from the fact that it promoted a radical ideal by using a familiar formulation. Although New Culture radicals continued to use the language of national strengthening to justify their attack on the traditional family, the element of self-interest in their arguments added a new twist to the selfstrengthening argument. Late-nineteenth-century reformers like Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao advocated reforms that would certainly affect individuals, but they did not address individual interests and desires. New Culture radicals, although still presenting the nation as their ultimate interest, believed that a happy, fulfilled individual was the first necessary step toward national strength. Young men also certainly found attractive the independence that the conjugal family offered. Arif Dirlik observes that the “cultural revolution,” particularly family reform, derived its power from the justification of rebellion against authority in everyday life. Yet Dirlik overstates his


Introduction

11

case somewhat when he attributes to these young men the desire to overthrow authority.33 Although the New Culture Movement ushered in a number of significant social changes, most participants’ goals remained fairly conservative. They planned to push aside the patriarchs who restricted their personal and public lives, but they by no means wanted to destroy authority and patriarchy altogether. Rather, they hoped to carve a foothold for themselves within the Chinese patriarchal order and from their heightened vantage point exert control over their own lives and the lives of their families. In accordance with this vision, New Culture family reformers focused on restructured women’s roles in the family with an eye toward their own individual fulfillment and happiness. If men were to live the lives they wanted, if they were to redefine themselves and their nation, then they had first to redefine their families. Women became objects of reform because of the implicit expectation that they should make satisfactory companions for their modern husbands. Historians Chow Tse-tsung and Ono Kazuko have argued that New Culture rhetoric acknowledged women’s identity as individuals independent of men and championed women’s rights for their own sake.34 More recently, scholars have recognized that the rhetoric of women’s rights also articulated young men’s frustrations with their own position in the traditional, hierarchical family.35 Sociologist Judith Stacey has observed that “the most radical attack possible against the traditional family system was to assail its oppression of women, and therefore a critique of gender served young men in their own challenge to generational subordination. The logic of Confucian patriarchy made family transformation the primary idiom of political discourse and induced Chinese radicalism to assume a feminist cast.”36 Vera Schwarcz has also suggested that women’s rights became a vehicle through which young men wrestled with the difficult process of redefining themselves.37 In this connection she offers an acute explanation for the popularity of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and its central character, Nora, among progressive urban youth early in the twentieth century. In search of a model of more individualistic rebellion they found that her final gesture—a door defiantly slammed shut against her assigned roles— echoed their struggle for emancipation from the family system. Nora’s unequivocal answer to her husband’s accusations that she was betraying her “sacred duties” as a mother and a wife engraved itself in the hearts of this generation: “I have a more sacred duty, my duty to myself.” The predicament of women thus spoke most directly to the emotional


12

Introduction needs of young men trapped in social duties not of their own choosing. Examples of dissent drawn from the Confucian tradition of defiant but loyal ministers did not meet their need for a model of disloyal, unfilial egoism. Nora did just that. She fired the imagination of Chinese sons, who read about her, wrote about her, and even played her on the Chinese stage.38

The redefinition of manhood occupied the primary, if implicit, focus of the family-reform debate. Even as these young men tried to create new and modern identities for themselves, they continued to treat the family as the primary source of those identities. Thus, it only made sense that the qualities of other family members—in this case, wives—affected their visions of themselves. Under the joint family ideal, men drew their identities largely from the status, education, and wealth of the joint family— particularly through the stem that connected the paternal line. In the conjugal family ideal, husband and wife replaced fathers and sons as the core of the family. The status of a man’s paternal elders and forebears no longer determined his reputation. Instead, he was responsible for creating himself—with his wife’s help. As a result, New Culture radicals energetically discussed the “civilization of women” (funü wenming) and the redefinition of women’s roles in family and society. At the same time, New Culture radicals believed in patriarchal authority and the traditional link between family and state. They rebelled against their fathers’ authority because they wanted to be patriarchs of their own small conjugal families. Yet, in traditional Confucian fashion, they still believed in the organic link between family order and state strength. Thus, their suggestions for family reform rearranged family organization and gender roles in ways that supported, rather than questioned, patriarchal and state authority. In hindsight, this approach to women’s rights created much more freedom for men than for women. But it is unlikely that New Culture radicals consciously or cynically manipulated feminist rhetoric for their own purposes. As happened in so much of Republican reform discourse, these men entered the contest for family and nation with the best of intentions, but they armed themselves with a logic and rhetoric that ultimately failed them and those they wanted to help.

why discourse? Many historians have recognized the importance of “women’s liberation” and family reform in nineteenth- and twentieth-century China. A number of scholars have also explored the complex relationship between so-


Introduction

13

cialism and women’s rights and family reform, most notably Elizabeth Croll, Judith Stacey, Kay Ann Johnson, and Margery Wolf. They, and others, have concluded that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) abandoned radical family reforms—the real troublemaker was the complete freedom to divorce—because it was afraid of alienating conservative peasants and losing their support. My study builds on the work of these scholars by examining a related phenomenon that has received little attention—the New Culture Movement’s vehement critique of the joint family system and the decades-long discussion of family reform that continued through the Republican era (1911–1949) and into the early years of the People’s Republic of China. Examination of the family-reform debate of the Republican period casts CCP “conservativism” in a very different light. I contend that the CCP did not maintain traditional family and gender hierarchies out of deference to peasant sensibilities. On the contrary, the Party developed its construction of family and gender roles, as well as its vision of statesociety relations, during the years it was based in China’s cities. The Party’s willingness to subordinate women’s rights to the needs of the state was, in fact, the product of a family-reform discourse that began with the urban New Culture Movement. Family-reform discourse offers us a new perspective on state-society relations in twentieth-century China, and presses upon us a significant reinterpretation of the New Culture Movement. The movement has long been understood as a radical break with the Chinese past, but the trajectory of family-reform discourse suggests a different interpretation. While the threat of colonization shook the elite’s confidence in the viability of Chinese culture, the threat to China’s sovereignty solidified an alliance between reformers and the state. The elite not only justified social and political iconoclasm as the means to strengthen the nation, but also called on the state to lead society in its evolutionary efforts. This contract eventually produced an impossible and dangerous entity—the Communists’ “revolutionary state.” Impossible because this phrase is an oxymoron: if revolution demands the upending of all established power structures, a state—which by definition is an entity that unceasingly pursues its own entrenchment—cannot be revolutionary; upon its formation, it begins almost immediately to solidify its authority. As Lenin, commenting on Marx, observed, the state “is a force standing above society and ‘increasingly separating itself from it.’”39 The phrase “revolutionary state” is not only logically problematic, it is also dangerous; when a state cloaks itself in a revolutionary identity, it claims for itself the au-


14

Introduction

thority to lead the nation into the future.40 In that capacity it also takes upon itself the responsibility for formulating change and judging all behaviors and customs. As the revolutionary body, it labels all opposition counterrevolutionary and so forbids critical thinking and independent action. Thus, the phrase “revolutionary state” is not simply a product of sloganeering or sloppy political terminology; rather, it reveals the logical impasse in which proponents of nation-strengthening discourse ultimately found themselves. Elite urban Chinese interest in the Western-style conjugal family (xiao jiating) and the family-reform discourse reformers created illustrates these processes. Of course, the Chinese adopted and adapted other foreign concepts like democracy, eugenics, and Marxism. In comparison with these other imports, however, for which no Chinese words existed, family-reform ideals were uniquely situated in the nation-strengthening discourse. Family, or home,41 albeit with a somewhat different definition than the Western one, was a concept deeply embedded in Chinese culture and inextricably bound into Chinese notions of state and society. Traditional precedents created a context in which new ideas about family could be integrated into the changing identities of China and its new citizens. A direct relation between discourse and behavior may not exist. Nevertheless, discourse provides insights into both values and behavior. Prescribed norms tell us how particular groups would like to order their world and why. As Stephanie Coontz observes, “Both as an institution and as a conception, the family mediates between people’s definitions of themselves as individuals and as members of society. It is one of the main tools we use to understand and define ourselves in relation to the overarching social structure.”42 By its very nature, discourse often comments on a broader range of issues than those it explicitly addresses. Lynn Hunt has demonstrated, for example, that pornography produced during the French Revolution was as much about a new political order as it was about libidos.43 Changes in ideals may precede changes in behavior.44 For example, the discourse of self-strengthening provided the rationale for the antifootbinding movement; a strong nation depended on the health of its people. Likewise, numerous examples suggest that the discourse of family reform did directly affect behavior. Wang Huiwu, the daughter of a poor schoolteacher, took New Culture ideals to heart, became an effective advocate of women’s rights, and emerged as a strong feminist leader in the very early years of the Communist Party.45 An anonymous respondent to a survey on marital satisfaction explained that because of


Introduction

15

the new marriage ideals he had recently become dissatisfied with his traditional wife.46 Republican sociologists Pan Guangdan and Chen Heqin found in the early 1920s that men in Jiangxi and Shanghai had indeed adopted New Culture expectations of their wives, especially with regard to education.47 Historian Wen-hsin Yeh has shown how new ideals of family and marriage reached Shanghai’s petty urbanites through Zou Taofen’s Life Weekly (Shenghuo zhoukan).48 In 1939 a scoundrel used the rhetoric of xiao jiating to seduce a young woman away from her family.49 The ideals of gender equality (or at least parity) that were important to new visions of marriage found expression in the Guomindang (GMD) family code of 1931 and later in the CCP Marriage Law of 1950. In the last decade of the Republican period (1940–1949), laboring women took advantage of the GMD code to attempt to divorce abusive or absent husbands.50 In the very early years of the Communist regime, peasant women, encouraged by Party models of marriage, used the Marriage Law to divorce undesirable husbands. Although much work remains to be done before we can fully understand family life in Republican China, existing evidence suggests that the discourse of family reform was far from irrelevant. From a historiographical viewpoint, it makes sense to understand prescriptive ideals of behavior before attempting to establish how people really lived their lives. In American and European historiography of women, family, and gender, study of the prescriptive ideal preceded our understanding of how these ideals affected women’s lives. Barbara Welter opened a new subfield in women’s history by reconstructing the Victorian white, upper-middle-class ideal of womanhood in her article “The Cult of True Womanhood.”51 The superstructure of the ideal, which Welter provided, created an analytical framework for the projects that followed. Later historians used her findings as a departure point for empirical researches into women’s lives and asked how socioeconomic status and race affected women’s roles and their ability and desire to live up to the “true womanhood” ideal. Moreover, Welter’s sketch of the dominant ideal allowed historians to gauge the significance and degree of the variation that they inevitably detected.52 Analysis of family-reform discourse also provides richer explanations for several much-discussed characteristics of Chinese culture and politics. Many historians have remarked on the persistence of “traditional” attitudes toward women among even the most radical of New Culture, GMD, or CCP reformers. Participants in, as well as historians of, these events have attributed the survival of unequal gender expectations to


16

Introduction

the pernicious influence of a “feudal” past. For example, Christina Gilmartin portrays male dominance within the Communist Party as a continuation of traditional patriarchy: “It seemed only too natural to them that men should hold the reins of power.”53 Although historians scrupulously record the perpetuation of gender bias, they share their subjects’ belief that these views of women derived from Chinese tradition. In fact, however, much of what has been attributed to “tradition” was not so much a vestige of the past as a product of the new formulation of women’s roles.54 Sharon Nolte and Sally Hastings have shown that the “traditional” Japanese family form was, in fact, fashioned by the Meiji government in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.55 Their interpretation of the nature of family tradition applies equally well to China. The “traditional” woman’s role promoted by the participants in the family-reform debate, whether New Culture intellectuals, Nationalists, entrepreneurs, or Communists, had undergone significant transformations. In the traditional ideal, a good mother modeled ethical behavior for her children by working hard, running a frugal household, and submitting to family and paternal authority.56 In the iconography of good mothers, even single mothers took a fairly passive role in their children’s education. Mencius’s mother, the ancient Confucian paragon of motherly virtue, fulfilled her maternal responsibility simply by providing her son with an environment conducive to moral cultivation. This ideal assumed that elder male relatives and teachers would educate sons in letters and politics.57 Women played very much the same roles in relation to their husbands as they did to their children. The good wife labored tirelessly in the home, making sure it ran smoothly and economically, and provided her husband with little source of aggravation. She did not enter or interfere in the world outside the home. The modern ideal still expected women to devote themselves to reproductive labor in the home, but it also called upon mothers to take an active role in forming their children’s moral and civic virtues and provide them with the foundations of a formal education. This was not, in fact, a new role for elite women. They had played an important role in their children’s education since at least the Han.58 But instead of restricting themselves to the inner world of the home, modern women were supposed to connect their children to the wider world and to the nation, at least through their interests, vision, and education, if not through outright participation in wage labor or politics. Women retained primary responsibility for the household, but the conjugal family ideal trans-


Introduction

17

formed both the scope and the implications of their duties there. Whether through their frugal consumption of time and money, their reproductive labor in the home, or active production, women’s labor was presumed to have an indirect but important impact on the well-being of the polity.59 Moreover, wives were expected to be both housekeeper and companion to their husbands. The modern ideal continued to restrict women to the home, but it expanded somewhat the tasks they tackled there and imputed to them a greater significance. In fact, the modern ideal resembled the traditional one in many ways, even though it was created by men who believed they were overturning all tradition and authority. Family-reform discourse also sheds light on how the Chinese understood the concepts of nation and state. I think it is fair to say that during the Republican period—and at least in the early 1950s—most Chinese who thought about the political problems facing China may not have found this distinction very useful. Westerners use “state” to refer to the bureaucratic apparatus that handles the logistics of governance and taxation. “Nation” is that community to which we understand ourselves to belong. It is a source of identity. Certainly, some Chinese made a similar distinction. Sun Yatsen, for example, described the nation (minzu) as a “natural and pacific” entity that grew out of a shared Chinese identity and the state (guojia) as an “artificial and violent” construct that was forced on the Chinese by the Mongols and Manchu. But even so, Sun thought of the two as inextricably connected, likening the connection between state and nation to that of the organs to the body.60 In Republican and early Communist China, nation and state overlapped in a way that is not immediately apparent to us. Chinese reformers believed that the nation needed a strong governmental apparatus in order to survive: without a strong state there would be no nation. In a fundamental sense, the nation was the state and the state was the nation. Loyalty to the nation entailed loyalty to the state because without the state, the nation would perish. The conflation of nation and state explains how the state managed to grow even as government collapsed. As each failure further endangered national sovereignty, reformers called for an ever more powerful state structure. The would-be state builders—both the GMD and the CCP— identified themselves with the nation and put into place ever more invasive policies. The population accepted and even welcomed these policies because it believed they were necessary for China’s survival. In using national strengthening as their justification for reform, New Culture radicals struck a Faustian bargain with the powers and logic of


18

Introduction

rhetoric. The rationale of national salvation allowed them to swiftly dismantle long-lived structures of authority and dominance. They themselves benefited from the new freedom and power that the reforms promised young men. But the power to subjugate all reform to the needs of the nation circumscribed the debate from the very beginning. Even reformminded entrepreneurs of the 1930s, who came closest to proposing an individualistic socioeconomic order, retained allegiance to the state as part of their family and social reform discourse. When the state (Nationalist or Communist) became strong enough to situate itself as the material, and not only the rhetorical, recipient of self-strengthening reforms, no one—neither feminists, nor intellectuals, nor politicians, nor ideologues, nor entrepreneurs—possessed sufficient political and cultural capital to counter the state’s demands. Thus, we see that by linking family reform with state-strengthening, thereby making national salvation the ultimate justification for any reform, early Republican radicals gave up any claim to an oppositional role that could command legitimacy in the eyes of either the public or the state. The growth of the Chinese state—which took place independently of a centralized, or often even coherent, government—illustrates perfectly Michel Foucault’s theory of the modern state as one that controls not death, but life.61 Understanding the development of family-reform discourse sheds new light not only on the origins of Communist marriage ideals but also on the Party’s vision of state-society relations and the means through which it enhanced societal control. The CCP’s ability to convince family members to “draw a line of demarcation,” as it was known, between themselves and politically suspect relatives during political campaigns, to implement a one-child policy, and to crush student protests at Tiananmen is quite in line with the initial decision early in Republican-era history to give the nation primacy of importance in reform efforts and the state pride of place in implementing them. Much of what this study uncovers resonates with James Scott’s observations about “why so many well-intended schemes to improve the human condition have gone so tragically awry.”62 Scott believes “that many of the most tragic episodes of state development in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries originate in a particularly pernicious combination of three elements”: “high modernism,” a belief that those empowered with “the authority of scientific knowledge” can “discern and create [a] superior social order”; the state’s uncontrolled use of its power to implement plans for a scientific social order; and a “weakened or a prostrate civil society that lacks the capacity to resist these plans.”63 Much


Introduction

19

of Scott’s work speaks to the bureaucratic and political disasters of the PRC—in fact, he briefly discusses the Great Leap Forward. Much of what Scott observes about the “high modernist authoritarian state” came to fruition in the PRC but took root in the late Qing and Republican periods. Throughout the Republican era, reformers of every political persuasion appealed to all manner of “scientific” knowledge to justify their proposals. Many intellectuals of the late nineteenth and much of the twentieth centuries, for example, believed in the explanatory powers of Social Darwinism. In “Jinggao qingnian” (Call to youth), the essay that ignited the New Culture Movement, Chen Duxiu urged his compatriots to embrace “Mr. Science and Mr. Democracy.”64 The Communists, of course, boasted of the power of “scientific” Marxist thought to unravel even the knottiest social and economic problems, while the Nationalists produced scores of questionnaires for all kinds of “scientific” surveys. Eugenics was of perennial interest during the Republican period and the sociologist Pan Guangdan, author of a survey that we will examine in chapter 1, was one of its most prominent advocates. Finally, family and women’s magazines offered their readers abundant advice on hygiene, nutrition, and the rational use of time and space. Republican politicians, intellectuals, and progressive urbanites formulated policies and reforms but failed to create the state apparatus necessary to implement them. Nevertheless, most Chinese interested in politics were anxious for the state to take a leading role in a new social and political order. As a result, when the CCP finally came to power in 1949, it imposed its vision of a “scientific social order” with relative ease. This welcoming of state intervention suggests an elaboration of Scott’s third point. He suggests that civil societies are brought to their knees by forces that are somehow exterior to the civil societies themselves: “War, revolution, and economic collapse often radically weaken civil society as well as make the populace more receptive to a new dispensation. Late colonial rule, with its social engineering aspirations and ability to run roughshod over popular opposition, occasionally met this last condition.”65 My study of the family-reform debate shows that given certain desperate historical circumstances, societies may prostrate themselves to authoritarian states in hopes of saving the nation. Reformers and revolutionaries of all political stripes welcomed state intervention and willingly subordinated individual rights to the demands of the state in return for its promise to save China. This allegiance to the state, of course, was forged in the context of the historical events that produced it. As Chandra Mohanty has noted, the


20

Introduction

formation of a nation-state proceeds differently and with different effects in nations under the threat of imperial invasion and rule.66 In China and in other countries oppressed by imperialism, the consistency with which advocates identified family reform with national strengthening distinguishes family reform from the path traversed by societies of western Europe and the United States. Because family reform was formulated as part of a response to imperialist invasion, the transformation of the Chinese family ideal was telescoped, consciously elaborated, and embedded in a nationalist agenda. Because reformers always presented family reform and its attendant support of women’s and individual rights as a means to national strength, individualism per se never became an end in itself. Indeed, many Republican thinkers disparaged the West’s valorization of the individual and many Chinese intellectuals, feminists included, continue to do so today. While acknowledging the value of these critiques, we must also recognize the limitations inherent within a discourse that insists that the good of the nation supersedes all. In the West, for example, where philosophical and ethical systems recognized the absolute value of the individual and individual rights, feminists fought for their rights by arguing that women, like men, were human and individuals and, therefore, deserved absolute equality. In China, however, because the nationalist cause overrode the rights of both male and female individuals, no such avenue existed for advancing the interests of any group independent of state or societal demands. As a result, both Republican- and Communist-era feminists found it impossible to counter family reformers’ demands that the home and children remained women’s primary responsibility, and China’s women have repeatedly found their interests subordinated to those of the state.67 Likewise, any challenge to state authority and control has been doomed to illegitimacy in a system for which the survival of the state was the ultimate goal. This is not to imply that values like individualism have not been connected to state-building programs. Benjamin Schwartz affirms Yan Fu’s observation that liberal values were connected to the rationalization of the socioeconomic “machinery” of the modern nation-state—the bureaucracy, the judiciary, the military, and industrialization. But as Schwartz points out, the difference lies in which goal is given precedence: Are values like individualism or gender equality, for example, adopted as intrinsically important or as a means to an end?68 My goal in this study is to understand the logic of the choices Republican Chinese made and their consequences. It is not my intention to blame the Chinese for plac-


Introduction

21

ing national survival above all else or champion the West for its valorization of individualism. Decisions are made in the context of the world that surrounds us and we have no idea how this story is going to end. The complexity of understanding how political, economic, and cultural forces shaped a particular moment is underscored by the fact that many of the developments that we have traced in the United States, western Europe, and other parts of the world appear also in China. China is not unique in its efforts to revise family ideals and gender roles. An interest in changes in family and concomitant gender relations and women’s status has been common in many cultures at revolutionary moments and at times of great economic or political stress. We could draw many parallels, for example, between China and late imperial and revolutionary Russia, the United States, France, Turkey, and Japan.69 In the course of the following discussion, I refer to these developments when they seem especially pertinent. A deeper and broader comparison is beyond the scope of this book. We see, for example, an intense and public interest in mothers’ role in training children and raising good citizens. The ideal of the companionate marriage makes its appearance, and with it an insistence on the importance of individual, rather than family, choice in marriage. With the spatial separation of reproductive and productive work we witness the emergence of a “cult of domesticity,” and an idealization of home as haven. Obsession with self-improvement—a phenomenon that became very prominent in the United States early in the 1900s—appears in Chinese Republican culture too. Consumerism, commercialization, and commodification of the home, family, and happiness were familiar phenomena to Republican urbanites. As in so many industrializing cultures, China also experienced the transformation of the family from a unit of production to a site of consumption, with women becoming the home’s primary consumers. Finally, as reformers tried to gain leverage against entrenched systems of patriarchal authority, they began to debate women’s proper place in home and society. When the state subsequently asserted itself over patriarchy, it pulled women into the struggle—supporting their rights as a counterweight to the traditional family system.70 Finally, the xiao jiating debate also highlights key differences between Chinese and Western conceptions of state-society relations. China ultimately rejected a social and familial model that “established the predominance of individual acquisitiveness over collective entitlement and defined the measure of the good society as private well-being achieved through consumer spending.”71 At the same time, Chinese political cul-


22

Introduction

ture required the government to consider the physical well-being of the populace—a concern that recalls the Mencian insistence that good rulers concern themselves with the welfare of the people. Victoria de Grazia notes a “paradox” in the development of late-nineteenth-century American politics: At the moment people were recognized as having the right to demand necessities, the notion of the necessary was narrowed, and the right to representation was denied to those who were most closely identified with the interests of the household in providing for basic social wants, namely, women. This paradox is not merely not recognized in liberal political theory but in a sense justified as indispensable to the development of a healthy modern civic culture. . . . According to this narrative, a civilizing politics of rights out of which constitutional government and modern political systems eventually evolved operated against a moral economy, one ruled by a primitive politics of needs and desires, that was irrelevant to or in any case outside of the evolution of modern representative politics.72

In China, concern for public welfare was not, ultimately, excluded from public debate and trivialized by being relegated to the “private.” In fact, Republican Chinese of all political stripes, with the exception of the anarchists, were committed to maintaining a moral economy. In China, a relative disinterest in individual and family privacy accompanied a concern about the moral economy. Coontz believes that as American families found themselves ever more involved in the state and market, they increasingly stressed privacy.73 This did not happen in Republican Chinese discourse on the family. Even the entrepreneurial xiao jiating, the most individualistic of all Republican models, displayed little interest in privacy. Urban Chinese also decided on a valuation of work different from that of the West. In the West, the appearance and growth of the private world and “subjectivity” was part and parcel of the development of capitalism; as production moved out of the home, people tended to separate work from the rest of life. On the one hand, this reflected the positive effect of industrialization—increased leisure time and the subsequent development of interest in self-cultivation and the valuation of both individuals in and of themselves, and the importance of human relationships as ends in themselves. On the other hand, this search for meaning in the self and in relationships reflected the loss of meaning in work and society.74 In Chinese cities, we see a similar growth in subjectivity and interest in the individual as traditions lose their meaning and productive


Introduction

23

work moves out of the home. But there family and society, personal and political have not been so radically separated. Social and work roles have maintained their significance and so personal relationships have not borne the entire burden of individual fulfillment. Perhaps this is the flip side of ongoing national crisis: in the struggle to save the nation, one’s work and social roles are full—perhaps too full—of significance.

the family-reform debate In China then, the indissoluble link between family and national reform meant that the contest to define the family was also, at a deeper level, a struggle for the right to define the Chinese nation.75 In her definition of the function of the family, Stephanie Coontz gives us an eloquent description of this phenomenon: The family regulates and limits the personal activities of its members while its members simultaneously shape, redirect, even dissolve and reconstruct the family to affect their role in the larger social network. The family is thus a “terrain of struggle,” both as a social unit working, with or against other groups in society, and as a changing set of personal interactions and conflicts over roles. Since the family is an explanatory and legitimating device, a symbol system that functions as ideology, as well as a concrete constellation of relationships in the larger socio-economic universe, its very definition is part of that struggle. That is why the family is always as much a political institution as a personal one.76

The four groups that dominated the family-reform debate—New Culture intellectuals, the Nationalist government during the Nanjing decade (1927–1937), Shanghai entrepreneurs in the 1930s, and the Communist regime after it came to power in 1949—fully understood that in the process of articulating their versions of the xiao jiating, they were also promoting a particular vision of the Chinese state. The following chapters discuss in turn each participant’s version of the xiao jiating. The chapters are ranged in roughly chronological order in order to concentrate on each group at the time when it dominated the debate and articulated its vision most clearly. This does not mean that one group picked up the discussion and then abandoned it to the next participant. The New Culture radicals started the debate, but by the early 1920s at least some members of the Communist and Nationalist parties and the entrepreneurial community had taken an interest in family reform. Nor did family-reform discourse develop from


24

Introduction

one stage to another like a maturing insect; teleology is essential to the beetle but death to history. Each group’s xiao jiating borrowed from and built upon the others,’ choosing to emphasize some aspects and downplay others. The xiao jiating ideal and the political culture it articulated did not have to unfold in the way they did. At the same time, in the political environment of the Republican era, certain choices made more sense than others. Each of the following chapters includes some examples—letters to the editor, survey responses, a love letter, court cases—that suggest how the xiao jiating ideal may have been put into practice. The primary focus of this study, however, is how this ideal articulated and shaped statesociety relations and ultimately facilitated state dominance of society and hobbled the potential for popular challenges to state authority. It is useful to think of the discourse on family as taking two different tacks. The forces promoting family reform used both prescriptive and coercive tactics. New Culture and entrepreneurial xiao jiating advocates offered an attractive ideal and urged their audiences to pursue it. Nationalist and Communist regimes did not abandon prescriptive models entirely, but they devoted much of their energies to coercive methods of legislation and judicial action. Despite the difference in these approaches—carrot versus stick—the two were connected: the prescriptive campaigns of New Culture intellectuals and entrepreneurs prepared urbanites to accept, and even welcome, the coercive demands of the Nationalist and Communist states. New Culture radicals set the terms of a family-reform debate that has continued into the Communist era. They established and firmly linked three elements—the self, the nation, and productivity—and posited the conjugal family as the mediating vehicle that would establish among them the appropriate order of priority and causation.77 Subsequent participants redefined the elements or weighted them differently, but they never promoted one element independently of the others or broke the links between self and family, nation, and productivity. New Culture family-reform discourse defined itself through a constellation of values that linked state-strengthening to economic rationalization, individual fulfillment, improved rights for women, and nationalism. The young, educated men who shaped the xiao jiating ideal embedded their call for family reform in the rhetoric of individualism, nationalism, and the demands of an industrializing economy. Their use of industrialization as an explanation for the Chinese family’s difficulties arose more from a desire to place China within the universal pattern


Introduction

25

of economic development posited by Marxism than it did from tangible changes in China’s economy. According to Marxist theory, the forces of industrialization doomed the patriarchal family to extinction. New Culture iconoclasts took this descriptive analysis, reversed the causation, and created a prescription for action: the patriarchal family had to be destroyed if China were to industrialize and modernize. They argued that the changing economy demanded greater individual self-determination; at the same time they justified their stress on the individual in terms of national strengthening. Likewise, reformers advocated education and rights for women as necessary tools for improving the nation’s wives and mothers. The ultimate justification of family reform and women’s rights in terms of national strengthening made the xiao jiating ideal particularly appealing to the state. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the Nationalist government contributed to the debate by promulgating its New Family Law and choreographing new wedding ceremonies. The Nationalist government used the conjugal family ideal, with its emphasis on individual enterprise and self-determination, to protect individuals from the joint family’s control. By granting women near-equal divorce rights and increased property rights, and by giving men and women the right to choose their own mates, the state hoped to free much of the adult population from the joint family and thus encourage greater participation in the social and political sphere. The Nationalists, however, envisioned a strictly controlled citizenry whose social activities and patriotic contributions would be closely supervised by the state. By the mid-1930s, Shanghai’s entrepreneurial circles dominated the debate. Entrepreneurs who published commercial family magazines manipulated the linking of nation, individual, and productivity to encourage the development of the conjugal family as a unit of consumption. In this vision, women fulfilled their civic duties by practicing rational consumption, educating their children, and making the home comfortable for their husbands. Meanwhile, men contributed to the nation through rationalized, productive labor. In both cases, entrepreneurs marshaled the powerful rhetoric of family reform to promote their vision of a modern, industrialized China powered by a consumer economy. To date, the Communists have had the last word. In 1950 they promulgated their own Marriage Law and in 1953 they launched a campaign to promote its implementation. In the cities they strenuously countered petit bourgeois “misunderstandings” about marriage and love. In the countryside they conjoined productivity and prosperity with marriage


26

Introduction

reform. Despite the Party’s efforts to differentiate itself from Nationalist and entrepreneurial versions of family reform, it shared their assumptions and concerns. The Communists wanted very much to claim the legacy of a New Culture radicalism that had turned its back on China’s feudal past. In fact, however, of all the participants in the contest to define family and state, the CCP manifested most powerfully the invigoration of a traditional view of state-society relations that was the legacy of the New Culture Movement.


chapter 1

Saving Self and Nation The New Culture Movement’s Family-Reform Discourse

Historians of the New Culture Movement have typically focused on either the movement’s nationalism or its romantic individualism and portrayed participants’ interest in family reform as an outgrowth of one of these two elements. Chow Tse-tsung remarks that young radicals believed that “to have all individuals liberated from the old passive thinking and from the self-sufficing and paternalistic family and clan system based on an agricultural society would strengthen the nation.”1 Roxane Witke argues that New Culture radicals attacked the traditional family because “while individualism might be possible to some degree within a loosened form of the old system, it was thought that adoption of the western model of the monogamous family would surely facilitate it.”2 Vera Schwarcz believes that young New Culture radicals “demanded a new ethical code that would make self-fulfillment a natural and widespread prerogative.”3 In fact, the impulses that drove family reform were more complex than these representations suggest. Although much of family-reform rhetoric prominently featured the language of nationalism and individualism, New Culture family-reform literature reveals that the primary impetus of the family revolution was the search of young, urban males for a new identity in a modernizing, industrializing society. Ultimately, socioeconomic issues, not nationalism or individualism, drove young men to challenge traditional family structure and authority. We cannot understand the significance of the family-reform movement or even account for its emergence unless we examine its socioeconomic components. A good place 27


28

Saving Self and Nation

to start is with Jiating yanjiu (Family research), a popular family-reform journal that exposes the confluence of political, ideological, and socioeconomic factors that shaped the family-reform debate. It also reveals a New Culture radical quite different from the one we thought we knew: no romantic dreamer, this young, educated, urban man was deeply concerned about his own economic future and passionately involved in redefining himself as a member of an industrializing economy and a modernizing state.

founding family research As the epicenter of the New Culture Movement, the Beijing University campus saw a lively succession of student organizations. China’s first Marxism study society began there in 1920, and the New Culture Movement’s founding journal, New Youth, claimed the university as its headquarters. The campus seethed with an emerging youth culture. Mary Ryan has shown how the appearance of peer associations in early-nineteenthcentury Utica, New York, created new social spaces that facilitated a reworking of family roles.4 With the advent of the New Culture Movement, a similar phenomenon occurred in many of China’s cities. Only by organizing and orienting themselves to their peers were the movement’s young participants able to formulate their radical proposals for a new society. In fact, the creation of peer associations was one of the most important innovations of the New Culture Movement. Traditional social order in China, and to a lesser degree in the United States, organized itself through the web of connections within and among families. Blood and marriage ties defined group membership; individuals usually found themselves embedded in vertical relationships governed by the hierarchies of gender, age, and generation. In contrast, membership in peer associations was voluntary. People of similar ages formed single-sex organizations around a common interest. Ties within these groups tended to be horizontal and egalitarian. In China as in the United States, peer organizations implicitly contradicted the logic of traditional social organization. In January 1920, one of these peer groups coalesced to offer an explicit challenge to traditional family organization. Two Beijing students, Luo Dunwei (1898–1964) and Yi Jiayue (Yi Junzuo, 1899–1972), called together several “comrades” to discuss the “cruel circumstances” and “barbaric aggravation” that young people suffered in their families.5 Later that month, the group, which had grown by fifteen, established the Family Research Society (Jiating yanjiu she), with the intention of pro-



29

viding a forum for discussing family reform and publishing a journal. The group decided to welcome additional members regardless of age or gender. (In fact, most members were men in their twenties.) Interest in the society spread quickly. On the first of February, the society held a large meeting at the New Knowledge Translation and Compilation Society (Xinzhi bianyi she). Three people from Shanghai and nine from Changsha promised to establish branch societies in their own cities.6 Intense interest in family issues prompted the Shanghai Commercial Press (Shangwu yinshuguan), a large and prestigious publisher, to announce its intention to publish a volume of Yi Jiayue’s translations of foreign scholarship on the family.7 Clearly, the Family Research Society had struck a nerve. These charter members also made plans to publish a first issue of the journal Family Research, funding it with their own money. Although the society was founded in Beijing, the magazine was published in Shanghai, and the society maintained headquarters in both cities. The first issue appeared in mid-August 1920, and the journal continued publication for over two years. Original imprints may have numbered only a thousand, but each issue was reprinted at least once.8 A cloth edition of the first volume was published in 1923. Although the journal focused on a narrow slice of the Chinese population, devoting itself to issues that affected young urban men, especially their economic, educational, vocational, and conjugal independence, it drew readers from a broad geographical area. Letters to the editor arrived from all over China—most commonly from Beijing, Tianjin, Changsha, Changshu, Jiading, Suzhou, Wuxi, Shanghai, and Canton. One young man who became acquainted with the journal while in eastern China continued to correspond with the editors all the way from Yunnan. The two leaders of the Family Research Society, Yi Jiayue and Luo Dunwei, were Hunan natives.9 Both were part of the student culture of the early twentieth century in which young men of elite families often received an education abroad. After graduating from Beijing National Number Four High School in 1916, Yi studied government and economics at Waseda University in Japan. Two years later he returned to China. That summer he joined the Young China Association (Shaonian zhongguo). In the fall he entered the second year of Beijing University’s program in law and government. The following year he joined the Socialism Study Society (Shehui zhuyi yanjiu hui) and the Marxism Study Society (Makesi zhuyi yanjiu hui).10 In 1920, the same year he co-founded the Family Research Society, he helped found the anarchist Struggle So-


30


ciety (Fendou she) and its magazine. In January of 1921 he joined the Literary Research Society (Wenxue yanjiu hui). Later that year he graduated from Beijing University and went back to Waseda University to continue his studies. He returned to China the following autumn and went with Yu Dafu to teach for a semester at Anhui College of Law and Administration (Anhui fazheng zhuanmen xuexiao). After graduating from Waseda in March of 1923, Yi went to Shanghai, where he taught literature at Shanghai China Public School (Shanghai Zhongguo gongxue) and served as an editor at Taidong Press (Taidong shuju). Yi joined the Guomindang in 1924. Thereafter he applied his editing skills to Nationalist Party organs while continuing to teach. We know much less about Luo Dunwei. He may have received some education in London. He wrote a number of books on marriage and family issues in China and on socialism, economics, and the nation. Before the War of Resistance (1937–1945), he taught at Beijing University, China University, and Chaoyang University. Some time before the beginning of the War of Resistance, Luo also served as secretary to the Guomindang’s Department of Business (Shiye bu).11 Yi and Luo were by no means unique in their interests. Rather, they articulated the ideas and concerns that preoccupied many of their young, college-educated, urban contemporaries. The two probably knew many of the men who contributed to and edited the literary and reform publications that appeared in the last years of the New Culture Movement. As students on the Beijing University campus, they could not help but be familiar with New Youth and the ideas it popularized—among them, Marxism, anarchism, and family reform. While publishing Family Research, Luo and Yi lived and worked in the Taidong Press building, where their magazine was printed. The first floor housed the printing presses, and the second and third floors served as offices and dormitories for Taidong editors. There, in the spring of 1921, Yi and Luo rubbed shoulders with Guo Moruo, popular at that time for his contributions to the Shanghai daily Shishi xinbao’s (China times’s) literary supplement, “Xuedeng” (Light of learning), and soon to become famous for Nüshen (The goddesses), a set of poems he would publish in Chuangzao she congshu (Creation society collectanea).12 They also counted among their acquaintances Cheng Fangwu,13 one of the founding members of the Creation Society.14 Yi introduced Family Research with a justification that neatly summarized the rationale for family reform and its connection to the rest of the New Culture Movement: “Since the beginning of the ‘New Culture



31

Movement,’ those of us who want to be a ‘person’ [ren] have been called upon to marshal our ‘creative instincts’ [chuangzao de benneng] and ‘natural inclination to improve’ [xiangshang de tianxing] in order to liberate and reform irrational and unnatural institutions and customs. But ‘the family problems’ [jiating wenti], which bear an important relation to this, have been put to the side and ignored.”15 Yi’s call to arms resonated with key New Culture concerns. The issue of personhood had engaged New Culture radicals from the beginning; they proffered the individual as a challenge to a society that subordinated the interests of the individual to the group. Yi’s readers would surely have understood his use of “creative instincts” and a “natural inclination to improve” to refer to Social Darwinist interpretations of individual and social evolution. His exaggerated claim that family problems had been “ignored” justified the need for a journal devoted entirely to the issue of family reform.16 At the same time, it also expressed the frustration that gripped many participants as they struggled to disentangle themselves from the web of the family.

the family: a historical artifact Not that individualism was celebrated as an end in itself. The young men who organized Family Research claimed that family reform was a necessary first step in China’s modernization; if they were to develop their full potential and contribute to the reform movements sweeping urban China, they had to be happy at home. This amalgam of political necessity and individual desire pervaded the journal’s essays. In lieu of a formal opening-issue manifesto, Yi Jiayue wrote a detailed and forceful essay that linked personal dissatisfaction in the family with faults in the family system. Individual problems, he argued, were manifestations of systemic crisis.17 By attributing family problems to a systemic breakdown, Yi suggested that the traditional family was not an inevitable and universal organizing principle but a social construction subject to change. Yi contended that contemporary forces had eroded the foundations of the traditional family and would soon destroy it. One such contemporary force was the movement to liberate women, which, by making them aware of their own personhood, inspired them to rebel against the “irrational control by men” and participate directly in social and world progress. As a result, “the marital relationship . . . had become problematic.” The increasing distance between parents and children dealt the family system a second blow: “Since the implementation of the educational system, children’s


32


education, for the most part, has been taken out of parents’ hands and placed in the government’s. The same is true with work.”18 As industrialization moved work out of the home and into the factory, it also eroded family solidarity. The extended or patriarchal family system had developed over time, Yi reminded his readers, clearly implying that the present family system was neither necessary nor self-evident and that it, too, would need to respond to socioeconomic pressures. For Yi, the most sensible response was to dismantle the family: if there were no family system, or no joint family system, then “we would not suffer from the pain of the family.”19 Yi’s conception of the problem may seem rather simplistic. But he was not alone. The historian Arif Dirlik believes that early-1920s intellectuals applied Marxist theories of history in a relatively superficial fashion that generally ignored class analysis.20 For this reason, he prefers to characterize their historical interpretation of Marxism as “a variant of evolutionist theory based on economic change” rather than as historical materialism.21 Nevertheless, the theory that Yi learned in the Marxism Study Society gave him tools with which to attack the legitimacy of the patriarchal family system. By arguing that economic conditions shaped family organization, he removed the traditional Chinese family from the realm of the eternal universal and placed it firmly within the mundane world of historical change. Yi’s contemporaries also used historical materialism to critique the Chinese family. Hu Hanmin (1879–1936), a prominent Guomindang leader, wrote an article in the spring of 1920 that connected various types of kinship organization to transformations in the economic system and the divisions of labor that supported it.22 Earlier that year, Li Dazhao (1889–1927), an early Chinese Marxist, had similarly argued that the patriarchal family was a product of an agrarian economy that would be destroyed as China industrialized.23 Hu, Li, Yi, and Luo upset the normative moral construct of family by introducing the notion that family form was determined by socioeconomic forces. Although historians have focused on the nationalist and individualistic motives of family reform, the New Culture participants themselves told a different story, crediting industrialization and economic change for its impetus. Luo Dunwei listed four trends, all socioeconomic, that would result in the “natural extermination” of the joint family: (1) As transportation becomes more convenient, people travel far and are unable to be home very often. (2) Industry is concentrated in the cities; work is concentrated in the factories; there is no housing capable



33

of holding extended families. (3) Life grows more difficult; one cannot marry early—[but rather] must marry late. One cannot focus on having children early in order to see five generations; extended families naturally cannot be established. (4) Wages do not surpass daily need. If one cannot gather together considerable property, then naturally one does not have the financial resources to set up a joint family. For these reasons, the joint family, which is ill-fitted to the times, is “falling apart on its own”; it doesn’t need us to blow it over.24

The theme of industrialization and the subsequent limitation of wages and living space concerned many contributors to Family Research. Yet these students did not hold factory jobs.25 In fact, when Luo wrote the article quoted above, Chinese manufacture had barely begun to industrialize. How then, do we explain the prominence of this theme? The rapidly expanding Chinese publishing industry allowed these students to keep abreast of contemporary scholarship on industrialization and the family in the United States and Europe. This awareness, coupled with their interest in Social Darwinism and Marxism, led them (as it did Western scholars) to construct a model of the development of family organization.26 Most Western and Chinese authors presented the conjugal family centered around a companionate marriage—what William Goode has called conjugal marriage27—as the most socially and culturally advanced form of family organization and the hallmark of an industrialized capitalist economy. Luo and his contemporaries were not describing a contemporary process they could observe, but rather were invoking a universal law of economically determined social development dictated by a Marxist interpretation of history. By attributing social and cultural change to the effects of industrialization, Luo claimed a place for young men and for China within the process of modernization and industrialization that had empowered the West and Japan. This “economic theory of evolution” not only helped New Culture radicals place the Chinese family in a historic context but also gave them a way in which they and China could participate in history.28 Dirlik’s observation about Marxist historians in the 1930s applies equally to men like Yi and Luo in the early 1920s: “Their primary concern was to understand the past so as to carry out the task of revolution in the present.”29 David Roy has traced Guo Moruo’s embrace of MarxismLeninism to a similar impulse: “He felt that by becoming an adherent of this doctrine he could join forces with history and regain his sense of pride and responsibility as a participating member of an ancient culture with a badly bruised sense of self-esteem.”30


34


Thus, Marxist historiography, which began as an analytical description of the past, became a prescription for shaping the future.31 As Guo Moruo declared, “For this age in which we live Marxism provides the only solution.”32 Family reformers seized upon the Marxist description of a historical process—industrialization destroyed the traditional family—and reversed its causal direction: the traditional family must be destroyed so that China could industrialize. To prove their point, they would marshal historical and contemporary examples of how patriarchal control of education, vocation, mobility, money, and marriage restricted productivity and stunted the potential of China’s youth. But for a variety of reasons, the proposed reforms were easier to catalogue than to carry out. Whereas in the United States and Western Europe industrialization provided viable alternatives to the family economy, in Republican China occupational opportunities were much more limited. Despite Yi’s and Luo’s claims to the contrary, industrialization in China was still in its infancy. Factory jobs were restricted to the larger port cities and many white-collar jobs—those of bank clerks, shop clerks, and managers—were either nonexistent or still dominated by an apprenticeship system. A strong class bias may have discouraged these young intellectuals from taking these jobs anyway. Elite men and women who chose to strike out on their own confronted limited opportunities. Many hesitated to act on their principles and oppose patriarchal authority for fear that their elders would retaliate by refusing them financial support.33 The reformers were by no means blind to these obstacles, and in response to these needs some members of the Family Research Society and others outside the society helped found the Youth Independence Association (Qingnian zili hui). The purpose of the association was to aid those who “had truly suffered family anguish and were unable to support themselves,” because “youth who suffered all manner of family anguish and were unable to support themselves tended to extreme acts, and even became so pessimistic as to commit suicide.” Assistance was contingent on detailed proof of one’s circumstances.34 The association was planned as a communal organization, with the men running a printing shop and the women sewing, mending, and weaving. Expenses for room, board, education, and entertainment were to be paid out of common funds (gongjia gongji).35 Whether the society ever got the Youth Independence Association up and running is unknown.36 What is clear, though, is that the reformers took very seriously the distress of the youth who were unhappy in their families. To better “relieve the suffering of today’s Chinese youth who suffer family anguish,”



35

table 1. age of jiating yanjiu survey respondents

Age 16–19 20–25 26–30 30+ total

No. of respondents 7 11 3 1 22

source: JTYJHK 1, no. 3 (January 1921): 74–86.

the Family Research Society decided to study the object of its interest. In October 1920, the society placed advertisements in four popular newspapers—Beijing’s Chen bao (Morning journal) and Weiyi ribao (The only daily) and Shanghai’s Shishi xinbao (China times) and Minguo ribao (Republican daily). The body of the ad read, “Attention, all those who are experiencing family suffering . . . please come and meet or write Mr. Yi Jiayue . . . and report your bitter circumstances.”37 In little more than a month’s time, thirty-four men and one woman responded, either by letter or in person, with accounts of family conflict. The editors categorized these reports into four subject groups: marital anguish, suffering at the hands of the family head, economic privation, and inexpressible anguish (shou tongku shang wei mingyan de). Most respondents also provided their name, age, native place, contact address, and occupation or education. The youngest respondent was sixteen, the oldest thirty-six. As table 1 shows, most respondents were between the ages of sixteen and twentyfive, the years when most Chinese were betrothed and married. The range of the respondents’ native places indicates the geographic mobility of Family Research’s audience: all but two provinces were represented and no province accounted for more than three people. Many currently resided in Beijing; more than half provided a contact address in that city. The occupations given for eighteen respondents also suggest that the journal broke through occupational as well as geographical barriers. Only half of the eighteen respondents who gave an occupation were involved in academic life (eight students and one “professional”). The remaining nine included the section chief of the commercial Port Affairs Finance Office of Hulu Dao; a military man; a member of the Board of Agriculture, Industry, and Commerce; a Huning Railroad English-record keeper;


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a man who worked in the Ministry of Finance Printing Office; a merchant; a pawn shop apprentice; and a school janitor. The editors were disappointed to count only the one woman among their respondents.38 The society seems to have used these replies largely for its own information. In his report, Yi referred to various incidents culled from the survey in order to confirm the need for family reform. The society also appears to have investigated at least some respondents, as Yi’s comments below suggest. Whether the society intervened on behalf of any of the respondents is unclear. By definition, this sample included those who felt persecuted by their families. Yi Jiayue recognized the potential for bias inherent in these onesided reports and acknowledged that they might not accurately describe family circumstances. He seemed especially worried about getting only men’s side of the story and issued this warning: With the exception of Mrs. Chen, all those reporting on marital anguish are men: Now, is what comes out of a man’s mouth about his wife’s faults true or false? This awaits careful examination: for example, Li’s relationship with his wife was just the opposite of what he said it was. And Nong Fenfen said his wife’s “appearance is not sufficient to satisfy his desire.” What kind of talk is this? Consequently, it is necessary that each case be carefully investigated. It is very important! Very important!39

Whatever the truth of their situations, the young men who responded to this ad were deeply unhappy with the control their families exercised over every aspect of their lives. The family decided their education, vocation, and place of residence, allowed or restricted their travel, controlled their financial resources, and made their marriages.40 Young people were rarely consulted in any of these decisions. Ultimately, these young men (and women too) yearned to control their own destinies and to shape the future of China. In this regard, New Culture radicals developed a vision of themselves that had much in common with nineteenth-century American ideals of manhood. The historian Elaine May has written about these American ideals in ways that are instructive here: Millions of young men knew the formula, expounded most widely by Horatio Alger, that luck, pluck, ambition, and self-control were the ingredients necessary to become self-made. They learned in church, at home, and in the popular literature what was expected of American manhood. The key element was moral autonomy: total control over one’s instincts as well as independent pursuit of one’s calling. Perhaps the core of this code was economic self-mastery. Ideally, a man would be his own boss,



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own his own property, and control his own means of production. The industrious man worked without need of external restraints. Using his freedom to compete in an open economy, he served his own best interests as well as those of his family, community, and nation. The essence of this entrepreneurial ethos was in tune with the republican spirit of individual liberty. A striving man was the perfect citizen, for his ambition furthered, rather than hindered, the goal of national progress.41

Early in the twentieth century, New Culture radicals defined themselves in similar terms. Like their American counterparts, young Chinese insisted on complete control of their lives and fervently believed that individual autonomy would fuel production and speed national progress. The Chinese radicals themselves recognized this parallel with the Americans. Early issues of New Youth featured essays by prominent Americans and, to a lesser degree, Europeans on the proper and profitable use of one’s intellectual and material resources. These essays, published in English and accompanied by Chinese translations, promoted the values of thrift, tenacity, self-discipline, independence, self-respect, science, political freedom, and love of learning. They included selections from Ben Franklin’s autobiography, Henry Beecher’s essay “Genius and Industry,” and an essay by the Scottish social reformer Samuel Smiles titled “Money—Its Use and Abuse.”42 New Culture radicals looked to these essays for a philosophy of life that valorized the individual even as it maintained a commitment to the communal good. Family Research articles consistently combined individualistic claims with collective goals, arguing that the individual’s rights and happiness played a vital role in social progress and national strength. For example, Luo argued that social progress could not occur in the absence of individual development.43 In another, unattributed essay, the author asserted, “As a matter of fact, the root of the nation is the family, and the root of the family is the person. If the person suffers family anguish, how can there be a good nation?”44 Roy has observed that Guo Moruo turned to Marxism-Leninism because he believed it held out the best possibility for the full realization of the self.45 Hu Shi made an important contribution to this outlook in his essay on Ibsenism, which appeared in New Youth in June 1918. He quoted part of Ibsen’s letter to a friend: “What I hope from you is a pure kind of egoism. If you should want to be of benefit to society there is no better way than to fashion yourself into a useful tool. There are times in which I feel that the whole world is like a mass of colliding ships and the most important thing is to save oneself.”46 Vera Schwarcz argues that here Hu equated “pure egoism” with


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“true altruism” (i.e., one best served society by serving oneself) and that this link became for Chinese intellectuals the most significant element in A Doll’s House.47 Thus, New Culture radicals’ attacks on family and the patriarchy that oppressed them arose from a complex mixture of desire for individual freedom and concern for China’s place in the drama of world history. They portrayed the family patriarch as the greatest obstacle to individual freedom, family reform, and national strengthening. The xiao jiating (conjugal family) promised to free the individual to develop the talents that would ultimately create a stronger China. They hoped the state would reciprocate by creating the environment they needed to realize their potential. Guo Moruo articulated these sentiments when he declared, “Matter is the mother of spirit. A high development and equal distribution of material civilization will be the placenta of a new spiritual civilization.”48 Thus, New Culture radicals strengthened the links between self, family, and nation that had been part of the political culture since the Great Learning by encouraging greater state intervention into family and private life than the Chinese state had heretofore enjoyed, or even wanted.

the patriarch problem The primary target of the New Culture radicals’ ire was the patriarch, whom they attacked for both the power he wielded and the power he represented. Because Confucian ideology set up each patriarch as the moral leader of his family and insisted on the interconnectedness of family, society, and state, it was not surprising that young men blamed the patriarch for the breakdown of the Chinese world. As Wen-hsin Yeh has shown, some of the Republican era’s most radical activists were young men who had most fully internalized Confucian morality and its tenets of benevolence, duty, and responsibility.49 Once betrayed by that moral order, they cast it aside, determined to create a new one. As the representative of Confucian authority in the microcosm of the family, the patriarch became the scapegoat for the failed promises of the Confucian order. Moreover, toppling the patriarch, although difficult, was at least conceivable. Impatient for change but unable to effect an immediate transformation of the Chinese economy or political structure, these young men attacked the patriarch both for his control over their lives and as a standin for the nebulous forces of “power” and “class” that strangled China.50 The centerpiece of Family Research’s attack on the patriarch was Yi’s two-part, forty-page “Superficial Discussion of the Patriarch Problem.”



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Yi wrote, “Although many aspects of the family need reform, the very first that must be eliminated is that disgusting thing—the family head. Because no matter what aspect we are discussing, the family head always represents power, class, and an impediment to social progress.”51 The essay articulated the complaints and criticisms that appeared in many letters to the editor and in numerous essays and drew on recent Western scholarship on the evolution of the family to make historical sense of these complaints. Yi noted that in ancient societies, a patriarch was perhaps necessary, directing as he did important activities like kidnapping, wife-selling, and worship. Herding societies had become accustomed to patriarchal authority because they often chose the oldest male as the strongest and ablest leader. Because joint families functioned as units of both consumption and production, they needed one person— the patriarch—to take charge of family finances.52 Moreover, in lieu of government-sponsored education and a police force, the education and supervision of the family fell to the patriarch.53 But if social and economic conditions produced the patriarch, Yi reasoned, then changes in those conditions could also destroy him. Yi sketched a momento mori for the patriarch when he recounted the history of the Roman family system. The Roman patriarch, he claimed, had also wielded an absolute power supported by veneration of ancestors. Because kinship ran through the male lineage, the production of male heirs became paramount there too. Like his Chinese counterpart, the Roman patriarch also controlled family property. But, Yi reminded his readers, even the Roman patriarch, whose authority at one time seemed unassailable, succumbed to social and economic changes. The worship of gods and the spirit of scientific inquiry destroyed ancestor worship. The destruction of the old government system placed family heads under the supervision of city mayors. The increased frequency of divorce, initiated by both husbands and wives, further undermined his authority. Having developed among nomadic herders, the patriarchal family became increasingly obsolete in subsequent agricultural, commercial, and industrial economies.54 Yi also cited historic Greece and Germany and nineteenth- and twentiethcentury Russia as examples of countries where strong patriarchal systems had begun to collapse. In each country, Yi concluded, the patriarch had met his inevitable demise: “In sum, European patriarchy . . . if not already long destroyed, is gradually weakening even now. This proves that this thing, the family head, is inappropriate for the times, and this is a natural trend. Nowadays, anywhere in Europe or the United States,


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try asking if the patriarch system still survives!”55 Yi used Marxist theory and Western scholars’ work on the connection between economic development and family transformation to prove that the traditional Chinese family was also bound for obsolescence. Yi’s readers easily grasped the message implicit in his historical survey: in stubbornly clinging to the traditional family, China was falling behind the march of global progress. Yi portrayed the patriarch as a vestigial organ that had survived in East Asia even though the forces of social evolution had made the patriarch irrelevant.56 He claimed that agricultural societies needed the leadership of the most intelligent, rather than the most physically powerful and experienced; thus, the eldest male was not necessarily the best suited for leadership. At the same time, new institutions like public education, a police force, and the court system superseded patriarchal authority altogether.57 Yi argued that the patriarchal family had outlived not only the socioeconomic conditions that produced it, but also the political assumptions upon which it rested. In taking this approach, he exercised a logic that followed inevitably from the collapse of the dynastic system in 1911. Confucian ideology posited five key relationships—emperor and minister, husband and wife, father and son, elder brother and younger brother, friend and friend. Because these relationships were ontologically interdependent, proper comportment in one relationship reinforced the others. With the collapse of the dynastic systems, one of the fundamental pillars of the Confucian system collapsed. If the emperor-minister relationship could, in fact, be rejected, every hierarchical relationship was threatened.58 Yi likened the family head to the emperor; both wielded absolute power on the basis of birth rather than ability. Although the limitations of the emperor system had been recognized, contemporary patriarchs presided over their families with the arbitrary and absolute power of an emperor, unconcerned with anything but securing status and a comfortable old age.59 The Draft Civil Code still accorded the family head the power to make all decisions related to marriage, inheritance, the division of the household, and place of residence.60 The patriarch’s decisions carried the full force of law, even though he might be illiterate, “stupid as a deer or pig,” and immoral.61 Yi saw signs of collapse everywhere. He insisted that new values had transformed the parent-child relationship and argued that the great “new tides” of women’s liberation and youths’ independence had changed the way women and young people felt about their husbands and fathers:



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“They feel that the value of the father or husband rests only in ties of blood or love. Aside from this, authority, dignity, and filiality are all little wings on a paper tiger. They are nothing to be afraid of!”62 Yi also saw student self-government as proof that the patriarch had outlived his usefulness. He observed that students could govern themselves and that the family would have to do likewise if it were to survive.63 Yi maintained that because of these changes, “Even if we act magnanimously and do not abolish it, the patriarchal system will give up the ghost by itself.” In fact, Yi was so impatient for the patriarchal system to make its exit that he wanted to eliminate the father altogether: “I not only want to rescind his standing as family head, I also want to rescind his standing as father.”64 Yi saved his most vehement critique of the patriarchal family system for its economic ramifications:65 The aspect of economic life that we think most important lies in free choice of occupation and the mobility of the labor force. With these freedoms each person may pursue the occupation that he believes suits him best. Only in this way can humankind develop and society benefit from the increase in efficiency. But the patriarchal system is diametrically opposed to this. One person controls the entire family and forces everyone to live together. He impedes on all sides their moving away or living separately, and adds senseless restrictions to their choice of work and mobility. [It] really is preposterous!66

Patriarchal control stood between China and a modern economy and nothing less than complete independence would open China’s path to the future. Family-reform radicals drew a dark picture of a willful and unprincipled family head who controlled all the family property and disposed of it as he wished: “He can use it to buy opium, take a mistress, and cheat and oppress his children.” Yi claimed that although children had property rights under the law, the father could harass them until they surrendered their property to the family. As for the patriarch’s use of his own money, Yi suspected that “he probably gives [it] to his three concubines so that they can use it for their future marriages or take it home to their mothers’ households.” Meanwhile, his children “have to wait until the new year before they receive a dollar or two.”67 Yi’s accusations were meant to undermine the moral authority of men who would place the pleasure of their concubines above the well-being of their children. Yi’s tirade against the patriarch, as well as other New Culture “patricides,” is best read not as a dependable record of family dynamics, but


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rather as a rationale for rejecting the principles of hierarchy, deference, and benevolence that had characterized traditional Confucian family ideals. In their efforts to justify a family revolution, New Culture radicals exaggerated the abusiveness of fathers, underplayed the authority of mothers, and ignored the power of members of the joint family— uncles, aunts, grandmothers—to temper patriarchal tyranny. The radicals’ self-interested characterization of the family is nowhere more evident than in their portrayal of their mothers. Mothers are almost absent from this discussion, and when they do appear they are sympathetic but powerless witnesses to the father’s tyranny.68 In fact, we know that among elite families, women wielded considerable economic influence and moral authority within the home.69 As Dorothy Ko has demonstrated, New Culture radicals used the trope of powerless and victimized women as a rhetorical strategy to argue the importance and necessity of their cultural and political agendas.70 The fact that mothers serve principally as props in this rhetoric is underscored by the two-dimensional portraits their radical sons paint of them. Men rarely discuss their relationships with their mothers and they rarely speak on their mothers’ behalf. Even when discussing mistresses and concubines—an issue that affected many of these men’s mothers—radicals like Yi spoke only from the vantage point of the ill-treated son. The knot of anxiety surrounding issues of property and power in the traditional family can be separated into several strands. In both China and the West, New Culture attacks on the patriarch have been interpreted as an expression of a new sense of the individual. Although this sense is by no means absent from Yi’s critique, parts of his diatribe against the patriarch read like an accusation of betrayal rather than of oppression. Much of what Wen-hsin Yeh has said about middle-county radicals applies to New Culture radicals involved in the critique of the family. Yeh suggests that Shi Cuntong (1899–1970) rejected the Confucian system in which he was raised precisely because his elders failed to live up to Confucian ideals of benevolence and virtue.71 Yi was angry for just this reason: patriarchs were demanding obedience even though they failed to consider their children’s welfare. In short, Yi attacked the patriarch because he violated the Confucian code of reciprocity—deference for benevolence. To make matters worse, the legal codes did not redress this moral failure. Yi complained bitterly that the Draft Civil Code gave the family head many rights but few duties. He could disinherit children, choose heirs, bequeath property, and withdraw or provide financial support at will.72



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His only duty was to support family members to the extent that his resources allowed. Yi claimed that this provision was tantamount to relieving the patriarch of any real responsibility to support his family. Even if a father violated the injunction to support his children, the children had no real means by which to force him to fulfill this duty. Why is this? Because the extent of the patriarch’s financial resources are known only to himself and perhaps his mistress. It is common knowledge that the court’s investigations are unreliable. The patriarch may obviously have money but may not want his son or daughter to go to school. He can say to the court, “It is not that I am against my children receiving an education, but rather my resources are insufficient.” And the law will certainly forgive him. I have a cousin whose situation is just this.73

Yi’s rage finds two targets here—the corrupt patriarch who shirks his responsibilities and a legal system that not only fails to bring him to heel but also gives his authority the weight of law. That the patriarch could use his financial and legal power to bully his children into submission infuriated Yi, who saved his most vitriolic attack for a provision in the Draft Civil Code that stipulated that family members deserved support only if they had not “erred” (guoshi) and could not support themselves. As for the condition that one not err, in today’s context it is difficult to say what an error is. The parents want him to do some small job and he is unwilling. Is this a kind of error? The parents arrange his marriage and he publishes an announcement in the paper avowing his refusal to recognize it. Is this an error? Or, taking a step back, because he has matured but is not allowed to marry, he visits prostitutes. This seems to be an error, but is it not the parents’ fault? Or the fault of social organization?

Yi went so far as to challenge parental authority over a daughter’s sexuality and the double standard that made her virginity so valuable: If sons’ [situations] are like this, we know how it must be for daughters. Usually they do not let the daughter take a step outside the door. But the daughter, because her sexual urges have developed, has a relation with her lover. [The patriarch] pulls his hair, his anger rises, and he continuously rants about the family’s ill fortune. Kinder parents marry her off right away, no matter whether to a chicken or a dog. The more fierce throw her out and urge her to kill herself. And the law will not charge the family head with murder.

Yi refused to accede to a patriarchal authority that spawned the very abuses it condemned. In concluding his indictment of patriarchal tyranny,


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he lashed out at the society that fostered such abuses of power: “Under today’s social system, who knows how many youths have been unjustly killed because of the family head’s power?”74 Yi saw an extreme situation whose remedy required extreme measures. He did not merely urge China’s patriarchs to loosen their purse strings and govern their families with benevolence and restraint. Instead, Yi advocated abandoning entirely the system that he believed had destroyed its young people. He argued that the passivity and dependence of working for the family was itself both shameful and exploitative. Without the freedom to choose their own vocations, young men lost the opportunity to develop their talents and acquired a passivity ill-suited to the modern world. Moreover, those who worked for their families got very little in return—only room, board, and daily necessities. With no savings or investments of their own, young people were completely vulnerable to patriarchal malfeasance and ineptitude. Only economic independence could save China’s youth from the patriarch’s stranglehold.75 Family Research’s editors and contributors longed to strike out on their own. As part of their efforts to escape the family’s control, they promoted the xiao jiating ideal. Whereas the traditional family subordinated the individual to the family, the xiao jiating celebrated individual autonomy and volition. At its heart stood a husband and wife who had married for love. They lived independently of their families, forming their own household and supporting themselves with their own income. In the xiao jiating ideal, New Culture radicals combined their desire for individual fulfillment and dedication to national salvation. They believed that the happiness and personal satisfaction they would find in this new family organization was crucial to China’s economic productivity and social progress.

“marriage is mutual help, marriage is love” The xiao jiating ideal was crucial to the New Culture radicals’ vision of themselves, and Family Research devoted many pages to promoting it. One contributor, Liao Shuan, drew together the family ideals of the New Culture Movement into an essay modestly titled “Hunyin wenti zhi yizhong zhuzhang” (An opinion on the marriage problem). Liao observed that although the New Culture Movement had transformed intellectuals’ ideas about marriage, society at large still lacked a “thorough awakening and concrete methods.” As a result, most people still lived under the tyranny of the family and parents continued to arrange their



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children’s marriages. To remedy this situation, Liao offered eight rules for marriage reform. 1. 2.

3.

4. 5.

6.

7.

8.

Marriage must be completely free; no one, no matter who, may interfere. Only men over twenty-two or twenty-five years of age and women over twenty years of age who are economically self-sufficient can marry. Marriage of the two sexes must be based on their spiritual union; then all the ugly customs of excessive ceremony and exchanging horoscopes and gifts (wenli nacai) will be eradicated. After marriage [the couple] must remove themselves from relations with the joint family and establish a xiao jiating. After marriage the couple should live in the spirit of mutual cooperation, each pursuing his or her own economic independence, and neither relying on the other. In any marriage previously forced by the family, and in free marriages, if both parties are dissatisfied with the marriage, they may divorce without legal sanctions. Marriage must be monogamous. Taking concubines, collecting slaves, and other such vile improprieties will be prohibited. Whoever violates this law may be taken to court and divorced. The rearing and education of children must be shared.76

Liao’s essay highlighted the principles and assumptions that shaped the xiao jiating ideal: a happy companionate marriage facilitated individuals’ contribution to society and maximized their productivity. Liao expressed the interrelationship of love and work with the maxim “Marriage is mutual help, marriage is love.” He insisted that the importance of individual happiness made the choice of a spouse a particularly personal affair. Young people rightly looked for partners who were compatible in character, education, talent, and feeling. Parents who ignored these factors and forced their children to marry were guilty of “using the marriage of the two sexes as a machine to produce babies.”77 Yet Liao did not deny that marriage served certain social and economic functions. Indeed, he and most other New Culture intellectuals interested in family reform advocated the companionate marriage partly because they believed it would contribute to economic productivity and social progress. Liao valorized individual satisfaction and at the same time extolled the social benefits of marriage: “Marriage is a kind of baby-making machine, but in addition to this, does it not contribute to enterprise and to the development of society? If, indeed, it is related to supporting en-


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terprise and developing society, then can it accomplish these if there is no spirit of cooperation? This kind of marriage in which a man and woman who do not know each other are forced to live together is simply barbaric marriage, marriage as commerce, slave marriage.”78 Liao objected to the traditional economic rationalism as a criterion for marriage choice, but at the same time justified the xiao jiating because it made a new kind of economic rationalism possible. Instead of sacrificing the individual to the family’s socioeconomic interests, he placed individual fulfillment first. But even as he promoted the individual, he remained steadfastly communitarian. Ultimately, individual fulfillment served the nation’s interests. Liao and other New Culture radicals denied the family’s right to subordinate the individual’s needs to its own, but they willingly offered the individual’s energies and talents—the products of his fulfillment—to the nation. Their devotion to the nation transformed the radicals’ “selfish” refusal to serve the family into selflessness. Another essay, “The Evils of the Old Marriage System,” also outlined the economic rationale of the conjugal family. The author, Guo Xun, acknowledged that many people would think it nonsensical to condemn the traditional family system. How, they would ask, had it lasted so long if it were harmful? But, Guo countered, its negative results were often not immediately apparent. They developed slowly and arose from indirect causes: “Those who are victims of its indirect harm are like those who die in their dreams, passing away without knowing it.”79 Like Liao, Guo began his justification of marriage reform with an insistence that marriage was an individual, not a family, matter and reasoned that parents and matchmakers had no right to interfere. “Is marriage for oneself, or for one’s parents? Or for the matchmaker? Who will experience the joy or suffering that results? If it reaches the point of being unhappy, will the parents or matchmaker be able to get one out of it?” Guo dismissed the matchmaker as a busybody and accused parents of manipulating their children’s lives in order to feel important and to obtain grandchildren, treating their children like gifts to other families and toys for their amusement.80 Guo followed his emotional appeal for the rights of the individual with a list of seven problems created by arranged marriage. All but points two and seven began with an observation about the adverse emotional and psychological effects of arranged marriages and then abruptly shifted to a commentary on how they impeded economic productivity and national progress. My italics highlight the moment at which Guo shifts from individual to social welfare. Taken as a whole, Guo’s indictment of arranged



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marriage reveals just how closely connected New Culture radicals believed individual happiness and social welfare to be. Guo’s first point declares that the traditional marriage system “leads to the evils of adultery and concubinage.” Because they are not free, arranged marriages are loveless and often full of hatred. This affects the wealth of the family because members are not motivated to work for family welfare. The husband wastes money on prostitutes and concubines. The wife seeks entertainment. Miserable, the two spouses look for ways to harm one another. The wife lets a lover into the house. At this point morality has already fallen to the extreme. “This impedes social progress.”81 In his second point, Guo states that the traditional marriage system “weakens the economy.” If two people love one another, they will be of one heart, consulting with each other and working together. As a result, “the family economy will immediately develop.” If they do not love one another and are always at odds, any enthusiasm will quickly be lost. Both sides will pursue entertainment, eating and never working. A person with much free time easily tends toward lasciviousness. Because prostitutes and concubines cost a lot of money, [such a man] will soon be standing on the street corner in torn clothes begging. “Money spent on this ghost heap almost never reaches society. As a result, the economy will be shaken by him because he interrupts the flow of currency in the market.”82 Guo’s third point claims that the traditional marriage system robs people of hope and pleasure. “Who enhances hope and the little pleasures of life? Do you mean to say it is not one’s own beloved wife? If husband and wife are harmonious, they will correct their faults together and cultivate their virtues. They will offer each other comfort in hard times and jokes to help dispel frustration. . . . The reason we can brave hunger and cold [and] hard work, [and] run around in rain and wind, is because we want a happy home. If we lose happiness at home, who can stand the bitterness of work? If a person cannot put up with the difficulties of work, it has a direct negative effect on the family and an indirect negative effect on society’s productivity.”83 As his fourth point, Guo insists that the traditional marriage system destroys filiality. “If the parents ruin their son’s marriage, this cannot but produce rebellion. . . . But because of the oppressive strength of the old family system, the son is forced [to comply]. This leads to a kind of passive rebellion. The son resorts to a dissolute lifestyle. His parents will wonder at how they are repaid for their efforts to make their son happy. There will necessarily be yelling and cursing; perhaps he will leave home.


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Without [one’s] knowing it, the more one oppresses, the more a person’s anger rises. As a result, filiality is destroyed. [A person] may even violate various principles of human relations. As a result he will injure customs and impede social progress.”84 In his fifth point, Guo claims that the traditional marriage system causes suicide. “It goes without saying that those who oppose an arranged marriage must suffer their parents’ banishment, but they must also suffer the attack of the general polluted atmosphere, leaving them no place at all in society. People are not made of wood and stone. Who can stand this kind of atmosphere? [They think,] ‘Why stay on this earth to be bullied about something that was originally one’s own business . . . but which others interfered with?’” This causes many young people to kill themselves in a moment of anger.85 In his sixth point, Guo blames the traditional marriage system for “impeding reproduction and the development of posterity. After the two sexes are united, pregnancy is certain. If husband and wife are incompatible, the two sexes are not easily united. This is also the way things go. Well then, where will childbirth come from? Without childbirth, the ancestors’ blood lines will be cut off. We will not be able to bring forth good citizens.” Even if children are born, parents who do not love one another cannot produce intelligent, whole, healthy children. Moreover, with husband and wife at odds, they will also often get angry with their children. And so [they] “will not only not teach their children to be good citizens, but, by whipping them, will also make their children into passive playthings or even produce immoral outcomes.”86 In his final point, Guo concludes that the traditional marriage system “obstructs social and national progress.” The nation is created from the gathering together of the people. And in this process the husband and wife are the most important. The country is created by gathering most families together couple by couple. “If husbands and wives are harmonious, the men till and the women weave; only then will the economy develop and good citizens be produced.” If the people are well educated, then society and nation will progress without obstacles. If it is the opposite, society and country will regress—that is, people will just consume and not produce.87 New Culture attacks on the traditional family were more than an expression of individualism and romantic self-indulgence. Like many other New Culture radicals, Guo presented his argument as a defense of individual rights and personal happiness as well as a prescription for social



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progress and national vitality. For Guo and his radical contemporaries, the individual happiness made possible by romantic love was part of a constellation of values that placed individual happiness at the root of economic productivity, social progress, and national vigor. As the source of creativity and productivity, the individual became the key element in effecting change. Consequently, whatever made the individual happy could be justified by the claim that such happiness contributed to social well-being and national strength. A strong nation was the aggregate of happy, productive individuals.

new families, new wives, new women As one might expect, this step in the family reform equation profoundly affected women’s roles in family, state, and society. Once New Culture men began looking to the family as a source of happiness and productivity, they developed a new set of expectations for their wives. In traditional families, a son’s mother usually played a key role in choosing his wife. Since a young wife’s most important responsibilities were producing sons and helping her mother-in-law with household tasks, a mother’s primary concern was finding a bride who would fulfill these expectations. But men who hoped to establish a xiao jiating did not necessarily share their mothers’ criteria for an attractive mate. These men wanted marriages based on mutual love with women who shared their intellectual and political interests.88 Some young women evidently shared these ideals of companionate marriage.89 One of the few Family Research essays written by a woman advocated freely chosen marriages between couples of comparable education and compatible dispositions. Its author also insisted that both husband and wife maintain economic independence and develop their individuality after marriage.90 However similar male and female views of marriage may have been, the truth remains that men wrote the vast majority of family-reform articles. Not surprisingly, then, these essays assumed the male perspective and reflected male interests. For example, the essays in Family Research frequently discussed the ideal wife, but they never considered the ideal husband.91 Men took it for granted that it was their happiness that was at stake. Men’s advocacy of women’s rights, as well as their frustration with their wives and fiancées, is best understood in this light. In the abstract, these men eloquently defended each and every per-


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son’s right to independent personhood (duli renge). Many essays insisted on women’s value as individuals and their right to education and selfdetermination.92 When writing about women in general, they were able to acknowledge the special difficulties women faced in securing these rights. But in their personal lives they were, as we all are, driven as much by emotion as reason. Despite their ideological commitments, when confronted with the women their families had chosen for them, these young men seethed with dissatisfaction and frustration. A letter to Family Research editors from a distraught young man makes clear his dissatisfaction with his arranged marriage. At the same time, it reveals how personal misery took on elevated significance because of the connections these men drew between personal satisfaction and the fate of the nation. I am a person who has suffered very deeply from the tyrannical marriage system. I have searched for a solution for the longest time. Because of family oppression and a coercive environment, I have, in the end, failed. Today I will write down the painful experiences of the last ten or more years one by one for you gentlemen to read. I will be very grateful if you can come up with a happy solution so that I may escape this bitter sea. Ten years ago, my thought was such that I believed that a good society and human happiness all come from a happy marriage. I firmly believed in the purification of the race and eugenics. The very first sentence in Yan Fu’s translation of On Liberty says, “To be a couple and at the same time teachers of one another, to [share] profound knowledge and lofty ideals of truth and essential principles: surely this arouses our aspirations.” These words speak my mind. Who could know that she not only does not measure up to my ideals, but to the contrary is not as good as an ordinary person? Before I married, I thought that even though this marriage, which was arranged when I was a child, was not as good as today’s love marriages, if she were clever, I could teach her the truths I had learned. We could often talk together and perhaps spend our days together after all. But when she arrived at my home, fat and naive, with ignorant behavior and muddled speech, she really was just like a primitive. Using all of her intellect, she still cannot understand how to count to five. The rest goes without saying. To be told to live with this kind of wife. . . . I am willing to teach her, but, pray tell, where should I start? Confucius said, “Rotten wood cannot be carved.” She really is just like rotten wood. Ellen Key93 said, “Loveless marriages are immoral.” This kind of immoral marriage is also the sacred and unassailable shili 94 marriage that our old society took as a matter of course. If I had not received an education . . . I would also be able to acquiesce to this murderous shili marriage and willingly live in this spiritual hell . . . Unfortunately, I know that love is the foundation of the marital relationship. Who could have known the appropriate reason for a love marriage?



51

Not only did no one help me, but my good friends all marshaled social customs to coerce me, leaving me to stand alone with no support. . . . My mother is very kind; she often sheds tears for me. My father is very hard; he often curses me. Relatives and old friends all criticize me with vile words. . . . Day and night I plan and ponder. Divorce is extremely difficult. Remarriage is against the law. I could stay single all my life, but I do not have the resolve for that. Or I could just carry on in this confused way, but that causes me great mental and spiritual pain. Dear sirs, family reform is your objective; I am in this bitter sea! Do you have a way to save me? My friends who have suffered the same anguish, can you also think of a way for me to escape? I beg you all to give me a way and I will soon leave this “living hell,” ah! Jian Cheng 1921.10.495

Overwrought as it is, this letter exemplifies several themes characteristic of young men’s complaints about the women their parents chose for them. Jian Cheng implies that his unhappiness is not merely a personal matter—“a good society and human happiness all come from a happy marriage.” Asserting that he came to this realization way back in 1911, he claims a place for himself among the intellectual avant-garde. His references to Yan Fu and Ellen Key also identify him as an intellectual progressive. His belief in eugenics charges his marital unhappiness with a significance that reaches beyond the personal. He yearns to fulfill his social responsibility, but he has married a fat, ignorant, stupid “primitive,” someone far below him on the social-evolutionary scale. Given this raw material, even his noble intention to make the best of an arranged marriage by teaching his wife “the truths I have learned” has come to naught. Our would-be Pygmalion is blameless because “rotten wood cannot be carved.” When Jian Cheng concedes that he probably would not feel so cheated by his present marriage if he could only live in ignorance, he hits upon the crux of the matter. The wealth of New Culture literature shows us that men’s expectations of themselves and their wives had changed. Unfortunately, the simple fact was that very few women possessed the level of education and political consciousness that these men hoped for.96 After all, in 1922 only 656 women in all of China were attending university. Some men took a much more sympathetic view of their fiancées than Jian Cheng did, but found themselves frustrated still. One man tried to convince his parents to send his fiancée to school before their marriage, but they refused.97 Another man’s parents agreed to educate his fiancée, but he could not find a school for her.98


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The deep undercurrent of resentment stemmed not simply from misogyny—although, as we will see below, that was certainly an element— but also from these young men’s idealistic images of themselves. Their fathers had defined themselves through their families, ancestors, and descendants. These young men wanted to define themselves independently from the family. Yet, because it was so important to a man’s identity as a modern, enlightened individual to make a freely chosen love-marriage, the quality of his marriage and his wife became absolutely essential to his self-image. So despite their iconoclastic aspirations, these young men continued to define themselves, at least in part, through the family—in this case, the xiao jiating. Ultimately, these men advocated women’s rights because they wanted to help create wives who met male demands for educated, enlightened companionship. And men complained bitterly when women failed to meet their husbands’ expectations. One contributor expressed the frustration of many readers when he complained, “My wife is a good-fornothing. Her talent is insufficient to meet her obligations, her virtue is insufficient to be of help to others, and her appearance is insufficient to satisfy my desires.”99 Certainly not all the contributors to Family Research took such a negative view of their wives. Editors and essayists sometimes reproved their readers for making women, rather than the family system, the target of their dissatisfaction. One writer chided his readers for attacking the marriage problem from the male point of view. Men’s problems, he argued, were easier to solve. Because women struggled with greater educational, economic, and social restrictions, a critique of the marriage system from their point of view promised richer insights. He reminded readers that blaming women for their “deficiencies” unjustly held them responsible for being deprived of an education. He also pointed out that a woman suffered more in marriage than her husband did; not only was she married to a man chosen by others, but she was also thrust into a family of strangers.100 But this sympathetic voice was generally drowned out by clamoring for self-satisfaction and bitter complaints about old-fashioned wives.

“they turn the living world into a graveyard” Fictional accounts of marriage echoed and even amplified the kinds of complaints found in Jian Cheng’s letter. In the first issue of its second volume, Family Research published Lihun (Divorce), a play by Cheng



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Fangwu.101 Although the tone of the play is too extreme to be typical, it foregrounds the thread of misogyny that ran through a good deal of New Culture writing on women. The play portrayed the trial of Li Lesheng (Happy-Life Li), a young middle-school teacher. As the play opens we learn that Li originally acquiesced to the marriage his parents had arranged for him but divorced his wife a year later. Publicly humiliated by the divorce, she committed suicide. Her family blames Li for her death and sues him for damages, but Li denies any wrongdoing. Because he refused to fulfill his responsibility to others and meet the expectations of society, the judge and plaintiffs accuse him of immoral behavior. Li, however, insists that in being true to himself, he answers to a higher moral authority. Like much of the new-style “spoken theater” (huaju)102 of the New Culture movement, Divorce served as a vehicle for Cheng’s ideas on love, marriage, and self. The supporting characters—a judge, one of Li’s relatives, and the plaintiff’s representative—mouth the social conventions that prompt Li’s long soliloquies. In Li Lesheng, Cheng Fangwu created a character who signaled an entire set of values to Family Research readers. Li represented the vanguard that would lead China into the future. He was young, educated, and a teacher. He valued his individuality and looked to moral absolutes rather than social norms to guide his behavior. Despite his newfound identity, his parents married him to an old-fashioned girl with no appreciation for education or ideas. In Li Lesheng many readers saw themselves. Yet unlike most young men, Cheng’s protagonist braved the social and legal consequences of divorce. The play opens on a conversation between Li Lesheng and one of his relatives surnamed Xie. Li proudly proclaims himself a “rebel” whom the court, as a protector of society, should harshly punish. He defends his habit of patronizing brothels because, he claims, it is only through stimulation of the senses that he knows he is alive. In fact, he believes his lifestyle is superior to that of men who treat their multiple wives and concubines as private property, never wondering whether such a custom is immoral, whether the women care for their husbands, or whether they want to live with jealousy every day of their lives. Li also refuses to acknowledge traditional expectations of fatherhood. When Xie remarks that considering the judge’s attitude toward divorce it is fortunate that Li and his wife had no children, Li insists that the existence of children should not inhibit a divorce. Whichever parent wants them should take them.103 The playwright strains to dismiss every traditional assumption


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about marriage and family ties: the individual’s needs are paramount and he need not bow to any social obligations. The theme of the male individual and his need for freedom and selffulfillment dominate the first half of the play. Li insists on his right to enjoy life: I am only willing to live this life to the fullest and not let this bit of time pass fruitlessly. I have no other request. I am only willing to drink in the moment’s sweet dew and bathe in the moment’s bit of brilliance. . . . She not only did not add sweetness to my life, it was as if she took my “life fire” and blew it out. Our marriage was devoid of all significance. Every day we lived life like that was another day of bitterness, robbing life of its ultimate meaning. Why should I love her?

His duty to himself was reason enough to divorce a wife he did not love: “We have a duty to ourselves. A wrong done to ourselves is the greatest wrong. One’s duty to oneself is the highest duty. What kind of duty is one’s duty to oneself? It is to make all our actions accord with duty to our own ‘life principle.’ . . . Our married life was not in accord with our ‘life principles.’ Now, if I wanted to carry out my duty to myself, I had to divorce and we had to live new lives.”104 Of course, for Li’s wife there was no new life to live. The traditional code of chastity forbade women to remarry. Even if Li’s wife had been willing to contravene social expectation, the stigma of divorce would have prevented her from making a good second marriage. In response to the judge’s questioning, Li attacks his wife and all traditional Chinese women, expostulating on the dangers of the traditional woman and the threat she presents to modern men and society. He champions the subjectivity of love, his responsibility to his nation, and his supreme duty to himself. In the process he makes several key linkages, all of them gendered. On the male side of the gender dichotomy, Li connects his desire for romance, the national good, and his right as an individual to pursue his own happiness. On the female side, Li identifies traditional women with all that is wrong with China. When the judge asks Li why he divorced his wife, Li responds, “I did not love her. Isn’t that enough of a reason?” When the judge asks why he did not love her and why a loveless marriage justifies divorce, Li responds, “Why does one person love one object [emphasis added] and someone else love another? Is there a logic to what one does or does not love? . . . Since you asked me, I have a little something to say to you. I say I could not love her, I may not love her, and I need not love her.”105 As Li elaborates on why he could not, may not, and need not love his wife, she becomes the



55

object against which he defines himself, his preferences, and his duties. As a person, his wife remains absent from the play. But as a metaphor for traditional China, she haunts the stage. Li reduces his wife to an object to be kept or discarded depending on its attractiveness; he could not love her because he did not find her beautiful. (Her education he dismisses out of hand: “There is no use in speaking of her knowledge.”) Beauty, Li asserts, is subjective: “I ask you, why don’t we think beautiful those things that savages believe are beautiful?” He also insists on the value of that subjectivity. His mother praised his wife’s beauty, but Li declares, “If I am to say my wife is beautiful, she must be beautiful in a way that is valuable to me. It is of no use to me that others think her beautiful.” As his vituperative attack continues, he literally demonizes his wife: “Her sallow face looked as if there were no warm blood flowing in it. Her eyes had a ghostly fire. . . . It seemed as if that air carried the earth element. Imagine what that ghostly fire in her eyes, flickering in that atmosphere, was like.” This ghostly presence threatened Li’s life: “When I was with her it was like being buried alive. Only when I got away from her could I breathe deeply of the fresh air. [Then] I felt as if I had been resurrected.”106 Li insists that in escaping his wife he not only saved himself but also did his part for China. He could not allow himself to love his wife because women like her burdened the country with their dead weight: “I think that everything in China is good, it is only people who are bad. [Socalled] beautiful women are especially unworthy of notice. In spirit and body they have fallen into indescribable decrepitude. Not only are they unable to increase our prosperity, it is as if we were running around dragging them along, running around dragging along a corpse that gets smellier day by day, that gets heavier day by day. . . . They turn the living world into a graveyard.” Instead of contributing to the problem by loving such women, men should consciously eliminate the market for them: “According to the economists’ law of supply and demand, if we still love them after a thousand years who knows what kind of ghostly things they might become. Therefore, in order to change the nature of women, we must not love [this kind of woman].”107 Thus, men like Li, who refused to take on the burden of a living ghost, were aiding China in its social-evolutionary struggle for survival. The plaintiff’s representative calls Li a king of egoism and accuses him of driving his wife to her death. Li claims that, in fact, he had to save himself. He rejects the value of self-sacrifice; sacrificing himself to his wife would not have benefited either of them. He was dying; there was no


56


time to ask whether others were going to die. His spiritual death counted far more than her corporeal death. He even questions whether she is really dead. Her noxious presence still lingers, as if she has returned from the dead for the satisfaction of watching his ordeal: “Do you all believe that she is dead, then? I don’t think so. I believe that she is now resurrected. Before, she was indeed dead. Previously it was as if I was also harmed unto death by her. I struggled for life. She came back to life. She is over there laughing at us.”108 Li denies all responsibility for the fate of this ghost-wife, insisting on his right to divorce at will. But the judge takes a different view of the matter; he fines Li 5,000 yuan in damages, banishing him to Xinjiang for ten years. Li claims that he will go gladly to a place where he can start a new society.109 In its denigration of women, Divorce was extreme for Family Research, but in making women the object of family reform and the source of men’s anguish, it was typical of New Culture family-reform discourse. A ghostly, otherworldly succubus draining young men of their vital life force, the traditional woman became the scapegoat for China’s weakness. To save himself and his nation, the young man was not only allowed but even duty-bound to abandon her. In this respect, Li is somewhat akin to the young scholar of traditional tales who sees through the fox spirit’s false beauty and knows her for the demon she is. Most New Culture family reformers shared Li’s logic, if not his nerve. Yet, despite the extremity of his rhetoric of individualism, Li ultimately connected his individual struggle for freedom with the fate of the nation. At the same time, Cheng’s gendering of modernity and tradition, the reformer and the reformed, and the West and China as respectively male/female reflected the tensions that underlay assumptions about male and female roles in the new China. The language of xiao jiating could sometimes slide into outright misogyny. More often, however, its rhetoric undermined the ideals of gender equality in a more subtle fashion. The xiao jiating promised happy, productive individuals. The men who hoped to implement this ideal took for granted their role as the productive laborer. Consequently, they interpreted the xiao jiating ideal in ways that sustained traditional gender roles: men would devote themselves primarily to productive labor and women to reproductive labor and to making the productive (male) individual happy. The vehemence with which Cheng’s play scapegoated women for China’s ills, and the fact that Yi Jiayue and Luo Dunwei published such a misogynist play, suggest that these men had yet to rethink women’s place in state and society. Much of their vision of female gender roles remained firmly rooted in tradition. If men at the leading edge of the family-reform



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movement harbored such traditional notions, how might readers of New Culture literature have interpreted family-reform ideals? Two surveys from the 1920s give us the opportunity to consider this question.

a slice of life Readers of New Culture periodicals like New Youth, Xin chao (New tide), and Family Research frequently wrote to ask advice on family problems; the high tide of new thought left their imaginations awash with hopes and expectations. But just how deeply did these ideas affect their daily lives? Did these young men merely enjoy the titillation of radical ideas? Or did they absorb these ideas and make them their own? If these ideas did affect their worldview, how did the young men change their lives? Where did discourse and behavior intersect? Two Chinese sociologists, Chen Heqin (1892–1982) and Pan Guangdan (1899–1967), tried to answer these questions through surveys that they conducted in the wake of the New Culture Movement.110 Their findings suggest that some New Culture family ideals— choosing one’s own spouse, having an educated wife, delaying marriage, and eliminating concubinage—had become very important to many students. Other ideals, like living independently from the joint family, for example, played a central role in family-reform rhetoric but found relatively few adherents among those surveyed. Most men did not resent women as fiercely as Cheng Fangwu did, nor did they envision a family as radical as Yi advocated. In fact, with a few modifications, young men of the 1920s seem to have been willing, and even happy, to make their peace with much that was traditional in the Chinese family. The two surveys differed markedly in form and to a lesser degree in content. In 1920 Chen Heqin distributed over 1,500 surveys to faculty and principals in Jiangnan-area schools. He recognized that respondents needed special assurances before they would answer the many personal questions he wished to ask. Accordingly, before distributing the questionnaires he explained his research objectives. He also made a special point of reminding his respondents to withhold their names. He received 631 responses from men at six academic institutions.111 Seven years later, Pan Guangdan published his questionnaire in “Light of Learning,” a literary supplement published weekly in the Shanghai daily China Times. Pan asked for respondents’ names but promised to keep them confidential. Whether this made potential respondents reluctant to answer is unclear; only one person out of more than 300 re-


58

Saving Self and Nation 40

Number of respondents

35 30

Married Engaged

25 20 15 10 5 0

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 Age

Figure 1. Chen’s survey: age of married and engaged respondents. Chen Heqin, “Shehui wenti,” DFZZ 18, no. 4 (25 February 1921): 103–104, and DFZZ 18, no. 5 (10 March 1921): 103.

spondents withheld his name. But Pan did have to issue three requests for responses to his queries. The first request appeared on 31 May 1927 and a second on 9 June. He printed a third and final call a week later. At that point he had over two hundred responses, but only ten of those came from women. Pan’s final call boosted the number of female respondents to 44 and the total to 317. Pan estimated that this number equaled 1 percent of China Times’s circulation.112 To varying degrees, both Chen and Pan recognized the limitations of their surveys.113 Chen collected no questionnaires from women. Women accounted for just under 14 percent of Pan’s respondents. Both sets of respondents were relatively affluent, well-educated urbanites—a decidedly non-representative sample of China as a whole but an accurate profile of those interested in family reform. That they answered the surveys at all indicates their familiarity with the xiao jiating ideal and their interest in the debate. The surveys succeeded in eliciting responses from those most directly concerned with the family reform debate. Most of Chen’s and Pan’s respondents were between the ages of seventeen and twenty-eight (see figures 1 and 2), and more than half were unmarried.114 The majority of their respondents—70 percent of Chen’s and 77 percent of Pan’s—came from Jiangsu and Zhejiang, China’s wealthiest provinces.115 All of Chen’s


Number of men


59

25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

Unmarried men Married men

14

16

18

20

22

24

26 28 Age

30

32

34

36

38

40+

Figure 2. Pan’s survey: marital status and age of male respondents. Pan Guangdan, Zhongguo zhi jiating wenti, 35–36.

respondents had advanced at least as far as middle school. Pan’s respondents were also very well educated in comparison to the general population: a third had received some secondary education, 14 percent had completed middle school, and another third had completed at least some college education.116 Because of their level of education, the women in Pan’s survey were even less representative of the general urban population than the men were.117 Forty-four female voices, however, are better than none at all. Accordingly, their responses are included here. As figures 3 and 4 show, Pan’s respondents came from a rather elite occupational spectrum—more than half of the men and women were either students or teachers. The rest of the men worked in “business and industry,” civil service, or professional occupations. Among his remaining female respondents, Pan counted five housewives, three office workers, a painter, a politician, a writer, and a doctor.118 Although Chen’s and Pan’s respondents were not identical, they were

Number of men

Students

Academics

Business & Transportation Government industry workers workers workers

Medical workers

Engineers

Figure 3. Pan’s survey: occupations of male respondents. Pan, Zhongguo zhi jiating wenti, 26–29.

110 105 100 95 90 85 80 75 70 65 60 55 50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0 Journalists/ editors

Other


0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

Students

Teachers and administrators

Writers

Office workers

Political workers

Painters

Medical workers

Figure 4. Pan’s survey: occupations of female respondents. Pan, Zhongguo zhi jiating wenti, 30.

Number of women

20

Housewives

Unknown



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similar enough to allow us to use them together as we examine the tensions between ideals and realities. This presentation is made in full awareness of the problems intrinsic to surveys: Did respondents report their true feelings and opinions? Are people who voluntarily respond to surveys representative of their cohort? These caveats should inform our analysis of survey data but should not prevent us from using surveys altogether. Opportunities to peer behind the facade of ideals and discourse come infrequently to historians: only epistemological perversity could make us turn away. Forming a Family New Culture radicals like Yi and Luo insisted that young couples establish households independent of their parents’. But according to Chen’s and Pan’s surveys, this particular innovation found little support among China’s youth. Most of Chen’s respondents did not want to leave their parents’ homes. Of 447 engaged and unengaged respondents, 281 (63 percent) wished to remain at home after marriage. Married men showed even greater enthusiasm for multi-generational households. Only 2 of Chen’s 184 married respondents suggested that China’s marriage system would be improved if couples lived apart from their parents.119 It seems that one of the central tenets of New Culture family reform met with a chilly reception among students. Of the 71 who explained why they wanted to live at home after marriage, 51 (72 percent) said they needed or wanted to serve their parents. An additional 13 (18 percent) expected to enjoy the “happiness of human relationships” (tianlun zhi le). Chen maintained that young men felt obligated to live at home because their parents depended on them for economic support, but the responses that he printed made it clear that strong emotional ties also kept young men at home: I want to continue to live with my parents because they are old and like to see their own flesh and blood every day. If I live somewhere else, the old people in my family would be very unhappy. My parents are old and the country has no system to support them. If one has a gentle disposition, then what kind of family conflict can there be? If I do not disappoint my wife, then I will not disappoint my parents. One cannot fully perform a son’s duty if one lives apart. Furthermore, won’t one spend more money in renting another place?



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When my parents become too old to do for themselves, I can serve them and so fulfill the principles of humanity.

As these samples suggest, a complex mixture of affection, filial obligation, and economic interdependence encouraged young men to remain with their parents.120 Pan’s respondents also preferred a modified joint family instead of the emotionally and economically independent xiao jiating. Although 71 percent did not advocate the preservation of the “Chinese joint family system,” 59 percent did not want to accept the “Euro-American conjugal family” in its entirety either. Sixty-four percent of Pan’s respondents agreed that China should “adopt the Euro-American conjugal family, but grandparents and parents should live with and be supported by children and grandchildren.” Sixty-one percent agreed that China should “adopt the Euro-American conjugal family, support parents and grandparents, but live apart.”121 These surveys suggest that contrary to New Culture presentations, independence from parents and elders was not the most popular element of new family ideals. In fact, for the majority, neither spatial nor economic independence was the defining characteristic of the “Euro-American conjugal family.” Of course, a sizable minority—40 percent of Pan’s respondents and 28 percent of Chen’s—did advocate wholesale independence from the joint family. Those of Chen’s respondents who provided reasons for wanting to live separately from their parents echoed the prominent New Culture theme of the importance of individual independence. Forty-six of the 77 (60 percent) wanted to be independent of their parents, 19 (25 percent) wanted to destroy the old family and establish the new, and 8 (10 percent) hoped to “enjoy freedom.”122 In explaining their reasons for wanting independence, many of these young men used the vocabulary and logic of the New Culture reform discourse we saw in Family Research: I want to be independent and not rely on my family. Moreover, it will prevent the evil customs of the old family from spreading. I want to destroy the outlook of the old society and so I must live apart. In this way I respect my own individuality and wash away my previous dependency. Second, I will make a tangible contribution to the reformation of society. First, it preserves family harmony. Second, it will allow my wife and me to put the new style of education into practice. The old family always disagrees with this on many points.


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Saving Self and Nation Because my family is corrupt, if I want to achieve the new happiness I must live elsewhere. Presently there are very few new-style families. I want to set an example for others, so I must live somewhere else.123

Here again, the desire for personal happiness and independence fuses with a sense of social responsibility.

Choosing a Wife Although most young men surveyed did not want to live apart from their families, they took great interest in two other key aspects of family reform: marriage at a later age and marriage to women of their own choosing. Eighty-seven percent of Pan’s respondents approved of women marrying at age twenty and men marrying at age twenty-five. Another 18 percent thought women should marry only at age twenty-five or later and men only at age thirty or later.124 Chen’s findings resembled Pan’s. Over half of the 220 unmarried respondents who indicated their preferred age of marriage wanted to marry between the ages of twenty-five and twenty-nine. About 18 percent (thirty-nine respondents) hoped to wait until they reached thirty.125 These responses suggest that the New Culture advocacy of later marriages garnered widespread support among educated youths. The actual ages of marriage reported by married respondents suggest, however, that young men encountered difficulties in delaying marriage until their mid-twenties. Chen compared the ideal age of marriage reported by the unmarried with the married respondents’ age at marriage. He observed that the majority of unmarried men hoped to marry between the ages of twenty-five and thirty. If the age at marriage reported by their married counterparts is any indication of the average age of marriage, however, these men were likely to be married about five years earlier than they wished (see figure 5).126 Pan’s respondents seem to have fared a little better: most of them seem to have married near their ideal age of twenty-five. Pan did not ask his respondents their age at marriage, but we can discern a tendency: the majority of respondents age twentyfour and under were single, and most respondents twenty-five and older were married (see figure 2).127 In general, Pan’s and Chen’s respondents approved of freedom of marriage choice, but they were not as adamantly opposed to parental involvement as New Culture rhetoric suggested they might be. The vast majority of Pan’s respondents insisted on having a voice in their en-


Number of respondents

Saving Self and Nation 75 72 69 66 63 60 57 54 51 48 45 42 39 36 33 30 27 24 21 18 15 12 9 6 3 0

65

Actual age at marriage Ideal age at marriage

1

3

14 15

16

17

18 19 20

21 22 23 Age

24 25

26

27 28 29 30

Figure 5. Chen’s survey: actual versus ideal age at marriage. Chen, DFZZ 18, no. 6 (25 March 1921): 113.

gagement. Only two (male) respondents to Pan’s survey thought the senior generation should decide their marriages. At the same time, only 34 percent believed the decision should be left entirely to the individual. The most popular alternative (80 percent) was for individuals to choose their own mate but to obtain parental approval. A sizable minority of 42 percent approved of parents choosing a spouse as long as they obtained their children’s approval. The unengaged men in Chen’s survey followed a very similar pattern, but they advocated more vigorously their right to marry whom they pleased. At the same time, perhaps because of their relative youth, a larger percentage was willing to let their parents decide (see table 2).128 Unfortunately for Chen’s young men, life rarely complied with the ideal. His poll of the engaged and married respondents suggests that most families thwarted young men’s hope to select their own wives. Of 181 engaged men, only 6 had decided their engagements themselves and only 17 had been consulted by their parents. Of the 172 married respondents who answered this question, only 6 had chosen their own wives and only 6 had been given the opportunity to agree with their parents’ choices. Many of the men who wrote to Family Research recounted the surprise and dismay caused by marrying a complete stranger. Although this com-


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table 2. chen’s survey, unengaged men: who should choose your wife?

Individual decides Individual and parents decide Parents decide Individual or parents decide No response total

Number

Percentage

171 55 21 8 11 262

65.3 21.0 8.0 3.0 2.7 100.0

source: Chen, DFZZ 18, no. 5 (10 March 1921): 108.

plaint became almost formulaic, in fact, it was not empty rhetoric, but a reflection of all-too-real experience. Less than a quarter (41 out of 179) of the married men in Chen’s survey knew their wives before marriage.129 Although most respondents wanted a voice in their marriage, not all those whose marriages had been arranged were intent on opposing their parents. Of the 158 men in Chen’s survey whose engagements had been arranged, 145 responded to his questions about their willingness to comply. Fifty-six declared themselves willing to go through with the marriage. Their fiancées’ level of education seems to have done much to reconcile them to the match. One respondent explained his willingness this way: “Now my heart is willing because she is literate and sensible. This kind of person is very hard to find among those who have not gone to a girls’ school.” For another man, his fiancée’s education capped other, more traditional criteria for compatibility: “I am willing because we are close in age, she has a gentle personality, her family is of very good reputation, she is attractive, and she has been to school.”130 The eighty-eight respondents who declared themselves unwilling to proceed with the match provided ninety-one reasons for their reluctance. Their complaints underscore the value that men attached to having educated wives and to participating in the engagement process. There were forty complaints that their fianceés were uneducated. Fear of marrying women about whom they knew nothing appeared thirty times. There were ten protests against parental tyranny. For all the New Culture valorization of romantic love, only four men were unwilling to marry because they did not love their prospective wives.131 These responses suggest that Chinese youth did not adopt the whole of family-reform discourse. Instead, they selected the ideals that suited them. Chen’s respondents enthusiastically adopted the ideal of an educated wife. Very



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few, however, worried about romantic love, even though “love” featured prominently in New Culture periodicals. Of the eighty-eight unhappily engaged, forty-nine had resolved to marry as their families wished. Twenty-two of these men provided reasons for not backing out of the engagement. Thirteen cited the difficulty of exercising such a choice given “family circumstances” and “oppressive customs.” Eight did not want to disappoint or embarrass their parents. Only four declined to resist the engagement because they believed in the New Culture ideal of educating their wives themselves. Two gentlemen, perhaps more gallant than their contemporaries, showed sensitivity to their fiancées’ fate and refused to back out, noting that it was not the women’s fault. Thirty-nine of the unhappily engaged wanted to escape the marriages their families were planning for them, but their prospects for successful resistance seemed dim. Twenty-two admitted that they had not yet devised a strategy for escape. Four planned to notify the woman’s family of their refusal and three wanted to discuss it with their parents. Only one was willing to reject his family and leave home as radical New Culture literature urged young men to do. Nine left this part of the questionnaire blank.132 The distance between New Culture ideals and real experience is palpable even for those of Chen’s respondents who reported that they had decided their own marriages. Only six made the decision themselves, while seventeen had cooperated with their parents. Thirteen of the men reported that they knew their fiancées before the engagement. Seven did not. Twelve had used go-betweens to present the proposal of marriage: just one made the proposal himself, six relied on a friend, four on a relative, one on his fiancée’s brother, and one on a teacher. At least sixteen of the men obtained their future wives’ consent. Two descriptions of the engagement process highlight just how much this experience varied: Originally we did not know each other. We were not friends or relatives. The first time I saw her was at a graduation ceremony at her school. Afterward we exchanged letters, saw each other, and talked. Gradually we became closest friends. We have known each other for five years. We got engaged only last year. Long ago our families used to be related, so we knew each other. No one introduced us. As for whether she agrees to the match, at the time of the engagement I did not know. Then I decided she must be satisfied because we grew up together.133

The first describes a courtship that perfectly matched the xiao jiating ideal. By comparison, the second describes an engagement as businesslike as any arranged by practical parents. The second’s confidence in his


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mate’s satisfaction with him is not only breathtaking but also indicative of a double standard that men might bring to the marriage question: even as they demanded for themselves a good deal of participation in the marriage process, they assumed that women would be satisfied with significantly less. Although the vast majority of Chen’s engaged and married respondents had had their marriages arranged for them, the unengaged were bursting with fantasies about how they would meet their future wives. Many envisioned a courtship that would take place within a new social context that made room for friendship between the sexes: “First I would become friends with a girl; in the space of one or two years I would do a very close inspection and then I would bring up marriage”; “From among my friends I would choose someone whose disposition is compatible with mine, whose education is equal to mine, and with whom I share a mutual love”; “I would pay attention everywhere I go. When I found a good moral girl, I would investigate her and her family’s circumstances. Then I would enlist a matchmaker to propose marriage.” Some respondents intended to rely on a go-between for an introduction. Others expected to adopt the role of judicious matchmaker themselves: “First I would make friends with an unmarried girl’s parents, then I would make friends with her”; “First I would ask my parents or other relatives at home to investigate for me, but I would be in charge of decision making.”134 The Ideal Wife Although these young, unengaged men fantasized about finding their wives in brand new ways, it seems they wanted wives with fairly oldfashioned qualities. Chen asked all 266 of the unengaged respondents to consider their ideal wife’s demeanor, disposition, family status, education, age, talents, appearance, and “other.” Although Chen did not ask them to rank these qualities, the relative importance of each is revealed by the number of men who indicated their preferences for each category. As it turns out, women’s demeanor and disposition mattered a great deal—257 men indicated preferences in each of these two categories. At least in this regard, the young men were in agreement with traditional wifely ideals: 37 percent hoped for an “ordinary” demeanor, 32 percent wanted a wife who was “proper and well-formed,” 21 percent hoped for a wife who was “elegant and beautiful,” and only 9 percent professed not to care. A whopping 87 percent counted gentleness as the most ideal disposition.135



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Almost all of the respondents also addressed the issue of family status. But here the unengaged were divided. In the tradition of arranged marriages, choosing a spouse from within the same socioeconomic class— “matching the doors”—was an important criterion. But 46 percent claimed that a wife’s family status did not matter. (Their lack of interest in family backgrounds may reflect their desire to place a higher priority on personal, rather than economic or familial, compatibility.) Yet an almost equal number wanted wives whose status was comparable to their own.136 Education and age also ranked high on the list of concerns, with 219 and 211 responses, respectively. Most held high hopes for their wife’s level of education; 60 percent wanted her to have at least a middle school education. Another 34 percent wanted a wife with “ordinary” learning. (Unfortunately, Chen did not explain whether this meant an elementary school education and basic literacy or the traditional education in domestic skills).137 These young men were also adamant about their wives’ relative age. Most rejected the custom of marrying men to women who were a few years older. Sixty percent thought husband and wife should be the same age. Fourteen percent preferred wives a year or two younger, and 11 percent wanted wives who were three to five years younger. The remaining 14 percent did not specify how much younger the wife should be.138 Given the link that Chinese culture (and many others) made between youth and sexual desirability, it is not surprising that the rise of companionate marriage ideals gave rise to a demand for younger wives. Men wanted to choose wives to meet their needs, not those of their mothers. Capability took a back seat to companionability and desirability. Moreover, young men who hoped to displace their elders and set themselves up as patriarchs in their own homes would not relish the challenge to their authority that older wives might present if the couple were to live independently from their elders. These unengaged men had little to say about an ideal wife’s qualities beyond disposition and demeanor, family status, education, and age. Less than a quarter of them thought of anything to write when Chen asked them about the ideal wife’s talents. Of the sixty-one who did respond, almost half named skill at running a household, hardly a “modern” attribute. Only 12 percent wanted a wife skilled in social intercourse, and a mere 10 percent thought the ideal wife should be able to educate her children.139 A final category of “other qualities” contained a wide variety of sug-


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gestions, though again, interest in this question was relatively low: only 114 of the 266 subjects provided answers to this query. Christianity topped the list at 19.3 percent. The popularity of this quality probably stems from the fact that Chen’s sample included a Christian school. Just how this Christian influence affected these students’ views of women is unclear. It may have introduced them to ideas about the need for women’s education, the right of women to occupy public space, and the acceptability of socializing between men and women. Some hallmark qualities prevalent in New Culture literature on women appear, although again not as frequently as New Culture rhetoric leads us to expect. Fourteen percent of respondents believed the ideal wife should have unbound feet. A little over 13 percent wanted a wife who was able to serve society. Other qualities that figured prominently in family-reform rhetoric appeared infrequently: only 9 percent ventured to suggest that the ideal wife should love her husband; patriotism (3 percent) and the possession of “new thought” (4 percent) also fell low on the list.140 Table 3 shows that married men found satisfaction in the same qualities that unmarried men hoped to find in the ideal wife.141 Again, compatibility, skill in managing the home, knowledge, and education rank high on the list. Chen’s married respondents eloquently affirmed the high value that the rest of his respondents placed on a wife’s education. Unhappiness over their wives’ lack of education accounted for over a third (58 out of 149) of the complaints about marriage. Those who found themselves with uneducated wives complained bitterly: I am dissatisfied with my marriage because she does not have a high level of education and because she lacks everyday knowledge. She does not even recognize the character for ding and she is incapable of living an independent life. She only relies on others, living as a parasite. She has lost her individuality and sees herself as a man’s possession. She says, “At home one relies on father and mother, in marriage one relies on a man.” Isn’t this ridiculous? This is the kind of thing I am dissatisfied with.142 What is there to be satisfied about? What I am dissatisfied with is her illiteracy. I did not hope for much; but when I speak with her she simply does not understand. So not only can we not speak of being beneficial companions and good friends, she hasn’t even the qualifications to be a disciple.143

Another married man’s response suggests how profoundly the New Culture Movement altered some men’s expectations of their wives:



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table 3. chen’s survey, married men: my wife’s satisfactory qualities Number She manages the home well She is gentle toward others Our dispositions are compatible She is knowledgeable She is talented She is capable and virtuous She is simple, industrious, and frugal She serves relatives and cares for the young She is very attractive She is very intelligent She is reverent and respectful She serves society She is quiet and speaks little My parents are satisfied with her She can be independent She serves She loves to win total

18 15 15 13 7 7 6 4 3 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 99

Percentage 18.18 15.15 13.13 13.13 7.77 7.77 6.66 4.44 3.33 2.22 2.22 2.22 1.11 1.11 1.11 1.11 1.11 100.00

source: Chen, DFZZ 18, no. 4 (25 February 1921), 108.

[Before] I was very satisfied with my marriage because I lived in the old society and I was completely of the old mindset. My wife’s personality and appearance and trousseau were precisely appropriate to the old society. Now I have reacted against it. I look at her as if she were an enemy. Why? Because I have received the tide of the cultural movement and I know that women and men are the same. No matter whether in literature or social exchange, we should be equal. I know that my wife is just the opposite—she is illiterate, her feet are bound, her face is covered in powder—she possesses none of the brilliant phenomena of the twentieth century. As a result, I am now very disappointed.144

This passage resounds with the frustration of opportunity lost. This man emerged from darkness into the “brilliant phenomena of the twentieth century” only to find himself bereft of the new century’s most important emblem—the new woman. A Word to the Wise Chen suggested that women use his survey for their own edification: “If women understood men’s hearts, then they would know what was appropriate.” He noted:


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Saving Self and Nation The thing that satisfied most was the ability to manage the home well. Heretofore, Chinese women have been good at managing the home. Now many female students misunderstand managing the home as the bitter work of slaves. They ignore the home economics courses in their schools. It is all right to oppose the slavery of women. It is not all right to oppose women conserving the managing of the home, which has been the essential point of what is good and appropriate in China since ancient times. The next points of satisfaction were gentleness toward others and a compatible disposition. Clearly there is a close relationship between the gentleness of a wife’s disposition and the happiness of the home. The fourth kind of satisfaction was with a wife’s knowledge. From this we can see the importance of a woman’s education. In addition to this, if a wife has much talent, is capable and virtuous, simple, industrious, and frugal, et cetera, she will be sufficient to satisfy one.145

Chen’s interest in teaching women how to please men recalls themes in family rhetoric highlighted earlier in this chapter—men’s promotion of women’s education and liberation more often reflected their interest in obtaining a suitable companion than a dedication to abstract principles of gender equality. What men were most dissatisfied with was their wives’ lack of knowledge. . . . This accounted for 57.71 percent of responses . . . more than the other complaints combined. Today’s students cannot be compared with previous scholars. Today’s students [i.e., male students] are enlightened students. They are students who have been influenced by new thought. Naturally they are not satisfied with women who have no knowledge and who have not been enlightened. Therefore, if we want to improve the happiness of the home, we must educate women. If we want to take lifeless, hellish homes and turn them into heavens on earth, we must educate women.146

Chen reinforced men’s expectations that women would continue to provide reproductive labor in the domestic sphere, an assumption that New Culture literature, which explicitly treated women as objects of reform, rarely challenged. The very happiness of China’s families (read men) depended upon the successful reformation of Chinese women.

Women’s Role in Home and Society Chen’s and Pan’s subjects envisioned new roles for women even as they affirmed many features of the traditional family. Both surveys asked ques-



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tions about child rearing and work. The respondents’ answers highlight the tensions and even confusion that characterized their visions of women’s place in home and society. They wanted fairly large families and expected their wives to assume many of the responsibilities of child care. At the same time, they also wanted their wives to take active social roles. Chen’s respondents imagined a demanding family life. More than a third of them wanted four children and another third wanted three.147 Seventy-five percent agreed that “infants absolutely must be nursed by their mothers. [One should not] use a substitute milk product or a wet nurse.” Respondents were equally adamant about the centrality of parents’ role in early childhood. Seventy-one percent believed that “parents themselves should take on the early years of children’s education.” It seems that most respondents expected women to remain home with their children during the first years. At the same time, a majority of respondents (58 percent) agreed with the statement “Children should be reared communally to allow the majority of women to avoid losing the opportunity to develop themselves as individuals and contribute to society because of reproduction.”148 At the same time, 60 percent of Chen’s unmarried respondents wanted their wives to “serve society” after marriage. Chen neglected, however, to ask how they might meet that responsibility.149 Pan’s survey of attitudes toward women’s education suggests that some expected women to serve society through their domestic roles or an extension of those roles. But here also, the respondents’ views of women’s education seem full of unresolved conflicts. Virtually all the respondents (97 percent) wanted men and women to receive a college or professional education if family resources allowed, and most (80 percent) approved of the statement “Girls and boys should receive exactly the same education, in accordance with the intention of equality of the sexes.” But a sizable minority (35 percent) believed that men and women should receive education suited to their disparate roles in society. Twenty-three percent of Pan’s respondents believed that men and women possessed different kinds of intelligence and therefore women should not receive the same education as men.150 Just how the respondents resolved these tensions is, of course, unknown. It seems that the New Culture Movement convinced men and women that women should play a greater role in society, but most were not sure of how the new public role was to be combined with the traditional private one.


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The Concubine Question Many of the details of family life may have remained unresolved, but a very large majority of respondents were decidedly against concubinage. Eighty-two percent of Chen’s respondents declared they would not take a concubine. In their responses some men made clear that they had rejected the traditional view that made the production of heirs the primary goal of marriage: If she cannot bear children, there are still others who can. Humans will not become extinct. So I don’t need to worry about it. I do not recognize taking a concubine as human behavior. I do not believe that one marries only to have children. Marriage is also about helping one another. I just want her to work together with me. That’s all. I am not concerned about whether there are children. Why would I think about taking a concubine?151

A few young men conceded that they would take concubines if their wives failed to produce children: Myself, I would not want to take a concubine, but I am afraid that external pressure would prevent me from following my original intention. At that point I would want to take a concubine. Didn’t Mencius say that there are three unfilial acts and that not having an heir was the worst? If we had been married many years and still had no children, I would feel I had lost the happiness of the family and would then take a concubine. I am young, so I don’t care about it, but she has said to me that if after many years we do not have children, I may take a concubine because my parents are waiting for the day when they will have grandchildren.152

Although the hold of the traditional family was slipping on this point, some men still felt its pressure. The majority of Pan’s respondents also adamantly opposed concubinage, though their opposition varied somewhat depending upon the scenario Pan presented to them. Eighty percent agreed that men must practice monogamy “no matter what.” Eighty-one percent disapproved of taking a concubine as an antidote to an unhappy marriage. When Pan asked whether one should take a concubine “without inhibition” if the first marriage produced no children, 70 percent said no. Even those who accepted concubinage seem to have done so in order to satisfy social, rather than physical, needs. Only 10 percent agreed that monogamy ran



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counter to the male nature. For many, the New Culture Movement pushed concubinage beyond the pale and established new ideals of male chastity.153 The Purpose of Marriage Like so many of the other issues that Chen and Pan explored, the respondents’ vision of the purpose of the family contained both continuities and innovations. Chen asked the 447 engaged and unengaged respondents what they thought the purpose of marriage was and 404 responded. He then grouped the responses into twelve categories. Although New Culture rhetoric advocated individual fulfillment, most of the respondents listed selfless goals. Forty-six percent believed that the purpose of marriage lay in the advancement of society and the continuation of the human race. Sixteen percent believed that the purpose of marriage was to help one another. Six percent believed marriage should help the family. Even those who hoped for personal happiness in marriage (18 percent) linked it to the family’s happiness. The six respondents who sought an intimate friend in marriage were the only respondents who attributed a purely individualistic purpose to the institution.154 Pan asked his respondents to rank the relative importance of four purposes of marriage—to serve parents, have a romantic life and partner, satisfy sexual desire, and produce and educate good children. To clarify the results, Pan weighted the ratings. Each first choice rating received four points, each second choice received three points, each third choice received two points, and each fourth choice received one point. Pan’s results are striking for two reasons. As tables 4 and 5 show, like Chen’s subjects, Pan’s affirm the importance of what were, traditionally, the two most important functions of marriage—rearing children and caring for parents. Although men and women reversed the order of items two and three, the results differed by a value of only seven points. For the previous decade, family reformers had so consistently exaggerated the tyranny of the patriarchal family and the victimization of women that Pan was surprised when his study suggested that women found satisfaction in their traditional family roles. He thought it strange that women did not feel that caring for parents was a “bitter responsibility.”155 This similarity of viewpoint is echoed in men’s and women’s expectations of their spouses. Pan asked male and female respondents to rank the qualities they valued in a spouse. He then weighted them by assigning ten points to each first choice, nine points to each second choice, and


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table 4. pan’s survey: men’s ranking of the purposes of marriage To produce and educate good children To provide a romantic life and partner To serve parents To satisfy sexual desire

900 points 693 points 680 points 537 points

source: Pan, Zhongguo zhi jiating wenti, 56–57.

table 5. pan’s survey: women’s ranking of the purposes of marriage To produce and educate good children To serve parents To provide a romantic life and partner To satisfy sexual desire

143 points 121 points 114 points 82 points

source: Pan, Zhongguo zhi jiating wenti, 57.

table 6. pan’s survey: important qualities in a wife Disposition Health Education Ability to manage the home Appearance Sexual morality Family reputation Economic ability Motherliness Dowry

2,350 points 2,147 points 1,981 points 1,907 points 1,607 points 1,492 points 1,212 points 1,020 points 913 points 317 points

source: Pan, Zhongguo zhi jiating wenti, 61–62.

so on. As tables 6 and 7 show, Pan’s male respondents, like Chen’s, placed the most value on a wife’s disposition, health, education, ability to manage the home, and appearance. Even more striking, however, is the remarkable congruence of men’s and women’s rankings of characteristics they valued in a mate. Women reversed male rankings of education and ability, but the two qualities were separated by only eight points—the difference of one person’s choice. In women’s eyes, male sexual morality ranked much higher than appearance. Only one point, however, accounted for the difference in women’s ranking of family reputation and economic ability. Men considered a prospective wife’s family reputation



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table 7. pan’s survey: important qualities in a husband Disposition Health Ability to handle business Education Sexual morality* Appearance Economic ability Family reputation Fatherliness Family property

388 points 341 points 312 points 304 points 269 points 209 points 202 points 201 points 112 points 68 points

source: Pan, Zhongguo zhi jiating wenti, 61–62. *This probably referred to male chastity, an idea that gained popularity during this period.

considerably more important than her economic ability. Viewed as a whole, however, men and women held remarkably similar expectations of their mates.156

conclusion In New Culture literature, the modern man yearned to marry an educated, liberated, patriotic, civic-minded wife and set up house with her far from the entanglements of the patriarchal family. Pan’s and Chen’s surveys suggest that people took to heart parts of the New Culture xiao jiating ideal and ignored or modified others. They very much wanted some voice in choosing their wives, although most accepted or even welcomed their parents’ assistance. Chen’s young men focused on those wifely qualities that would most directly impinge upon their own lives— demeanor and disposition, family status, education, and age. Only with regard to their wives’ education and relative age did they make any substantial innovations in the wifely ideal. Like their parents, they wanted wives of gentle disposition who were skilled at running a household. Even those who wanted civic-minded wives who would “serve society” still expected women to care for home and hearth. Pan’s and Chen’s male subjects rejected concubinage, implicitly limiting their obligation to the family. But in other important ways they affirmed the values of the traditional patriarchal family; men and women alike valued serving their parents and most men did not want to establish their own households after marriage. How do we understand such a disparity between rhetoric and prac-


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tice? Zou Taofen, the editor of the popular periodical Life Weekly offers a possible explanation. Zou frequently reminded his readers that they belonged to a transitional generation.157 As a member of such, he believed it was his duty to fulfill his parents’ expectations that he would live with them and care for them in old age. He did not think his parents should suffer the consequences of a reform they had not chosen. He did not, however, expect the same of his son. He would teach his children differently. As one of Chen’s subjects explained, “Because my parents supported my grandparents, I should support my parents. I cannot say that reform should start with my parents, rather, it should start with me.”158 Lu Xun spoke eloquently on the same problem: “Burdened as a man may be with the weight of tradition, he may yet prop open the gate of darkness with his shoulder to let the children pass through to the bright wide-open spaces to lead happy lives henceforth as rational human beings.”159 With regard to women’s role in home and society, the survey responses reflected the same tensions and contradictions that informed much New Culture literature on family reform and women’s liberation. Men wanted educated, civic-minded wives because they would make better companions. But their desire for increased communication with their wives did not necessitate a radical revision of women’s roles in the home. Rather, they hoped to transform women’s roles only insofar as this would help them carve a toehold for themselves farther up in the family hierarchy. In short, these young men did not want to overturn patriarchy: they wanted to join it. This desire led them to ignore the possibility of restructuring domestic gender roles, as some feminists suggested. Young men did not want to abandon their claim to women’s reproductive labor at the very moment that they stood a better chance of enjoying that labor. If Chen’s and Pan’s surveys are any indication, the average educated, urban man set quite modest goals for himself. He wanted to delay marriage and he wanted some voice in choosing a wife with some education. Yet, more often than not, his family made these decisions for him. One distinctive characteristic of reform efforts in late Qing and Republican China was the willingness of reformers to bring the state into their reforming efforts as an agent of change.160 Although the individualism of the New Culture Movement had obscured this tendency, interest in state-led reform appeared with new strength in the 1920s. Disappointed by their failure to significantly change Chinese society or politics, many



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young men gave up on the individualistic approach that characterized much of New Culture activism. Instead, they began searching for systemic solutions to China’s problems through increased state leadership in reform efforts. For other reform-minded Chinese, disillusionment with individualistic reform efforts came in the early 1930s with the GMD’s failure to defend China against Japanese encroachment and invasion.161 One of Chen’s respondents wrote ardently of the need for state and judicial intervention in family-reform efforts: “The government should prohibit parents from deciding their sons’ marriages for them. If a marriage has been forced then it should be without effect. Those who have already been married to a bad spouse should have the freedom to divorce.”162 Both the Nationalists and the Communists responded to this call. In April of 1927, Chiang Kaishek purged the Communists from the Nationalist Party and established his government in Nanjing. He and his government immediately took on the “tutelage” of the Chinese people prescribed by Sun Yatsen. The Nationalists adopted various reforms and education policies meant to teach the Chinese their social and moral duties as citizens. Their New Family Law, which took effect in May 1931, was central to their vision of the Chinese state. It was also one of the most warmly received of Nationalist projects. Meanwhile, the Communists had fled Shanghai and established bases in Jiangxi. There they initiated reforms of their own. In 1934, Nationalist harassment forced the Communists to embark on the Long March to China’s distant northwestern province of Gansu. There too, they tried to institute some family reforms. However, the exigencies of guerilla warfare and their own state-building concerns kept reforms on the back burner until after the CCP’s victory in 1949. At the same time that the Nationalists and Communists were developing their views of the family as a pillar of state strength and order, entrepreneurs were refining a model of the family as the site of rational consumption and the source of a consumer economy. Their version of the xiao jiating featured prominently in the pages of family and women’s magazines and supplemental sections of many newspapers in the 1930s and 1940s. The New Culture Movement initiated a debate that quickly widened to include reformers and revolutionaries, middle-class liberals, and entrepreneurs. Progressive urbanites soon accepted as truth the claim that social and national progress depended on family reform. But New Culture radicals did much more than accustom an urban audience to an idea.


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They defined the terms and set the scope of a debate that was to continue through the Republican era and well past 1949. In the decades to follow, the Nationalist government, entrepreneurs, and the Communist Party would manipulate the images and terms of the debate to their own purposes, but they would never fundamentally challenge the essential components nor the causal connections that linked them.


chapter 2

Making the National Family The Statist Xiao Jiating

When the Nationalists came to power in 1927, they exploited the statebuilding possibilities of xiao jiating discourse by stressing nationalism and patriotic duty. Their version of family reform and its relation to the state differed in emphasis and direction from its New Culture predecessor. Whereas New Culture radicals had envisioned a state strengthened by the cumulative effects of individual freedom and productivity, the Nationalists made the state both the primary beneficiary and the central agent of reform. They rejected the individual as the agent of change and intended instead for the state to lead the way, remaking the individual and family to suit its needs. At the same time, state-led reform was neither entirely unwelcome nor unprecedented. New Culture reformers had hoped that through political, judicial, and legislative reform the state would aid their efforts to change Chinese society.1 Many New Culture radicals also believed that state intervention in the form of new legislation would be an important aspect of effective family reform. Reform-minded urbanites tended to agree. For example, in the mid-1920s, the popular journalist and editor of Life Weekly, Zou Taofen, portrayed the law as a guarantor of individual rights.2 Precedent for the state’s active role in social reform was established in the earliest years of the Republican era. (Indeed, the Qing dynasty itself began a series of reforms in the last decade of its rule.) From 1912 to 1927, the Supreme Court (Dali yuan) at Beijing took upon itself the 81


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Making the National Family

modernization of China’s customs in order to bring them into line with those of the international community.3 During its tenure, it attempted to liberalize marriage customs, eroding the authority of family elders and taking an active role in what previously had been private family decisions.4 These early efforts to reform the Chinese family through the court paved the way for the Nationalists’ own judicial and legislative efforts in the 1920s and 1930s. As early as 1915, the court began to uphold a woman’s right to marry the man of her choice. A year later it refused to force a woman to complete a marriage and denied the husband’s right to forcibly retain her for the marriage—even though the court itself ruled that she was bound by the betrothal agreement. A 1916 ruling supported a child’s right to refuse to fulfill a betrothal agreement if she or he had a legal right to break it. A 1917 ruling further undermined parental authority by denying parents the right to withhold consent to a marriage “without just reason.” In 1925, the court decided that parents could not force their children to conclude a betrothal that had been made when they were minors. It also prohibited parents from withdrawing consent to a betrothal once they had given it. In its final years, the court ruled that marriages between parties who were of age could not be carried out if either party actively protested the match.5 The Nationalists continued the proactive approach of the Beijing Supreme Court. Their Supreme Court (Zuigao fayuan), established in Nanjing on 24 December 1927, continued the effort to modernize family law, taking its lead from the Second Party Congress (January 1926) resolution to treat men and women equally. The Nationalists’ civil code would also further erode familial authority and claim a broader purview for state authority. Far from perceiving Nationalist efforts as an encroachment on private issues, those interested in family reform welcomed the new legislation.

the nationalist state as meta-ancestor The Nationalist vision of the family and its place in state-society relations required an intervention in family affairs far greater than China’s imperial governments had ever attempted or wanted. Traditional cosmology linked family and state order; disorder in one reflected disorder in the other. But the connection between the two was imagined not so much as a causal link as a cosmological reverberation. The imperial government encouraged “proper” human relationships by disseminating the



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Sacred Edict (shengyu), awarding the especially chaste and filial, and modeling virtuous behavior within the imperial family. Direct state intervention was limited. For the most part, families supervised their members, managed their affairs independently of the state, and disciplined deviant behavior. This meant that the state actively intervened in family affairs only when serious deviations from the norm—murder, rape, the abuse of elders—landed families in court.6 Unlike the Republican supreme courts, the dynastic courts were largely reactive bodies that restored society to its proper, “natural” order. The Nationalists dissolved the barriers between family and state by appropriating to the state the authority previously held by the senior generation, pulling the family within the purview of the state, where it could be monitored by state agencies. The Nationalists justified their intrusion into the family with the language of family reform and state-strengthening. One hallmark of familyreform discourse was the ease with which different groups used the same rationale to justify different, and sometimes conflicting, goals. New Culture radicals championed the individual and promoted family reform in the name of state-strengthening. The Nationalists used the same language to justify the statist direction of their family legislation. In his introduction to the books of Marriage Law and Inheritance in the Nationalist’s civil code, Nationalist functionary Fu Bingchang7 (1896–1965) explained the Nationalists’ intention to use family legislation as an instrument of state-building. In order to turn China into a real State, in the modern sense of the word, Dr. Sun Yat Sen thought it necessary to substitute for the primitive notion of unity of clan or family, the notion of unity of population formed by these clans or families. The particular interest of the isolated groups had to yield to the general interest of the nation. To put into practice this new ideal and to enable the citizens to make use of their personal abilities to the best interest of their country, it was imperative that the excessive grip of the old family ties over the individuals should be loosened.8

Through the voice of Sun Yatsen, Fu established the nation’s claim on its citizens’ loyalty. If the Chinese people were to succeed in building a nation, they would have to redirect their energy and abilities from family loyalties to a greater national loyalty. The Nationalist state did not, however, wish to dissolve the family entirely. Instead, it preserved it, albeit in somewhat streamlined form, as the essential building block of a new China. Such a polity would be “a great family of the people.”9 A passage in the Nationalist guidelines for rituals clearly articulates this relationship between family and state, ob-


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serving that “marriage is not only the beginning of a new family, but also the starting point of the people and the nation.”10 Because the Nationalists believed that the family would play a central role in China’s reconstruction, the government devoted much effort to the codification of family ritual and legislation of family law. These efforts provide important interpretive keys to the Nationalist vision of state-society relations and to the hierarchies that ordered the relationship between individual, family, and state. The government first showed an interest in creating ceremonial guidelines in 1928, when the Guidance Committee for Party Affairs in Ciqi county of Zhejiang province complained to the provincial Guidance Committee for Party Affairs that weddings, funerals, and other rituals were “exhausting material resources” and asked the government to design regulations to curb excess spending.11 The government received similar requests from other parts of the country. Traditional weddings involved elaborate exchanges of gifts as well as a wedding ceremony and banquets. It was not uncommon for poorer families to borrow money in order to maintain, or increase, family prestige by means of such festivities. Given the general concern with national productivity, the Nationalists probably hoped that reduced wedding costs would allow families to put more capital into productive investments or at least to avoid falling into debt. The Nationalists were not alone in their concern over ritual spending; politicians, intellectuals, and others were preoccupied with saving money in order to boost the economy and buy back foreign concessions.12 Family and women’s magazines often encouraged housewives to curb frivolous spending and included savings in their model monthly budgets. Despite the purported urgency of these issues, disagreements over the guidelines delayed them considerably. Early in 1930, the Executive Committee of Nanjing dismissed as “unbearably old-fashioned” the version produced by the Department of the Interior.13 The government sporadically drafted and redrafted the guidelines over the next ten years; whether it ever produced a final set of guidelines is unclear. Portions of the draft discussed below were written in October 1932 and June 1934. The draft appears to have been partially revised during the New Life Movement (1934–1936).14 We also have no way of knowing whether private individuals ever paid any attention to the guidelines. But even if they remained something of a wish list, the guidelines provide insight into Nationalist visions of family, nation, and state. Both by authoring the guidelines and giving pride of place to Nationalist and national symbols, the Nationalists expressed



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their desire to direct individual and family loyalties and energies to the Nationalist state. The new Chinese citizen would honor and serve the Nationalist party just as previous generations had honored and served their ancestors. The committee in charge of the guidelines wrote them as supplements to the civil code. The committee explained: Ritual and law both are led by custom, but ritual must not take precedence over the exercise of law. Their significance and their natures differ. . . . But in that both tie together people’s hearts, and keep people within the law, they are clearly different roads to the same destination. It has never been otherwise. Ritual already has a long history in China. Today the law is also complete in scope. But the articles of the law have a coercive quality, and take concreteness as their priority. Behavior must be fully formed in custom before it can be legislated into law. Ritual seeks to bring circumstances closer to what is right. Ritual can focus on whatever can lead the way to better customs. Therefore, ritual supplements law but it must not act in contravention of law, so that the two may complement each other in their execution, coexisting and not conflicting.15

The wedding protocol hoped to encourage behavior that could not be legislated; the injunction to secure parental consent could not appear in the civil code without contradicting the legal guarantee of free choice in marriage. Other aspects of the guidelines, like the recommendation that traditional vocabulary describing betrothal and wedding rituals be discarded, and the ideal choreography of the ceremony itself, were similarly unenforceable. But by creating state-sanctioned rituals, the Nationalists hoped to shape custom, an important task in light of the fact that they believed that “behavior must be fully formed in custom before it can be legislated into law.” This vision of the relation between custom and law recalls the flexibility of the Qing bureaucracy as it mediated tensions and conflict between imperial statutes and local custom. The Nationalists, however, took a much more directive stance. Although they recognized the need to make their laws responsive to local practice, they also intended to make the people more amenable to government law through the reshaping of that practice. In essence, the Nationalists sought to expand their authority through the rationalization of custom. They were not satisfied with merely trying to influence custom (fengsu) through moral example. The content of ritual practice was too important to leave to chance. They wanted to mold ritual directly, using authoritative guidelines. The choreography of the ideal private wedding ceremony vividly illustrates the Nationalist vision of the family as a link between state and


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individual and of the state as the ultimate source of authority and object of loyalty. By placing the state at the head of the family structure— making it, in essence, the individual’s parents and ancestors—the government tried to reinforce individual rights vis-à-vis the joint family while simultaneously maintaining social stability. The language of the guidelines introduced a degree of equality into the parent-child relationship, but a complete abdication of parental authority made the Nationalists uneasy. The guidelines urged couples to obtain their parents’ blessing before marrying: “When men and women become engaged, they should inform their parents in advance and ask for their guidance.”16 The protocol explicitly stated that its recommendations must not conflict with any article of the civil code. Thus, the Nationalists recommended, but could not require, that couples seek parental advice and approval before marrying. The Nationalists also tried to influence popular vocabulary so as to convey their ideal that marriages be made “in the spirit of love, sincerity, and equality.” Accordingly, the party urged people to discard traditional terms and practices that suggested marriage was a commercial transaction in which families acquired brides and grooms through negotiation and barter. With the exception of qingqi (asking the date) and qinying (welcoming the bride), the protocol recommended that people stop using terms like wenming (asking the names prior to betrothal), naji (divining the good or bad luck of a marriage), nacai (sending presents to the bride’s home to confirm the betrothal), nazheng (sending betrothal gifts to complete the wedding arrangements). The Nationalists also wished to replace the taking of horoscopes (bazi gengtie) with an engagement ceremony that expressed the couple’s own agency in the match and their respect for the institution of marriage.17 Distinct as they were, the Nationalists’ ceremonies were created with the central features of the wedding ritual practiced by the Han, China’s dominant ethnic group, in mind. Although there were many regional variations, the traditional Han wedding ceremony tended to organize itself around the following essentials. The ceremony began when the groom and his party arrived to take the bride to her husband’s home. (The bride’s family did not participate in the wedding proper.) Once she arrived at the groom’s home, the couple was taken to the ancestral hall or room where the ancestral tablets were kept. There they bowed first before the ancestors and then to the groom’s parents. Sometimes the couple also bowed before Heaven and Earth or the door gods. The groom often poured an offering of wine to the ancestors, and the wedding couple



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sometimes drank wine together to symbolize mutual devotion. The groom’s family then held a banquet for its relatives and friends. On the following morning, or sometimes on the third morning, the bride proceeded to the main hall or principal room and presented herself to her seated parents-in-law. There she served them tea while the rest of the household looked on. Later that same day, the bride’s parents sent food to the groom’s parents. The bride waited on them as they ate.18 The marriage was completed only after the wife had performed these rituals to mark her deference and filiality to her in-laws. The traditional wedding ceremony sprawled across time and space. In contrast, the Nationalists confined the wedding ceremony to a single room and a short span of time in the presence of family and friends of both bride and groom. The witnesses, intermediaries, family heads, guests, and the wedding party entered the hall in turn and seated themselves while “marriage music” played. At the beginning of the ceremony, everyone rose as one body and “stood at respectful attention.” Then everyone bowed together three times to the Nationalist Party flag, the national flag, and the portrait of Prime Minister Sun Yatsen (who was, and still is, commonly referred to as the father of the country [guofu]).19 Only after respects had been offered to the state did the bride and groom bow three times to their ancestors. This was followed by the reading and then chopping (the equivalent of signing) of the marriage license. The newlyweds exchanged jewelry and bowed to one another three times. Then the intermediaries spoke, the family heads “exhorted,” the guests spoke, and the newlyweds responded. The newlyweds thanked the witnesses with three bows. The witnesses reciprocated with three bows and exited. This step was repeated with the intermediaries. Next, the newlyweds saluted the family heads with three bows. In keeping with their generational status, the family heads did not return the salute. After the family heads exited, the newlyweds thanked the guests with one bow. The guests bowed in return. The guests exited and the wedding party followed. Marriage music resumed and marked the completion of the ceremony.20 Both the traditional and the Nationalist ceremonies were carefully orchestrated rituals that marked hierarchies of loyalty, obligation, and deference. But in the Nationalists’ ceremony the state appropriated the dominance and ritual seniority formerly accorded to ancestors. In the traditional ceremony, the bride and groom repeatedly underscored the authority of ancestors with obeisances and ritual offerings of food and drink. In their ideal wedding ceremony, the Nationalists used symbols


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Making the National Family Prime Minister’s Portrait Party Flag

National Flag

Ancestors’ Place Head of Bride’s Family

Intermediary

Witnesses

Intermediary

Head of Groom’s Family

Ceremonial Table Guests

Master of Ceremonies

Master of Ceremonies Bride

Guests

Groom

Maid of Honor

Best Man

Musicians

Figure 6. Choreography of an ideal Nationalist wedding. Drawn from Department of the Interior guidelines, GSG 311 114.13–56, document “B.”

and choreography to interpose the state as the ultimate family authority (see figure 6). The emblems of the state—the party and national flags and a portrait of Sun Yatsen—occupied a spatially superior position, symbolizing the precedence of state authority over the ancestors, and, by implication, over the family. The heads of both families, together with the intermediaries, represented family authority. State authority, manifested in the two or more witnesses required by law, stood together with the family heads behind the ceremonial table. Except when bowing to the portrait and the flags, these people faced the room, backed, so to speak, but also dominated, by the state and party emblems. The bride and groom faced this hierarchy of family and state authority while guests, representing the power of social expectation that supports family and nation, sat to either side. With the elaborate sequence of bows, the newlyweds acknowledged that they owed fealty first to the state and then to the family. Recognition of the conjugal bond ranked a distant third. The series of bows that followed the wedding proper rep-



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resented the couple’s continuing ties to family and society under the auspices of the state. Masters of ceremonies, as well as a maid of honor and best man, stood to either side of the couple, providing assistance as they navigated the complexities of a ceremony that initiated them into the web of political, family, and social ties.21 With the exception of the family heads, the Nationalist ceremony provided no special position for the families of the bride and groom. Family members presumably stood with the guests, a placement symbolizing the Nationalists’ desire to attenuate the connection between family and individual. The committee also drafted an oath that might be read in unison by the newlyweds after they applied their chops to the marriage license. In considering a public declaration “in order to make clear that their union arises from the greatest sincerity,” the Nationalists followed the example of Western Christian custom. But in content the Nationalist vows again made the state’s presence felt. In the Nationalist pledge the couple not only swore undying loyalty to one another, but also promised to devote themselves to the Chinese people and state: “Today with greatest sincerity I, ______, [and] ______ become lifelong companions. In the spirit of equality, mutual help, respect, and love we are willing to establish [a] new family, strengthen the body and the race, work hard for the public good, protect the country, and resurrect the people.”22 The proposed pledge deftly combined nationalism with the marriage ideals introduced by the New Culture radicals. The ideal marriage provided an environment that fortified the couple in their efforts to build a strong China. The Nationalist penchant for appropriating social practice, at least on paper, is vividly illustrated by comparing the Nationalist choreography of the wedding ceremony and a diagram of a “new-style” Shanghai wedding published in a 1925 Shanghai guidebook (see figure 7).23 In this ceremony, state and family authority were entirely absent. There were no party or government symbols, no portraits, no flags. There were no allusions to ancestors and the heads of the bride’s and groom’s families were demoted to “hosts.”24 In the “new-style” wedding, social authority replaced state and family: the witnesses and intermediaries stood behind the ceremonial table, legitimating the ceremony that was carried out before their eyes. The “new-style” ceremony expressed the hierarchies and distinctions that did matter: it maintained the distinction between family and guests. It placed the bride’s family on her side of the room and the groom’s family on his, underscoring the very family solidarity that the Nationalists wished to weaken. It also continued the traditional prac-


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Making the National Family Witnesses

Intermediary

Intermediary

Ceremonial Table Bride’s Family

Host of the Wedding on the Bride’s Side

Host of the Wedding on the Groom’s Side

Bride

Groom

Bridesmaid

Best Man


Groom’s Family


Musicians

Musicians Female Guests

Male Guests

Figure 7. Choreography of a new-style Shanghai wedding. Drawn from a description in Shanghai baojian (Precious mirror of Shanghai), section 4, page 1.

tice of segregating men and women guests, a distinction that the Nationalist wedding ignored. The Nationalists envisioned a state that stood at the peak of the social and political hierarchy. Unlike New Culture radicals, they were much more interested in the family as a center of authority than as a locus of affection. Thus, the Nationalists accorded family heads a degree of authority in the expectation that they would both supervise the individuals within the family and link them to the state. At the same time, the Nationalists wanted to weaken family authority and solidarity to a certain extent, so that the state could command the individual’s productive energies and ultimate loyalty. This desire is expressed in the superior placement of national and party symbols and in the blurring of traditional distinctions between family and outsider and between male and female. Practitioners of the popular ceremony, in contrast, dispensed with the powerful symbols of family authority like ancestors and family heads but continued to order the world through distinctions of kin and gender, thus acting out their own sense of what mattered.

“a decidedly social turn” Just as Nationalist choreography of the marriage ceremony placed the individual within a hierarchy of political, social, and cultural ties, so did its family legislation set the individual within a matrix of political, so-



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cial, and familial obligations.25 In 1928, legal scholar Tao Huizeng observed that social progress, ease of transportation, growth of commerce and industry, and the resulting richness of urban life expanded state authority and heightened the value of the individual.26 Nationalist legislation recognized this and took steps to ensure that the force of individualism did not outstrip the strength of the state. In effect, the Nationalists wrote their family legislation to conform to the implementation of the conjugal family ideal.27 Before beginning its revision of the family code, the Civil Codification Commission of the Legislative Yuan asked the Central Political Council ten questions. Most of the issues they reviewed—age at marriage, parental authority, grounds for divorce, concubinage, the persistence of the family system and principles for its organization—had occupied an important place in the New Culture family-reform debate.28 With the exception of concubinage, the Central Political Council dealt concretely with all of these topics.29 Much of the Nationalists’ family legislation responded to concerns raised by the New Culture Movement. The new code insisted that both men and women marry of their own free will.30 Those who had been coerced into marriage had recourse to annulment.31 Men and women were given nearequal grounds for divorce.32 Either husband or wife could act as family head.33 Moreover, the code emphasized the mutual obligation of family members to support one another rather than the dependents’ obligations to the family head.34 It also required that parents maintain and educate their minor children.35 The code implicitly recognized the New Culture complaint that the requirement to live with the family crippled one’s ability to make a living; it did not give the family head the authority to force family members who had attained majority to live at home.36 The principles of generational and gender equality so important to New Culture family reformers strongly influenced the new code. Nevertheless, the primary focus of the legislation was not the individual but the state. This focus manifested itself both in the Nationalists’ efforts to regularize and control wedding ceremonies and in the goals of family legislation elucidated by Hu Hanmin37 and other key figures in the codification process. The state’s effort to define what constituted a legally binding marriage ceremony represented a significant innovation. Traditionally, weddings had been family affairs governed by custom and conducted without state intervention. The ceremony usually took place in the home of the groom’s parents and friends and family of the groom were invited to witness the ceremony and/or attend the banquet that followed. Of course, everyone who mattered knew about the marriage, but


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it was not registered with government or church authorities. Elite families kept genealogies, but even these might be incomplete because daughtersin-law were often added only after they had produced a son. Earlier Republican-era codes required only that the marriage be reported to the housing registration official (huji li).38 The Nationalists’ New Family Law went much further, requiring that “a marriage must be celebrated by [an] open [gongkai ] ceremony . . . in the presence of two or more witnesses.”39 In fact, the presence of witnesses carried more weight than a written agreement.40 The insistence on an open ceremony marked an intensification of state-society relations. It defined the necessary steps by which families were constituted and forced the family to submit previously private activities to state scrutiny.41 James Scott’s theory about modern nation-states and their insistence on “legibility” is useful in thinking about what the Nationalists thought they were accomplishing by requiring “open” ceremonies. Scott notes that “the premodern state was, in many respects, partially blind; it knew precious little about its subjects, their wealth, their landholding and yields, their location, their very identity.”42 The modern nation-state, by contrast, “attempts with varying success to create a terrain and a population with precisely those standardized characteristics that will be easiest to monitor, count, assess, and manage.”43 Through a variety of measures— permanent family names, standardization of weights and measures, cadastral surveys, population registers, and so on—the state imposed an order that would make society as a whole “legible.” “In each case, officials took exceptionally complex, illegible, and local social practices, such as land tenure customs or naming customs, and created a standard grid whereby it could be centrally recorded and monitored.”44 But the goal of such standardization was not simply knowledge, it was power: “The builders of the modern nation-state do not merely describe, observe, and map; they strive to shape a people and landscape that will fit their techniques of observation.”45 Scott’s point is amply borne out in the Nationalists’ family legislation. The Nationalists wanted to create a citizenry in their own image. To that end, their laws refused to recognize unions that did not comply with the code, and thus forced people to organize their lives in ways that the state could “see.” The Nationalists’ choice of “open” to describe the acceptable marriage ceremony is especially telling in this regard, suggesting as it does that the traditional ceremony had been closed. Closed to whom? Not to the locals, of course, for whom the ceremony was very much a public occasion. But for a state intent on taking stock of the nation as a whole,



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such “unorganized” and idiosyncratic means of sanctioning a marriage actually obscured it. What the state wanted was uniform means by which a marriage was established and a consistent method of verification—thus the prescribed ceremony and the two official witnesses. Of course, the Nationalists did not speak about their state-building project in terms of legibility and increased state control. In fact, they emphasized the liberating possibilities of the new family code. Hu Hanmin believed that the family and inheritance laws could “sweep away” the corruptions of “tyranny, dependency, and inequality.”46 Likewise, the principles set forward by the Judiciary Office of the National Government (Guofu fazhi ju), which were to inform the legislative efforts, were all marked by the language of liberalization. The Judiciary Office designated three main principles that were to inform the family code: equality of men and women; promotion of the health of the race; and encouragement of mutual help among relatives but discouragement of dependency.47 We tend to assume that increased state surveillance always results in loss of freedom and that the language of liberation always masks a desire to control, but the Codification Commission’s response to the Judiciary Office’s charge demonstrates the complexity of the relationship between state power and individual freedom. In fact, for the most part, the Nationalists’ efforts to open the family to state surveillance provided individuals with new freedoms. In response to the Judiciary Office’s three principles, the Commission gave men and women near-equal rights to divorce and daughters the right to inherit equally with their brothers.48 In the interest of eugenics, it set minimum ages for marriage, defined one’s mother’s relatives as kin, prohibited marriage to maternal relatives within the third degree,49 and allowed men and women to divorce spouses with grave, incurable mental illnesses or “loathsome diseases.”50 In each of these provisions, the Nationalists made good on their promise to dispense with “tyranny, dependency, and gender inequality.” This is, perhaps, especially clear in the first two, which redistributed power within the family without impinging too deeply on the rights of others— husbands were simply held to the same standards of behavior that wives were, and daughters enjoyed a share of what their brothers had previously monopolized. In prohibiting the marriage of the gravely ill or disabled, the state limited the freedoms of some people. But in doing so, it tried to end the practice of families marrying sons who were insane, severely retarded, incapable of consummating the marriage, or afflicted with venereal disease to unsuspecting brides. In recognizing maternal relatives


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as kin, the Nationalists also hoped to underscore the equality of men and women. The Nationalists’ decision to recognize maternal relatives as kin exemplifies how a state might both increase its surveillance and give the individual more freedom from patriarchal social institutions. This provision of the code expanded state surveillance by illuminating a family connection that was often socially obscured. At the same time it underscored the equality of men and women and destabilized patriarchal authority by reducing the patriline to just half of the family and limiting its authority over family property and identity. Prior to this, Han Chinese families had been strictly patrilineal. Relatives on one’s mother’s side were not considered to be real family. This was reflected, for example, in the reduced mourning obligations for the death of relatives on the mother’s side. This is also why marriage to a first cousin on one’s father’s side was considered incest, but marriage to first cousins through the maternal line was sanctioned. To count maternal relatives as kin entailed a radical redefinition of family.51 It would be a mistake, however, to believe that ritual definitions of family meant that people were strangers to their maternal kin. As Ellen Judd has so aptly put it, “A married woman ‘belongs to her pojia’ (mother-in-law’s family), but she can make her niangjia (mother’s family) a continuing part of her practical world of kin.”52 Women seem to have usually retained close ties with their natal families. The old adage “A daughter is like spilled water”—meaning that at marriage a daughter and all one’s investments in her were lost because she would devote her energies and loyalty to her husband’s family—echoed Confucian prescription but ignored the complex realities of everyday life. In fact, it seems that for much of China’s history, women’s natal families have remained closely involved in their daughters’ lives, offering them shelter, financial and legal assistance, and emotional support throughout their lives.53 It is possible that by defining maternal relatives as kin, the Nationalists were bringing the law into line with custom (following their tenet that custom leads law). The Nationalists’ desire to exploit individual productivity also freed the individual from onerous obligations to the family. The Nationalists shared the New Culture radicals’ concern with the “parasitism” that afflicted Chinese society. According to Hu Hanmin, dependency was “the deepest and most poisonous” of family problems; it bled individuals of their initiative and would-be entrepreneurs of their capital.54 To limit the demands families made on an individual’s resources, the new



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legislation explicitly defined economic rights and obligations. Article 1114 set out the relatives who were “under a mutual obligation to maintain one another: lineal relatives by blood; spouse and the parents of the other spouse living in the same household, brothers and sisters, the head and the members of a house.”55 Although these obligations may be wider than what most Westerners are used to, they drew a much smaller circle of obligation than had been customary in Chinese society. At least according to the law one could no longer be importuned by aunts, uncles, and cousins. The code also reduced the family head’s responsibility to support family members, requiring him or her to maintain only those who “have no means of livelihood and have no means of earning a living” and his or her lineal ascendants by blood.56 For those who could not fulfill these obligations without risking their own survival there was further relief: they were exempted from all obligations.57 Everything moved in the direction of personal accountability. Property that children attained under their own names belonged to them,58 and adult relatives who contributed to common property were given the right to use it.59 Despite the individual freedoms created and safeguarded by the code, the Nationalists were not interested in individual freedoms as such. True enough, their legislative innovations drastically curtailed the number of relatives who could demand financial assistance on the basis of wideranging and often vague, or fictive, kinship ties. But having thus limited the individual’s obligations, the state hoped to spur the cycle of individual saving and investment that it believed produced industrialized economies. In his introduction to the family code, Fu Bingchang reveals the state’s desire to free “the community” from economic dead weight: For some time past Chinese statesmen have been deploring the primitive economic conditions under which most of their countrymen are living, and they have traced the origin of the unhappy state of affairs to the “parasitism” engendered by the clan organization. The bond between members of the same clan has been so strong under the old system that tradition usually imposes on a certain member the burden to support those who are unable or simply unwilling to work for their livelihood. He has thus around him a train of dependents whom he must feed out of the produce of his land if he is an agriculturist. If he is engaged in trade or industry, he must take them as assistants or employees. If he is an official, he has to procure positions for them. The system prevents the free development of the individual virtues of the best part of the population, and encourages idleness among the worst element. The community is consequently burdened with a large proportion of useless, idle and unproductive persons.60


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The Nationalists linked the individual’s economic enterprise with the viability of the state in a way that, on the surface, very much resembled New Culture formulations. The two groups differed markedly, however, in their values and motives. New Culture advocates of family reform assumed that the dismantling of the traditional patriarchal family would lead to the dissolution of the absolutist state. New Culture radical Wu Yu advocated the destruction of the patriarchal family for just this reason. But the Nationalists intended to free the individual’s loyalties and economic energies from the burdens of the joint family for the purpose of building the Chinese nation and Nationalist state. They viewed statesociety relations as a top-down affair and preferred an authoritarian approach to governance. In an effort to disarm the individual’s potential challenge to the state as ultimate political authority, the Nationalists identified their goals with the greater good. Hu Hanmin, for example, claimed that a code that took either individual or family interests as its guiding principle fell short of the Nationalist Code: “By embodying in it the principles of the Kuomintang the Code is given a decidedly social turn. The personal activity of the citizen is directed by the Code so that it may be most advantageous for the community to which the individual belongs. This particular feature distinguishes the new Code from the individualistic legislation of Europe and America as well as from the former Chinese legislation of the old familial type.”61 This approach both denied the validity of placing one’s ultimate loyalty in either family or self and made the Nationalists the final arbiter of community good. Fu echoed these sentiments: In his philosophical writings, Dr. Sun Yat Sen has on several occasions brought out the point that the old Chinese conception of law was already ahead of that of the Western leg[al]ists. Occidental legislation is essentially individualistic; it is intended to protect the rights of the individual and to let them freely develop. The traditional Chinese legislation, on the contrary, is familiar; it subordinates the activities of the individual to the interests of his family. The new Chinese legislation, based on the Three Principles, racial, democratic and economic, is going one step further and will have a deliberate social character. . . . The individual must seek his own gratification in such development of his own natural abilities as is most likely to contribute to the general welfare. The Kuomintang doctrine considers therefore men not as self-contained entities, but in relation to the society which they form. It assigns to them rights and duties only in so far as the exercise of such rights and duties tends to the pacific and orderly progress of the community. It restricts their activities when they would be harmful to the group. Rights and morals in the



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Kuomintang doctrine are purely social notions, which may eventually be subject to evolution, just as society itself evolves.62

Here Fu reveals the Nationalists’ willingness to achieve social stability by subordinating individual freedoms to the good of society. As we saw in chapter 1, family-reform advocates couched their arguments in the language of national strengthening from the beginning. This made it almost impossible to deny the paramount importance of community (read state) imperatives over individual rights and interests. Furthermore, New Culture iconoclasts had themselves argued that family reform was a necessary step in social progress. The Nationalists appropriated this idea, arguing that the socially and politically undeveloped Chinese needed the tutelage of an authoritarian state. At the same time, GMD theorists entertained the possibility that Chinese society would evolve to a point that would force the “evolution” of Nationalist policy. This idea of evolution and the corollary that “rights and morals in the Kuomintang doctrine are purely social notions” denied the absolute value of any moral, social, or political standards. Everything was subordinated to social stability and, one supposes, collective goals. Hu and Fu explicitly recognized the Nationalists’ desire to subordinate individual interests to those of the group. And although neither used the term “state,” their conception of the individual’s social and political role easily provided a rationale for laws and measures that encouraged “pacific and orderly progress of the community” at the expense of individual rights. Once the state was installed as the organ in charge of group welfare, this language was easily adapted to the rationalization of restrictive state policies in the name of society and nation. Hu Hanmin concluded a speech on sex, marriage, and family with a Cantonese homily that spoke to the Nationalist desire to construct a state in which citizens acquiesced to state tutelage, even coercion, for the greater good of the community: “Uncle beats my father, uncle helps my father, people beat my uncle, people help my uncle.” This adage, Hu declared, “is the true spirit of minzu zhuyi [nationalism]. It is minzu zhuyi in miniature. It contains the spirit of the kingly way that helps those in difficulty. The Chinese people will continue to survive because of this spirit, the people of the world must rely on this if they are to make firm the foundations of their existence.”63 Nationalist policy maintained an uneasy balance between individual freedom and family authority. Ultimately, the Nationalists made concerted efforts to guarantee individuals a degree of marital and economic


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independence, giving individuals enough freedom from the family to allow them to contribute their energy to the nation. At the same time, they acknowledged that complete individual autonomy was anathema to their state-building goals.

the family as link between individual and state Although New Culture reformers and the Nationalists focused on many of the same issues, the two groups actually brought somewhat different expectations to the family-reform debate. The young men and women of the New Culture Movement looked to the state as an advocate that would press their demands for individual autonomy from the family with the understanding that they would use their newfound freedom to contribute to China. The Nationalist state supported greater individual autonomy only to the extent that it freed potential citizens from the grip of the joint family and allowed them to be more accessible to the state. After its consolidation of power in the spring of 1927, the Nationalist state salvaged some of the rubble of the extended family ideal to rebuild state and society relations. Hu Hanmin drew on Sun Yatsen’s belief that “devotion to one’s own family would expand into devotion to one’s national family,”64 explaining that “today this kind of . . . ancestral law is an obsolete and empty shell. It should be destroyed. But the spirit of the family system, because it responds to the demands of the real world, must be preserved to an appropriate degree. This is why the new family and inheritance law have reformed the family system.”65 The Nationalists usurped much of the patriarch’s authority and eliminated his prerogatives, but at the same time attempted to preserve some of the ties of obligation, duty, and deference that characterized the traditional family ideal.66 The Nationalists hoped to achieve social stability and state strength through a combination of a reformed family supported by legislation and a modified hierarchical social order bolstered by ritual. Hu Hanmin believed Nationalist legislation to be superior to that of the West precisely because the code retained the family as a link connecting the individual to the state. He again assumed Sun Yatsen’s voice: Foreigners take the individual as a unit, the individual writ large is the nation. Between the individual and the government, no strong common society exists. So with regard to the structural relationship between citizen and state, foreign nations cannot compare with China. Because in China, aside from the individual, we emphasize the family head. If something arises,



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we ask the family head. Some say this kind of organization is good and some say it is bad. From my point of view, the structural relationship between Chinese citizens and the Chinese nation begins with one’s own clan [ jiazu]. The clan is then expanded to include the lineage [zongzu]. Only after this does a national family [guozu] come into being. This kind of organization, which becomes bigger step by step, is all in order, without any confusion. The large and small structural relationships are, of course, effective.67

The Nationalist vision that Hu articulated seems hopeful of keeping individuals encapsulated within families. The family head, now either male or female, continued, as in imperial times, to be the point at which family and state intersected. As Hu understood Chinese society, the family was the smallest unit, and each family was itself enclosed within a larger family, from the clan (jiazu) to the lineage (zongzu) to the national family (guozu) or nation. Such a vision belies a deep suspicion of individualist goals and bespeaks a predilection for state intervention. Hu’s hope of subsuming all families into the largest corporate body possible, the state, bodes ill for those who suggest that the family may have offered a last refuge for civil society. In the GMD vision, the family and the state were all of a piece. The family was not a private refuge, as it had been in imperial China and the industrializing West. The Nationalist architects of state-society relations allowed no room for civil society.

crimes against the family The Nationalists not only supported a degree of family authority in ceremonial guidelines and civil legislation, they also defended parental prerogative in their criminal code under “Offenses against Marriage and the Family.” Statute 240 of the revised 1935 criminal code provided for a prison sentence of up to three years for anyone who seduced a man or woman under the age of twenty (and over the age of fifteen) away from his or her family.68 This was a relatively new statute. It had appeared in somewhat simpler form in the criminal code of 1928, but was absent from the provisional criminal code of 1915. The timing of its creation suggests that lawmakers developed the statute in response to new social pressures that threatened family stability and the authority of the family head; as contact between men and women became more acceptable and the ease of mobility for both men and women increased, the family head and the state turned to legislation to enforce family order.69 This approach echoed Hu Hanmin’s view of the family head as the fulcrum for the balance of state and family power.


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The statute itself indicates that the government expected the family head to exercise considerable control over his or her children until the age of majority (twenty years; article 12), even though the civil code set the legal age of marriage at age sixteen for women and age eighteen for men.70 As early as 1931, the Supreme Court noted that “the removal of the seduced from parents or others with parental rights constituted the most important element of this law.”71 A month later, the Jiangsu High Court, in the text of a decision on a charge of “Offenses against Marriage,” elaborated on its own interpretation of the statute. Looking closely at the criminal code, line 240, on the crime of harming the family, it was originally intended to protect the rights of relatives and guardians and to make more serious [the crimes] of scheming to make a profit, to commit adultery, etc. Therefore, in order for this to be a crime according to this statute, the crime must involve the seducing away from the family and placing of [the victim] under one’s own power to the point that the mother and father or guardian cannot exercise their rights as relatives or guardians. If there is only adultery or if the parents or guardian of the seduced agreed with this action, then these [actions] do not obstruct parental or guardian authority and so do not correspond to the intention of this statute.72

The cases hinged on whether parents knew that their children had taken up with the seducer.73 Most commonly, it was fathers who entered the suits. The victim was usually, but not always, a daughter. Two of the three Shanghai courts enthusiastically enforced statute 240.74 In 1934, the First Special District Local Court, which operated in the International Concession, tried 159 cases of offenses against marriage and family out of a total of 11,461 criminal cases, or about 1.4 percent of all cases. The court convicted 133 of the 159 defendants (89 men and 44 women), a conviction rate of 83.6 percent.75 In 1934 in the French Concession’s Second Special District Court, offenses against marriage and family accounted for 0.9 percent of all cases, 47 out of a total of 5,209.76 Only seven men and two women were convicted, a conviction rate of only 19 percent.77 Their sentences ranged from two months to three years. The court acquitted seven defendants and refused to hear the remaining thirty-one suits.78 In the same year, the Chinese court operating in the Chinese City convicted 447 men and 230 women of offenses against marriage and family.79 We do not, however, have the data to calculate what percentage of total suits this represents, nor the rates of convictions. Of course, such limited statistical information is not definitive. It demonstrates, however, that statute 240 was put into effect.



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We can explore the assumptions and values behind this code through a particular case, one that is especially revealing because it includes not only the text of the decision, but also transcriptions of the litigants’ testimony.80 Depositions cast a different light on the judicial process than do the court’s written decisions. The decisions tend to edit out the controversy that is explicit in the depositions, presenting the judicial process as one of objective, logical analysis that led to an incontrovertible and just verdict. The litigants’ depositions destroy this illusion, revealing reallife complications and exposing the judges’ own assumptions and values. Of course the court clerk still exercised editorial discretion; for example, the colorful verbal melees that interrupt the sedate process of question and answer might be reduced to a laconic “then everyone talked out of turn” or “the defendant became disputatious.” Nevertheless, the deposition retains the hubbub of the court’s proceedings and the angry, indignant, and sometimes duplicitous voices of the plaintiff and defendant. Artifacts of the defendant’s and plaintiff’s struggles—wedding invitations, emergency-room reports, child-bride contracts, love letters, and even photographs—often accompany the deposition. Sometimes they suggest a different story, hinting that the seemingly incontrovertible judgment set down in the decision was determined by something other than the evidence at hand. In this case, the father maintained his ignorance of his daughter’s affair—the key to winning the conviction of his daughter’s seducer/ lover—despite circumstantial evidence and witness testimony to the contrary. Even though the father’s claim of ignorance strained the bounds of credulity, the court chose to believe him. Given the nature of the evidence, the court must have based its decision not only on the plaintiff’s testimony, but also on its own desire to sustain the myth of family morality and social order, rather than face up to the social and moral chaos sprawled before it. In the text of the decision, “the facts” were simple. The defendant, Zhou Jiawei, was a twenty-seven-year-old coppersmith from Ningbo. The plaintiff, Zhou Hongquan, was forty-six years old, also a coppersmith, and also from Ningbo.81 The two men knew each other because they belonged to the same clan and worked together. Jiawei had begun on an illicit affair with Hongquan’s daughter, Zhou Shumei, when she was only sixteen. On 2 June 1939, Jiawei took Zhou Shumei to a Zhabei hotel for illicit relations. Afterward, on the pretext that he wanted to find her work at a silk factory, he seduced her into living with him. Zhou Hongquan reported him to the police and they arrested him. The court


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noted that the defendant did not refute any of “the facts.” Clearly, it concluded, Zhou Jiawei had plotted to seduce a girl under twenty away from her family. The court sentenced him to eight months in jail.82 The text of the decision portrays this suit as an open-and-shut case. But court transcriptions reveal a number of complications. First the procurator questioned Zhou Hongquan: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A:

Was it Zhou Jiawei who took away your daughter? It was. Do you want to sue now? I want to sue him. When [he] took her away did you know? I didn’t know. My oldest daughter was also tricked away by him. After [she] gave birth he didn’t want her. You did not tell [us] about this matter. I told it yesterday. Right now [I am] only asking you about the matter of Zhou Shumei. All right.

One wonders why, if Zhou Jiawei did, in fact, have an affair with the elder daughter, her father continued to let Jiawei into his home. Was the father really so offended by Zhou Jiawei’s attentions to his daughters? But the court was not interested in these issues and it did not pursue these allegations. By the time the younger sister, Zhou Shumei, turned sixteen, Zhou Jiawei, then twenty-five years old, had started illicit relations with her. The procurator then questioned Zhou Shumei: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A:

Had you two had relations before? We had relations when I was sixteen. Where did these relations occur? In my home. You were able to sleep83 with him in your home? My mother fell ill. She called him to come and stay. He came to my room and “slept.”

Zhou Jiawei adamantly resisted the charges against him, as evidenced by his answers to the procurator’s questions: Q: A: Q: A:

Did you take Zhou Shumei away on the second of June? She herself wanted to go out. Did you go with her to Xinzha Hotel and get a room? Shumei took the room.


Making the National Family Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A:

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Why would she take a room? Please ask her. Have you “lived” with her? Early on. When was that? Before the battle of 8/1[3].84 After you took her out you rented a room85 and lived with her at Yongsheng fang, 33 Jiaozhou Road. No. You rented the room, isn’t that right? I wasn’t the one who rented it. The account book has your name in it. I don’t know. Did you pay for the room? I didn’t pay for it either. You were the one who took the woman out, isn’t that right? She rented the room herself and told me to go. Have you always known her?86 My sisters knew her.

Statute 240 assumed that a minor was incapable of rational, independent decision making, but Zhou Shumei testified to her own complicity in the affair. She never accused Zhou of telling her he would find her work at the silk factory; she went there only expecting a place to live. Once at the silk factory, she waited patiently for ten days while he found a room. During that time she continued to leave the factory every day in order to visit him in the hotel. The procurator questioned Zhou Shumei: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A:

Where did he take you? Xinzha Bridge, Xinzha Hotel. How long did you stay at the Xinzha Hotel? From ten in the morning until seven in the evening when he went out. Did he sleep with you? Napped. What happened afterward? He went out saying he was going to borrow a room and that he would be back again in a while. What did he say when he came back? He went with me to the Hongda Silk Factory. Where is the Hongda Silk Factory? Xinjiapo Road.


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Q: A: Q: A: Q: A:

What did you go to Hongda Silk Factory for? [He] said there was a workers’ dormitory I could live in. How long did you live at Hongda? [I] waited more than ten days. What happened after you waited more than ten days? [I] waited until June 15 of the solar calendar; [he] found a room and I went to live there. Q: After finding a place [you] then lived together. A: [We] lived together.

She denied registering for the room they later rented, but she lived there with him and told no one their true status: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A:

He says you registered for the room. I can’t read, how could I register for a room? Did you register for the room or not? I wasn’t the one who registered for it. You said he went with you to register for the room. He went with me to register for the room. . . . After renting the room, did the defendant live with you? [We] lived together. Did you tell people you were husband and wife? He did.

Later, before the Jiangsu High Court, Zhou Shumei revealed that she knew of Zhou Jiawei’s marriage: Q: Did you know that Zhou Jiawei was married? A: I knew he had a wife. He said he would go with me and leave his wife. And then take me as his wife. Q: When did he say this? A: He said this when we left.87

When the procurator asked Zhou Shumei why she finally returned home, she replied matter-of-factly, if not altogether truthfully, “On July 22 he [Zhou Jiawei] went out and did not come back. I could not wait so I went back.” In her testimony to the High Court, it came out that she returned home only because of a chance meeting with her father: Q: Did your father come to Yongshengfang to take you back home? A: He did not come to get me. On 2 August, because Zhou Jiawei ran away and I had not eaten, I went out. My father saw me. We went



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together to Gedeng Road police station to make a report and then returned home.88

Presumably Zhou Jiawei returned later to find her gone. As the testimony drew to a close, the lawyer for the prosecution urged the court to convict Zhou Jiawei of seducing a girl under twenty away from her family. In response, the defense lawyer insisted that because Zhou Hongquan knew about the relationship, Zhou Jiawei did not remove her from the authority of a parent or guardian—a fundamental criterion for conviction under statute 240. He then made a startling claim. The real issue, the lawyer asserted, was money. When the defendant had been making good wages he paid Zhou Shumei’s father twenty yuan a month for her company. Then his circumstances took a turn for the worse and he could only support his wife and parents (xiao jiating).89 Zhou Hongquan filed suit because Zhou Jiawei failed in his payments. The court ignored Zhou Jiawei’s marital status90 and only briefly explored the charge that he had paid Zhou Shumei’s father for her companionship, questioning Zhou Jiawei first: Q: You say you gave her family money? A: . . . Every month I make fifty-five yuan. I gave her family twenty. At the time I often went to her house. Feelings between us were very good. After 8/13 I didn’t give the money for two months and they attacked me. . . .

Zhou Hongquan was then questioned: Q: A: Q: A:

Q: A: Q: A:

Did you know they had slept together before? Before I did not know it. Did he give you twenty yuan? No. I am the boss of Dongfang. He worked there as a petty laborer. I promoted him to shop clerk. Afterward, when Dongfang closed, I went to Yunhua as the boss and I took him with me. Have you used his money? No, I haven’t. How long was your daughter shacked up with him? I don’t know.

Zhou Jiawei appealed his conviction to the Second Branch of the Jiangsu High Court, where his defense focused again on persuading the court that Zhou Shumei’s father in fact knew that the couple lived together. Although the defendant presented a witness who said the father came by


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one day, the court remained unconvinced. It criticized Zhou Jiawei harshly for taking off with Zhou Shumei even though she was only seventeen at the time. The High Court reaffirmed the lower court’s guilty verdict in a decision that was equally cut and dried.91 The High Court’s summary of Zhou Jiawei’s testimony suggests that he again presented a weak case and dismisses as insufficient evidence the witness’s claim that the father came to the couple’s room. But the depositions paint a more vivid and ambiguous picture of these events. Q: Why are you bringing an appeal? A: The woman and I lived together. Her father knew. Every month I gave him twenty yuan. Moreover, he saw the place where we lived. After the war my economic circumstances were difficult and I did not pay the twenty yuan. Only then did he report me for arrest. Q: When did relations begin between you and Zhou Shumei? A: I became acquainted with Zhou Shumei in 1938. Q: When did you and Zhou Shumei take a room? A: We took a room in June of last year. Q: After that where did you go to shack up together? A: We went to live together at Yongsheng fang, 33 Jiaozhou Road. Q: Zhou Hongquan did not know about these matters. A: Zhou Hongquan knew from the beginning. Q: What proof do you have? A: There was a Chen Shuigen who got the money and there is a witness, Wang Dazuo, to the fact that Zhou Hongquan came to Jiaozhou Road.

Chen Shuigen was forty-three years old and a chef by trade. Also a native of Ningbo, he was related to Zhou Jiawei by blood within the five degrees of mourning, through Zhou’s sister. He was also distantly related to Zhou Hongquan. Chen attested to the truth of Jiawei’s claim: Q: What can you prove? A: My distant relative, elder sister’s husband Zhou Hongquan, previously took Zhou Jiawei to the Dongfang factory to work. Every month he gave Zhou Hongquan twenty yuan. I sometimes went to get this money. Q: How much could Zhou Jiawei earn in a month? A: Zhou Jiawei earned fifty yuan a month. Q: How do you know when he started to pay [literally, subsidize] him? A: I don’t know how long he had been paying before. Later, because he had missed six months I was sent [to get it]. Q: When did you go to get the money?


Making the National Family A: Q: A: Q: A:

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Last year in February or March. How much did you ask for? I asked for three months’ worth and got sixty yuan. . . . How many times did you go to get it? I went many times to get the sixty yuan.

The court then called Zhou Jiawei’s second witness, Wang Dazuo, to the stand. Wang was a Jiaxing native who worked in a silk factory. In the first trial he had testified that Zhou Jiawei and Zhou Shumei rented their room from him and represented themselves as a married couple.92 In the appeal he asserted that he saw Zhou Shumei’s father visit her one day at the room the couple rented.93 Q: When did Zhou Jiawei rent your room? A: Last year in June Zhou Jiawei and Zhou Shumei came to my house to rent a room. Q: How long did they live there and did Zhou Hongquan come there or not? A: They lived there together for over a month, saying they were husband and wife. Her old man [laozi], Zhou Hongquan, visited. Q: When did he come? A: He came once at lunch time. Q: How many people came with him? A: He came by himself. Q: Was Zhou Jiawei at home? A: Zhou Jiawei wasn’t there, he had gone out to do something. Q: If he came only once how do you remember? A: After he came I asked about him. The woman said it was her father; I also recognized his face. Q: When did he come? A: It was a few days after they rented the room.

The court’s skepticism about Wang’s memory seems reasonable. But as Wang continued his testimony, a detail emerged that strained the credibility of Zhou Hongquan’s professed ignorance of his daughter’s affair: Q: After they rented the room, how many people came and went? A: I work outside, I didn’t pay close attention. Q: If you don’t remember how many people came and went, how is it that you remember a single instance? A: He lives in the building behind. I live in the tingzijian. When he went by I saw him.


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The court turned a deaf ear to the fact that Zhou Shumei’s father lived in the building behind the one where she and Zhou Jiawei had taken up residence. Instead, it continued to press Wang on his memory of the event: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q: A: Q:

Did you speak with Zhou Hongquan? I did not speak with him. When he came did you speak to Zhou Shumei? I did not speak to Zhou Shumei either. How long did he stay? I saw him when he came. I didn’t see him leave. Did [he] go into Zhou Shumei’s room? He didn’t go into their room. He happened to come by one time and you mean to say you remember clearly? A: I pay attention to those who come in. Afterward Zhou Shumei told me it was her father. She told me this in the evening.

The court seemed reluctant to challenge Zhou Hongquan on the issues raised by Chen and Wang. It did not press him when he evaded the court’s question about how he knew the identity of his daughter’s seducer. It easily accepted his explanation that he received money from Zhou Jiawei as a sort of commission for Zhou Jiawei’s employment: Q: A: Q: A:

Q: A: Q: A:

Q: A: Q:

When [Zhou Shumei] left, did you know it? I didn’t know it. How did you know it was Zhou Jiawei who deceived her into leaving? After a month of investigating I went to the Gedeng Road police station to report [him]. When they went to arrest him he had already fled to the [French Concession]. On the sixteenth day of the seventh month [lunar calendar] I brought her home. Where was Zhou Jiawei arrested? Later he was arrested by the Gedeng Road police station at the Era of Peace Coal Ball Factory in the French Concession. . . . Did Zhou Jiawei give you twenty yuan a month or not? The boss of Dongfang called me to go work. He gave me forty yuan in wages. Because Zhou Jiawei was my assistant I had him go. Every month he gave me ten yuan from Dongfang. Zhou Jiawei took thirty yuan a month. After the war (8/13) I went and told him to add ten yuan. I took ten yuan as always. This was from Dongfang. Did Zhou Jiawei subsidize you with money? No such thing happened. Did Zhou Jiawei live with you?



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A: He never lived with us. My wife got sick and he came to accompany her for the night. Q: Did you go to Yongsheng fang where Zhou Jiawei and your daughter lived? A: I did not go there.

Zhou Shumei corroborated her father’s testimony. The court questioned Zhou Jiawei one last time. Although he maintained to the end that Zhou Shumei’s father was complicit in their liaison, he failed to satisfy the court: Q: Zhou Jiawei, when did you start to give Zhou Hongquan twenty yuan a month? A: Relations happened in June of 1938. In October I started to pay money. Q: How did you deceive Zhou Shumei into leaving? A: [Because] she had a fight with her father she wasn’t willing to live at home. Q: Did you deceive her, [telling her] you would leave your wife and take her as your wife? A: I did not leave my wife. Q: Did Chen Shuigen come asking for twenty yuan? A: Chen Shuigen took five months of my payments. Q: Did you have an account book of the money you paid Zhou Hongquan? A: There was no account book. Q: What proof do you have that you paid money? A: The Dongfang Coal Ball Factory can investigate, and Chen Shuigen can testify.

The court, however, pursued the matter no further. Although the Nationalists had empowered the family head to protect his children from predatory outsiders, the litigants in this case brought to court a tangled web of social, economic, and family ties rather at odds with the Nationalists’ vision. In the densely populated neighborhoods of Shanghai, Wang Dazuo’s room over the kitchen shed offered him a bird’seye view of his neighbors’ comings and goings. The hotel, a fairly recent addition to the Chinese urban scene, opened new social spaces and simplified the logistics of illicit liaisons. The plaintiff and victim were not only members of the same clan, but also part of a patronage network that characterized artisanal labor, and in the precarious wartime economy family and friends were crucial to finding and keeping work. In the final analysis, was the suit the result of a father’s desire for justice? Or was it


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retribution for Zhou Jiawei’s failure to continue his payments? A 1939 Shanghai map reveals that Zhou Shumei and Zhou Jiawei lived only two blocks (about fifty meters) from Zhou Hongquan’s residence. The silk factory where Zhou Shumei lived for ten days was just a couple more blocks down the road.94 It is possible that Zhou Hongquan knew nothing of his daughter’s whereabouts, but it seems unlikely. Hanchao Lu believes that most Shanghainese lived, worked, and shopped within a very small radius, with many doing almost all of their shopping on the same block in which they lived.95 But the most interesting point for our purposes is how little interest the court showed in pursuing the seedier possibility that Zhou Shumei’s father knew about her relationship with her kinsman. Confronted with contradictory testimony and scant evidence, the court seemed all too willing to read this case as a simple story of seduction. Although there was no evidentiary reason to take the father’s word over the defendant’s, such a decision offered the much more appealing prospect of restoring family order—even if that order were, in fact, illusory. To have found Zhou Jiawei innocent, the court would have had to recognize that the family order upon which the state so heavily relied was weakened by moral chaos and economic desperation.

testing the state’s limits The Nationalist state’s efforts to bolster family order, if only by keeping families intact whenever possible, is also evident in divorce suits from 1940 and 1941. The New Family Law, which went into effect 5 May 1931, equalized the grounds of divorce for men and women. Divorce by mutual consent remained an option and, in fact, most divorces were handled in this fashion because most Chinese preferred to keep family affairs private. In addition, the code allowed either spouse to sue for divorce on the grounds of bigamy; adultery; intolerable ill treatment (of one spouse by the other, of a husband’s lineal ascendants by the wife, or of the wife by the husband’s lineal ascendants); desertion in bad faith; attempted murder (of one spouse by the other); a “loathsome” disease; a severe, incurable mental illness; disappearance for three years with no word; criminal conviction with a prison sentence of three years or more; or conviction of an “infamous” crime.96 Under dynastic law, men could divorce their wives for seven reasons: jealousy, gossip, adultery, disrespect for or cruelty toward the husband’s



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kin, stealing, barrenness, and incurable disease. However, a woman guilty of any crime except adultery could not be divorced if her husband had risen from poverty to prosperity during their marriage, if she had nowhere to go, or if his parents wanted her to remain his wife. A woman could divorce her husband only if he had tried to murder her, beaten her and inflicted grave injury or broken bones, or forced her to have sexual relations with another. The community at large and the woman’s family might bring pressure to bear against a husband who wanted to divorce his wife unjustly, but even with this informal protection, the wide-ranging and loosely defined grounds for divorce left women vulnerable to husbands determined to get rid of them. By giving women equal rights to divorce and narrowing the criteria, the Nationalists hoped to increase women’s leverage in marriage. The Nationalist code also protected women from arbitrary divorce; men who had previously found it relatively easy to divorce a wife, at least from the legal standpoint, now found themselves subject to court, as well as community, scrutiny. This is not to say that women found it easy to persuade the court to enforce these laws, or that the interpretation of the new laws was not inflected with a level of subjectivity that sometimes made divorce difficult to get. In fact, as we will see, plaintiffs in Shanghai who put the codes to the test found that divorce could still be difficult to obtain. Nonetheless, by codifying the grounds for divorce, the Nationalists gave women recourse to a standard that was, at least in the abstract, independent of the vagaries of community sentiment. The following is based on my analysis of forty-three decisions of cases tried in the Shanghai First Special District Local Court in 1940 and 1941. These represent almost half of the marital cases available to me in the Shanghai Municipal Archives (SMA) for this court and these years. The SMA divided the cases into two sets. After surveying all the cases, I chose one of the two sets as representative of the whole. The court kept clear and systematic records that always adhered to the following format. A heading indicated the name of the court, the nature of the document, and the document number. The names of the plaintiff, defendant, and their representatives, and the nature of the plaintiff’s suit, appeared next under the heading “to judge” (panjue). A brief statement of the court’s decision (zhuwen) followed. “The facts” (shishi) marked the summary of the plaintiff’s and defendant’s testimonies. The court’s decision and the laws on which it was based appeared last under the heading “rationale” (liyou). The procurator’s name and a statement


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attesting to the fidelity of the copy to the original followed. Finally, the court clerk added a line advising participants that they had twenty days to appeal the decision. By no stretch of the imagination can one claim that these cases are representative of how the courts solved marital issues in the Republican era. One would, of course, expect the patterns of court decision to vary with locale and probably with period as well. One would not be surprised, for example, to find that a court in rural Shandong granted divorces much less easily than a court in Shanghai. The fact that these cases were heard in the International Concession may also have affected their outcome. Moreover, the cases were decided in 1940 and 1941, years marked by social, economic, and political turmoil. Did concern for social stability make the court reluctant to grant divorces unless the conjugal unit had already, in fact, dissolved? Was it easier to get a divorce in the more prosperous and stable years of the late 1920s and early 1930s? Did formal codification of Nationalist family and marriage policies make it easier or more difficult to obtain a divorce? These are all questions that await further archival research; these cases alone cannot answer them. These cases are not, then, presented here as a representative sample that allows us to draw sweeping generalizations about the landscape of marriage, family, and divorce under the Nationalists. Rather, they provide a keyhole peek at what happened when men and women in late Republican Shanghai brought their marital troubles to court. The cases survive only as texts of the decision (juepan ben). As such, they limit analysis in several ways. These documents do not include depositions or other documents entered as evidence. Although the judges quoted parts of depositions, we have no way of assessing their accuracy. The documents also occasionally describe evidence admitted to the court, but my experience with cases that included evidentiary documents revealed that the court sometimes ignored evidence that contradicted its preconceptions. Accordingly, the documents examined here reveal more about the court’s assumptions about the meaning and function of marriage and family than they do about the behavior of the parties involved.97 Kathryn Bernhardt argues that these cases demonstrate that a gap existed between the letter of the codes and their execution. She concludes that although the courts, through their interpretation and application of the codes, placed limits on women’s successful use of the divorce codes, women were nevertheless able to use the codes to change their lives.98 I



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expand upon her observations in two ways. I show that the decisions reveal a discernible pattern in the limitations that the court placed on women’s use of the divorce law. I also use the cases as a measure of just how far into the family the state had reached and the degree to which the general population, or at least women, had accepted, and even welcomed, state intervention in family matters. That these documents were products of judicial decision making has strongly shaped their narrative quality. Their prose is terse and devoid of rhetorical flourishes. The writing style establishes a majestic distance between the cold, analytical eye of justice and the passions and perfidies of the litigants. Thus, these texts offer very little in the way of dramatic flair. They also muffle the voices of the plaintiffs and defendants. All speech is reported speech; the court recorder did not clearly differentiate between direct quotes and speech from the depositions reported by the judge. I have, therefore, used reported speech to relate the plaintiffs’ stories and have quoted only the occasional telling phrase. All the names that appear here are pseudonyms.

“a woman with no support” Women initiated thirty-four of the forty-three suits examined here. Twenty-three women sued for divorce (see table 8). Two women petitioned to dissolve their engagements. Five women sued for permission to live apart from their husbands (see table 9). One woman asked the court to rule her marriage invalid; a second petitioned to have her marriage annulled; a third sued to rescind her divorce agreement; a fourth sought reinstatement of cohabitation rights. In contrast to the variety of suits waged by female plaintiffs, the nine male plaintiffs all petitioned for divorce on grounds of abandonment. Six of them won their suits. The civil code required spouses to live together and support one another unless they had good reason for not doing so. A spouse who failed to fulfill this responsibility could be divorced under two articles. Article 1052.9 permitted one to apply for divorce if one’s spouse had been missing for more than three years and it was unknown whether he or she were living or dead. Article 1052.5 allowed one to sue for divorce when “the other party has deserted the spouse in bad faith and such desertion still continues.”99 Plaintiffs shared the court’s interest in the economic viability of the conjugal unit and relied on these statutes more than any other when suing for divorce. In plaintiffs’ testimonies, economic assistance and tangible help in the


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table 8. grounds women used to sue for divorce, and outcomes Grounds Abandonment Cruelty Criminal conviction Other* total

No. of suits

Successful

13 5 2 3 23

10 0 0 3 13

Failed 3 5 2 0 10

source: Jiangsu Shanghai di yi tequ difang fayuan (First special district local court of Shanghai, Jiangsu Province). SMA 180.2. * Includes intent to murder, insanity, and addiction.

table 9. grounds women used to sue to live apart, and outcomes Grounds Cruelty Legally unrecognizable marriage total

No. of suits

Successful

Failed

3 2 5

1 1 2

2 1 3

source: Jiangsu Shanghai di yi tequ difang fayuan (First special district local court of Shanghai, Jiangsu Province). SMA 180.2.

day-to-day running of a household emerged as the most fundamental expectations of marriage. All of the nine men who petitioned for divorce entered a plea based on either article 1052.9 or 1052.5, and six of them were successful. Thirteen of the twenty-three women who sued for divorce based their plea on one or both of these articles. Ten of them won a divorce. One of the most striking aspects of these cases is the ease with which people dropped out of sight in Shanghai. Although the Nationalists’ civil code did not allow one spouse to sue the other for divorce on grounds of incompatibility, those with enough nerve to set out on their own could simply disappear. In this way, a spouse who may have refused to enter a joint plea for divorce and who provided no legal grounds for divorce found his or her hand forced by a spouse who refused to return. The men who sued for divorce all claimed to find themselves in just such a predicament. Some men described their wives’ disappearances in words that evoked the mystery and danger of Republican Shanghai. For example, Mr. Wang claimed that he and his wife had gotten on well at first. Suddenly, her personality changed. One day she just started crying.



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She persisted in this “obstinate” behavior. She also began staying out at night. Finally, on 1 December 1936 of the lunar calendar, she left at midnight and never returned.100 The court rejected his suit because he could not prove she had been missing for three years. Mr. Qu met his wife through a matchmaker. They married on 9 June 1940 in the Haihualou tea house. A month later, almost to the day, she picked up her belongings and vanished without a trace. On the tenth of August she returned in the company of her mother. He “suffered in silence and did not question her,” hoping to mend their relationship. His wife displayed a penchant for small anniversaries; on the tenth of September she again departed. On the twelfth he reported her to the police as missing. Nine days later he wrote her mother and placed an ad with his wife’s picture in the newspaper Xinwen bao (The news). Still no sign of her. In a final effort to “bring her to her senses,” he placed an announcement in the paper. When that did not work, he requested a divorce, entering the wedding invitations and the newspapers as evidence. The court granted it.101 Another woman seems to have been intent on providing her husband with the proof he needed to divorce her for abandonment. This woman lived with her mother-in-law for almost three years while her husband stayed in Hankou on business. She entered the Shanghai Academy of Chinese Medicine (Shanghai zhongyi xueyuan) to learn a profession. According to her mother-in-law, she became “very dissipated.” On 8 September 1940, a day after she fought with her mother-in-law, she took all her clothes and jewelry and vanished without a trace. The next day her mother-in-law directed a lawyer to place an ad in the newspaper Shen bao (Shanghai news) asking her to call home. As for the plaintiff, he “hurried home” over a month later. In a few days, the husband’s cousin received a letter from the wife. She asked the cousin to help her obtain a divorce so that she could escape the “suffocation of the home.” She also wrote her father from Hong Kong vowing to abandon her husband and threatening to divorce him. The court promptly granted divorce on the grounds of malicious intent to abandon.102 Although plaintiffs obtained divorces relatively easily if the court believed their spouses had been missing for three years, it did not automatically grant all such suits. Of the three men’s suits rejected by the court, all lost because the plaintiff could not demonstrate to the court’s satisfaction that the wife had indeed disappeared three years prior. Two of the men appear not to have put any ads in the paper, a standard requirement of evidence. The third fellow had placed an ad in the paper


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but the court decided that he did not have enough evidence to prove that he and his wife had been legally married.103 The court gave its most sympathetic ear to women who sued for divorce on grounds of abandonment or malicious intent to abandon. In their pleas, these women stressed their husbands’ failure to fulfill their duty to live with and support their families. They emphasized the difficulty of surviving in Shanghai “alone.” As one woman who found herself without husband, brothers, or in-laws testified, life as a “lone woman” was very difficult indeed.104 The court did not hold these women to high standards of evidence. Whereas men often placed newspaper ads immediately after their wives’ disappearance, four women placed no ads at all. Two placed them only within a couple of months of entering the suit. In general, the court accepted the truth of the woman’s own testimony and granted the divorce on the grounds that the husband had disappeared for three years, failed to fulfill his duty to live with and support his spouse, and displayed continued intention to desert his wife.105 The court often took the defendant’s failure to appear at court as evidence of his guilt. Only once did the court explicitly rely on testimony by a third party as evidence of a husband’s disappearance. Mrs. Gu never dated her husband’s final disappearance. Instead, she described his absence as the culmination of a long history of deviant behavior. They married in 1931. A very dissipated man, he had affairs, treated his wife as a burden, and came home late at night. They fought often. Finally he stopped coming home and gave his family no support at all. When he took off for Hong Kong, she tried to follow him but got lost. Finally, she gave up and returned to Shanghai. There had been no word from him. Necessity had forced her to pawn her belongings. The court agreed that the defendant displayed continued ill intent to abandon his wife and granted the divorce.106 Other women echoed Mrs. Gu’s complaints and also convinced the courts to grant them a divorce. Mrs. Ding’s husband spent all her jewelry and silver before he disappeared. He did not support her. She resorted to pawning her remaining belongings.107 Mrs. Xie complained that her husband had sent no letter or money since he left for Hankou in October of 1935.108 Mrs. Zhao’s husband walked out in September 1940 after an argument. Although she asked family and friends about him and “used every manner to find him,” there had been no word. As “a woman with no support,” she relied on her mother’s family and “women’s work” to feed herself. She feared that with the rising cost of living she would



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soon starve to death.109 The court agreed with her and granted the divorce on the grounds of malicious intent to abandon.110 The unspoken assumption driving these suits was that divorce would free the plaintiffs to remarry. Although none of the female plaintiffs made explicit statements to that effect, it is the only reason a divorce would solve their dilemma as “women alone in the world.” Men, who did not have to worry about the stigma of remarriage, could afford to be blunter. One man referred to his plight as that of a “married widower.”111 Another complained of having to cook and care for his children, tasks he had expected his second wife to take up.112 An Unsuccessful Abandonment Suit: The State Preserves Its Prerogatives Of the three women who failed to obtain divorces on the grounds that their husbands had abandoned them, one lost because of jurisdictional problems and another because she did not convince the court that her husband had been gone for three years.113 The third case involved a woman whose husband claimed to work for the Nationalists. Although she appears to have been in more desperate circumstances than any of the women who successfully sued for divorce, the court denied her petition. We will explore it in detail here because it illustrates the lengths to which the court might go to preserve soldiers’ marriages and the extent to which the state’s interests took precedence over individual welfare. Mrs. Zhang gave the following testimony. She married the defendant through a matchmaker in March of 1936. After only a month together, he headed for Nanjing to work in the Department of Military Administration (Junzheng bu).114 Three or four months later he returned to Shanghai. He went back to Nanjing before 13 August 1937, the day the Japanese invaded Shanghai. After the attack, Mrs. Zhang moved in with her mother-in-law. After his departure, the defendant sent neither money nor letters to her mother-in-law or sister-in-law. On 10 October 1940 her mother-in-law kicked her out of the house. She asked a lawyer to help but got nowhere. Her newspaper ad went unanswered. With no place to go and no money, she requested a divorce on the grounds that she knew not whether her husband was dead or alive. She presented newspapers and a witness to substantiate her testimony. The court accepted Mrs. Zhang’s claim that she and her husband were legally married. It denied, however, that she had proved that he went to serve the government or had been gone three years without a letter or


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money to either her mother-in-law or sister-in-law (emphasis added). In consideration of “wartime and the difficulty in transportation,” the court refused to grant her a divorce, unswayed by the fact that she did not know whether her husband was dead or alive. The court’s treatment of this case appears unique in a number of ways. In no other case did the court require proof that the man’s family had not heard from him. And although it did so in other cases, here the court did not exercise what seemed to be its prerogative to grant the divorce on the grounds of another statute—malicious intent to abandon, for example.115 Furthermore, although “wartime and the difficulty in transportation” presumably applied to the other cases in this sample, this was the only time the court used this reasoning to reject a suit for divorce. Finally, the court does not appear to have given the husband the benefit of the doubt because he left for legitimate reasons; in another abandonment suit that was successful, the husband had left on a business trip to Hankou but when he failed to return the court awarded his wife a divorce.116 All in all, the court seemed particularly intent on preserving this serviceman’s marriage.117 In fact, the court’s interest in preserving this man’s marriage presaged a measure that the Nationalists would take to bolster their servicemen’s morale: in November 1943 the Nationalist government issued a directive that prohibited the wives of soldiers from divorcing husbands who were on active duty.118 Occasional, Tolerable Beatings The court granted divorces fairly readily if plaintiffs demonstrated that the family had ceased to function as an economic unit. It showed much less concern for the conjugal unit’s emotional integrity or the wife’s physical safety. Female plaintiffs suing for divorce on grounds of cruelty often argued that they simply could not bear to live with their husbands again. To this argument the court turned a deaf ear. Court bias, the vagueness of the criteria outlined in the statutes, and the confrontational nature of cruelty suits made divorce on these grounds all but impossible to win. Whereas defendants in abandonment suits never appeared at the trials, wives suing for divorce on the grounds of cruelty faced their husbands in court. There the husbands minimized the frequency and force of the beatings they gave their wives. Women had to prove that their husbands had been not only cruel to them, but habitually so, a condition that was not explicit in the code. Article 1052.3 stated that either spouse could apply for divorce if he or she “receives such ill-



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treatment from the other spouse as to render it intolerable to live together.”119 The court did not consider even savage beatings grounds for divorce if they occurred “only” occasionally. The following six cases illustrate the court’s reluctance to intervene in a marriage on the relatively “subjective” grounds of cruelty. The statute that provided for cruelty as grounds for divorce stipulated that mistreatment had to be “intolerable.” It provided no criteria, however, by which to measure abuse. Unfortunately for the women whose stories are recounted here, the judges calibrated the scale of tolerability with more interest in the institution of marriage than empathy for the individual (a problem women still encounter in most societies when they turn to the legal and judicial apparatus for protection from abusive partners). Women in desperate circumstances seized upon the opportunity to escape violent marriages, but the new law codes could not so quickly overcome social expectations that marriage was a lifelong bond. Mrs. Wang testified that about eight months after their marriage in December 1936, her husband stopped supporting her and began to treat her harshly. She had no choice but to go to Hong Kong to work in September 1937. She returned to Shanghai in January of 1940. Because her husband had a new woman, he treated her cruelly, beating her and inflicting wounds. She could not bear it. In May she reported him to the police for committing adultery. She sued for divorce but lost because the statute of limitations had expired. Angry at her for suing for divorce and for reporting him to the police, the defendant beat her again. In April of 1941, he came to her mother’s house and, “without asking who, what, or why,” hit the plaintiff on the head with a glass. She went to the hospital and then filed for divorce on the grounds of cruelty and conviction for an “infamous” crime.120 The defendant countered that he could not support her early in their marriage because he had lost his job. The plaintiff argued with him every day and ran around making trouble. As for going to Hong Kong, “that was her own idea.” He asked her to come live with him after she returned from Hong Kong. She wrote a letter asking him to meet her but she stood him up. As for going to her mother’s house and hitting her, there were many people at her mother’s house: “Could just one person hit her?” She made the wound herself, he claimed. He went on, “When she reported me to the police station a lot of people went with her. I couldn’t defend myself. She wants a divorce; I don’t. As for that [other] woman, I gave her up long ago.”121 On paper, both litigants’ arguments seem equally credible. The court,


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however, focused on dismantling the plaintiff’s argument. It noted that although adultery was grounds for divorce, one had to file within six months of discovering it. The plaintiff had waited six months and twenty-two days and so lost her previous divorce suit. Moreover, she could not sue for divorce on the grounds that her husband was convicted of a reputation-damaging crime, adultery, because adultery served as separate grounds for divorce. Finally, she has no proof that he beat her “cruelly and regularly.” If he did hit her with a glass, she walked out of the hospital soon after, thus indicating that his treatment of her did not fulfill the stipulation that it be “intolerable.”122 That mistreatment be habitual in order to be considered grounds for divorce appeared as a common refrain in the texts of court decisions. In another case, the court examination performed several days after a beating revealed finger marks on the plaintiff’s forehead; red skin and blackand-blue marks on the inside and outside of her left arm; and black-andblue marks in four places on her right leg from “a light beating.” The verdict was as terse as it was predictable: “It is not a case of cruel treatment to the point that one cannot bear it. Just getting beaten because of a conflict with the defendant is not sufficient grounds to sue for divorce.123 The court used the same logic even when it dealt with women who had previously sought to prosecute their husbands for abusive behavior. One woman had previously been persuaded to drop charges against her husband. When she later sued for divorce for cruel treatment, the court refused to consider the previous incident precisely because she had dropped that suit. It elaborated on its position, stating that although the defendant admitted beating her that day, he said it was because her behavior and dress were “inappropriate”: “A conflict between a husband and wife over some small thing in which one side receives an injury is not sufficient reason for divorce.124 Several plaintiffs expanded the notion of cruelty to include psychological cruelty, indicating either that women actively pursued the opportunities that legislation offered them, or that they were able to find lawyers willing to innovate. Mrs. Li sued her husband for divorce, asking for 20,000 guobi for damages to her psyche (jingsheng), as well as 37,200 guobi in support and court costs.125 The court rejected all of her requests. Two other women entered suits based on psychological cruelty alone. One woman lost for lack of evidence,126 but the second woman, Mrs. Chen, had police records, not to mention tradition, behind her. In an echo of the Confucian maxim “To lose one’s life is a small thing, while to lose one’s virtue is a great thing,” the court countenanced trans-



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gressions on a wife’s physical integrity but refused to tolerate false attacks on her moral integrity. Mrs. Chen sued to live apart from her husband. She likened her marital relationship to that between “ice and burning coal.” She accused her husband of pawning all her jewelry and gambling instead of working. To support herself, she worked as a laborer in a factory. Her husband beat and berated her if she did not give him her earnings to gamble with. She told the court that things had already reached the point at which she could stand no more when, on 30 November 1939, her husband went to the police and accused her of having an affair with her boss. The police investigated and dismissed his charges as lies. She insisted that their relationship was damaged beyond repair. The court noted that witnesses substantiated all of Mrs. Chen’s claims. Accordingly, it agreed with the plaintiff that a false accusation of adultery counted as unbearably cruel treatment and could be considered reason to live apart from one’s spouse. In fact, the Supreme Court had set a precedent for such a ruling in one of its recent decisions. The court granted her suit to live apart from her husband.127 Renegotiating Marital Status In the following three cases women asked the court to help them renegotiate their marital status. Although the court often failed to provide women the relief they asked for, these women were determined to avail themselves of an opportunity to rework their relationships, and they saw a potential advocate in the courts. A Miss Li hoped to restore her reputation and perhaps extract a measure of revenge. While studying at Dao Yizhong Elementary School she became acquainted with the teachers there. One of the female teachers introduced her to the defendant and described him as an honest man who worked in a bank, made good money, and wanted a wife. The plaintiff had “been waiting for a husband” and thought him acceptable. An engagement ceremony at which the school principal served as witness soon followed. At the engagement ceremony they “hurriedly” chose a December date for an old-style wedding. She understood that her fiancé wanted to rush the wedding because his mother had died and his father had a mistress. With no one to care for the house, the older generation kept pushing the younger man to hurry and marry. When she married the defendant, Miss Li thought she “had support for the rest of her life and that the two of them could grow old together.” But in April 1941 she discovered that her husband already had a wife.


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When she confronted him, he beat and insulted her. At this point she knew that he had deceived her. Evoking traditional images of the gullible beauty who sacrifices her virtue in good faith to the man she loves, she said, “The white jade is polluted.” Not wanting to live, she fell ill and “waited for death.” But the fury she felt at the thought that the defendant schemed with the teachers to seduce a “girl of good family” drove her to search for justice in the courts. On the grounds of bigamy she asked the court to annul the marriage (article 992) and, citing article 999, she asked the court to award her damages of 12,000 guobi.128 She cautioned the court against believing the defendant’s witnesses; they were strangers to her and were “all scheming together.”129 The defendant presented a different picture. According to him, he had started living with the plaintiff early in December because his wife had borne no children after eleven years of marriage. No wedding took place. Rather, he and the plaintiff invited a few people to eat with them. The principal, the teacher the plaintiff referred to, and some others attended. He gave the plaintiff 50 or 100 yuan every month, no definite amount, but he paid for rent and rice. Ultimately, the civil court provided no recourse for Miss Li. In its decision, it noted that the crux of the matter was whether the couple had legally married. In its view, Miss Li had not presented appropriate evidence to support her claim that they were married. Nor had any of the witnesses presented evidence that the plaintiff married in an open ceremony with at least two witnesses, as article 982 of the civil code required. The court reasoned that without a real marriage, there was no marriage to annul. Accordingly, the court also denied her request for damages.130 A Miss Ding asked the court to reinstate the cohabitation agreement she had had with a Mr. Ding and to award her 150 guobi a month for her daughter, whom she claimed was Ding’s child.131 According to the plaintiff, she and Mr. Ding were introduced by his elder sister and drew up a cohabitation contract in 1936. When she became pregnant in 1938, the defendant ordered her to return to her native place, Ningbo. She went back to Ningbo in 1939 and gave birth to a girl in the spring. To her surprise, the defendant did not support her. Finally she “risked danger” and came to Shanghai late in 1940 to find him.132 He refused to take her in. At that point she appealed to this court with a suit of abandonment. She lost that suit because the defendant claimed she was just a hired servant and presented a signed agreement dissolving their cohabitation contract. Miss Ding insisted, however, that Mr. Ding had forged her chop and that she had never agreed to dissolve their contract.



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The defendant reported a much more casual alliance. He claimed that the plaintiff worked as a prostitute on Sima Road in Ningbo. He often went there to have a drink and so got to know her. His friends thought her “pitiful” and urged him to help her. As a result he decided to live with her. “In view of safety” he drew up a document of dependency. Although her sent her money every month for living expenses, he did not visit her often. On 24 March 1939 (shortly after she had returned to Ningbo) he went to look for her. She had gone out, but a man’s gown lay on her bed. He waited for her to return and when she did they began a quarrel that ended in his lawyer’s office, where he agreed to give her 200 yuan then and 250 more when she turned over the proof of dependency. On the twenty-fifth of the same month he put an ad in the paper to announce that they had separated. He challenged her accusation that he had forged the document dissolving their cohabitation contract. Moreover, he observed that they drew up the agreement to separate less than a month before the baby’s supposed birth, and she did not look pregnant then. Finally, he asked why it took her two years to get to Shanghai if she left soon after the birth of her child. In its decision, the court refused to consider the possibility of forgery or collusion between the defendant and his lawyer. In explaining its decision to deny the plaintiff’s suit, the court cited the defendant’s lawyer’s testimony from the previous trial. The lawyer had substantiated the claim that the plaintiff received money. He also asserted that her name appeared backward on the document because she stamped it with a chop ring. The court also noted that an announcement had appeared in the Shanghai News. This itself provided sufficient proof that the two had agreed to part and that the defendant had not forged the separation agreement. Finally, the court shared the defendant’s skepticism about the plaintiff’s reasons for waiting two years to enter a suit of abandonment. Although we do not have transcripts of the deposition, the text of the decision gives the impression that the court refused to consider the possibility that the defendant and his lawyer had forged the separation agreement, stolen or forged the plaintiff’s chop ring, and placed the announcement without her consent. At the same time, it is certainly possible that the plaintiff had changed her mind about the wisdom of agreeing to separate. Either way, the court made few allowances for women who needed time to gather the knowledge and resources to travel to Shanghai and wage a suit. Whatever the truth of the matter, the plaintiff turned to the court in the belief that it offered her the best opportunity for redress.


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On 7 August 1941, a Mrs. Ma asked the court to rule her divorce agreement invalid.133 She claimed that on 23 April 1941 she had been hurried into signing a document she did not understand, and that only after returning home did she discover she had signed a divorce agreement. Because the agreement bore the signature of only one witness instead of the two that the law required, she hoped to convince the court that the agreement was invalid. The defendant countered that he and his wife had never gotten along. Ultimately, they had decided to divorce. He had agreed to pay her 2,000 yuan but only had 1,000 yuan at the time. He claimed that the plaintiff herself suggested he give her 1,000 in cash and a promissory note for the balance. A second witness would sign the divorce agreement when he paid the balance. Mrs. Ma’s suit failed because although the divorce agreement bore only one signature, the promissory note and agreement about the payment schedule carried two. The court decided to accept the defendant’s explanation of why the divorce agreement carried only one signature. It also wondered why Mrs. Ma did not file a suit immediately upon discovering that she had unknowingly signed a divorce agreement instead of letting three and a half months go by. Because she waited until the second payment came due, the court believed she now regretted her decision. Note that here the court relied on an interpretation of the spirit of the agreement rather than the letter of the law, as it had in the cruelty cases and in Miss Li’s pursuit of an annulment. Beyond the Pale Women with ambiguous marital status may also have found themselves at a disadvantage before the court. If this sample is any indication, however, the court did draw a line on unacceptable behavior. In two cases in this sample, the court proved willing to enforce a woman’s right to dissolve an unsatisfactory engagement. Miss Xu met her fiancé through a matchmaker. They became engaged in December of 1940. In May of the following year, a stock market merchant was “tied up” and Miss Xu’s fiancé implicated in masterminding the crime. He had since disappeared. On the basis of article 976.9, which allowed the dissolution of a betrothal for “other grave reasons,” Miss Xu asked the court to dissolve the engagement. It ruled that the crime did not merit dissolution on these grounds, but it granted the dissolution on the basis of her fiancé’s having been sentenced to prison (article 976.8) for another crime.134



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A Miss Wang sued to dissolve the engagement her father had made for her, testifying that in September 1940 she wrote to the man to whom her father had betrothed her and told him that because she had not agreed to the engagement, he should not consider it binding. She denied the defendant’s claim that she attended the various engagement ceremonies and joined the families in drinking when they set a wedding date. She insisted that her father’s attendance in her place did not make the engagement valid. The court agreed wholeheartedly with Miss Wang. The defendant had no proof that she had attended the engagement ceremonies. Moreover, simple attendance could not be taken as proof of her agreement because at the time she was under age and presumably could have been forced to attend. Finally, the September letter clearly stated her intention to oppose the engagement.135 The court also acted decisively when women brought suits against obviously unfit husbands—men incapacitated by addiction, mental illness, or homicidal inclinations. One woman sued to divorce her husband of seven years because he had become hopelessly addicted to drugs. A barber by profession, he had lost his job and pawned all their belongings. When she brought the suit he was serving six months in jail, his second sentence for drug addiction. Between jail sentences she had paid for hospital treatment to cure his addiction. She now despaired of a cure. Her financial difficulties were acute: “While a mountain of hospital bills presses upon her, all the family relies on her for support.” Despite the defendant’s pleas to delay the divorce at least until he left jail, the court ruled in favor of the plaintiff.136 The court granted a divorce to another woman who discovered on the day after her wedding that her husband suffered from a severe mental illness. For ten years she endured the marriage, hoping he would improve. When ill he beat her. His family insulted her. She “lost interest in living.” She filed her suit after discovering that serious untreatable mental illness was grounds for divorce. The defendant’s lawyer claimed that “any abnormal behavior can be explained by too much study as a young boy. He is what is popularly called an educated idiot, a shudaizi.” But the court found the defense ridiculously transparent. It replied, “The defendant is obviously mentally ill. He cries and laughs abnormally and suddenly.” It granted the divorce, but refused to award part of her husband’s property to her as alimony. The court observed that she had no proof that her husband had ever received a portion of his father’s property and it was unwilling to provide her with alimony out of the joint family’s coffers. Moreover, it thought she seemed perfectly capable of


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making a living.137 This case highlights both the strengths and the weaknesses of the court’s implementation of divorce law. The court released this woman from a marriage she would not have been able to escape a generation before. At the same time, it felt no responsibility to force her in-laws to compensate her for the deception, nor was it willing to recognize the difficulties she might face in earning a living. A third woman, Mrs. Hui, began her testimony by portraying herself as a compliant wife who obeyed the traditional injunction to “marry a chicken follow a chicken, marry a dog follow a dog.” She married her husband at seventeen, not knowing that he had no proper employment. She “sighed over her fate” and supported herself. In late July 1940, he attacked her with a knife, laying open her mouth, lower neck, and back. She escaped and had him arrested. He had been sentenced to two and a half years in prison. She requested a divorce on the grounds of attempted murder. The court ruled in Mrs. Hui’s favor, noting that attempted murder was grounds for divorce and that that was clearly what happened in this case. It rendered its favorable decision even though it knew that her behavior belied the patient virtue that she ascribed to herself. She stayed with her mother whenever her husband was out of work, an apparently chronic problem after the Japanese attack on Shanghai in August 1937. While living there, she struck up an illicit relationship. It was for this reason that her husband had tried to kill her. Yet the court considered her actions immaterial to the case.138 Negotiating Women’s Rights and State Prerogative While the sample here is small and restricted in time, it permits us several observations. Recent scholarship amply demonstrates that since at least the fifteenth century, ordinary Chinese had been quite willing and able to take their disputes to court.139 Clearly, the willingness of the plaintiffs to go to court was not a new phenomenon. Rather, their litigiousness represented a continuation and expansion of commoners’ use of the imperial courts. In imperial China, the court rarely intervened in the marital relationship itself, although it did step in to punish adulterers. In the cases examined here, women and men turned to the court to resolve their disputes because they recognized the state’s power to adjudicate their marital status and they hoped to use it to their advantage. The vast majority of the plaintiffs came from the working classes. Some



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were so poor that they lived in the straw huts that clotted the streets and alleys at Shanghai’s edges. Middle-class and upper-class urbanites, on the other hand, seem to have settled their marital problems in private agreements. They usually published an announcement in a popular newspaper, notifying the public at large that they were not responsible for one another’s debts. In this way they minimized the publicity that might attend a divorce trial and the shame of being taken to court. The plaintiffs, many of whom were married through arranged matches, refused to submit in perpetuity to decisions made by their elders. The law required them to file suit as individuals and, in fact, protected their right to do so. But even as they discarded traditional family authority, they submitted to a new state authority. They married in ceremonies that were “legible” to the state, they appealed to the state to free them from bad marriages, and they accepted the state’s authority to terminate or revise conjugal ties. The notion that marriage was a contract between families supervised by custom was replaced by an understanding of marriage as a contract between two individuals authorized, and sometimes adjudicated, by the state. Because of their greater vulnerability in unhappy marriages, women used the court more often and for a wider variety of suits than men did. Women lived at greater risk of being abused by their husbands or in-laws and had greater difficulty in supporting themselves alone. The sexual double standard meant that they needed to be legitimately divorced if they wanted to remarry and maintain a degree of respectability. One’s gender also shaped the significance of the divorce statutes and their execution. For female plaintiffs, the statutes offered the potential for greater liberty and control over their lives. For men, the courts represented a restriction of their right to divorce and remarry. The Nationalist state, through the court, immersed itself in what, until the advent of the reformist policies of the Beijing Supreme Court in 1912, had been largely private family matters. The Shanghai court examined here displayed a strong preference for maintaining marriages whenever possible. Only when a spouse was either physically absent—as in the abandonment cases—or socially absent—as in the attempted murder, addiction, and mental illness cases—did the court agree to dissolve the marriage. This suggests that a certain tension underlay the interaction between court and plaintiff in particular and the trend toward state expansion into the family in general. Plaintiffs entered suits with their sights set on individual benefit but the court decided cases with an eye toward the welfare of


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society. When individual benefit coincided with social good—as the court measured it—plaintiffs won their suits. When it did not, they lost. Nevertheless, the new code and the court’s execution of that code enabled some women to remarry, dissolve engagements, or escape dismal marriages. Despite—and because of—the state’s interests, the court offered women unprecedented opportunities to control their lives. Women actively pursued these opportunities, sometimes applying the law inventively in hopes of renegotiating their marital status. These cases also offer a glimpse of life in Shanghai. Wife beating seems to have been accepted as a matter of course. Chastity remained essential to a woman’s reputation. The ease with which people disappeared in Shanghai is evident from the number of abandonment cases and the recurrent refrain that spouses had disappeared without a trace. Despite the wealth of periodical literature touting the importance of companionate marriage, these plaintiffs maintained a traditional approach to marriage. Matchmakers figured prominently in many testimonies. Plaintiffs tried to present wedding invitations rather than licenses as proof of marriage (the court rejected them). The practice of giving a young daughter to her future husband’s family to raise (tongyangxi) remained common. A plaintiff’s justification for divorce generally rested on the defendant’s failure to contribute his or her share of productive or reproductive labor to the home. Finally, women’s testimony suggests that the natal home continued to be important after marriage. It was not unusual for women to return to their mother’s home when marital life turned fractious. These cases belie the civil code’s dry prescriptions for rational marriage and the popular magazines’ brittle formulas for a happy family. While the Nationalists legislated marriage statutes and policies, and publishers created a flourishing industry of family magazines and marital how-to manuals, members of the working class of Shanghai put these new ideas to the test by taking one another to court.

group weddings The Nationalist government fulfilled its statist vision of the family most successfully in its sponsorship of group wedding ceremonies. According to Florence Ayscough, the first group ceremony took place on 15 March 1935 in Hangzhou.140 The Nationalist government continued its interest in ritual even after the Japanese forced it to retreat to the inland city of Chongqing. On 9 October 1942, the Executive Yuan wrote to the



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Shanghai municipal government announcing its plan to begin group wedding ceremonies as of 1 November 1942. The communication acknowledged Shanghai’s occupation, but noted that a copy of the announcement would be sent to the municipal government upon the city’s recovery.141 In fact, Shanghai’s first group wedding ceremony after the war was held 3 March 1946, not long after the Nationalists resumed control of the city.142 Group ceremonies were held in Shanghai, Nanjing, and Chongqing in the last half of the 1940s. Susan Mann reports that in 1946–1947, over a thousand couples participated in group wedding ceremonies in the Ningbo guild in Shanghai.143 As it did with the private ceremony, the Nationalist government used the group wedding ceremony to stage a ritual representation of statesociety relations. The ceremony retained the essentials of the ideal private ceremony described earlier: it began with everyone bowing three times to the party and national flags and to Sun Yatsen’s portrait. It followed the same progression of obeisances and speeches. The only significant departure from the Nationalists’ ideal private ceremony was the subordination of the couple’s families. In this regard the group ceremony resembled the popular new-style ceremony from 1925. The ceremony omitted any mention of ancestors, thereby reserving the claim of supragenerational authority solely for the Nationalist state. The group wedding guidelines carefully substituted “wedding hosts” for “parents,” thus implicitly acknowledging that participants might act entirely on their own initiative. The regulations also noted that either parents or wedding hosts could sign (chop) the wedding certificate. Thus, although the state did not overtly eliminate the family, it tacitly assumed the family’s role as the ultimate authority sanctioning the conjugal union. In this rarefied atmosphere, the state fully acted out its economic, political, and eugenic interests. The Nationalists used the frugality of the group wedding as one of its key selling points: “The group wedding saves time and money. It is most fitting with the principles of the New Life Movement.”144 Participation cost as little as twenty yuan.145 The simple ceremony allowed couples to economize even further. For example, although many Shanghai couples exchanged jewelry during a private ceremony, the group wedding eliminated this step. The ceremony provided no role for a best man or maid of honor, further reducing the couple’s financial and social obligations. The uniformity of dress—the brides in pale pink dresses and veils, the grooms in traditional blue robes with short black vests—limited the opportunity for sumptuous display (see figure 8).

Figure 8. Participants in a Nationalist group wedding, ca. 1935. From Eric Baschet and Han Su-yin, China, 1890–1938 (Zug, Switzerland: Swan, 1989), pp. 202–203.




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The Nationalists also favored the group wedding because it facilitated government surveillance of marriages, allowing it “to prevent in one fell swoop marriage under false pretenses, bigamy, and early marriage and to reduce all manner of complications.”146 Moreover, group weddings underscored the individual’s absorption into the group and increased couples’ political and social capital within the circle of Nationalist supporters. Although couples who married in the group ceremony sacrificed family face (which was traditionally enhanced by ostentatious wedding ceremonies), their very sacrifice of family interests entitled them to the prestige of true patriots. The couples transferred their filial loyalty from family to state, thus earning bona fide status as Nationalists and citizens. To ensure the health of its future citizens, the Nationalists implemented a eugenic screening of all applicants. Prospective brides and grooms had to pass an examination that elicited a three-generation family health history and covered every bodily system, including the reproductive organs. Many candidates found the procedure invasive. Some may have resisted the invasion of their privacy because they doubted the confidentiality of the doctor-patient relationship. The government also worried about patient privacy: a memo from the Department of the Interior warned physicians not to “profit from the circumstances and commit irregularities” and reminded them to treat the results of the physical exam with utmost confidentiality.147 Many others balked because they felt the exam exceeded all bounds of modesty. In 1947 the head of the Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Social Affairs petitioned Shanghai Mayor Wu to temporarily relax the requirements and make the physical exam less intrusive: . . . According to the health exam record sheet, we must closely examine the entire body of both men and women. It seems this is disliked for being too rigorous. At a time when customs are not completely open and the civil ceremony does not dictate this procedure, most participants fear what is difficult and do what is easy. The tendency will necessarily be to abandon this and take up [the civil ceremony]. This is not the government’s intention in promoting the group wedding.148

But the head of the Department of the Interior, Zhang Lisheng, citing a nationwide compliance that was probably wishful official rhetoric rather than a reflection of fact, refused to make any concessions to modesty: The original method, article five, [says that] the applying couple must submit a certificate of health. The objective is to raise the level of the people’s health and reduce the various hereditary illnesses in order to allow the race


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to progress along the road of eugenics. In medical organizations this kind of health exam is commonplace. All the big cities have instituted the above procedure, apparently without difficulty.149

Although it met with resistance, the Nationalists insisted that in the remapping of China’s state-society relations, the human body would itself become part of the state’s domain. China’s citizens would have to brave the new world of intrusive, Westernized medicine. The Nationalist government’s reasons for organizing group weddings are clear, but its citizens’ motivations for participating were probably varied and complicated. Perhaps some men and women participated out of dedication to a statist ideal of family organization and the Nationalist vision—just as idealistic Communists would a decade later—and in hopes of securing status as political and cultural progressives. Perhaps others took advantage of the opportunity for an inexpensive wedding. An artifact of the Nationalists’ careful documentation of group wedding ceremony participants in Shanghai in 1947 suggests a fourth possibility— the group wedding allowed some to express a new modern urban identity. Sixty-seven of ninety-eight men (68 percent) listed their occupation as merchant and seventy-nine of ninety-eight women (80 percent) described themselves as housewives.150 The remaining thirty-one men included sixteen in public works (gongwu), four in education (xuejie), and three in the military (jun); there were also seven laborers and one actor. Of the nineteen women who were not listed as housewives, there were seven teachers, four merchants, two laborers, two peasants, one doctor, one actor, one unknown, and one employed in public works. I suspect that the majority of participants were petty urbanites (xiao shimin). Although frugality was an admirable quality, prosperous Shanghainese would have found that the mass ceremony cost them far too much in prestige. Although we cannot confirm the accuracy of these self-descriptions, it seems that the roles of businessman and housewife had become ideals for a sizable portion of Shanghai’s petty urbanites. The participants’ selfdesignations suggest that the members of this new segment of Shanghai’s population identified with the values of frugality, simplicity, and rationality promoted by the group weddings and linked these values with their own emerging identity as modern businessmen and housewives.151 Entrepreneurs, the next purveyors of the xiao jiating ideal, would find in these petty urbanites an audience anxious to see itself as economically rational, culturally enlightened, and civic-minded. Most urbanites did not marry in mass wedding ceremonies, perhaps out of resistance to the state’s appropriation of what had been a private



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event. It remained for entrepreneurial publishers to dissolve the tensions between nation and individual with the universal solvent of commercialization. These publishers offered their readers a third incarnation of the xiao jiating formula. As we will see in the next chapter, they shifted the emphasis from production to consumption, arguing that family order, national strength, and individual fulfillment all depended on the rational consumption of time and money.


chapter 3

Marketing the Family You Huaigao and the Entrepreneurial Xiao Jiating

As early as 1920, Shanghai’s education and business circles joined forces to address the question of marriage and family. Commercial presses published an ever-increasing number of books and pamphlets on love and marriage. Newspapers began to add supplemental sections on home and family. The Society for Daily Renewal of the Family ( Jiating rixin hui), established in January 1920, dedicated itself to the “improvement of the family.” Its members, who described themselves as businessmen and educators, decided to first address family education and hygiene. Later they would tackle problems of family dynamics and organization. Members vowed to give up bad habits and inappropriate pastimes like drinking, opium smoking, and gambling and turn to healthy leisure activities like getting together with family and friends, traveling, hiking, attending lectures, and playing sports (youxi yundong). Huang Yanpei (1878–1964), a business leader who helped found the China Vocational Education Society (Zhonghua zhiye jiaoyu she) in 1913 and the China Vocational Institute (Zhonghua zhiye suo) in 1918, spoke on women and the war in Europe at one of the society’s meetings.1 He would ultimately play an important, though indirect, role in the entrepreneurial xiao jiating; his China Vocational Institute published the popular Shanghai periodical Life Weekly from 1925 to 1933. First edited by Wang Zhixin (1896–1957), the president of Xinhua Bank, the magazine flourished under its second editor, Zou Taofen. In his many essays, Zou articulated his vision of a

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Marketing the Family

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rational and productive society, returning again and again to the issues of work, education, and marriage.2 By the 1930s, members of the business community dominated the family-reform debate. Jeffrey Wasserstrom has demonstrated how the New Culture idiom of protest created a core of form and meaning for later student protests. In a similar way, New Culture family-reform discourse heavily influenced the form and content of later debates.3 Like the New Culture radicals and the Nationalist government, entrepreneurs continued to link individual happiness, national strength, and productivity. But whereas New Culture proponents had emphasized individual fulfillment and the Nationalists had stressed state-building, entrepreneurs played up economic aspects of the xiao jiating. The entrepreneurial vision of the conjugal family defined individuals’ family roles and relations by their economic functions rather than kinship or emotional ties. They embedded their xiao jiating in the growing commercial culture and promoted a family ideal based on emerging patterns of consumption. A Shanghai dairy entrepreneur, You Huaigao (1889–?), published a magazine that amply illustrates this reworking of family-reform discourse.4 To the extent that You used Jiating xingqi (Family weekly) as a forum for his ideas, his magazine followed the example of New Culture reform journals like New Tide and Family Research.5 But the family formulations that appeared in Family Weekly contained a commercial element distinct from the interest in economic productivity evident in New Culture journals. You tried to use the xiao jiating ideal as a vehicle to “rationalize” (helihua) urbanites’ habits of production and consumption. In his vision of China, the economically rationalized family played the key role in creating both individual fulfillment and a wealthy, strong nation. As entrepreneurs elaborated on the economic elements of the xiao jiating, the conjugal family ideal itself became a marketable “product,” a development that businessmen recognized and encouraged. By the 1930s, the image of the xiao jiating connoted a comfortable lifestyle and the accumulation of various accoutrements of modern urban life. You’s vision of family and national reform assumed that women would continue to meet family and state demands for reproductive labor while adding a new role as educated consumer. This reconfigured role for women was the linchpin of the entrepreneurial xiao jiating ideal. You avidly differentiated citizens’ contributions to the state by gender. Women fulfilled their civic duties by practicing rational (heli) consumption, educating their children, and making the home comfortable for their hus-


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bands. Men contributed to the nation through rationalized, productive labor. When feminists challenged the assumption that the care of home and children should remain women’s primary responsibility, even progressive intellectuals and politicians accused them of being selfish and “unpatriotic,” the most damning of all political epithets in the Republican period. Thus, the push for woman’s equality met resistance not only from traditionalists, but also from those very family reformers who claimed an interest in women’s rights.

the man Shortly after You returned from eight months of study in Japan at the end of November 1909, his father used his connections to secure You a place in the first group of students traveling to the United States on Boxer Indemnity scholarships.6 Zhang Yintang (?–1935), minister to the United States, interviewed You while visiting the You family at their Suzhou home. Within days of meeting the Minister, You found himself on a voyage to San Francisco.7 You remembered the boat to San Francisco as the place where he first experienced the “tangible benefits” of European and American material culture. He was surprised that his cabin stayed quite warm in spite of the cold weather. The fully furnished cabins with their well-coordinated colors, ample lighting, and scrupulous cleanliness made him feel that his own home “was not novel, lovely, peaceful, or comfortable, nor pleasing to the eye.” You confided that the experience “Europeanized” him and that he later found it difficult to return to life at his old home. If the amenities aboard ship impressed him, the “beauty and opulence” of the Hotel Sacramento in San Francisco left him ecstatic: “Everything was completely convenient,” he exclaimed. “The bathroom was not only completely equipped, but sparkling clean. Hot water arrived in the twinkling of an eye. Towels and face cloths were wonderfully clean.” You and his roommate enjoyed themselves immensely, taking several baths a day during their short visit.8 The attractiveness and convenience of Western material culture contrasted starkly with You’s description of the Chinese embassy in Washington, D.C. Despite the arduous train journey from San Francisco, You and his friends headed for the embassy to “pay their respects” immediately upon their arrival. Much to their disappointment, they found the embassy an altogether unimpressive building. It could not compare with the other embassies in the capital, much less with the embassies in Bei-



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jing: “So, the Chinese embassy in Washington is not a majestic public office, but rather a completely domestic dwelling and nothing more.”9 After spending the spring of 1910 in the senior class at Williston Seminary in East Hampton, You entered Cornell University’s School of Agriculture. While at Cornell, he spent four consecutive summers on the dairy farm of a classmate. Many of You’s essays about ideal family life recalled the Hatch household. He admired the family’s egalitarian atmosphere, the members’ hard work and healthy living, the mother’s attentive nurturing of her children, and her devotion to cooking and cleaning. He enthusiastically endorsed the Hatches’ custom of spending their leisure time in sing-alongs, educational games, hay rides, and picnics. The level of education and political involvement he observed in the surrounding community of farmers also impressed him.10 These themes, which are the subject of many Family Weekly essays, resonate with the transformation of the American family that Mary Ryan has examined in The Cradle of the Middle Class. Family Weekly’s presentations of frugality, equal partnership in marriage, and women’s domestic role as nurturer bear striking similarities to late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American ideals. You’s prolonged exposure to the rural culture of the American northeast certainly influenced him deeply; it became his touchstone for all that families could be.11 But You’s essays on the idealized Hatch family were more than nostalgic recollections of his student days. The family ideals that he encountered in America and that he later incorporated into the xiao jiating moved him because they provided a way to respond to real changes in coastal China’s social and economic structure. The effects of modern urbanization and industrialization that the New Culture intellectuals had so eagerly anticipated were making themselves felt, particularly in Shanghai. There, the combination of these two forces altered the patterns of economic and family life just as they had in the United States and Europe in the previous century. Employment opportunities for individuals in the new economy undercut the economic power of the family head and his control over his children’s life decisions. At the same time, capitalist industrialization and urbanization encouraged the formation of nuclear families. In Europe, the United States, and China (and certainly in other parts of the world) these commonalities launched similar transformations of family ideals. All three saw the ascendancy of companionate marriage, with its economic and emotional independence from the joint family, and a gendering of home and work space.12 At the same time, differences in the Chinese political experience gave urban family


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ideals, especially those regarding the role of women, a distinctly different texture. We will return to this question later in this chapter, after examining You’s shifting prescriptions for women’s domestic roles. Although we can only surmise the influence of northeastern American family culture on You’s ideals, we do know why he made agriculture his vocation.13 In his memoirs, You recalled that at age twenty-two (probably soon after his arrival in the United States) he came across a book, Three Acres and Liberty, by Bolton Hall (1854–1924), that impressed him deeply.14 You was persuaded by Hall’s argument that urbanites should either move to the outskirts of the city and support themselves on subsistence farms or raise livestock and vegetables in vacant city lots. Thus freed from the constraints of the clock and relieved of complete dependence on wages, they could live the “free” lives of rural people.15 You returned to China in the autumn of 1913, convinced that Hall’s ideas provided the answers to urban China’s overcrowding and its dependence on the countryside for food. After a failed attempt at raising and selling chicken eggs, he decided to draw on his experience on the Hatch farm and try his hand at urban dairy farming. In 1920, You established Liberty Farms, self-consciously named after Hall’s book, with a little over 10,000 yuan in capital and five mu of rented land on the outskirts of Shanghai.16 His business quickly expanded. He established a second farm in Suzhou in 1926 and a third in Hangzhou in 1931.17 The autumn of 1935 found You preparing to start a fourth farm in Nanjing and to expand his Shanghai farm. In an interview in the Shanghai News, You claimed that in the early years he had only done a few yuan of business per month. By November 1935, he grossed over 10,000 yuan a month and his Shanghai farm of 120 cows made daily deliveries of Grade A milk to over a thousand customers.18

entrepreneurial family reform We can link You Huaigao to a larger entrepreneurial community in several ways. In 1920, he appeared in the “ordinary member” list of the China Vocational Education Society.19 The society promoted a form of education that gave lower-middle-class youths both practical skills and general knowledge. Wen-hsin Yeh notes that this combination “represented a curious hybrid of schooling and craftsmanship that confounded conventional expectations about the separation between the bookish learning of the literati and the practical skills of tradesmen and artisans. At the same time it aptly reflected the combined values that Shanghai’s



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modernizing social and financial elites jointly sought to promote among their prospective employees.”20 The Vocational Education Society had been formed in 1913 by the well-organized and influential Jiangsu Provincial Educational Association (Jiangsu sheng jiaoyu hui). The association joined Jiangsu gentry in a network of relationships with native industry and commerce in Shanghai.21 Because he was a native of Jiangsu, it seems likely that regional as well as business ties drew You to the Vocational Education Society.22 It is tempting to muse about what inspired You to join the familyreform debate by publishing his own magazine. Did he draw his inspiration for Family Weekly from Life Weekly? Did he imagine himself Zou Taofen’s successor? For much of his tenure, Zou espoused the same principals that would preoccupy You a few years later. Zou advocated freedom of marriage choice and urged his readers to lead a balanced life of useful work and wholesome leisure. Like You, he was concerned about the frugal and productive use of time and money. He acknowledged the growing consumer culture in Shanghai, but gave it a much less prominent place in his vision of the family. Zou also expressed concern that young people balance the independence of the conjugal family with obligations to aging parents, an issue that You ignored completely. For many years Zou, like New Culture radicals, the Nationalists, and Republican entrepreneurs, believed in individual rather than systemic reform; if each individual would lead a productive and progressive life, the nation would thrive.23 Whatever psychological intangibles drew You into the familyreform debate, Life Weekly’s first editor, Wang Zhixin, provided material support for You’s efforts. Xinhua Bank was Family Weekly’s most frequent advertiser. You reciprocated; the Shanghai Dairy Association maintained an account at Xinhua Bank during You’s tenure as president of the association.24 Early in 1932, Zou despaired of the Nationalists’ ability to protect China against the Japanese. At the same time, he abandoned his hopes for an individualistic approach to China’s salvation and began to search for a systemic solution. He eventually came to believe that the Chinese Communist Party would solve China’s problems.25 Meanwhile, entrepreneurs and businessmen like You Huaigao retained their faith in the individualistic approach until the Communist victory in 1949 forced them to abandon it. Although we do not know how long You maintained his membership in the China Vocational Education Society, we do know that the society and the banking community continued their interest in the family. In


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1936, the China Vocational Institute and the Shanghai newspaper Dagong bao (The impartial), organized a seminar on family issues. Huang Yanpei and Jiang Wenyu (1886–1961), also a member of the Vocational Education Society, attended. So did Pan Yangyao of the China Industrial Bank.26 These various intersections suggest that You was part of a network of entrepreneurs and businessmen who shared his belief in the importance of family reform. You portrayed himself as a committed reformer in the tradition of the illustrious Qing official Zeng Guofan. You devoted an entire installment of his memoir to a description of Zeng’s study-abroad program and made much of his personal acquaintance with four of its participants.27 You urged his readers to give these men and others who had returned from study abroad (presumably including You himself) the credit and respect they deserved. In doing so, he claimed for himself a prestigious genealogy that legitimized and gave authority to his own reform agenda.28

the magazine Once a week, Liberty Dairy customers found a free copy of the magazine Family Weekly on the doorstep along with their regular delivery of fresh Grade A milk.29 The magazine articulated You’s holistic vision of reform; in its pages he promoted family reform, economic rationalization, improved nutrition, hygiene, and wholesome habits. The back cover invariably publicized You’s various organizations and services—the Home Service Society (Jiating fuwu she), the Child Milk Drinking Society (Ertong yinnai hui), his milk and snack service for office workers, and his milk service for students. You must have devoted a good deal of time and money to his magazine; the prose is clear, the type quality good, and the typographical errors few. No ordinary flier, Family Weekly ran to sixteen pages every week. Modest in appearance, the magazine rarely published photographs. Advertisements and cartoons were simple and small. Family Weekly featured the same kinds of articles on home management, decorating, self-improvement, and marital relationships as the commercial periodicals devoted to women and family and treated them in much the same way.30 You’s periodical differed from these magazines only in the heaviness of its didactic voice. Because commercial periodicals competed with one another for readership, they avoided scolding their readers. They adopted a decidedly light tone as they advised women on enlivening their marriages and managing their budgets. Unlike commercial publishers, You had no immediate profit motive in publishing Family



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Weekly. Freed from the bottom line, You indulged his reformist zeal, writing extensively, and pedantically, on the interdependence of efficient economic management of the home, social and economic rationalization, and national progress. His essays explicitly map the entrepreneurial reinvention of the conjugal family ideal.31 Commercial magazines wrapped their construction in layers of consumerist fluff—lipstick tips, goldfish rearing, photographs of Hollywood stars—but You’s journal left the bones bare, joints exposed. Despite these differences, the polished commercial magazines and the homelier Family Weekly shared the same skeleton of assumptions and hopes that gave shape to entrepreneurial visions of the conjugal family.32 Because Family Weekly appears to have been largely You Huaigao’s own production, reconstructing the magazine’s message is relatively easy. Despite a plethora of pen names, the articles bear his stamp in content, opinion, and even vocabulary.33 Although the views presented in Family Weekly are not without tensions and contradictions, the uniformity of voice that emerges allows us to reconstruct You’s vision of family, state, and society. Thus, Family Weekly offers an unusually articulate representation of ideals that informed much of the commercial industry of women’s and family magazines. Readership and circulation figures are notoriously difficult to determine, and those for Family Weekly are no exception. You hoped to secure 5,000 subscriptions, but how close he came to that goal we do not know. We do know that only well-to-do Shanghainese could afford You’s milk delivery service, so only they received free copies. A year’s subscription cost less than one yuan. This amounted to about 1 percent of the average worker’s annual income, a significant amount given workers’ meager wages. You explicitly addressed himself to Shanghai’s xiao jiating, an audience that he claimed accounted for 90 percent of Shanghai’s households.34 (You claimed that only the nouveaux riches maintained extended families.)35 We have little means to assess his claim, but anecdotal evidence suggests that he probably overestimated the predominance of this family form. His figure certainly failed to distinguish between families that lived in a conjugal family structure out of necessity and those who chose to live the xiao jiating ideal. It also ignored the fact that many men lived alone in the city—either because they had left wives behind in the countryside or could not find wives in a city in which there were over 130 men for every 100 women and in which 85 percent of men and women over twenty were already married.36 Nevertheless, even if the vast majority of Shanghainese did live in conjugal families,


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most could only dream of the lifestyle You described in Family Weekly. When discussing housing, You openly acknowledged that only 20 percent of Shanghai residents could afford to live in clean, comfortable cement houses, and he explicitly directed his housing advice to this small group alone.37 Family Weekly’s articles on family budgeting also reveal an exclusive interest in Shanghai’s middle class. The annual income for his model budgets often amounted to a “frugal” 1,800 yuan, but worker incomes in the early 1930s averaged no more than 90 yuan per month. These budgets earmarked 30 to 50 percent of family income for rent and 10 to 30 percent for savings. The balance went to household expenses and social engagements. You treated social obligations as a necessary expense even when they consumed 20 to 30 percent of the budget. Almost all budgets included 5 yuan per month for one live-in servant.38 You’s milk program advertisements also indicate the economic status of his ideal audience. Milk was expensive; in the mid-1930s daily delivery of a pint of milk could cost 30 yuan—six times the monthly wage of a live-in servant.39 You gave fewer indications of what he expected in terms of his audience’s educational level. His ads for delivery services targeted office workers and students, suggesting that he tried to reach those with a certain level of modern education and/or business experience.40 The bulk of the magazine’s articles addressed housewives, but You wrote enough about social and business reform and husbandly duties to suggest that he intended men to read his magazine too. You assumed that his readers could afford to follow his advice. Thus, Family Weekly’s ideal reader was a young husband or wife of a conjugal family in comfortable economic circumstances. The family lived in its own apartment with one servant and one or two children.41 The husband left for his office in the morning and returned at day’s end to share the evening with his family.42 The wife remained home to supervise housework and care for the children.43 We will probably never know precisely which individuals read You’s magazine and what they made of his ideas. But we do know that since the New Culture Movement, new notions about love and marriage had become ever more familiar to China’s urbanites. Family Weekly and other like-minded publications articulated ideas that fired people’s imaginations and ultimately shaped their lives. In the example that follows, a young Shanghai ne’er-do-well, Chen Yunlong, uses the language of xiao jiating for sinister purposes. Despite the unusual character of the case—



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the criminal court never represents the typical—a letter from Chen that was entered in the court record suggests that some of Shanghai’s petty urbanites had taken the xiao jiating ideal to heart.

beyond the magazine rack On 28 December 1939, Wang Wenrui searched his daughter’s room. The sixteen-year-old girl, Wang Ximei, had been missing for two days, and he hoped to find a clue to her whereabouts. In the girl’s bed he discovered a receipt from the Shanghai Photo Studio. There he retrieved a photo of a young man in a traditional gown sitting in a worn, European-style chair. Wang’s daughter stood behind this stranger, clutching his shoulder (see figure 9). Greatly alarmed—he later told the court that “only then did I know about the first defendant’s behavior”—Wang Wenrui showed the photo around the neighborhood and soon learned the stranger’s identity and address. Armed with this information, he went to the police station and entered a complaint. The police arrested Chen Yunlong on charges of alienating a woman under twenty away from her family. At the home of Chen Yunlong’s accomplice, a woman who lived down the street from the Wang family, the police found love letters and a photo of Wang Ximei. On 4 January 1939, the court pieced together the following story. A couple of months before, Wang Ximei had left the house to go shopping with Xu Jinying, a woman who lived down the street. At the older woman’s initiative, the two stopped first at the Eight Immortals Hotel. Once there, Xu led Wang Ximei to a room where a young man, Chen Yunlong, was waiting for them. The older woman introduced the two and left. Once they were alone, Chen Yunlong raped Wang Ximei. Somehow, the violent encounter in the hotel turned into a romance of sorts, presumably a rather desperate one for Wang Ximei, who found herself pregnant and involved with a married man. In late December Chen Yunlong ran out of money and returned to the countryside. Unable to tell her father about the attack or her pregnancy, Wang Ximei left her father’s house to stay with friends. It seems likely that she planned to wait there until Chen Yunlong returned. Why did Wang Ximei throw in her lot with her rapist? She and Chen Yunlong apparently carried on a correspondence after the rape, but her letters were not in the court file. (There was a note from Wang Ximei to her father telling him goodbye. She had asked a professional letter


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Figure 9. Chen Yunlong and Wang Ximei. Courtesy Shanghai Municipal Archives.

writer to write it for her and apparently planned to leave it for her father when she ran off with Chen.) The stigma of rape ruined a woman’s reputation and with it her chances for a good marriage or, perhaps, for any marriage at all. Pregnancy left her with alternatives as few as they were harsh—a risky abortion or complete disgrace. The code of female chastity, which was still strong, demanded that a woman have only one sexual partner her whole life. Thus, Wang Ximei may have decided that by giving herself over to her rapist, she could salvage her dignity and make the best of a bleak situation. After he raped her, Chen Yunlong wrote Wang Ximei a long letter ask-



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ing her to run away with him. In trying to persuade Wang to come with him, he used the language of xiao jiating that had grown so familiar to Republican urbanites: Yunmei, little sister,44 we are of two bodies but one heart. (Really, I love [you] as my own flesh and blood.) A week has already passed since our meeting that day. Time passes so quickly, passion is so warm. Today the two of us are bound by an undying bond. You are in the spring of youth. I am a youth half old. You are still a lamb. Yunmei, that day I acted so unseemly. I pursued you relentlessly. You permitted my kiss, my passionate kiss, my aroused and wild kiss. . . . Only because I was overwhelmed with passion did I pursue sexual desires. It is absolutely not because my character is debased and I have abandoned shame and morality. Do you think I am degraded? With simple and shallow learning? No, no, little sister. You are so beautiful. You are truly moving, little sister. Your elder brother remembers you. Your character is great, you are wise and spiritual. You worry whether my occupation is appropriate.45 If I had you, my work and hopes would meet with great success. I hope that we will help one another with united hearts. We will struggle on the road of life. Living in society one should work for the well-being of the people or establish oneself, break down the classes, and be close friends. You are able to see clearly the false sons of factory and store owners and false scholars in today’s society. . . . Most are the sons and brothers of gentlemen [gongzi ge’r]. They are lost in nests of pleasure and have no real occupation. Their only ability is the spending of money. To my eyes you are transparent. I know you inside and out. In the future, in order to execute my plans I will choose my own wife, live independently, and avoid the bitterness of an unhappy marriage. Yunmei, your letter was very detailed. I fully understand. Heaven can help people. We two have the hope of uniting and living our lives together, spending a sweet life in comfortable days. We will also help each other work hard, doing our best for our future business. If I have your help, in the end there will be a day when we are united and married. I hope you agree to be patient. Would I turn my back on you? I cannot take lightly or pollute your reason and chastity. One day you will sleep in my embrace. Isn’t that right? Although it did not really happen that day, we have already shared a pillow. The memory is hard to forget. White clouds are ever changing. Our love will never break. God has prepared a temple of love for us. We do not have to pray for it. We met briefly and I regret that we met so late. It was love at first sight. We will be together and work hard. Daily we will nurture our hope. We will work hard together.

I have saved a little money to go into business. To be successful one must expand one’s aid. Little sister, your nature is innocent. You could be successful at anything. One must do something to be successful. Mountains have their peaks and fires their depth. Only by doing one’s utmost may one be called a hero. [You] will not be a housewife. [You] are willing to wander.


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[You] will not be a lady of a gentry family. Be a deer on a mountain peak. I have lived everywhere. The seaside is even more welcoming. One can expand one’s horizons. Don’t be a wife in the kitchen. Elder brother is a stupid person. I have dependents. I have a wife I married in poverty, a lifelong partner. These are punishments for sins in another life. Now little sister loves me and I love her even more. True love moves heaven and earth. The sun and moon can attest that we are of like hearts. There will be a day when what we wish is achieved. With little sister’s resolve like a stone, elder brother’s feeling will certainly not alter. . . . Little sister is capable of the resolve of a stone. I have a little saved to await the opportunity to return to the countryside. We two will encourage one another. This is not a plan that will take a long time. For the time being we can get by, and then we will grow wings and fly to the southern seaside. I have lived at the southern sea. We will live there sweetly. I will not forget. I will always remember the person in my heart. Just before sleeping my mind is full of dreams. In my dream I kiss you wildly, with the kiss my blood boils. But a dream is a dream. I toss to and fro, remembering the time we shared a pillow, when I ripped your clothes from you. Always respecting the value of your character. The sound of our murmurs is always in my ears. This continues night after night. Who else knows a great love like this? I think of you but do not see you. It always leaves me thinking of love alone. Please quickly agree to become my wife, to live with me and share hardship. Heaven does not turn its back on people. How long must I wait to hold you in my arms? Little sister will have to work hard temporarily and wait for an opportunity for us to be together. I am in the countryside happily reading books. Thinking and thinking of little sister but never seeing her. Thinking and thinking, thinking that little sister does not set a date.46 The green spring is passing quickly by. What chastity does little sister preserve? What milk are you waiting to drink? Little sister says there is much time, why press so hard? She lives at home as before. But behind the elder generation’s back she goes out at night. How can you avoid someone finding out? Each night your picture accompanies me in sleep. She smiles quietly. So lovely that I could eat her up. I am your friend. My companion is your body. Tonight these feelings moved me to write. Now I am thinking bitter thoughts. I wish you happiness. Your elder brother Yunlong 47

Chen Yunlong’s letter runs the gamut of rhetorical techniques. He excuses his attack with a traditional explanation of his behavior: “Only because I was overwhelmed with passion did I pursue sexual desires.” Then he segues into a refrain familiar from family-reform literature: “If I had



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you, my work and hopes would meet with great success.” After a nod to the rhetoric of reform and self-strengthening, he vows to realize the xiao jiating ideal: “I will choose my own wife, live independently, and avoid the bitterness of an unhappy marriage. . . . We will also help each other work hard, doing our best for our future business.” His fulsome poem recalls New Culture raptures over the power of romantic love. His present marriage is punishment for “sins in another life,” but their love can overturn even fate: “True love moves heaven and earth.” Chen Yunlong also tries to flatter Wang Ximei into joining him in what promises to be a precarious existence: “[You] will not be a housewife. [You] are willing to wander.” He makes her relive the rape and then reminds her that she has few alternatives: “What chastity does little sister preserve? What milk are you waiting to drink?” He even threatens to reveal her secret nocturnal excursions: “Behind the elder generation’s back she goes out at night. How can you avoid someone finding out?”48 It takes a particular perversity to frame rape as a prelude to romance and marriage. Nonetheless, even perverse explanations allow us to glimpse the paradigms by which people understand their lives. Chen Yunlong drew on both traditional and new language to try to convince Wang Ximei to join him. Traditional language allowed him to describe rape as an act of passion and to remind her of her loss of virtue. The predominant syntax, however, is that of xiao jiating—the letter presumes that love is what brings people together and makes their lives a success. I have placed the case of Chen Yunlong and his “seduction” of Wang Ximei here in part because it encapsulates all of the three elements that figured prominently in the Republican xiao jiating ideal. Chen Yunlong wrote as passionately about “love” as any New Culture radical ever had. He encountered the Nationalists’ interest in the state and social stability when he was found guilty and sentenced to eighteen months in prison. Even more importantly, Chen Yunlong linked love and productivity—a connection that was important to New Culture and Nationalist familyreform rhetoric but critical to You Huaigao’s entrepreneurial xiao jiating.

the entrepreneurial xiao jiating In Family Weekly, You Huaigao manipulated the rhetoric of family reform to promote his vision of a rational, commercialized economy and the gendered and spatial divisions between home and work that it required. He rejected the economic rationalism of the joint family because


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it subordinated individual interests in order to enhance family wealth. In its stead, he advocated the economic rationalization of the entrepreneurial xiao jiating. You’s presentation reveals much about the trajectory of the individual vis-à-vis state, society, and family in Republican China. The entrepreneurial version of the xiao jiating shared much with New Culture and Nationalist ideals. Like New Culture radicals, You argued that the conjugal family maximized productivity because it placed a premium on individual independence and enterprise. Like the Nationalists, he expected the reformed family to contribute to the strength of the state. But You believed that the primary engine of change was located in economic behavior—the rational consumption of time and money—not in the state or in the individual. Members of the entrepreneurial xiao jiating served themselves and the country through “rational” participation in the emerging commercial economy. Thus, the entrepreneurial model of the xiao jiating promised to resolve the tensions in New Culture and Nationalist visions that stretched the individual between the poles of self-fulfillment and national duty. You found the solutions to China’s ills in the economic productivity that the xiao jiating encouraged. In his “Editor’s Opening Statement,” he recalled Sun Yatsen’s lament that the Chinese were like grains of sand on the beach; because they were gathered in the same place, they composed the beach, but there was no cohesion between one grain and the next. Likewise, China was weak “because most Chinese know only the family; they are unaware of the nation.” You disagreed with those who thought that the family was necessarily an impediment to national consciousness. You argued that critics of the family who believed that “advocacy of the family is tantamount to urging citizens to pursue their own selfish advantage” were mistaken in condemning the family per se. Rather, You contended that “it was the old joint family that caused citizens to love pleasure and disregard work.”49 You blamed the joint family for promoting a family-centered focus that prevented the Chinese from identifying with the Chinese nation. He also blamed it for inculcating laziness and pleasure-seeking. These characterizations had become commonplace by the mid-1930s. New Culture intellectuals cited these problems in their attacks on the joint family. Zou Taofen frequently complained about these baleful influences in the pages of Life Weekly. Hu Hanmin proudly acknowledged that the Nationalists’ 1931 Family Law intended to pull individuals out of the family so that they could participate fully in the nation.50



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You claimed to share with Sun Yatsen and Yan Fu the belief that the Chinese people could be led to nationalism through “familism.” But several degrees of meaning and motive separated You’s “familism” from that of Sun and Yan. Sun and Yan hoped to expand the small circle of family feeling to include the larger national family. Their understanding of the relationship between familism and nationalism drew from the Confucian view that likened the home to an empire in miniature and the empire to a family writ large. You’s vision involved a different family form, one that created a new foundation for nationalism. His xiao jiating produced productive individuals who related to the state not by drawing the circle of family wider, but by linking the needs of the individual to the needs of the state. In this scenario, the xiao jiating related to nationstrengthening goals most saliently through economic function, not emotional identification. Sun and Yan believed that all men were brothers; You knew them as producers and consumers. You felt that members of xiao jiating worked harder because each member reaped the benefits of his or her labor. Thus, the xiao jiating was “the family form suitable to the ‘new age.’”51 And the “new age” was to be built on a xiao jiating whose primary goal was economic success: “With love’s encouragement, relying on one’s own industry to support oneself, one fulfills one’s duty to society and country.”52 Like his Nationalist and New Culture predecessors, You believed in the essential connection between family and state order. On at least one occasion he explicitly drew on an ancient text from the Confucian canon, the Great Learning, to underscore the interconnectedness of family and state: “To govern the nation, one must first regulate the family, the management of the family can affect the nation. If the family is administered well, the country can also be well governed.”53 Although state and individual still held a place in You’s vision of the family, the prominence he gave to economic action muted their importance as agents of change. Thus, the individual mattered insofar as he was able to become an effective economic force, but his personal fulfillment, in and of itself, counted for little. Likewise, You expected the state to benefit from the economic activity of xiao jiating, but he did not expect it to take the lead in reform either as agent or recipient. You’s valorization of the economic element of the xiao jiating shaped the content and even the form of his essays. For example, he urged his readers to organize their activities with three goals in mind: cultivation of the self, advancement in one’s occupation, and service to society. This holistic injunction informed his serialized essay “Sanmu di yu ziyou”


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(Three acres and liberty), which was devoted to You’s ideas for business reform. His entrepreneurial vision supplied a very simple antidote to China’s ills: China would flourish through good economic citizenship. Xiao jiating members need not concern themselves with social, economic, or political justice, nor with legislation and the reform of custom, as had New Culture intellectuals and the Nationalists. For You, economic success became both the basis of a happy family life and its raison d’être. Love, which had been given some independent value in the romantic language of New Culture, became merely a facilitator of productive labor. Social and national duty, which preoccupied the Nationalists, were similarly reduced; social responsibility and patriotism required no more than economic productivity. These links were developed most fully in an article entitled “Zenme zuzhi yige kuaile jiating” (How to organize a happy home): The family is a unit of social organization. Only if family organization is strong will social organization be robust. Therefore, the quality of the home directly influences the entire social system. Everyone knows that family life occupies an important place in human life. If we want our life to be happy, we must have a good home that allows us, in the after-work hours, to find comfort for body and spirit, so that we will have the extra strength to serve society and country. This is what the ancients meant when they said, “Order the family and then pacify the country.” Now I will present my individual opinion on “how to organize a happy family” and raise a few points that I ask the reader to consider. In family life, the most important problem is family economics. Family economics supports the home and is the primary element in advancing the family’s prosperity. If we want our lives to be tranquil we must first have a budget for family expenses, spending no more than we earn. Only then can we avoid economic difficulty. Our nation’s homes have never been particular about money management. As a result, many families run into financial difficulty or even bankruptcy because they waste money. In order to make family life happy, we cannot but pay attention to family economics. But how do we manage family economics? 1) Determine the family’s living standard. 2) Make a budget. 3) Devote oneself to saving, or use extra capital to expand a productive enterprise.54

In this passage You distills the assumptions that shaped the entrepreneurial xiao jiating. Advocates of the joint family system would have agreed with the banal statement that “family life stands in an important place in human life.” In asserting that “the family is a unit of social organization,” You would have surprised neither Neo-Confucianists nor New Culture



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radicals. This assumption and its corollary, “Only if family organization is strong will social organization be robust, therefore, the quality of the home directly influences the entire social system,” informed and justified both Confucian moralists’ prescriptions for family order and New Culture intellectuals’ ideas for family reform. Traditionalists would, however, have been disturbed by the connections You drew between the family’s importance in human life and individual happiness.55 This equation belonged to the New Culture iconoclasts, who claimed a right to happiness and located the foundation of happiness in the home. It was they who insisted that the home be a source of “comfort for body and spirit.” And it was they who applied the traditional causal connection between family and national order and justified individual satisfaction because it provided “extra strength to serve society and country.” But New Culture family reformers would have been surprised by You’s claim that “in family life, the most important problem is family economics.” You deftly manipulated previous and contemporary constructions of the xiao jiating and placed the new economic rationale at the center of his conjugal family ideal. His presentation encapsulated the accretions of meaning that attended the transformation of family ideals. He deftly combined the political culture of Neo-Confucianism and the nationalist and individualist impulses of New Culture ideals to create a xiao jiating that accommodated and encouraged the patterns of consumption and use of time and labor that a commercialized economy demanded.

marketing the xiao jiating Like family reformers before him, You attacked the joint family for repressing its members and allowing conservative elders to obstruct China’s progress. He likened the elders’ oppression of junior family members to the emperor’s oppression of the people and derided the “unbreakable prison of stubborn clan outlook nurtured by two thousand years of life under the extended family system. Although people extol the ‘harmonious household of one hundred residents’ and ‘nine generations living all together,’ in actuality, what they call the joint family system has engendered innumerable and long accumulated evils.”56 According to You, fraternal strife over property and conflict between the generations caused most family disputes. But You failed to note that property disputes had plagued extended families since their inception. Nor was generational tension in and of itself a new phenomenon. Certainly sons had bridled under patriarchal authority and daughters-in-law had resented the power


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of their mothers-in-law. But whereas previous generations had wrestled over prerogatives recognized by all, You’s contemporaries discovered that a generational shift in values divided their households. The older generation, molded by a traditional ethical education (lijiao), and the younger, inspired by the individualism and egalitarianism of “new thought” (xin sixiang), found they had little in common: “Fire and water could not be more different.”57 You blamed the system of arranged marriages for ruining many Chinese families: The essential element in setting up a family is, of course, marriage. However, in our country’s families, the sons’ and daughters’ marriage rights are, for the most part, still in the parents’ hands. They either give the old personages [i.e., the senior generation] free rein to make all decisions or rely upon a garrulous matchmaker to choose for them. As a result, a man and woman who have never set eyes on each other are matched as lifelong mates no matter that “they are compatible in appearance but distant in heart” or “dreaming different dreams while sharing the same bed.” When those old personages choose mates for the sons and daughters, their starting point is to use money and status as standards, the so-called bamboo door facing a bamboo door, wood door facing a wood door. As for the matter of the son or daughter’s later fortune or misfortune! That has nothing to do with the old personages’ own lives, why should they worry about it? As for the homes that this harmful marriage system produces, not only is it impossible to talk about their happiness, we simply must not let it continue to exist! Everyone knows that love arises out of pureness and appears naturally; it cannot be forced. Consequently, I think that if we want to establish and advance the new family, the first thing we must do is topple that irrational and stupid system of absolutely following one’s parents’ wishes in marriage.58

You vehemently objected to a family system that gave elders complete control over their children’s marriages, but he did not offer unqualified support for freedom of marriage choice. He worried that in the passion of youth, couples would marry unwisely. He complained that young people often chose their mates on the basis of physical attraction. He deplored loveless marriages and believed that truly incompatible couples should divorce, but the followers of Ellen Key, who argued that marriage without love was immoral, also made him uncomfortable.59 You urged young people to understand fully the true nature of love and treat it with great seriousness. He counseled young people to consider carefully their prospective mate’s character, education, and personality. He encouraged them to consult those who had their best interests at heart—



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their parents—and to rely on persuasion rather than rebellion to exercise their influence over marriage choice.60 Above all, You blamed the joint family for fostering economic ineptitude: “Joint families are not managed well, profits are few, and expenses are many. An even worse phenomenon is that it nurtures dependency on elders. All in all, the joint family is only confusion, tiresomeness, with never a moment’s peace. In order to avoid this evil influence, I suggest we leave behind the old, greatly corrupt ancient-style family and build my ideal, brand new xiao jiating.”61 In his attack on the joint family, You struck many of the same chords that the New Culture intellectuals and the Nationalists had: conservative family heads retarded social progress, created unhappy (and therefore unproductive) families, and dissipated wealth. The difference in the entrepreneurial vision lay in the emphasis it placed on economic behavior. The importance of economics emerged with even greater clarity in You’s ideal of the xiao jiating and the wife’s role in it. Not surprisingly, You took a practical view of marriage: love created the foundation of marriage, but the pillars of education, economics, and disposition kept it standing.62 He disputed the old chestnut “marriage is love’s grave,” but valued the durable love shared by partners in work and home over the passionate romantic love New Culture students craved. Marriage joined sex and friendship, but he urged his readers to concentrate on the “mutual respect, understanding, closeness, and intimacy” of friendship; when passion expired, friendship would sustain them.63 Despite his frequent avowals of the importance of preserving marital love, You’s descriptions of marriage were superficial, formulaic, and sometimes shrill. He counseled newlyweds to value the spiritual over the material, share a spirit of cooperation, and maintain their chastity.64 He insisted that couples found their marriages on love and equality.65 Yet he never treated these issues as topics in and of themselves. Instead, he strung them together in litanies of platitudes or used them as opening statements for articles about home management. Other than urging wives to appreciate their husbands’ efforts to earn a living and advising men to sympathize with the drudgery and tedium of women’s household tasks, he offered little concrete advice on how to nurture love and companionship in marriage.66 You never questioned the strict gendering of work that made it so difficult for the sexes to appreciate one another’s work. Nor did he explore the emotional tensions that accompanied changing ideals of love and marriage and the shifting economy.67 You treated home life in a similarly abstract and idealized fashion. He


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portrayed the home as a haven of physical and emotional comfort. There children found shelter and nurture and men escaped the pressures of the outside world and restored themselves for the next day’s work. The home also created a moral center that kept its members to the straight and narrow: “If one has no happy home to return to after a day of exhausting work one will be easily tempted to set foot on the road to degradation. But if after a long day of work one has a happy home, where the husband and wife comfort and encourage one another, one will find endless happiness. Add a child or two and it is heaven.”68 In contrast to his superficial treatment of the emotional aspects of modern marriage and home life, You provided concrete and detailed treatment of the material household. His concrete analysis of the material aspects of family life underscores his concern for the economic rather than emotional function of the family. He told his readers how to keep their houses neat and clean and used sketches to illustrate home decorating techniques. Articles on home economic management bulged with detailed advice. He insisted that his readers make and follow budgets and gave them models to follow.69 He introduced them to banking.70 You counseled his readers to avoid extravagance in food and clothing. He even prescribed specific worthwhile leisure activities—books, music, country outings, movies, and jaunts in the park.71 You envisioned a conjugal family well adapted to the demands of a growing commercial-consumer economy, with its gendered divisions of time and space. Eager to prepare his readers to take advantage of all the market had to offer, You devoted much energy to teaching them about their roles as consumers. In promoting milk drinking, You revealed the intimate interdependence between his passion for reform and his interest in commerce. In his attempt to convince his audience of the importance of drinking milk, You placed the failure to drink cow’s milk on a par with illiteracy as one of China’s major problems. His advertisement for the Child Milk Drinking Society asserted that “China faces two major problems today. One is that 90 percent of the population is illiterate. The other is that 80 percent drinks no milk.”72 You marshaled an entire column of figures to show that the Chinese in Shanghai lagged far behind non-Chinese in taking advantage of the nourishing properties of milk. According to his statistics, foreign families consumed three-quarters of the milk produced in Shanghai. That, You concluded, meant that only 4,000 of Shanghai’s 800,000 Chinese children drank milk. The benefits of milk were illustrated by an accompanying photo of a fat, giggling baby and the comment “A strong little baby who drinks milk daily.”73



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In striking this chord, You played on resonances from the earliest selfstrengtheners: a healthy nation depended on healthy children. At the same time, he added a new dimension: the health of China’s children depended on their consuming a new product. Maternal health—a key consideration at the turn of the century—was no longer sufficient in and of itself. Without cow’s milk, the children and the nation would fail to thrive. You’s enthusiasm for the consumer lifestyle prompted him to create the Home Service Society, which he frequently promoted on the back page of his magazine and welcomed his milk customers to use free of charge. The society promised to save its members time and money by researching goods and services and finding the best buys. The society offered its expertise for all sorts of household tasks; for example, it located reliable moving companies, offered advice on buying refrigerators, and located home decorating materials. Its staff members even ran errands and paid bills.74 You envisioned the society as a substitute for “the family ledger of the old joint family system or the general affairs office of a big organization.” Xiao jiating needed the Home Service Society because they could not delegate family labor the way joint families had. In promoting the society, You unself-consciously acknowledged a major weakness in the very family organization that he claimed was perfectly suited to the new economy: freed from joint family encumbrances, the xiao jiating sometimes found itself with too few hands to share the work.75 But the change in family organization was not the only reason families found themselves busier than ever. As in other consumer societies, the modern Chinese home required many more goods and services. The society provided advice on a list of products and services that had grown well beyond the traditional seven necessities (fuel, rice, oil or fat, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, and tea) to include electric fans, carpets, refrigerators, perfume, lightbulbs, home decorating, and radio repair. As the array of available goods and services became increasingly numerous and complex, the wise consumer consulted the experts before making a purchase. Consumption became a vocation that required careful research and expertise. The Capital Chemistry Industry Company appealed to this new sensibility when it advertised three different detergents—one for wool and silk, another for hair, hands, and bathing, and a third for cotton, hemp, and ordinary items—under the rubric “Laundering Must Become Scientific.”76 When You reassured his readers that he “fully understood that this era when European and American material culture floods our homes and


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surrounds our persons is not at all as easy to handle as the time when one needed only the daily necessities,” he not only acknowledged the presence of Western products in the Shanghai market, but also claimed a place for them in his readers’ homes.77 You’s advertisers did the same, insinuating their goods and services into the home. Xinhua Bank, which cultivated personal savings account customers, boasted “the best history of family service.”78 A food company advertised its crackers as “that special something every home needs.”79 The China Lock Company cautioned that “the modernized home is only a happy home when it installs the modernized lock.” The China Merchant Moving Company claimed to offer “the best and cheapest in family service.”80 The xiao jiating ideal that occupied the pages of Family Weekly differed markedly from the ideals of both the New Culture radicals and the Nationalists. The New Culture ideal of xiao jiating fundamentally challenged the traditional definition of family. It emphasized emotional fulfillment and promised to strengthen the nation through the increased productivity of happy individuals. The Nationalists tried to commandeer the xiao jiating to meet the needs of the state. The xiao jiating became the conduit through which the Nationalists would disseminate their vision of state and society. You’s xiao jiating chose a third tack: it firmly identified itself with the goods and services that Shanghai’s commercial economy made available. In the early issues of Family Weekly, You invited his readers to share their xiao jiating fantasies. Rather than describe new family relationships, as New Culture essays had done, these essays provided elaborate catalogues of home furnishings. One of the more detailed of these was submitted by Wang Shoufu, a resident of Shanghai.81 Mr. Wang still lived under the thumb of an old-style family, but he vowed he would escape from this “cage” of economic restriction if he ever attained a degree of economic comfort. Despite Wang’s claim for the simplicity of his ideal xiao jiating, he wrote a sizable paragraph on the layout, decoration, and furnishing of his ideal home. One imagines that You would have been delighted to have Mr. Wang join the Home Service Society. Wang dreamed of “simply” renting a shikumen with a small courtyard.82 There he would put some potted plants, some flowers, a parrot, a bowl of goldfish, and a grapevine trellis full of morning glories. On the walls of the front room, which would serve as both the sitting room and a large tea room, he would hang scroll paintings. The bedrooms, located at the back of the first floor, would be furnished in an ordinary fashion.



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He did, however, plan to place a radio on the dressing table so that he could listen to it when over-tired from work. Wang gave the kitchen short shrift. He dismissed it as simply a small kitchen for the small family. The study occupied an important place in Wang’s ideal home. He placed it upstairs, away from the hubbub of the first floor. He insisted it be exquisitely furnished in order to inspire him to record his thoughts and write poetry. He would fill two cases with books to research and discuss. His shelves would hold novels by the famous writers of both East and West. It would also be appropriate to have a Chinese huqin and an imported violin. He would make a children’s playroom in the back of the house. He would convert the pavilion to a billiard room and a place for table tennis. The balcony would be used for drying clothes and enjoying the cool air in the summer. Only at the conclusion of his essay did Wang add human figures to his dream home. He wanted to study cartoon drawing and become an artist. His wife would study music. If he had a boy and a girl, his son would go to school while his daughter would stay home to learn embroidery. At night the son would study cartoons with his father and the girl would play music with her mother. He rejected the common practice of keeping a servant because he did not want his children to have the “temperament of little masters and mistresses.” He would do the sweeping and general cleaning, while his wife would be responsible for making the beds, for the kitchen work, and so on. Most of the other essays continued in the same vein. High-flown sentiments about the sanctity of love and impassioned arguments for freedom of marriage choice were notably absent. Only a couple of the essays gave a nod to the ideals of love and equality in marriage, but most included careful descriptions of home furnishings. The prominence given to objects in these descriptions of the “ideal xiao jiating life” suggests that young Shanghainese identified the xiao jiating with the consumer goods they might acquire once freed from economic responsibilities to the joint family, rather than with the emotional freedom promised by New Culture radicals a generation before. Wang acknowledges that he would have to escape the economic “cage” of the joint family and become affluent before he could live out his dream. The essays in this series suggest that for petty urbanites like Wang, the xiao jiating symbolized a lifestyle of material comfort and undemanding entertainment. Through a melange of traditional and foreign cultural trophies, the householder appropriated both Chinese tradition and Western modernity: scroll paintings, a traditional instrument, and a collection of


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Chinese literature marked traditional culture and status; foreign goods— a radio, novels, an organ, a violin—lent a cosmopolitan flourish.

rational consumption The elaborate descriptions of ideal homes invariably connected material goods with intellectual and spiritual cultivation. Lovely tables and elegant studies inspired their owners to write. Musical instruments “attuned the spirit” after a long day of work. The radio and the long comfortable couch nurtured the mental capacities. Only a very few urbanites could afford the creature comforts Wang Shoufu described. Yet an ostentatious, self-conscious emphasis on simplicity and frugality accompanied these luxurious images. Cleanliness, order, flowers, coordinated colors, and plenty of sunlight took precedence over elaborate decorating techniques. Wang’s insistence that his children learn thrift and industry echoed a common theme in Family Weekly articles. The frequent refrains of self-cultivation and frugality did not represent a reaction against consumerism, but rather an attempt to channel consumption in socially useful directions. You’s vision of rational consumption embodied a marked hierarchy of priorities. The nature of the expenditure mattered more than the amount spent. After all, “appropriate” entertainment—movies, concerts, strolls through the park, visits to the countryside, or travel—presumed a disposable income and leisure time. And even the “simple” elements of a comfortable home—sunlight, air circulation, and room enough to keep everything in order—were expensive commodities in Shanghai. In fact, You advised his readers to spend more on housing so that they might enjoy fresh air and sunshine and keep their children off the streets and away from street vendors.83 Like Wang Shoufu, You criticized spending that simply indulged the senses. Proper spending acquired tangible, and useful, objects or contributed to self-improvement. He urged readers to save their money rather than waste it on “meaningless” spending.84 Acceptable purchases encouraged intellectual creativity, spiritual cultivation, physical well-being, and moral health. Wang justified the elaborate furnishings of his xiao jiating for just such reasons. You worried about the rational consumption of time too. In another milk ad, he created an image that connected time to his vision of a rational, healthy lifestyle. A milk bottle decorated with an image of the Statue of Liberty sits in front of a clock. Each of the clock’s black numerals is set in a white, milk-bottle-shaped figure. The clock recalls You’s



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insistence on the importance of punctuality and the wise use of time. Milk is just the sort of “simple” nutritional food that You promoted as part of a frugal, healthy lifestyle. Meanwhile, the image of the Statue of Liberty not only alludes to the dairy’s name, but also invokes the authority of You’s Cornell education (where he had read Hall’s Three Acres and Liberty), reminds his readers of his holistic plan for a well-ordered and productive life (which he outlined in the serialized essay of the same name), and borrows the political and cultural cachet of the United States. In this image, You seamlessly commingled the language of reform and self-improvement with his commercial interests. With a tactic familiar to anyone living in a consumer society, You tried to sell his product by marketing a lifestyle. You’s prescriptions for family reform served his commercial visions. Although he justified his support of the xiao jiating in terms of social and national welfare, his primary interest lay in promoting a family form that best accommodated the demands of a modernizing economy. And although his generalized discussions of family reform seemed to target an ungendered audience, he almost always directed his concrete prescriptions for improvement at women. Women’s role as homebound, reproductive laborers formed the keystone of You’s xiao jiating.

“the mother of all successful ventures” Women’s role in society continued to provoke heated debate in the 1930s. Feminists themselves had split over whether women should first pursue educational or political equality.85 Another debate focused on what had been a central tenet of New Culture ideology: gender equality depended on women’s economic independence. As women’s participation in the wage labor market in the 1930s increased, many feminists continued to argue that true gender equality could not be attained without economic independence.86 At the same time, a vocal opposition insisted that men and women possessed equal rights to an education and to political participation but differed with regard to their family and societal duties. You Huaigao stood firmly within the latter camp, deriding women who questioned traditional gender roles as “radical women’s libbers” (funü jiefangzhe) who, he claimed, insisted that equality would only be achieved if women left the home and the family were destroyed.87 Women’s roles as consumers and reproductive laborers formed the cornerstone of the entrepreneurial xiao jiating. In the 1920s and 1930s men and women reformers, in China as in Europe and the United States, engaged in the na-


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ture/nurture debate. Many concluded that men and women were born with equal abilities. Few, however, explicitly suggested that “equal abilities” meant that men ought to participate in child rearing or housekeeping. You entertained little debate; biology was destiny, and men’s and women’s physiologies dictated different responsibilities.88 In support of his view on women’s roles, You sometimes drew on American depictions of women as the “angel in the house.” In the paragraph below, he translated a description of women’s role in the home by Orison Marden (1848–1924), who was, like Bolton Hall, a member of America’s late-nineteenth-century self-help movement: Woman is the creator of the family. She is not just preoccupied with dust and nagging about order. She has to be capable and efficient. She creates a peaceful and happy atmosphere, making home a lovable place. In this kind of home, the husband can obtain comfort, the children can enjoy freedom and happiness and well-being. They also will not want to go out in the night to pursue dangerous pastimes. She will easily obtain results from teaching her children because they love their mother and are grateful to her for her care. Of course they will happily listen and follow her instruction.89

You did not spend much time defending his view on women’s place in the home. After all, women were, in fact, primarily responsible for reproductive labor. You paid homage to the romantic vision of woman as the keeper of home and hearth, but his real interest lay in the nitty-gritty of money management. In his view, happy homes were created by close attention to the practical aspects of running a household: In order to make home life happy and joyful, of course one must have appropriate organization, rational arrangement, and appropriate activities. No matter whether it is a joint family with its somewhat larger population, or the xiao jiating with its comparatively simpler grouping of people, neither can escape these restrictions. There is an even more important element in the necessity of planning for economic well-being. This method has already been discussed in ancient books: “Through diligence and thrift establish the family.” The two characters qinjian mean to plan for economic well-being, rationalize one’s lifestyle [shenghuo helihua], and advance along the road of happiness.90

You acknowledged that housewives, as their families’ primary consumers and as mistresses of their own households, exercised a good deal of discretion over their use of time and money: According to the average [situation], men are responsible for income and production while women are responsible for spending and consumption.



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A housewife fulfills her responsibility only if she stays within her income, understands surrounding circumstances, spends only what is necessary, and appropriately apportions expenditures. Moreover, distributing the income appropriately means not just avoiding want, but also saving the extra. Everyone hopes to have a happy life. A happy life often turns upon economic circumstances. Whether the economic circumstances are good and whether they are improving is a question of whether the housewife is rational [heli] in her management of affairs. . . . Money is not easy to come by, so when using it one should be especially judicious, measuring its cost in sweat and blood.91

The possibility that they might misuse these commodities caused You much anxiety. In his “Letter to Housewives” he attacked women for their failure to spend their time profitably: “Among you women there are two groups: those who go from morning to night mending with the right hand, dragging a crying kid along and giving him milk with the left, and those who have only to reach out a hand for tea and open a mouth for food [i.e., who live like parasites]. They visit and play mahjong all day. The former do not know how to manage time and the latter do not know how to work.” You advised all women to simplify their work at home, spurn superstition, and set aside time each day to learn a skill—art, music, embroidery, “even” science or literature. You believed these skills yielded both moral and economic benefits. Cultivated individuals would find that “deleterious” activities lost their attraction. If need be, women also could rely on their skills to contribute to the family income.92 In another letter, You blamed housewives for failing to live within their incomes and refusing to take their household responsibilities seriously: You housewives think that the problem is lack of enough money. You think that if one only has enough of that, then anyone can have a good home. Of course, money is necessary for an organization. But look around you. How many families do you see whose economic circumstances are better than yours? And there are others who cannot compare. How do they manage to establish a home? Why can’t you organize your home within your economic limits?93

You scolded his readers for “taking their responsibilities lightly” and “overlooking the management of the household.” If they were dissatisfied with their homes, they had only themselves to blame. “If you don’t improve it, of course it won’t progress, so of course you’ll be unsatisfied.” He also blamed women for not trying to better themselves: You don’t try to advance yourselves. Of course, the one who goes out to work [i.e., the husband] has more contact with people, more exchange,


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more molding, so of course he will be much more advanced than the one who works at home no matter what the level of education or intelligence of the wife. But even though a husband’s and wife’s knowledge and ability cannot be exactly the same, the wife should try to learn about her husband’s work and raise her general level of knowledge so that she practices her ability to handle business, helps him, and progresses with him.94

You made no pretense of wanting a wife whose abilities equaled his own. New Culture and Nationalist ideals of marriage as a partnership of equals gave way to his plans for creating a xiao jiating that operated like a wellorganized company. You’s interest in making the family operate at optimum economic efficiency revealed itself in the connections he drew between women’s reproductive work and money management and men’s productivity outside the home: When you decide to “return to the home” [after giving up a job or career], does your decision arise from sincere motives? Is it completely free of coercion? Only if there is no question on this point will your life afterward be secure and happy. Only then will your home be a product of true love. At the same time, you must understand that from the first day of your life together you have responsibilities. You cannot totally depend on your husband. You must respect yourself and you must respect your husband’s work. Do not think only of your own benefit and criticize him for all sorts of things. Help him with his work as much as you can, giving him every kind of convenience. No matter what his success at work, you should be the first to praise him. When he fails, you will be the only one to comfort him. A clear-headed woman will not let money influence her feelings and behavior. Whether rich or poor, she is constant. So, if you make up your mind to be a virtuous and intelligent [xianhui] wife, you cannot let your husband have only hard work and no comfort.95

Thus, if You’s plan for the conjugal xiao jiating were to be realized, women had to remain in the home to facilitate their husbands’ productive labor. Women’s behavior no longer manifested a moral code (as it did in the days when chastity and seclusion defined a virtuous wife), but rather a commercial one. You cautioned young men against underestimating the importance of marrying wisely. One Family Weekly article opined that although education laid the “foundation” of a young man’s life, his success depended upon his wife and their xiao jiating, “because an unhappy marriage, inharmonious home, or broken feelings between husband and wife will affect one’s vitality. And these difficulties, if they do not break off one’s



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study and work, will certainly disrupt it. One will not compare with those who obtained a good and beneficial housewife and so peacefully went to work.”96 The author of this article illustrated the importance of a carefully considered marriage with an autobiographical essay he had read recently in the newspaper Zhongyang ribao (Central daily news). The young author of the essay described the love and trust that made his marriage successful. Despite the Family Weekly author’s insistence that young people focus on the spiritual rather than the material, the examples of trust that he cited from the Central Daily News essay revolved around the wife’s control of family finances. She faithfully followed the budget she and her husband planned together. She was frugal. She meticulously recorded all expenses and regularly reported to her husband on their finances. All this gave him “great peace of mind.” He confided that as a bachelor he had spent too much money. Once he was married, his wife watched expenses carefully and refused to give him money unless she knew what it was for. Because of her careful money management and his trust, they had a very happy home life. Despite his small income, she never complained or overspent. She was happy with her responsibility and equal to it. Moreover, her efforts increased his resolve to work harder. She was, he concluded, understanding and she loved him.97 You made it quite clear that he believed women contributed most to productive labor through their reproductive labor. In doing so, he made explicit the New Culture and Nationalist assumptions that women would remain responsible for work in the home. Moreover, he challenged the criteria of women’s liberation created during the New Culture Movement and supported, more or less, by the Nationalists. Thus, You eliminated much of the tension that characterized visions of the modern woman, but only by eliminating its richer dimensions: These days, if someone says a woman is a man’s slave, or claims that she cannot be independent but must rely on a man, she will surely be very angry. But in fact, what percentage of modern women have really become New Age Women? Some people think that modern dress is the sign of a new woman. Others think that if they have studied and can understand applications of the past to the present, or even speak a Western language, that is a sign distinguishing the New Age Woman. Some of these views are outright mistaken, others are deficient. The New Age Woman should be a figure in society, a companion in the home, and a mother of children. She should bear not only the responsibility of society but also that of the second generation. The new woman is not one who enjoys herself and


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spends. Her role is one of bitter work and heavy responsibility. So fastidiousness of dress, extent of knowledge, or life achievements are not distinguishing signs of a New Age Woman.98

You denied the significance of women’s economic independence. Advanced education was as frivolous as a fancy dress. What mattered most was that women cooperated with male and state claims to their reproductive labor. Housewifery and motherhood had not only become women’s “natural” vocations but also their civic duties. You’s attack hit all the key points of the women’s rights movement, suggesting that women had been misled by their efforts to be modernly dressed, well educated, and economically independent. He even went so far as to invoke the traditional female virtue of self-sacrifice. But whereas traditional society had demanded women sacrifice their interests for the sake of the family alone, You now claimed it was necessary for the very health of the nation. You set out the distinguishing signs of a “New Age Woman” in a series of “Letters to Housewives.” In these letters You continued to argue that women’s place was in the home because they served their social role best as wives and mothers. By making the home comfortable, a woman facilitated her husband’s productive labor. By educating her children, she prepared them to participate in society. “Women,” one letter insisted, “are not only the children’s mother, and the husband’s mother, but also the mother of all successful ventures.” The letter continued: At present there are many people saying that women should leave the home and step into society, that they should do the same work as men and enjoy the same rights as men. Of course, women are also members of society, working for its construction. No one can deny it. But is not the improvement of the home, the education and the nurturing of children an important part of building society? Why do we have to encourage women to leave the home? Home and people’s happiness in it influences society’s progress. Comfort in the home creates happiness of spirit for each member of society. If they can make those who serve outside [i.e., their husbands] feel that their home is comfortable, happy, and helps them advance and not feel that the family is tiresome, then that is a great contribution. The rationalization of each family nurtures future members of our society. Family reform is the fundamental work of building society.99

You’s xiao jiating ideal carried grave implications for women. He built his vision of family and national reform on the assumption that women would continue to provide reproductive labor for the family and the state. The power of his family rhetoric was strengthened not only by the ex-



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plicit demands of nation-building, but also by the implicit role of male individualism. Beginning with the New Culture Movement, the object of many family-reform essays, most often written by men, had been women. Just as New Culture students lamented their marriages to “yellow-faced,” ignorant country girls, so You Huaigao fretted that urban women— whether “radical women’s libbers” or “parasites”—might disrupt his plans for family reform.

conclusion: reconciling state and individual The xiao jiating ideal that emerged on the pages of Family Weekly had undergone a dramatic metamorphosis since its introduction during the New Culture Movement. The New Culture ideal of xiao jiating had emphasized emotional fulfillment and individual independence. Later the Nationalists tried to parlay the individual’s newfound independence into a state-building tool. You’s xiao jiating, although draped in the rhetoric of individual fulfillment and national strengthening, firmly identified itself with the material culture of Shanghai. In You’s hands, the xiao jiating became a commercial trope, a symbol of the “good life.” And in the self-fulfilling manner in which consumerism regenerates itself, xiao jiating became both the product You tried to sell and the audience to whom he tried to sell it. At the same time, You embedded his family ideal in a holistic vision of reform that included self-cultivation and rationalized economic practices in addition to family reform. You Huaigao and the entrepreneurs who shared his vision believed that the key to China’s future lay in an economic revitalization rooted in the individual and the family. His activities and professional associations suggest the presence of a group within the reform-minded elite that found neither the Communist nor Nationalist program attractive, but instead clung to its vision of economic reform as the key to national strengthening. The version of the xiao jiating promoted by Family Weekly also appeared in many commercial periodicals from the mid-1930s until shortly after the Communist victory in 1949. Its resolution of the tensions between the dual impulses of individualism and nationalism may account for its popularity. Because one contributed to the nation through economic productivity, one served the nation and oneself by living out the entrepreneurial xiao jiating ideal. The entrepreneurial xiao jiating offered the possibility of expressing individual needs and wants independent of a larger goal.100


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At the same time, You’s model reasserted women’s responsibility to home and hearth. The qualities he lauded in the ideal housewife resonated with traditional requirements: thrift, industry, devotion. The fate of the nation depended on her skill as mother, wife, and housekeeper. Ultimately, the language of nation-building made it particularly difficult for women to find an oppositional voice in the family-reform debate. In the Republican era, the language of nation-building dominated public discourse. Movements and individuals that did not justify their reforms in terms of state-strengthening did not survive. Women could not effectively challenge the xiao jiating ideal in a language that emphasized their own rights as individuals and their desire for self-fulfillment beyond the home. This left them without the rhetorical tools or vocabulary to contest a family ideal that privileged the male individual within the family and appropriated women’s reproductive labor for family and state. New Culture reformers used the language of national strengthening to free themselves and women from the family. The Nationalists used state-strengthening rhetoric to provide women with legal rights that helped them resist family demands and exploitation. You manipulated the same language to renew women’s obligations to home and hearth. By the 1930s, women had begun to make inroads into education, the professions, and politics. You Huaigao’s xiao jiating threatened to thwart this progress in the name of a happy home and vigorous nation. As the CCP state took power, it openly rejected the entrepreneurial blueprints for a greater China. Like the Nationalists, the CCP emphasized the state-building possibilities of the xiao jiaiting ideal. It would denounce much of the domesticity of the Republican model as a bourgeois affectation (even as it continued to expect women to shoulder reproductive labor). But it would use the most fundamental element of this “bourgeois” marriage ideal—the importance of personal happiness to economic productivity—to ease the introduction of marriage reforms in the countryside.


chapter 4

Love for Revolution Xiao Jiating in the People’s Republic

Throughout this book I have examined the participants in the familyreform debate during the period in which they were best able to disseminate their visions of the ideal family. It is for this reason that I concentrate here on Chinese Communist Party marriage policies after the CCP came to power in 1949. Of course, the CCP had turned its attention to marriage issues long before 1950. Mao’s essay on Miss Chao, who killed herself rather than marry the man her parents had chosen for her, and his comments on women’s extra burden (the authority of the husband, in addition to the other feudal authorities of the state, of the clan, and of the gods and spirits) have become famous.1 The Party implemented some marriage reforms first in the Jiangxi Soviet (1929–1934) and later in the areas around its headquarters in Yan’an (1936–1947). Kay Ann Johnson has devoted a great deal of attention to the CCP’s marriage policies in both places.2 In both situations, the Party eventually sacrificed full implementation of marriage reform to avoid losing peasant support.3 Johnson reports that “the low-priority support given to implementing women’s rights and marriage reforms in Kiangsi [Jiangxi] narrowed further in the wartime base areas and eventually turned to active suppression of those who attempted to raise such issues within the Party.”4 Johnson argues that the CCP failed to push for women’s rights and marriage reform because it believed it had to make concessions to tradition in order to maintain the support of the peasants and enable the Party to enlist peasant men in the Red Army: 167


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Mao had already argued that marriage reform, which promoted women’s rights, would simultaneously benefit these poor men because it would abolish the economically ruinous bride price system. But when faced with a serious conflict between his goals, Mao, like most other leaders, usually sought to resolve the conflict by downplaying, compromising or moderating efforts to promote women’s struggle against traditional male and family authority. Thus, in an effort to protect the morale of his fighting men, Mao personally supported the clause abrogating the divorce rights of army wives. . . . The pattern of compromise is an enduring feature of women’s rights and family reform policy in China. The conflict has its roots in the contradictory aspirations of the different constituents of the revolution and in the dual nature of the experienced family crisis which helped to create revolutionary conditions. In the initial years in Kiangsi, Mao and other leaders hoped to be able to straddle the two sides of this experience—the intellectual’s iconoclastic struggle against a decadent tradition and the poor peasant’s struggle to hold on to some semblance of the old norms of decency and legitimacy. Yet when there were sharp conflicts between advocates of women’s rights and the poor male peasants, Mao, like most of the PartyArmy leadership, empathized with the latter, who constituted their most crucial constituency.5

In other words, when forced to choose between revolutionary principle and political expediency, the Party consistently chose the latter. As a result, marriage and land reform policies as they applied to women were either not implemented, or they were interpreted in a way that reinforced patriarchal authority. The need to maintain peasant support certainly influenced the CCP’s tepid implementation of marriage reform and subordination of women’s rights, but it does not fully explain it. Despite Party claims that it was inventing a new and revolutionary vision of the family, the government’s family ideal represented a continuation, even a culmination, of the decadeslong discourse on family reform and the evolution of state-society relations that it reflected. In fact, the internal logic of family-reform rhetoric aided the CCP’s consolidation of its authority and legitimacy. Soon after the Chinese Communist Party came to power, the government promoted its own version of the xiao jiating, one that pressed the ideal further into the service of the state. On 30 April 1950, the Central Committee passed the Marriage Law as one of its first legislative actions. The law took effect the next day and the government soon began a propaganda campaign that carried new ideals of marriage and family out of the urban centers and into the coun-


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tryside. The government launched the Marriage Law along with the land reform movement as part of a two-pronged attack on the old “feudalist” hierarchies.6 Theoretically speaking, marriage and land reform were ideologically compatible because both sought to undermine traditional power relationships. The Party also believed that women would have to have land of their own, and thus a means to support themselves, if the Marriage Law and divorce laws were to have any effect.7 Nevertheless, cadres on the ground understood that marriage reform discouraged male peasant support for CCP reforms and might offset the wealth-creating possibilities that land reform offered. (A wife was often an expensive investment; she might well have cost her husband’s family several years of income.) Cadres were also wary of weakening land reform efforts by creating gender divisions within the lower peasant classes.8 The government recognized the controversial nature of the Marriage Law and discouraged cadres from enforcing it while they led the many other political campaigns that took place from 1950 to 1953.9 It was only in 1953 that marriage reform received the same kind of wellorganized, concentrated effort that land reform had.10 In that year the government started a campaign to “fully implement the Marriage Law” (guanche zhixing hunyin fa) by educating peasants and cadres about its proper execution. Despite the Party’s restraint in implementing the Marriage Law, the legislation and accompanying propaganda shed much light on the new state’s vision of the relation between state, family, and individual. The priority that the Central Committee gave the formulation and promulgation of the CCP’s Marriage Law speaks to the importance that the government attributed to an appropriate formulation of the family. More than a vehicle for improving women’s rights and weakening the power of patriarchal authority, the law helped define the relationship between state and society. Also, the government did, in fact, sponsor many exhibitions and publications on the Marriage Law from 1950 through 1952, and its justification for the law’s implementation remained consistent over these years. Because the Marriage Law campaign of 1953 marked a renewed effort to execute the law, not a revision of the rationale for doing so, the literature produced prior to the campaign is just as useful for understanding CCP formulations of the xiao jiating ideal as materials produced during the 1953 campaign. The CCP described its Marriage Law as the “crystallization” of the long fight, begun by the New Culture Movement, against the “feudal”


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customs of traditional China.11 It claimed for itself the glorious accomplishment of “upending patriarchal domination and protecting the proper interests of women and children,” ignoring the decades of Nationalist and entrepreneurial efforts that had followed the New Culture Movement. In fact, Party propagandists did not even credit the New Culture Movement with launching the attack on the patriarchal family. They reserved this honor for Mao’s essay on the Hunan peasant movement, in which he observed that while peasant men lived under three bonds, women lived under four because they also suffered the oppression of patriarchy.12 Scholars have been too quick to believe the CCP’s self-promotion. In presenting the 1950 Marriage Law as the first serious attempt at marriage reform in China, the CCP ignored the nearly identical code issued by the GMD almost twenty years before and its success in modifying urban marriage custom.13 In fact, the CCP Marriage Law closely resembled the GMD code of 1931 in both its particulars and objectives, but the two parties’ ideological differences and adversarial relationship have obscured the commonalities. The two parties shared important similarities that stemmed from their Leninist party-organization and their common roots in the New Culture Movement; as New Culture radicals entered the Nationalist and Communist parties in the 1920s, they brought with them the ideal of individual voluntarism, a passionate devotion to national strengthening, a belief in the need for state leadership in social and political reform, and the conviction that traditional patriarchal power stood in the way of national progress.14 All of these characteristics manifested themselves in the marriage codes.15 The Nationalists presented family reform as a necessary step in transforming China into a strong, modern nation. The Communists harbored the same intentions. The Central People’s Judiciary Committee explained that family reform was part and parcel of the “Chinese people’s long struggle led by the proletariat to oppose imperialism, feudalism, [and] bureaucratic-capitalist struggle.”16 By assuming a leading role in family reform and linking it to national strengthening, both governments hoped to use their marriage codes to solidify the supremacy of the state over the competing loyalties to family and self. Fu Bingchang, the convener of the GMD’s Codification Committee, lauded the “social” nature of the Guomindang’s civil code, praising it for placing the good of society above the interests of the individual. The Nationalists never defined the nature of the social good, although they assumed that the state would determine it. Communists made explicit their definition of the social good


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and the family’s role in bringing it about, binding family reform to their revolutionary agenda. The Marriage Law of the People’s Republic of China, like that of the Republic of China, guaranteed the right to choose one’s spouse.17 Like the GMD code, it also prohibited individuals from marrying if they were afflicted with venereal disease, mental illness, leprosy, or a physical disorder that made them incapable of having sexual intercourse.18 Both codes attended to the welfare of children by requiring that parents support and educate them.19 The two codes also established minimum ages for marriage (the CCP code set the minimum age at eighteen for women and twenty for men; the GMD had set the minimum at two years younger for both sexes).20 Both codes explicitly recognized the equality of men and women. The CCP code, however, lent weight to mandated gender equality with an article that gave women equal rights to the possession and management of family property.21 It also allowed women to keep their own family names after marriage (without prefixing the husband’s family name).22 On several points, the CCP furthered the state-building agenda begun by the GMD, successfully pushing the state deeper into the interior of the family unit. In an effort to decrease familial authority over marriage and to make the marriage ceremony a more public ritual, the GMD had demanded that couples marry in an “open” ceremony with at least two witnesses. This requirement implicitly acknowledged the existence of a space that fell within the purview of neither family nor state—a protocivil sphere, if you will. The CCP completed the transfer of power from the family to the state. It refused to recognize the legitimacy of any union formed after 1949 that had not been approved by and registered with the “people’s government” of the district or township in which they lived.23 The CCP dismissed the GMD requirement for two witnesses as a remnant of feudal custom. It claimed, moreover, that its system of registration effectively prevented bigamy.24 The truth of this claim is, in fact, less important than what this statute says about the CCP’s vision of statesociety relations. The CCP code excluded family, friends, and all other social contacts as sources of legitimation for marriage. Marriage no longer took place through the authority of the parents, as in the traditional world, or under the auspices of family and friends who served as witnesses, but only under the watchful eyes of the state. Once the CCP came to power, it was willing and able to make the most private matters public. Although people did not always welcome these intrusions, they did not resist them outright—reflecting both the


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coercive force of the new government and the degree to which the populace had come to accept an invasive state. For example, the CCP interviewed members of households to uncover abuse, infanticide, and arranged marriages in their homes and those of their neighbors.25 In the course of one such investigation, cadres uncovered an “irregular” marital relationship. A young woman had struck up a liaison with a married man. His wife learned about the affair but did not ask for a divorce. Instead, the young woman moved in and they all shared one house. The Party forced the young woman to write a self-criticism and then insisted on a second. It accused her of being a loose woman. Then she heard rumors that her case would be used as an example in the Marriage Law campaign of March 1953. Rather than face such humiliation, she jumped to her death from a Shanghai rooftop.26 The most dramatic example of the collapse between public and private appeared in the form of public divorce trials in which the trial itself, as well as the executions, took place before a large crowd that the government had assembled to watch the law in action. In 1951, the Beijing Municipal Marriage Office held 211 public trials. Most of the men on trial had killed their wives while beating them. The guilty were often executed. At the Shanghai Hengfeng Cotton Mill, 1,800 people were gathered together to watch the trial of men accused of raping, abusing, or seducing women. The guilty received two to four years in prison or labor camps.27 Just as the CCP took a central role in the creation of the conjugal unit, so it became the arbiter of its dissolution. Both the GMD and CCP codes allowed divorce by mutual consent: in this regard they continued a practice honored in imperial China. The GMD code had also listed ten conditions under which either party might sue for divorce. The CCP, however, did not define the grounds upon which one party could sue for divorce. Instead, it prescribed mediation by the people’s district government for contested divorces. If mediation failed, the district government allowed the plaintiff to take his or her case to the county or municipal court. There too, the court’s first duty was to attempt a reconciliation. Only if reconciliation failed again would the court consider divorce.28 Like the statute on registration of marriage, this article greatly increased state participation in family affairs. This is not, of course, to say that the courts under the GMD gave out divorces with a liberal hand. In fact, the cases that we examined in chapter 2 and studies by Kathryn Bernhardt suggest that GMD courts interpreted the divorce statutes conservatively and granted divorces reluctantly.29 Nevertheless, in creating criteria for


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divorce, the GMD code had at least allowed for the possibility of action independent of state endorsement or interference. The CCP code, in contrast, eliminated the possibility of social and legal action free of state direction. This statute directly affected people’s lives when the Party decided to restrict the frequency of divorce. Without explicit grounds for divorce, people found it difficult to fight the Party’s reluctance to grant it to them.30 Although statistical evidence is fragmentary, it seems clear that peasant women took advantage of the divorce statutes early on. Kay Ann Johnson estimates that the divorce rate may have peaked sharply in 1953 with 1.1 million divorces (about 2 per 1,000 people) and then rapidly declined. Divorce undermined traditional community structure and threatened to rob peasant families of one of their most significant investments: daughters-in-law. These effects discouraged many peasants from supporting the Communists and the land reform campaign. As Johnson notes, “The thrust of the 1953 marriage reform campaign was precisely to emphasize that the democratic reform of the family could be carried out without undermining basic, traditional aspirations for a secure family life.”31 The Party was, therefore, unwilling to enforce rights that contradicted its promise that marriage reform would bring happiness, security, and prosperity. After 1953, divorce was almost unheard of in the countryside and rare in the cities, where it was usually granted only for political reasons; men and women whose spouses had become targets of political purges might “draw a strict line of demarcation” by divorcing the offender. In this fashion they hoped to protect their own political status and that of their children.32 This state of affairs continued until the late 1970s, when discussions of divorce began to appear in the media. In 1980 the CCP rewrote the Marriage Law. In the new version it recognized the absence of love as an important criterion for divorce. It also acknowledged the limits of government mediation. The 1950 law allowed for the possibility of divorce only if mediation failed; even then, the court might reject a divorce suit. But the 1980 law mandated that couples be allowed to divorce if mediation did not effect a reconciliation.33 The CCP code completed the integration of the family into the nationbuilding project. New Culture radicals had insisted that individual fulfillment would free people’s creative energies for the improvement of state and society. The GMD, in the 1920s and the 1930s, had also believed that a degree of freedom from the encumbrances of the traditional family was necessary to the development of a productive citizenry. Entre-


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preneurs in the 1930s and 1940s had also presented family happiness and rationalization as the keys to a modern China. In the article that described the duties of husband and wife, the CCP Marriage Law revealed its debt to Republican constructions of the xiao jiating: “It is the husband and wife’s duty to love and respect one another, help and support one another, to unite harmoniously, be productive, raise children, and thereby struggle together for the happiness of the home and the construction of a new society.”34 This statute echoed the injunctions of previous participants in the family-reform debate. In the primacy of the conjugal unit and the importance of mutual love and respect we see the legacy of the New Culture Movement. A number of Republican-era reformers, from journalist Liang Qichao to dairyman-cum-reformer You Huaigao, had emphasized the need for a family reform that would lead to greater productivity and healthier, better educated children. All family reformers had insisted that the conjugal family would reinvigorate the nation. The Nationalists had designed their family law with national strengthening as their ultimate goal. In all these aspects, the CCP built upon the ideas and ideals of its predecessors. But the CCP extended these principles to explicitly include nation-building as part of a couple’s marital duties. By insisting on this tribute to the state, the CCP obliterated distinctions between private and public and absorbed the most interior aspects of the private world into the political realm. The private became more political than anyone could ever have anticipated.

getting word out In disseminating its version of the family ideal the CCP addressed two distinct audiences. A sizable urban population was already familiar with the xiao jiating ideal popularized by You Huaigao and other publishers and was acquainted with Republican and PRC marriage legislation. In the suburbs and the countryside, however, traditional ideals of patriarchal authority continued to hold sway. The Party used two voices to approach these disparate audiences. In the cities it tried to reshape “bourgeois” ideals of love and marriage by appealing to urbanites’ nationalism. In the countryside it faced the challenge of undermining a stubborn patriarchal system. There it found promises of increased production most effective. Although the very different audiences mandated the use of different tactics, the Party’s goal remained the same—to place loyalty to the state and economic productivity above all else.


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Revolution Comes to the City Within a year of taking power, the CCP launched an urban propaganda campaign designed to redirect the Republican family ideals propagated by the likes of You Huaigao. Under the tutelage of entrepreneurs, many urbanites had come to connect the xiao jiating ideal with consumerism. The CCP was determined to break that link. It condemned as individualistic, petit bourgeois, or capitalist those ideals of love and marriage that prevented individuals from fulfilling their duties to the new socialist state and society. Using lectures, symposia, and popular publications, the CCP tried to reeducate urbanites about the “proper” connections between love, marriage, and civic duty. Many publications used a question-and-answer format to engage readers in a guided conversation about the proper interpretation and application of the Marriage Law. For example, a Party handbook posed and answered the question Q: Why does this Marriage Law establish the happiness of the home and promote the development of society? A: This law fully expresses the spirit of the Central People’s Government toward the equality of men and women. Its fundamental spirit lies in enthusiastically actualizing the uplifting of women, the protection of children, and the destruction of the evil remnants of feudal society. Therefore, this Marriage Law is not only progressive, but also revolutionary. It tallies with the present circumstance of China and with the needs of the Chinese people and [what will] benefit them. In line seven of section three, there is this statute: “Husband and wife are partners in a shared life, they have equal status in the home.” Line eight rules: “It is the husband and wife’s duty to love and respect one another, help and support one another, to unite harmoniously, be productive, raise children, and thereby struggle together for the happiness of the home and for the construction of a new society.” It points out that the new democratic marriage must be bound together by true love and that real love is entirely voluntary [ziyuan] and built on the foundation of shared productive labor and shared purpose and interest. The marriage of the petit bourgeoisie classes emphasizes first and foremost the narrow interest of individual feeling. If, however, this kind of feeling does not have a foundation of shared labor and shared occupation, then gradually this kind of rootless feeling will begin to fade away and gradually become broken. They [husband and wife] will not achieve happiness in the future. Therefore, in the heart of their shared lives, husbands and wives must make sure their status is equal, that they respect and help one another, and at the same time they must participate in work and social movements. As the construction of society improves, the happiness of the home is guaranteed. Today the happi-


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Under Party auspices, real discussion about contemporary problems ossified into a ritual of indoctrination. Just four days before the Marriage Law took effect on 1 May 1950, the famous novelist Ding Ling lectured students at Qinghua University on the twenty most common questions that young people asked about love (lian’ai).36 The journal Zhongguo qingnian (Chinese youth) hosted a symposium on the same topic. In keeping with the government’s effort to disseminate as widely as possible the proper interpretation of these issues, the lecture and the results of the symposium were published soon after.37 To address readers with higher levels of both literacy and ideological sophistication, the government also issued collections of letters to the editors of various newspapers and prefaced them with heavy-handed introductions that left no doubt about the official Party line. To cadres responsible for the implementation of the new law, the government provided detailed case histories accompanied by introductions that outlined the theoretical underpinnings of the law. On average, the government printed 100,000 to 200,000 of each publication on the Marriage Law, a number that allowed the Party to reach a much larger audience than the symposia and lectures did.38 Wen-hsin Yeh has demonstrated how the CCP eventually co-opted Zou Taofen’s community of Life Weekly readers.39 A similar process is evident in the Party’s attempt to appropriate and reeducate the reader communities that had developed during the Republican era. The editors of Dajia tan (Everybody chats) used a “communitarian” approach in a collection of readers’ letters to the editor. Published as Lian’ai hunyin yu fufu shenghuo (Love, marriage, and married life), the volume contained three sets of correspondence. Each set of letters began with a reader’s request for advice. “Should I love or not?” described the dilemma of a young woman whose older cousin had suddenly proposed to her. “How to solve the problem of my younger girl cousin [biaomei]?” recounted a typical situation in which a young man found himself engaged to the uneducated tongyangxi, or adopted daughter-in-law, that his family had purchased for him years prior. “What to do about an unfeeling husband?”


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detailed the complaints of Mrs. Yang, a woman whose husband always put Party work before family life. Letters of advice from fellow readers followed the original letter. Whether actual readers penned these letters is, for our purposes, immaterial. The editors’ hand weighed heavily on the discussion from the outset. Chapter one, at sixteen pages the longest of the volume, laid out the appropriate interpretation of and solution to each problem. The collection of letters published also underwent heavy editing. Mrs. Yang claimed to have received over five hundred letters in response to her plea for advice; the editors published eleven of them.40 This pedagogical approach was used to varying degrees in many of the publications aimed at urban audiences. For example, the volume that included the lecture by Ding Ling was published along with a number of other pieces, several of which recounted “personal experiences.” The entire work was presented as the product of a collaborative effort. Even the transcript of Ding Ling’s lecture underwent group scrutiny before its publication. The editor noted, “This is a record of a lecture Ding Ling gave at Qinghua University 28 April 1950. After comrades put it in order, it was examined by comrade Ding Ling.”41 The CCP not only disseminated its version of the xiao jiating through Party publications, it also appropriated and remolded the discussion of family and home in popular periodicals that survived the 1949 transition as a vehicle for disseminating its reconfiguration of the xiao jiating.42 The transformations of two Republican-era journals, Jia (Home magazine) and Jiating (Happy home), illustrate the Party’s efforts to emphasize state ideology and production in an urban family ideal that had most recently placed more importance on individual fulfillment and consumption.43 Until October 1950, the cover of Happy Home featured the photos of movie stars and other icons of Western culture that it had used in the Republican era. The editor, Xu Baiyi, had presided over a number of newspaper supplements on home and family in the Republican period, all of which had promoted a version of the xiao jiating that resembled the Westernized, commercial vision evident in You Huaigao’s Family Weekly.44 But the volume issued in the month of the first anniversary of the People’s Republic leveled a revolutionary reprimand at the magazine’s urban, “bourgeois” readers. A black-and-white image of a peasant girl at her loom in a composition recalling a woodblock print or a new year’s paper cutout stood out against a deep red background. The simple and dramatic color scheme contrasted with the magazine’s


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previous multi-hued pastel palette. The bold print contradicted the softly polished images that had recently appeared on the magazine’s cover. Sitting in a crudely furnished room, sporting a long braid and wearing traditional dress, the peasant girl challenged the magazine’s iconography of Western fashions, short permed hair, European-style houses, and the vision of modernity that iconography represented. We do not know the ultimate fate of Happy Home or its editor. We do, however, have a much better sense of the CCP’s reform of Home Magazine, which ran from 1946 to 1953. Its editor, Huang Jiayin (1913– 1960), also edited Xifeng (Western wind), a periodical that announced its cultural orientation in its very title.45 Huang presented Home Magazine as a serious-minded magazine. Its cover usually displayed photos of eminent women (Madame Chiang Kaishek appeared on the cover of the fourth issue) or Chinese infants and toddlers. Yet its contents treated the same issues that were the standard fare of other Republican-era periodicals on home and family—the emotional, economic, and reproductive logistics of keeping a xiao jiating up and running. In the August/September 1950 issue of Home Magazine, Huang published a self-criticism renouncing his magazine’s former capitalist and petit bourgeois point of view. As with all self-criticisms, it is impossible to know whether this one represented a real change of heart or a prudent accommodation of prevailing political winds. It is, of course, entirely possible that Huang did not pen this self-criticism himself. What we do know, however, is that the Party used this essay in an attempt to remold the thought of Home Magazine’s readers. Huang declared that he regretted the commercialized flavor of the magazine and recanted his previous willingness to cater to readers’ petty interests. He acknowledged that he had impeded reunification by ignoring politics. He apologized for unconsciously promoting “Englandism” and “America-ism” by introducing a Western-style family and Western women’s lifestyle that favored idle enjoyment. Finally, he recognized that he had ignored the welfare of the laboring masses. In concluding his criticism of “pre-liberation” Home Magazine, Huang noted that the magazine’s contribution was not all bad, just incomplete; the journal had contributed to progressive ideas about child care, homemaking, and psychology, but failed to communicate this valuable information to the masses.46 The January 1952 issue of Home Magazine featured a weaving girl image very similar to the one that had appeared on the cover of Happy Home four months earlier. The very first page of this issue published the


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results of a review of materials printed by Home Publishing House ( Jia chubanshe). The review grouped Huang’s publications into three categories. The first, and largest, category included publications of “bad content or inferior translations.” Thirty books as well as all the “preliberation” issues of Home Magazine fell into this category. It was announced that they would no longer be available for purchase. Twelve books were labeled “of inferior quality or out of date.” These would be allowed to sell out, but they would not be reprinted. Only thirteen books passed muster and even these “needed to be corrected” (xiuzheng) before the next printing. It is ironic that Home Magazine’s editor apologized for promoting the Western-style family because, in its essentials, the Western family was the same as the Communists’ revolutionary family. The Western family provided the germ of the xiao jiating, and the Communists’ revolutionary family represented, in fact, yet another revision of the xiao jiating. As in the Republican xiao jiating, the PRC marriage ideal was founded on the companionate marriage ideal. Both stressed the centrality of a freely chosen conjugal bond and the mutual love and support that such a tie provided. The ultimate focus on national strengthening distinguished the xiao jiating from the Western ideal. The CCP family ideal shared this emphasis with its Republican predecessors. Xiaomei Chen uses the concept of “Occidentalism” to explain how the CCP has defined itself in opposition to the Western “Other”: Chinese Occidentalism, especially as it is reflected in the political and literary expressions of the post-Mao period . . . might be regarded as two related yet separate discursive practices, or perhaps, two different appropriations of the same discourse for strikingly different political ends. In the first, which I term official Occidentalism, the Chinese government uses the essentialization of the West as a means for supporting a nationalism that effects the internal suppression of its own people.47

Chen’s “official Occidentalism” is helpful for understanding the CCP’s treatment of the xiao jiating ideal. The CCP equated previous Republican xiao jiating ideals with the West and rejected them all. By attacking the Western family and “bourgeois” misconceptions of love and marriage, the CCP repudiated its debt to Republican family discourse and positioned itself as the only legitimate arbiter of family reform and its role in the construction of a revolutionary state. Party anxiety over the “bourgeois” elements of marriage reform is evident in a cadres’ report on an educational exhibit on the Marriage Law organized by the Shanghai Women’s Alliance (Shanghai fulian).48 We


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do not have a full tabulation of exhibit visitors’ questions and conflicts, nor do we have a record of how the cadres resolved them, but the cadres’ report allows us to draw a profile of the CCP’s urban audience for marriage reform and the Party’s reaction to this constituency. The marriage reform exhibit ran from 5 October to 5 December 1951, coinciding with a land reform exhibit. In fact, the marriage reform exhibit occupied a room in the land reform exhibition. In juxtaposing the two exhibits, the Party not only took advantage of the crowds that attended the land reform exhibit, but also stressed the ideological importance of marriage reform. In fact, the Party presented the two reforms as complementary revolutions that would dismantle the old order. The Marriage Law propaganda “tent,” as it was called, seems to have been geared to a largely illiterate audience. It housed both pictorial exhibits and an advice desk. The Shanghai Women’s Alliance created charts that included statistics on marriage cases before and after the promulgation of the new Marriage Law, the number of deaths due to marriage problems, and the number of criminal violations of the Marriage Law. It also exhibited posters that illustrated women’s oppression in the old society, contrasted the new and old marriage systems, compared the behavior of good and bad cadres in carrying out the Marriage Law, and held up positive examples of couples who had married in the spirit of the new law.49 Zhang Leping, the popular cartoonist who had created San Mao, was among those who drew the cartoons, picture books, and statistical charts.50 The Shanghai Women’s Alliance, in coordination with the Shanghai People’s Court (Shanghai renmin fayuan), operated the advice desk at the exhibition. The cadres at this desk fielded questions about the exhibit and the details of the Marriage Law.51 As if to underscore the revolutionary nature of their work, in reporting on their successes in assisting visitors the cadres presented examples that were emblematic of “feudal” family problems. Concerns about the nature of love and its appropriate application, so popular in CCP tracts published for urban audiences, were absent from the cadres’ report. Instead, cadres highlighted abuse of family authority, coercion of women, and aberrations from eugenic-minded prohibitions on intermarriage. For example, one young woman learned that as a tongyangxi, she had complete freedom to divorce. Another young woman confessed that she had been having an affair for years with the manager of the bar where she worked. Although he already had two wives, she could not muster the courage to leave. After talking with the cadres at the desk, she decided that she would no longer be his third wife.


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table 10. occupations of visitors to the marriage questions desk Laborer Housewife Office worker Merchant Cadre Teacher Unemployed Occupation unclear Student Medical worker Servant Peasant Police Artist Capitalist Revolutionary Army soldier Taxi dancer/prostitute

695 654 310 220 109 104 101 99 83 45 35 26 9 9 8 5 3

source: SMA 31.2.81, Marriage Questions Desk Summary, 6.

The desk urged her to bring the man in so that he could be educated. The cadres’ report indicates that she did just that. Afterward both sides came to a mutual decision to break off the affair.52 A father came to the cadres because his daughter wanted to end her relationship with him in retaliation for her stepmother’s abuse. At the cadres’ insistence, the two women came in together. The stepmother agreed to live harmoniously with her stepdaughter and the girl acceded to the cadres’ insistence that she maintain the father-daughter relationship. But this daughter got more help than she wished for. In the course of their conversations, the cadres discovered that she had fallen in love with a cousin within the five generations of collateral relationship. Because this violated the code’s prohibitions on marrying kin, they insisted that she not marry him.53 Despite the Party’s hope of reaching peasants and illiterates through this exhibit, statistics on the visitors who stopped to ask questions show that the exhibition attracted the same groups that had been attentive to family issues in the Republican era. That is to say, they were young, relatively well-educated white-collar workers and their spouses. As table 10 shows, laborers, housewives, office workers, and merchants made up the majority of the desk’s 2,515 visitors.54 Only 12 percent of visitors were illiterate; 6 percent had attended university, 32 percent had received a high school education, and 37 percent had attended elementary school.


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Half the attendees were between the ages of twenty and twenty-nine, while another 28 percent were aged thirty to thirty-nine.55 In their final report, the cadres fretted about the exhibit’s failure to reach illiterates and peasants. Although the number of women (1,128) who came to the desk almost equaled the number of men (1,387), the cadres worried that many women had been kept home by housework or by the fact that they could not read advertisements announcing the exhibit. They claimed to notice an increase in women’s attendance as word of the exhibit spread. They also recognized that the exhibit’s Shanghai location was just too far from the countryside for most peasants to attend it.56 The Shanghai Women’s Alliance cadres also felt uncomfortable with the population that the exhibit and the advice desk had attracted. Noting that housewives accounted for 58 percent of the women who came to the questions desk,57 the report claimed this as evidence that marriage problems were still very common and that housewives’ economic dependence interfered with their achieving total consciousness and a willingness to fight for their rights. But the very preponderance of their numbers suggests that this was, in fact, the sector of the female population that was most willing, or able, to insist on better treatment in marriage. The report also noted that the Party had intended to benefit laborers and disingenuously insisted that the goal had been reached because 76 percent of those attending the exhibition were “laborers” (gongren). However, this figure was arrived at only by lumping together laborers, teachers, office workers, and cadres.58 This suggests that the number of petty urbanites, or petite bourgeoisie, who availed themselves of the Party’s revolutionary efforts made the Women’s Alliance uncomfortable. The alliance feared that marriage reform would remain the province of the bourgeoisie, or that it was, somehow, intrinsically bourgeois. The CCP iterated its demand that urbanites place ideological understanding and the interests of the masses before individualistic and romantic bourgeois fantasies and selfish preoccupations through its own publications and those like Huang’s Home Magazine. In their critique of “petit bourgeois” ideas about love, marriage, and family, these publications focused on four points: the “selfish” misconception that love was a purely personal matter; the negotiation of a proper relationship among love, study, and work; the definition of “revolutionary love”; and the valorization of social progress and the nationalist cause as the source of all personal fulfillment. In urban Republican China, women had most often been identified with the more superficial aspects of cosmopolitan culture. They were the con-


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sumers of all that China’s port cities had to offer.59 This gendering of consumption was, perhaps, responsible for the Party’s insistence that women were most susceptible to selfish, romantic, “petit bourgeois” ideas about love and marriage.60 Women guilty of this fault, like the Mrs. Yang who sparked a deluge of letters to Everybody Chats with her complaint about her “unfeeling husband,” complained that their husbands’ work interfered with couples’ time together. Mrs. Yang told the readers of Everybody Chats how her husband had disappointed her plans for an intimate New Year’s Eve. Instead of seeing a movie and taking an evening walk, he held a workers’ meeting that lasted until well past midnight.61 Such women also bemoaned the absence of warmth and affection in their daily lives.62 If women were susceptible to “petit bourgeois feeling,” men tended to harbor “feudal” expectations that their wives would “heed their authority.” Men also tended to ignore home life for the sake of their Party work. Party publications explained that although quite different at first glance, both views of the conjugal relationship were rooted in misconceptions about love and marriage. Both the petit bourgeois wife and the feudal husband believed their relationship was an entirely private affair, and each expected to possess the other. This situation created conflict because people often tried to change their “possessions” to better suit their liking.63 Even more seriously, in the Party’s eyes, this point of view led couples to ignore the social significance of their union. Party propaganda countered this “selfish” approach to love and married life in two ways. On the one hand, it acknowledged the importance that conjugal love had gained in the Republican period by affirming the need for attention and affection in marriage. At the same time, it insisted that people balance emotional satisfaction and social commitment. It pointed out that husbands were more than romantic partners and wives were more than comrades. “Only when work and love are well combined do we manage married life well,” advised Zhang Fan.64 Ding Ling observed that to dismiss all emotional warmth as petit bourgeois was to say that the proletariat had no human feelings.65 Warmth and affection were normal, she maintained, they just had to be appropriately regulated. While students or young people who had just started working might want to delay love if it got in the way of other pursuits, adults were expected to balance love and work.66 A correct understanding of “revolutionary love” provided the key to striking the proper balance: “We cannot look at love just from a private point of view, rather, we must understand it from the point of view of its relation with society. For this reason, we must join together our re-


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sponsibility to our partner [duixiang] and to society, and build love upon the foundation of the couple working hard together for the people.”67 This Communist xiao jiating ideal continued to link love and social responsibility just as New Culture, Nationalist, and entrepreneurial versions had. But whereas earlier Republican formulations had made the improvement of society the result of conjugal happiness, the Communist version made it the explicit goal. Accordingly, the Party counseled young people to gauge their compatibility with others by assessing the similarity of their political views.68 Zhang Fan asserted that love could not last without the foundation of shared political thought.69 Ding Ling also explained that revolutionary love was built on the foundation of shared outlooks and comparable levels of political sophistication. Only then could two people “establish a foundation for their life together and unceasingly progress politically.”70 The Republican-era concern with similarities in education, personality, and background took a back seat to the all-encompassing mission of building the People’s Republic of China. Love became a problem to be resolved with a rational and practical “revolutionary outlook”: “As we know, the relationship of the revolutionary husband and wife should be first and foremost that of comrades— [though] naturally it is not just that of comrades—the loved one [airen] is one’s lifelong revolutionary partner; for this reason, the feeling between husband and wife is first of all that of revolution.”71 The goal of such revolutionary feeling was to help one another progress ever forward in political thought. The Party dismissed as “petit bourgeois,” “capitalist,” even “feudal,” and entirely “unrealistic” the Republican notion that true love superseded all.72 Tension between work and love and between the individual and the state had existed in the family-reform debate from the beginning. All participants worked within the parameters of the discourse to mold the xiao jiating in a manner that best served their interests. New Culture radicals were most interested in personal autonomy and so they emphasized the opportunities for emotional and economic self-determination that the xiao jiating offered. The GMD wanted to harness the energies of individuals and direct them toward state-building; through legislation, it tried to reduce family authority enough to increase individual independence while maintaining enough family structure to prevent complete individual autonomy. Entrepreneurs linked the xiao jiating to a culture of consumption in the hopes that a growing economy would save the Chinese nation. Like the GMD, the Communist government emphasized the state-


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building possibilities of the xiao jiating. But unlike its predecessors, it entertained no ambiguity about the relative importance of the state versus the individual. Republican-era reformers had connected love and work by claiming that happiness in the former increased productivity in the latter, but they maintained a distinction between the two. In fact, it was only by distinguishing them that they could place them in a mutually reinforcing relationship. To ensure the paramount position of the state, the CCP collapsed distinctions between love and work and conflated both with the needs of the revolutionary state: “In conclusion, we must give pride of place to that which benefits the revolution. Individual issues must follow in obedience to that [principle]. Only in this way can we finally fully resolve the contradiction between work and love.”73 In the PRC, one loved and worked for revolution. Each of the Republican participants in the family-reform debate had created, or at least acknowledged, extra-state space. The New Culture radicals championed the importance of social and psychological space for the individual. In its family legislation and marriage policy the GMD recognized, albeit sometimes grudgingly, social space external to the government. Entrepreneurs exploited the separation of work and home space that accompanies industrializing economies and cultivated a vision of home and family as a private haven from the workaday world. Each of these Republican constructions bound the individual’s autonomy to the goal of state-strengthening. But the Communist vision of state-society relations erased completely the distinctions between private and political. In the name of revolution, the CCP asked its citizens to subordinate their needs and desires to the greater good: “Our revolutionary enterprise is not to be confused or limited by the present; our duty is heavy, [and] for the sake of [our] common purpose, sometimes it is necessary to sacrifice individual benefit a little, and follow the good of the great revolutionary benefit.”74 The individual’s status returned to the bottom of the political and social hierarchy, where it had stood before the New Culture Movement. Yet this was not simply a return to the traditional political culture. In imperial China the family had been the primary unit of social organization and an object of loyalty. Although political philosophers acknowledged tensions between loyalty to one’s family and loyalty to the state, in the ideal Confucian universe, filial piety and loyalty to the emperor reinforced one another. In the Republican era, statebuilding enterprises and the cultural reforms that were their vehicles retained the family as the basic site of social organization but replaced loyalty to the family with loyalty to the nation. With the success of the


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Communist revolution, the equation of the nation with the state, which had begun with the Republican period, was complete; the state became the beginning and the end, the mode of social organization, and the object of all energies and loyalties. Xiao Jiating Goes to the Countryside As the foundation for a “new social life, new marital and family relations, and new moral outlook,”75 the Marriage Law had to be instituted in the countryside as well as in the city. Whereas in the cities cadres had found it most difficult to eliminate concubinage and domestic violence, in the countryside, many peasants seem to have resisted all aspects of marriage reform.76 The government, however, in keeping with its valorization of the revolutionary peasant, portrayed the rural population as taking the strongest stand in the call for the end of all feudal social relations, including arranged and coerced marriages. It claimed that in the wake of the “war of liberation” (i.e., the civil war between the Nationalists and the CCP that lasted from 1945 to 1949) and under the influence of the democratic movement, land reform, the production movement, and the new democratic education system, the entire country called for the destruction of all remaining feudal restrictions in government, economics, social thought, and daily life: “Not only is it like this in the city, but it is especially so in the countryside.” The people’s opposition to any remnants of feudalism was reported to be strongest where the landlord system had been broken; as feudal economic hierarchies crumbled, the power of clan, ghost, and patriarch began to wobble too.77 The government consistently portrayed marriage reform as a logical outgrowth of land reform and other campaigns of liberation. Many branches of the People’s Press issued their own booklets introducing the Marriage Law and its proper implementation to workers, peasants, and village-level cadres. The editors carefully shaped these publications to address their rural audience. These texts most commonly focused on the illegality of arranged marriages, harassment of remarried widows, and unjust denial of divorce. They often relied on short “biographies” of model men and women to illustrate the principles and benefits of marriage reform.78 The editors of Meiman hunyin (Happy marriage) promised their audience of “workers, peasants, district and village cadres, and elementary school children” that the accounts of successful marriages detailed in this volume were vivid and faithful records that would promote patriotism and “internationalist education.”79


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Figure 10. “Freedom of marriage, a life of prosperity and happiness.” From Huanan wenxue yishu jie lianhehui, Zhonghua renmin gongheguo hunyin fa: Tujie ben, 5.

Illustrated booklets used simple language and detailed vignettes to communicate to a rural audience of minimal literacy the particulars and principles of the Marriage Law. (Simple pictorial materials probably also helped cadres overcome some of the communication difficulties caused by China’s numerous dialects.) In a particularly well illustrated version of the Marriage Law, for example, the pictures occupied as much space as the text and often needed very little explication. The first drawing to accompany the code shows a contented looking couple sitting in a field (see figure 10). He holds a hoe and gestures at the crops and she carries a basket full of squashes. The caption above their heads reads, “Freedom of marriage, a life of prosperity and happiness.” Below them in either corner are small images of misery. On the right side an older woman consults a matchmaker as a young girl holds her head in her hands. The left frame illustrates the girl’s fate: overturned furniture and broken bowls emphasize the conflict between a dispirited husband and his weeping wife. Another caption, “Arranged marriage, a life of pain and bitterness,” brings the point home.80 All the illustrations relied on a few stark dichotomies—happiness/


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Figure 11. “Protecting the interests of women and children.” From Huanan wenxue yishu jie lianhehui, Zhonghua renmin gongheguo hunyin fa: Tujie ben, 17.

misery, plenty/want, health/illness—to communicate the value of the Marriage Law, and often they drew on more than one at a time. A frame illustrating the principles of gender equality and the protection of women and children contrasted the misery and want of a family afflicted by wife abuse with one that respected women and children (see figure 11). The unhappiness of the woman being beaten by her husband contrasted with the contentment of a mother nursing a baby and watching her husband teach another child to read. We also notice that while the unhappy family has only empty baskets, the happy family has hung on the wall several baskets overflowing with grain and produce. A section on the legality of widow remarriage used text to point out the productive advantages of remarriage and an illustration to contrast the happiness of marriage with the emptiness of a memorial to chaste widows (see figure 12). Issues that might otherwise have proven too complex to explain to an uneducated audience were reduced to simple pictures. The CCP’s concern with eugenics and the production of a healthy citizenry expressed itself in the drawing that accompanied the statute on the legal age of marriage (twenty for men and eighteen for women). A prepubescent couple remains weak and stunted and produces a sickly,


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Figure 12. “Widows have a right to remarry.” From Huanan wenxue yishu jie lianhehui, Zhonghua renmin gongheguo hunyin fa: Tujie ben, 25.

dispirited child. A fully grown man and woman retain their energy and vigor and produce a lively child (see figure 13).81 These illustrated booklets also created tropes of reform. The tongyangxi, or adopted bride, was a particularly popular one. An adopted bride was a girl who had been sold to the family of her future in-laws while she was still a child. Such an arrangement provided her family with a little ready cash and reduced the number of mouths they had to feed. The future groom’s family benefited because a bride obtained in this fashion was much cheaper than a mature one. Her mother-in-law could also train her as she wished. Although parents often adopted their daughters out in this fashion in order to assure their survival, popular lore usually portrayed them as victims of great misfortune, often depicting them as virtual slaves to their husbands’ families.82 The adopted daughter-in-law provided excellent ground on which peasant sympathies and CCP interest could intersect. As a symbol, the tongyangxi probably appealed to peasant audiences because most peasants viewed such a marriage as an unfortunate necessity. Neither men nor women wished to marry someone who had lived with them as a sibling.83 Even women who had not married as adopted daughters-in-law


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Figure 13. “Marrying at the proper age.” From Huanan wenxue yishu jie lianhehui, Zhonghua renmin gongheguo hunyin fa: Tujie ben, 31.

probably identified with the tongyangxi’s hardships as she learned to live with a strange family. The CCP, for its part, found in the tongyangxi a sympathetic figure who was utterly powerless, who vividly represented the worst of the arranged marriage system, and who needed the Party’s protection. As an emblem of both the corrupt “feudal” system and the Party’s power to redeem and rescue even the most pathetic and powerless from that system, the tongyangxi figured prominently in Party marriage propaganda. Propaganda aimed at workers and farmers attacked feudal misconceptions about love and marriage. Most texts started with a catechism of the reasons why the feudal marriage system must be eliminated. These publications cited the same reasons for abolishing the feudal marriage system that New Culture intellectuals had named decades before: the system was coercive, it valued men and degraded women, it ignored the welfare of children, and it relied on superstitious rituals like comparing horoscopes and choosing auspicious days. It trampled men’s and women’s rights in the “new society” and ruined married couples’ happiness in the current generation and in generations to come.84 The Marriage Law, with its promise of greater individual freedom and


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choice, may have been expected to appeal to a younger generation that was facing the realities of impending arranged marriages. It certainly seems that young women, at least, had a good deal to gain in exercising some control over their marriages. The rise in suicides, murders, and beatings of women who struggled against the marriage system without cadre support in the latter half of 1951 suggests that some women were willing to struggle against great odds to have what the Marriage Law promised them.85 At the same time, the claim that the elder generation resisted marriage reform may have been largely heuristic. Given what we know about the persistence of customs governing interaction between men and women and the continued reliance of young people on the older generation to find them mates, it is possible that there was not a large generation gap in perceptions of marital practice. (Remember that in the early 1920s even cosmopolitan youth often accepted a large family role in choosing a spouse.) Regardless of whether a generation gap over marriage practice in fact existed, the CCP presented itself as the champion of China’s oppressed peasant youth. In its efforts to reform marriage practice the CCP subsumed all resistance under the rubric of feudalism—and this was easily identified with the elder generation. Whatever the views of the younger generation, CCP propaganda acknowledged the older generation’s grave doubts about marriage reform. In government pamphlets, village elders often commented that “everything about the new people’s government is good except for the Marriage Law.” They objected to the Marriage Law because they feared it would distract young people from production and confuse family relations.86 Kay Ann Johnson observes that the Party asserted that increased productivity accompanied marriage reforms precisely in order to counter such criticism.87 But the CCP’s emphasis on the xiao jiating’s productivity was more than a strategy of the moment; it was part and parcel of its vision of the xiao jiating and its relation to state and society. As we have seen, the connection between xiao jiating and family reform had been well developed during the Republican era. Productivity appealed to urbanite and peasant alike, and its appeal allowed the CCP to take the xiao jiating out of its urban setting and present it in a compelling fashion to the peasantry. Although the Party did not analyze the particular disruptions that the elder generations feared, anthropological studies have shown that both men and women resented the challenge to their power that the conjugal family ideal represented. For parents, the marrying of children was


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an integral part of their traditional social role. A good marriage gave them a measure of prestige. For mothers in particular, the acquisition of daughters-in-law meant that they had finally ascended to a position of family authority from their original places as lonely outsiders at the bottom of the family hierarchy. The conjugal marriage ideal, with its emphasis on the emotional connection between husband and wife and the young couple’s independence from family influence, threatened to rob mothers-in-law of long-awaited and hard-earned status.88 As outsiders in their husbands’ families, many women had cultivated particularly close bonds with their sons. When sons matured, mothers relied on them for emotional fulfillment and protection in family politics. The daughter-inlaw, who had traditionally been seen as a potential threat to the motherson bond, seemed especially dangerous if she entered the family as her husband’s beloved. Finally, many older women equated traditional ideals with security—something that had been hard to come by during the Republican era. Thus, many resented the Marriage Law because it prevented families from living out the traditional ideal even as political and economic conditions placed that ideal within reach.89 The Party countered these concerns by presenting freedom of marriage choice as the best way to assure family harmony and high levels of production. The corollary to free marriage choice, gender equality, was also linked to tangibles like increased production. The Central Committee declared that gender equality, free democratic social life (minzhu ziyou de shehui shenghuo), and the “realization of the glory of the labor enthusiasm of the great masses of women” depended upon the destruction of the old family system and the “slave system” that imprisoned women.90 The Party frequently credited the conjugal marriage ideal itself, particularly the freedom to choose one’s own spouse, with raising production and laying the foundation for a prosperous new China: “The promulgation of the Marriage Law . . . has made a great contribution to the development of production, the construction of prosperity, and the wealth and power of the nation.”91 Accounts of “real-life” examples of people who had married of their own free will and subsequently shown increased productivity brought these grandiose claims within reach of the ordinary reader. The passage quoted here drew its moral from an account of two couples who married freely, lived happily, and as a result increased their social and productive contributions. The linking of emotional satisfaction and productivity came straight out of New Culture marriage ideals: “On the foundation of improving their work and mutually encouraging one another, they feel ever closer to


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one another.”92 The ideal of a couple devoted to one another, mutually dedicated to work, and committed to supporting one another in their daily improvement remained as central to the Communist marriage ideal as it had been to New Culture participants. In this formulation too, marital unhappiness crippled a couple’s ability to function. One couple fought every day. In their misery, “Wang Jingsheng was away from home all day, his production was only so-so. It goes without saying that Da Fengzi did not have much heart for work. Whenever she got angry she went to bed and slept.”93 This unfortunate couple divorced under the new Marriage Law and soon found more suitable partners. Wang, energized by the conviviality of his new home, threw himself into his work. Da Fengzi stopped sleeping the day away and accomplished all sorts of things in the home. Her husband frequently remarked that “if people feel good toward one another and are happy, then they are also vigorous in their work.”94 Although the PRC formula, like those of its Republican predecessors, drew a connection between love and work, it emphasized social contribution over personal satisfaction. In an essay titled “Models of Model Love” (Mofan aiqing de mofan), Ma Guiling and her suitor Li Changtai earned the envy of village youth and the respect of village elders through their love for each other and their dedication to the common good. The couple enjoyed family and community approval of their match. Ma’s father was happy with his daughter’s suitor and everyone in the village hoped the two would marry soon. But the couple saw fit to first devote their energies to building the new society: “[We] want to strive for new accomplishments in work to make a good wedding memorial gift.” Ma continued to delay their marriage, insisting that “it must not influence production.” The entire village grew anxious for them. Finally, an announcement appeared in the paper informing everyone that there would be a group wedding ceremony on 30 September. The two discussed it and, as it happened, on that night Li would get off work just in time. Even on the day of his wedding, Li worked furiously at his factory job. Just minutes before the ceremony, his supervisor pressed him to hurry and leave work. He complied, but not before announcing that his shift had produced fifteen more vehicles than the previous shift.95 Happily married couples not only produced more vehicles, corn, or what have you for the state, but they also made happier families. The cooperative efforts that followed a thoughtful free marriage resulted in “the increased prosperity of the family and days passed in happiness.”96 Although the state insisted on an individual’s right to independent marriage choices, it assumed that this conjugal unit remained connected to


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the joint family. Although the husband and wife were sometimes pictured as living independently, more often the stories indicated that the couple were enmeshed in very close social and economic relationships with the husband’s family. For example, after two women freed themselves from disastrous marriages and found mates of their own liking, they discovered that their relationships with their new mothers-in-law bore none of the resentment and acrimony that had characterized their relationships with their previous mothers-in-law. This was in addition to, and perhaps a result of, their harmonious relationships with their husbands and their increased “vigor” in production.97 The fruits of the freely chosen marriage were, in fact, the ideal results of the traditional arranged marriage with a democratic twist: “Husband and wife are compatible; if there is an issue everyone discusses it together. The two rise early and retire late. They are enthusiastic in production. Each day is better than the one before. And in the second year there is even a fat little son.”98 Traditionally, peasant families measured success by the production of food and male heirs, and they continued to do so after 1949 (even as they do today). The Party hoped to ameliorate fears about the disruptive potential of marriage reform by promising peasants that the fruits of a successful marriage remained the same, and that the new-style family was even more reproductively and agriculturally fecund than the old. Propaganda booklets routinely portrayed elders changing their minds about the Marriage Law in the face of such evidence. Seeing how energetically happily married couples worked, the old people in one village remarked, “We regret that before we were shortsighted and close-minded. Now we see clearly [that] if marriage is free, homes are harmonious, production is enthusiastic, the old do not have to worry. What could be bad about the Marriage Law?”99 In another account, the old people of a village looked on with amazement when they saw Shuzhen and Xingya working in the fields the day after their marriage. The family did not choose an auspicious day for their marriage nor offer obeisance to heaven, yet everything went beautifully. The husband’s mother commented, “This [business of a] freely chosen partner is really good. It saved money, bother, and energy, and life is going well.”100 The government carefully incorporated the personal benefits that accrued from increased productivity and family harmony into its statebuilding program. No matter how devoted a couple might be to increased production, they never focused their energies solely on the enrichment of the family. Rather, they combined love of family with love of coun-


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try. For example, after land reform, one model couple decided to raise chickens and pigs to supplement their income. But they did not ignore village affairs because of their new occupation: “[They] were not lacking in production; they loved country, family, and the masses. On the foundation of common labor, common work, and common progress they established a democratic, harmonious, prosperous family. The people of the area called them a model husband and wife.”101

conclusion The CCP version of the xiao jiating ideal promised to resolve the tension that the conjugal family ideal had created between the individual and the state. In fact, however, it denied the legitimacy of that tension and attempted to completely subsume the individual into the state. Through most of the Mao years, the government did not hesitate to sacrifice the individual and the family to the demands of production and politics. As the government assigned people to work units without regard to a spouse’s location, many couples endured long separations over years of marriage. Political purges put tremendous pressure on spouses and children to place political interests over emotional attachments. Young people are still expected to devote themselves to study and work to the exclusion of romance. The CCP was not unique in its desire to exploit the xiao jiating ideal for political purposes. New Culture radicals, the GMD, and urban entrepreneurs all used the xiao jiating as a means to articulate their vision of state-society relations. All used the rhetoric of family reform to bolster their political legitimacy. In fact, the Republican linking of family reform and state-strengthening created the foundation that gave power and authority to the CCP’s valorization of the state. The linking of family reform to state-strengthening and the eventual appropriation of that discourse by the CCP is emblematic of the process by which the CCP managed to control many aspects of state and society. The CCP owed much of its success to the generations of patriotic Republican intellectuals, politicians, and reformers who, in the face of imperialist threats to China’s sovereignty, had laid the ideological groundwork for an interventionist state that placed its own survival above all else. The CCP distinguished itself from its predecessors simply in its ability to carry to fruition the statist potential embedded in the xiao jiating ideal.



Conclusion The Malleability of the Xiao Jiating Ideal

Family reformers believed that the xiao jiating was essential to China’s salvation. But just what did xiao jiating mean? The New Culture radicals, the Nationalists, entrepreneurs, and the Communists all agreed on several fundamental and necessary criteria that distinguished the xiao jiating from the joint family, or da jiazu. They advocated the individual’s right to marry the person of his or her choice and shared an interest in limiting the economic interdependence of family members; early reformers Yi Jiayue and Luo Dunwei urged complete financial independence. The Nationalists expected immediate family members to care for one another when necessary but wrote articles into the civil code that prohibited collateral descendants and ascendants from demanding support. You Huaigao’s xiao jiating operated as an economic unit independent of the joint family. Although Communist pamphlets often portrayed the married couple as an independent unit, we know that the CCP expected lineal ascendants and descendents to care for each other. These participants in the family-reform debate also assumed that women would continue to take responsibility for reproductive labor in the home. In its essentials, then, the xiao jiating ideal featured freedom of marriage choice, a companionate relationship between spouses, at least some degree of economic and emotional independence from the joint family, and women’s continued devotion to reproductive labor. But like most definitions, this one reveals little about the significance of the xiao jiating ideal. Advocates of the xiao jiating shared a belief in 197


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the vital importance of family reform to national strengthening. But their visions of family and state differed. As we have seen, each group weighted differently the three foci of family-reform discourse—the individual, the nation-state, and productivity—in order to make the xiao jiating conform to its vision of social and political reform. To all those who participated in the family-reform debate, the xiao jiating ideal articulated what they wanted both for themselves and for their nation. Its significance is to be found therein. New Culture radicals ignited the family-reform debate when they voiced the dissatisfaction with the family that many members of their social strata and generation were feeling. But interest in family reform soon spread beyond the tight intellectual circles of the New Culture Movement. The source of New Culture radicals’ success in making family reform a central issue for many educated urbanites stemmed from the joining of individualistic and nationalistic concerns. New Culture students imparted political significance to personal experience. Placing their demands for individual autonomy within the accepted Neo-Confucian formula that linked family and state order gave them the credibility they needed to command serious consideration of their ideas. From the very early years of the Republican era, China’s political and economic crises pressed an urgent and abiding sense of responsibility upon China’s elite. New Culture radicals were devoted to the common goal of saving their country. At the same time, they were profoundly attracted to individualism. Ultimately, New Culture radicals believed they could and, in fact, should serve both self and nation. To some extent they reconciled their conflicting loyalties to nation and self by identifying China’s national emergency with their own; they believed that individual fulfillment and reform would save their country. In their attempts to marry two hostile forces, individual and state, these young men introduced a tension into family-reform discourse that remained unresolved throughout the Republican era. In the final analysis, they championed individualism not as an intrinsically legitimate value, but as a necessary social adaptation in the pursuit of a strong China. Before long, however, New Culture radicals lost faith in the effort to reform China one individual at a time. By the early 1920s, they began to look to the Nationalists and Communists for systemic solutions to China’s problems. But the growing faith in totalizing statist projects that emerged in the 1920s was only partly a product of frustration with the individualistic approach. Ironically, much of the momentum of Republican state-building was provided by the weight that New Culture radi-


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cals themselves gave to the state. In justifying individualism by what it could contribute to the nation, New Culture radicals implicitly sanctioned the supremacy of the state over the individual. By giving precedence to state-strengthening over all else, they left the door open to the state’s claim that national concerns superseded the rights and interests of the individual. Later opponents of the authoritarian state would find this door impossible to close. The Nationalists seized upon the xiao jiating as a vehicle of statebuilding, exploiting the link that New Culture radicals had drawn between individual fulfillment and nation-building. The Nationalists, however, developed a more nuanced critique of the family. New Culture participants blamed the traditional joint family for a variety of social ills and for China’s general political ineffectiveness. Likewise, the Nationalists targeted the traditional family as an obstacle that hampered the individual and hindered the formation of a Chinese state. For these reasons, the Nationalists supported individual rights and used the xiao jiating as a lever with which to free the individual from the crushing authority of the joint family. But unlike New Culture radicals, the Nationalists wanted to preserve a fairly strong family unit as the essential building block of the Chinese state. You Huaigao envisioned the xiao jiating as the social unit in which the inculcation of modern values like the rational use of time and money would begin. He and other entrepreneurs believed that the social and economic rationalization of China would fuel the productivity and consumption needed to drive a commercial economy. These family-reform advocates identified increased consumption and production, not statebuilding or individual freedom, as the keys to national strengthening. With its focus on economic productivity, this formulation avoided the tension between state and individual that characterized the New Culture and Nationalist versions of the xiao jiating. In the entrepreneurial formula, rational production and consumption allowed one to satisfy individual desires while contributing to the strength of the nation. The entrepreneurial vision of the xiao jiating was the only one that showed little interest in increasing the state’s intrusion into individual and family life. Although it did not directly champion the rights of the individual, it provided the most room for individual action. You Huaigao lacked the New Culture radicals’ passion for introspection and romance. He may not have exalted the ideals of individualism, but neither did he glorify the national cause at the individual’s expense. The logic of the consumer marketplace offered the rationale and space for individual ac-


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tion and perhaps even self-expression. However, as a solution for China’s ills, consumerism faced insurmountable obstacles. Its constituency was too small—only a tiny fraction of China’s population participated in the consumerist economy—and it could not possibly redress the grievances of China’s poor or resist the ravages of imperialism. Consumer culture offered feeble freedoms: it could not solve China’s economic problems and it was no match for the juggernaut of nationalist state-building. Within a few years of taking power, the Communists rejected the entrepreneurial plan for China’s reform. Yet the Communist approach to marriage, family, and state-society relations owed much to Republicanera visions. The Communists’ vision of marriage as a freely chosen union based upon mutual love and shared interests had its roots in New Culture family-reform discourse. In their understanding of state-society relations and the individual’s role in that nexus, the Communists took their cue directly from the Nationalists. The Marriage Law of 1950 was practically identical in its essentials to the Nationalists’ New Family Law of 1931. Like the GMD, the CCP used freedom of marriage choice as a tool to reduce familial control of junior members and exert greater state influence over the individual. This tactic was perhaps initially pursued most vigorously in the countryside, where the patriarch’s grip on the family remained as strong as ever. At the same time, from 1950 to 1953, the Communists remolded the entrepreneurial vision of family ideals that had taken hold in China’s cities. They reminded urbanites that the true value of marital freedom, and the productivity it encouraged, lay in the contribution that it allowed the individual to make to the state. The Communists fulfilled the Nationalist vision of the expansion of state power and influence. We now understand that Communist control of Chinese society has rarely been as complete as we imagined. Nevertheless, the CCP pushed the state further into the family than any regime before it and, especially in the Mao years, exercised an extraordinary influence in people’s daily lives. Although the CCP was most effective in lengthening the reach of the state, the invasive potential of the state was not peculiar to the CCP. The history of family-reform debate demonstrates that much of what the People’s Republic of China became was rooted in the political, social, and cultural struggles of Republican China.


Notes

The following abbreviations are used throughout the notes. DFZZ

Dongfang zazhi

GSG

Guoshiguan (Academia Historica)

HHMWJ

Hu Hanmin xiansheng wenji: Geming lilun yu geming gongzuo

JTXQ

Jiating xingqi

JTYJ

Jiating yanjiu

JTYJHK

Jiating yanjiu huikan

JXDRWDCD

Zhongguo jinxiandai renwu minghao da cidian

MGRWDCD

Minguo renwu da cidian

QSFCA

Qinshufa caoan

SMA

Shanghai Municipal Archives (Shanghaishi dangan guan)

introduction 1. Benjamin Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 99. 2. The beginning of the New Culture Movement was signaled by Chen Duxiu’s famous essay “Call to Youth” (Jinggao qingnian), which appeared in the September 1915 issue of Xin qingnian (New youth). The debate in 1923 on the ability of science to solve China’s problems marked the end of the movement. 3. The traditional family ideal called for five generations to live harmoniously under one roof, guided by the benevolent wisdom of the patriarch. In fact, most 201


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families managed to have only three generations living at a time. Throughout this book I use the anthropologically more precise term “joint family” instead of the more popular term “extended family.” Ironically, Yan Fu vehemently disagreed with nationalists who attacked the traditional family for its negative influences on Chinese society and the polity. In 1914 he argued that patriotism grew out of familism ( jiating zhuyi) and that the basic form of filiality survived in nationalism too, thus demonstrating that traditional values held an important place in nationalism ( Joseph Levenson, Confucian China and Its Modern Fate: A Trilogy [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965], book 1, 106 from Nakayama KujirÖ, “Gendai Shina no KÖjikyÖ mondai ni tsuite” [On the question of Confucianism in contemporary China], TÖa ronsÖ, II [Tokyo, 1940], 4). Sun Yatsen would later make a similar claim about the potential for “familism” to be expanded into nationalism. A discussion of his view appears in chapter 2 below. 4. See, for example, Stephanie Coontz, The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Families, 1600–1900 (New York: Verso, 1988); Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1977); and Eli Zaretsky, Capitalism, the Family, and Personal Life (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1976). Of course, as Coontz also points out, as the conjugal family became increasingly independent of the joint family and the corporate community at large, the state became increasingly interested in evaluating families’ success and guiding “extra-familial institutions” to cope with its “failures” (Social Origins, 272–273). 5. William Rowe believes that by the eighteenth century the Chinese were also beginning to think of the home “as a haven of privacy, relaxation, and personal sentiment versus the public world outside” (Rowe, “Ancestral Rites and Political Authority in Late Imperial China: Chen Hongmou in Jiangxi,” Modern China 24, no. 4 [October 1998]: 380). Be that as it may, I believe that Susan Mann is right in contending that Chinese notions of inner and outer were quite different from Western notions of private and public. 6. Susan Mann, Precious Records: Women in China’s Long Eighteenth Century (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 15. 7. Of course, the identification of family and state order did not mean that the two loci of authority always coexisted easily. Cosmologically, the authority of the emperor and the authority of the father complemented and reinforced one another. Yet political philosophers were all too aware that loyalty to family might conflict with loyalty to the emperor. A famous example of this debate is found in a story about a man whose son knew that his father had stolen a sheep. Confucius maintained that a virtuous man would never inform the emperor of his father’s crime. Not surprisingly, China’s emperors felt otherwise. 8. Rowe, “Ancestral Rites,” 381–382. 9. The Great Learning (Da xue), translated in William Theodore de Bary et al., eds., Sources of Chinese Tradition, vol. 1 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), 115. 10. Peter Zarrow makes the point that Wu Zhihui—a man who led the way in explorations of the scientific method during the New Culture Movement and became an important figure in the Nationalist Party—like Kang Youwei, Yan Fu, and many other Chinese, believed that customs like opium smoking and concu-



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binage not only affected their practitioners, but also weakened the nation (Zarrow, Anarchism and Chinese Political Culture [New York: Columbia University Press, 1990], 190). 11. Translated in Ssu-yü Teng and John K. Fairbank, eds., China’s Response to the West: A Documentary Survey, 1839–1923 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979), 155. Remember that the famous writer Lu Xun (1881–1936) also used the image of a house when he likened the task of awakening China’s populace to rousing sleepers in an iron house: one could either let them suffocate in their sleep or wake them so that they would be aware of their demise. 12. It is important to remember that most men, as well as most women, were illiterate. 13. In this respect, these early efforts resembled the Japanese ideal of the good wife and wise mother (ryosai-kembo). Chen Dongyuan, a historian writing in the mid-1920s, noted the similarity and characterized the period of 1895–1916 as the period in which a progressive view of women evolved from the prejudice that only ignorant women are virtuous (wu cai bian de) to the ideal of capable mother and good wife (xianmu liangqi). (Chinese uses the same characters as Japanese but in different order.) (Chen Dongyuan, Zhongguo funü shenghuo shi [History of Chinese women’s lives] [1926. Reprint. Taiwan shangwu yinshu guan, 1990], 365.) As separate terms, “good wife” (liangqi ) and “capable mother” (xianmu) had been in use in China for 2,000 years (Morohashi Tetsuji, Dai Kan-wa jiten [Great Chinese-Japanese dictionary] [1984. Revised edition. Taipei: Pei-i ch’u-pan she, 1987]). Just when they were united into the four-character phrase xianqi liangmu, or its variation xianmu liangqi, is unclear. Sources for the phrase cited in the Hanyu da cidian (The great Chinese dictionary) date from the first half of the twentieth century, among them a novel by Zhu Ziqing, Fandong taitai (Lady landlord), an autobiography by Feng Yuxiang, Wode shenghuo (My life), and an essay by Lu Xun, “Fen: Guafuzhuyi” (The grave: widowism) (Hanyu da cidian bianji weiyuan hui and Hanyu da cidian bianzuan chu [The editing committee and the compilation office of the great Chinese dictionary] [Shanghai: Hanyu da cidian chuban she, 1997]). Given the work that Lydia Liu has done on the importance of Japanese as a source of modern Chinese vocabulary and concepts, it seems likely that the four-character phrase was borrowed from the Japanese, who had themselves borrowed the separate expressions from classical Chinese (Lydia Liu, Translingual Practice: Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity, China, 1900–1937 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995). 14. For the most complete treatment of this interpretation see Mary Rankin, Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China, Zhejiang Province, 1865– 1911 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986). 15. This is a phenomenon that recurs, albeit with some variation, in the formation or remaking of many nations. See, for example, Renate Bridenthal et al., eds., When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1984); Linda Kerber, Women of the Republic: Intellect and Ideology in Revolutionary America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980); and Margit Nagy, “‘How Shall We Live?’ Social Changes,


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the Family Institution, and Feminism in Prewar Japan,” Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, 1981), 6–28 passim. 16. Elizabeth Croll, Feminism and Socialism in China (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), 45. 17. Charlotte Beahan, “Feminism and Nationalism in the Chinese Women’s Press, 1902–1911,” Modern China 1, no. 4 (October 1975), 379–415; Chen Dongyuan, Zhongguo funü; Chow Tse-tsung, The May Fourth Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960); Elizabeth Croll, Feminism and Socialism; Kay Ann Johnson, Women, the Family, and Peasant Revolution in China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); Ono Kazuko, Chinese Women in a Century of Revolution: 1850–1950, ed. Joshua Fogel (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989); Vera Schwarcz, The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); Judith Stacey, Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution in China (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); and Peter Zarrow, Anarchism. For a rich and detailed account of these developments, see Wang Zheng, Women in the Chinese Enlightenment: Oral and Textual Histories (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), part 1. 18. Ono Kazuko, Chinese Women, 26–28; Chen Dongyuan, Zhongguo funü, 322–326. 19. In Ren xue Tan Sitong argued that contemporary understanding of appropriate behavior for men and women, of the inferiority of women, of prohibition of lust, etc., were all cultural accretions. New Culture radicals and some feminists would later argue that women’s lives were largely shaped by cultural factors. Many family reformers, however, continued to believe that tasks like child rearing, cooking, and housekeeping and personality faults like dependency and jealousy came naturally to women. Tan also sought to demystify sex. He believed people should view sex as simply a mechanical function, “two fitted sides of a machine.” The idea that sex was a biological need, just like eating and drinking, surfaced in much of New Culture Movement literature. The most daring cited the Bolsheviks’ claim that having sex was like drinking a glass of water—it fulfilled a basic need and as such carried no moral import. By the late 1920s and 1930s, urban contemporaries treated the biological need for sex quite matter of factly. While this straightforward approach to sex may have also been encouraged through essays by Communists and by the Swedish writer and activist Ellen Key, the idea was certainly not entirely a foreign import. 20. Ono Kazuko, Chinese Women, 56–57. Ono notes that Liang Qichao had also urged women to fight for their own liberation (57). 21. Ono Kazuko, Chinese Women, 58; Chen Dongyuan, Zhongguo funü, 338. 22. Zarrow, Anarchism, 130. 23. Croll, Feminism and Socialism, 71. 24. Chen Duxiu, “Yijiu yiliu” (1916), Xin qingnian (New youth) 1, no. 5 (January 1916): 1. Chen Dongyuan pinpointed this article as a key contribution to ideas about women and family (Zhongguo funü, 2, 368–369.) 25. Chow, May Fourth Movement, 258.



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26. Wu Yu, “Jiating zhidu wei zhuangzhizhuyi zhi genjudi” (The family is the foundation of authoritarianism), Xin qingnian 2, no. 6 (February 1917). 27. Ono Kazuko, Chinese Women, 99–100. 28. Benjamin Schwartz, Reflections on the May Fourth Movement: A Symposium (Cambridge, Mass.: East Asian Research Center, Harvard University, 1972), 4–5. 29. Zarrow, Anarchism, 256. Zarrow notes that the anarchist critique of women’s rights distinguished itself by being the first (and for all intents and purposes the last) to speak of women’s liberation without invoking nationalism (151). Anarchism contributed to the New Culture Movement’s critique of family, politics, and culture not only by directly contributing ideas about women, family, etc., but also by undermining assumptions about the political and cultural order. As Zarrow points out, “By attacking the Confucian notion that hierarchy and inequality were rooted in nature, the anarchists forced all the participants in China’s political discourse to find new ethical bases for their proposals” (255). As such, anarchism “was from the beginning a powerful tool of cultural and social analysis” as well as “an instrument of moral regeneration” (242). Subsequent reformers chose national strengthening as their new ethical foundation. 30. Schwartz, Reflections, 4–5. 31. Joseph Levenson, Confucian China. 32. While Chow Tse-tsung recognized the tension between the pulls of nationalism and individualism, he overplayed New Culture intellectuals’ dedication to individualism (May Fourth Movement, 295). Although many New Culture iconoclasts made a claim for the importance of individual freedom over the demands of the state, the fact remains that they justified their interest in family reform with the language of nationalism. Chen Duxiu’s call for a new family was part and parcel of a China remade; he envisioned a “new mind and body, new character, new nation, new society, new family, and a new people” (“Yijiu yiliu,” 372). 33. Arif Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 164. 34. Chow, May Fourth Movement, 257–259; Ono Kazuko, Chinese Women, 108–110. 35. Contemporary historians are not the first to view men’s enthusiasm for women’s rights with skepticism. He Zhen wrote that she suspected the motives of men who advocated women’s liberation in order to strengthen the nation, in imitation of Europe, the United States, and Japan. She was not convinced that they really wanted women to be liberated. Although they gave their daughters an education, did not allow women in their family to bind their feet, and claimed they wanted to civilize the entire home, not just the women, He Zhen suspected they were using these means to seek public acclaim. She accused some men of insisting on educated wives not because they valued women’s minds, but because well-educated women would be better able to run their households, raise their children, and contribute to the success of their lineages (Zarrow, Anarchism, 145–146). 36. Stacey, Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution, 75. 37. Schwarcz, Chinese Enlightenment, 166.


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38. Ibid., 114. Schwarcz notes that Zhou Enlai enjoyed great success in playing Nora (324, note 47). 39. V. I. Lenin, State and Revolution (1918. Reprint, New York: International Publishers, 1974), 9. 40. It often succeeds in its claims because, as James Scott observes, “the revolutionary state has defeated the ancien régime, often has its partisans’ mandate to remake the society after its image, and faces a prostrate civil society whose capacity for active resistance is limited” (Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998], 97). 41. Both meanings are contained in the term jiating. 42. Coontz, Social Origins, 13. 43. Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). 44. The reverse may also be true. Joan Scott and Louise Tilly have demonstrated how working-class attitudes have sometimes been much slower to change than the economic behavior that they are supposed to describe (Tilly and Scott, Women, Work, and Family [New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1978]). 45. Christina Gilmartin, Engendering the Chinese Revolution: Radical Women, Communist Politics, and Mass Movement in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), 45–52. 46. Chen Heqin, “Shehui wenti: Xuesheng hunyin wenti zhi yanjiu” (Social problems: Research on the student marriage problem). Dongfang zazhi (Eastern miscellany; hereafter DFZZ) 18, no. 4 (25 February 1921): 107. 47. See Susan Glosser, “Expectation and Experience: Marriage Trends in the 1920s,” chap. 2 in “The Contest for Family and Nation in Republican China” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1995), 78–114. We will return to this issue in chapter 1. 48. Wen-hsin Yeh, “Progressive Journalism and Shanghai’s Petty Urbanites: Zou Taofen and the Shenghuo Enterprise, 1926–1945.” In Shanghai Sojourners, ed. Frederic Wakeman, Jr., and Wen-hsin Yeh (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1992), 186–238. 49. A love letter from Chen Yunlong to Wang Ximei. Court documents, Shanghai Municipal Archives (hereafter SMA), 180. 2. 48, January 1940. We shall meet this man in chapter 3. 50. Kathryn Bernhardt, “Women and the Law: Divorce in the Republican Period.” In Civil Law in Qing and Republican China, ed. Kathryn Bernhardt and Philip C. C. Huang (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 187–214; Susan Glosser, “Women Test the State’s Limits: Marital Cases in Shanghai’s Local First Special District Court,” chap. 4 in “Contest for Family and Nation,” 188– 203. We will return to this issue in chapter 2. 51. Barbara Welter, “The Cult of True Womanhood.” American Quarterly 18 (Summer 1966): 151–174. 52. See, for example, Hasia Diner, Erin’s Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983).



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53. Christina Gilmartin, “Gender in the Formation of the Chinese Communist Body Politic, 1920–1925.” Modern China 19, no. 3 (July 1993): 317. 54. Dorothy Ko makes this point most eloquently in Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 1–5. 55. Sharon Nolte and Sally Hastings, “The Meiji State’s Policy Toward Women, 1890–1910.” In Recreating Japanese Women, 1600–1945, ed. Gail Bernstein (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). 56. Susan Mann has begun interesting work in rethinking the meaning of the hagiography of virtuous women (“Her Stories: Women’s Lives in China’s History,” presented as the 36th Throckmorton Lecture at Lewis and Clark College, February 1999, and “Presidential Address: Myths of Asian Womanhood,” Journal of Asian Studies, 59, no. 4 [November 2000]: 835–862). 57. Ebrey, Ko, and Mann have demonstrated that some elite women played an important role in their sons’ and daughters’ educations. Patricia Ebrey (The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993]), Dorothy Ko (Teachers of the Inner Chambers), and Susan Mann (Precious Records). 58. Lisa Raphals, Sharing the Light: Representation of Women and Virtue in Early China (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), 20–24. 59. In connecting women’s world in the home to the outer world, reformers ignored the integral connection that political philosophers and moralists had historically made between the inner and outer realms and the significant impact women’s virtue was believed to have on the world at large and on male identity. Mark Elvin, “Female Virtue and the State in China.” Past and Present, no. 104 (1984): 111–152. 60. David Strand, “Community, Society, and History in Sun Yat-sen’s Sanmin zhuyi.” In Culture and State in Chinese History: Conventions, Accommodations, and Critiques, ed. R. Bin Wong, Pauline Yu, and Theodore Huters (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 340–341. 61. Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, vol. 1, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Pantheon, 1978). Many thanks to Alan Cole for drawing my attention to this connection. 62. The pre-condition, which is not itself necessarily dangerous, is “the administrative ordering of nature and society” (Scott, Seeing Like a State, 4). 63. Ibid., 88–89, 93–94. 64. Chen Duxiu, “Jinggao qingnian” (Call to youth). Xin qingnian (New youth) 1, no. 1 (September 1915): 1–6. 65. Scott, Seeing Like a State, 5. 66. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, “Cartographies of Struggle: Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism.” In Third World Women and the Politics of Feminism, ed. Chandra Talpade Mohanty, Ann Russo, and Lourdes Torres (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991), 1–47. Scott also acknowledges the impact of imperialism (Seeing Like a State, 1–4). 67. See, for example, Kay Ann Johnson, Women, the Family, and Peasant Revolution in China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983); Delia Davin, Woman-Work: Women and the Party in Revolutionary China (Oxford: Oxford


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University Press, 1976); and Margery Wolf, Revolution Postponed: Women in Contemporary China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989). 68. Schwartz, In Search, 238–239. 69. Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, “Was There a Family Romance of the Chinese Revolution?” Unpublished conference paper presented at the January 1993 American Historical Association meeting in San Francisco, cited with the author’s permission. The literature on this subject is vast. See, for example, Laura Engelstein, The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in Fin-de-Siècle Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992); William Wagner, Marriage, Property, and Law in Late Imperial Russia (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); Linda Kerber, Women of the Republic; Mary Beth Norton, Liberty’s Daughters: The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750–1800 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1980); June Starr, “The Role of Turkish Secular Law in Changing the Lives of Rural Muslim Women, 1950–1970,” Law and Society Review 23, no. 3 (1989); Muta Kazue, “Images of the Family in Meiji Periodicals: The Paradox Underlying the Emergence of the ‘Home,’” U.S.–Japan Women’s Journal: English Supplement, no. 7 (1994): 53–71. 70. Here again, the relevant literature is immense. A mere sampling includes Stephanie Coontz, Social Origins; Beth Haiken, Venus Envy: A History of Cosmetic Surgery (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997); Lynn Hunt, Family Romance; Elaine May, Great Expectations: Marriage and Divorce in PostVictorian America (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1980); Michelle Perrot, ed., A History of Private Life: From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1990). 71. De Grazia, “Introduction,” in Victoria de Grazia and Ellen Furlough, eds., The Sex of Things: Gender and Consumption in Historical Perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 5. 72. De Grazia, “Changing Consumption Regimes: Introduction,” in ibid., 17. 73. Coontz, Social Origins, 348–349. 74. For an early and thoughtful rumination on this process, see Eli Zaretsky, Capitalism, 29–30, 30–31, 57, 60, 65–67, 78, 114. Also see, for example, Elaine May, Great Expectations, 58. 75. Susan Mann observes a similar phenomenon among Chinese men in the eighteenth century: “Their conversations about women and marriage were a metonymic comment on larger social issues of mobility and class” (“Grooming a Daughter for Marriage: Brides and Wives in the Mid-Ch’ing Period.” In Marriage and Inequality in Chinese Society, ed. Rubie Watson and Patricia Ebrey [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995], 205). For an interesting discussion of this phenomenon in the contemporary United States, see Judith Stacey, In the Name of the Family: Rethinking Family Values in the Postmodern Age (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996). Prasenjit Duara’s point that each would-be participant in the creation of nations crafts a narrative that best suits its purpose is well taken (Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995]). I believe my study illustrates how various participants constructed their narratives and what the consequences of that discourse were. Of course, I recognize the inescapable, and not so lamentable, fact that I too am writing a particular history for the nation. For



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wonderfully lucid meditations on these issues please see Richard Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), especially chap. 1, “Solidarity or Objectivity?” 21–34. 76. Coontz, Social Origins, 13. 77. My conceptualization of how these three elements remained necessarily linked and in tension is informed by Benjamin Schwartz’s use of “polarities.” He uses this word to describe elements in Confucian thought “which were regarded by the Master and most orthodox Confucianists not as antithetical but as inseparably complementary. And yet, over the course of centuries it became obvious that tensions existed between the poles in question, that some men gravitated to or toward one pole rather than the other in spite of their nominal commitment to both.” (“Some Polarities in Confucian Thought.” In Confucianism in Action, ed. David S. Nivison and Arthur F. Wright [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959], 51–52.)

chapter 1. saving self and nation 1. Chow, May Fourth Movement, 359. 2. Roxane Witke, “Transformation of Attitudes towards Women during the May Fourth Era of Modern China” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1970), 97. 3. Schwarcz, Chinese Enlightenment, 109. 4. Mary Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790–1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981). 5. “Faqi de jingguo” (The beginning), Jiating yanjiu huikan (Family research collection; hereafter JTYJHK) (Shanghai: Taidong tushuju, 1923); Jiating yanjiu (Family research; hereafter JTYJ 1, no. 1 (August 1920): 68. 6. “Chengli de qingxing he xianzai de zhuangkuang” (The circumstance of founding [ Jiating yanjiu she (the family research society)] and the present situation), JTYJHK 1, no. 1 (August 1920): 68. Hunan’s reputation as the source of many Republican-era radicals is attested to here as elsewhere. One founding member was from Sichuan. The remaining twenty-two came from Hunan. Of those twenty-two, sixteen hailed from Changsha. (“Shewu jiyao” [Important society news], JTYJHK 1, no. 1 [August 1920]: 69–71.) 7. “Shewu jiyao,” JTYJHK 1, no. 1 (August 1920), 69. 8. Yi Jiayue, “Shewu ji bianji shi” (The society’s and editor’s office), JTYJHK 1, no. 5 (December 1921): 121. 9. Yi was from Hanshou and Luo from Changsha. (Chen Yutang, comp., Zhongguo jinxiandai renwu minghao da cidian [The great dictionary of pseudonyms of historical figures in modern and contemporary history; hereafter JXDRWDCD] [Hangzhou: Zhejiang guji chuban she, 1993], 573, 585.) 10. Participants in this group were dismissed as mere dilettantes by “serious” communists like Chen Duxiu. The superfluous Marxist bromides sprinkled through these essays seem to bear out that observation. 11. Xu Youchun, et al., Minguo renwu da cidian (The great dictionary of historical figures in the Republican era; hereafter MGRWDCD) (Shijiazhuang shi: Hebei renmin chuban she, 1991), 484; Chen Yutang, JXDRWDCD, 573, 585.


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12. David T. Roy, Kuo Mo-jo: The Early Years (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971), 110, 116. 13. “Zazhi fangmian” (About the journal), JTYJ 2, no. 1 (May 1922): 154. 14. The other founders were Guo Moruo, Chang Ziping, and Yu Dafu. (Roy, Kuo Mo-jo, 73.) 15. “Faqi de jingguo,” 68. 16. Since the fall of 1915, when Chen Duxiu first touched off the New Culture Movement with his essay “Jinggao qingnian,” a great deal of discussion had centered on family reform. 17. Yi Jiayue, “Tao Lügong yu jiating wenti” (Tao Lügong and the family problem), JTYJ 1, no. 1 (August 1920): 1. Yi framed this essay as a response to a talk given by Tao Lügong who, Yi claimed, had failed to recognize the systemic nature of the family crisis. Although I have been unable to find a record of Tao’s talk, Yi’s charge may have been exaggerated. In “Nüzi wenti” (The woman problem), an important contribution to the discussion of women’s rights that appeared in Xin qingnian (4, no. 1 [1918]: 19), Tao placed women’s issues within the global context of social change (Wang Zheng, Women in the Chinese Enlightenment, 49–50). 18. Yi Jiayue, “Tao Lügong,” 1–3. 19. Yi believed that the economy was in a transitory phase of “cooperative labor.” At present women managed the home and men worked outside. Eventually this inherently unstable economic arrangement would disappear and all family economic relations would “dissolve” (ibid., 3–4). 20. Dirlik observes, for example, that Hu Hanmin’s “observation that social change arose from the ‘disharmony’ between social relations and material production caused by economic change was a highly diluted expression of Marx’s premise that the contradiction between the mode and the relations of production lay at the source of the social revolutions that guaranteed historical progress” (Revolution and History: The Origins of Marxist Historiography in China, 1919–1937 [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978], 28–29). Others had a much deeper grasp of Marxism and Leninism. Wen-hsin Yeh notes that at this time contributors to the journal Gongchandang (The communist), published from November 1920–July 1921, were conversant in the tenets of Leninism—well before the founding of the Chinese Communist Party in July 1921 (Provincial Passages: Culture, Space, and the Origins of Chinese Communism [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996], 263–264). 21. Ibid., 29. 22. Hu Hanmin, “Cong jingji de jichu guancha jiazu zhidu” (An examination of the family system from its economic base), Jianshe (Reconstruction) 2, no. 4 (1 May 1920). Cited in Dirlik, Revolution and History, 28. 23. Li Dazhao, “Yu jingji shang jieshi Zhongguo jindai sixiang biandong de yuanyin” (An economic explanation of the causes of recent intellectual changes in China), Xin qingnian 7, no. 2 (January 1920). Cited in Dirlik, Revolution and History, 27. 24. Luo Dunwei, “Ni pei weichi xiaqu ma?” (Can you sustain your marriage?), JTYJ 1, no. 1 (September 1920): 67. Luo continued, “Nevertheless, I am not absolutely in favor of the ‘xiao jiating.’ But those gentlemen who would guard



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the cultural heritage, the president . . . , the Ministry of the Interior, which assists the sacred way, you are only concerning yourselves with encouraging the traditional five-generation family. I am afraid that you will be unable to stop the reform of this social organization. Don’t waste your energy.” 25. Guo Moruo sometimes identified himself as a member of the proletariat (Roy, Kuo Mo-jo, 142–143, 150–152). 26. The Chinese drew, for example, on the work of Edward Westermarck (1862–1939) ( JTYJ 1, no. 5 [December 1920]: 123). Westermarck was a SwedeFinn who impressed the academic world with The History of Human Marriage in 1921. Unlike most scholars of the family before and after, he discounted the theory that primitive societies were promiscuous. His explanation of the incest taboo was popular until Freudian theory of family relations displaced it (Arthur Wolf, Sexual Attraction and Childhood Association: A Chinese Brief for Edward Westermarck [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995], 6–19). Although some scholars debated the details, in broad terms the accepted progression for the development of the family went like this: promiscuous sexual relations or serial monogamy in the most primitive societies; matriarchy or female lineage in huntergatherer societies; the emergence of patriarchy with the appearance of herding; the subsequent development of polygyny and monogamy. Although most of those who wrote on the topic agreed that not every society passed through every stage, they agreed that lifelong monogamy was the most evolved form of marriage. 27. William Goode, World Revolution and Family Patterns (New York: Free Press, 1963), 7–10. 28. Of course, the Chinese were participating in history. I am not exiling the Chinese to a Hegelian hell beyond history, time, and the divine. Nor do I think that Joseph Levenson was correct in believing the Chinese had been cast adrift from history with only their “values” to buoy them (Levenson, Confucian China). In this discussion, I am trying to understand “history” as these young men saw it. Chen Duxiu captured their terror at being left behind when he said, “Revering only the history of the twenty-four dynasties and making no plans for progress and improvement, our people will be turned out of this twentieth-century world, and be lodged in the dark ditches fit only for slaves, cattle, and horses” (“Call to Youth.” Translated in Teng and Fairbank, China’s Response to the West, 242). These young radicals wanted to participate in a particular process of growth and development that would allow China to compete with the industrialized and industrializing powers. The imperialist dominance of the “developed” countries led both imperialists and their potential victims to identify industrialization with history itself. 29. Dirlik, Revolution and History, 18. 30. Roy, Kuo Mo-jo, 4–5. 31. Dirlik, Revolution and History, 14. Ironically, Yan Fu did the same with Spencer’s theories of social evolution. Benjamin Schwartz points out that Yan Fu took Spencer’s observations about the evolution of society and made them prescriptions. For example, Yan Fu commented that Spencer “uses the most recent principles of science to illumine [the principles] of self-cultivation, to regulate the family, to govern the state, and set the world at peace” (quoted in Benjamin Schwartz, In Search of Wealth, 36).


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32. Roy, Kuo Mo-jo, 166. 33. “Zhi wo siming de dongxi” (The thing that seals my fate), JTYJ 1, no. 3 (January 1921): 104–106. This man wrote a passionate letter begging the editors of Family Research for help. He desperately wanted to continue his studies, but his father forced him to work in the family business. To make matters worse, his family was rushing to find him a wife. 34. “Qingnian zili hui jianzhang ji yuanqi” (The youth independence association: Simple regulations and its origins), JTYJ 1, no. 3 (January 1921): 107. 35. Ibid., 108. Note that participants planned to follow traditional gender divisions of labor. 36. The society held a performance at Beijing’s Ximing Theater on the second and third evenings of the New Year to raise money, but as of May 1922 it still had not started because pledges of money had not been fulfilled. At this time, Yi and Luo decided to establish the society in Suzhou instead of Tianjin. They intended to sell the fabric and the machinery already purchased in Tianjin and use the proceeds to set up in Suzhou. (JTYJ 2, no. 1 (May 1922): 165.) 37. “Jiating yanjiu she,” JTYJHK, 1, no. 3 (January 1921): 73. 38. Ibid., 74–86. 39. Ibid., 78. 40. Benjamin Schwartz has noted that in Spencer’s work the happy individual was the person who was able to fully exercise his faculties. The New Culture radicals certainly shared this sentiment (Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power, 35). 41. Elaine May, Great Expectations, 17. 42. The fifteen-page excerpt from Franklin’s biography appeared in JTYJ 1, no. 5 (January 1916); Beecher’s essay was published in 3, no. 1 (March 1917); and Smiles’s essay appeared in 1, no. 3 (November 1915). In all, about two dozen different selections were published in New Youth’s first three volumes. Some selections, like Oscar Wilde’s “The Ideal Husband,” appeared in installments. This practice of publishing exemplary biographies of Westerners and their exhortative essays continued in reform- and vocationally minded periodicals throughout the Republican era. 43. Luo Dunwei, “Jiating shenghuo minzhu hua” (The democratization of family life), JTYJ 1, no. 1 (August 1920): 35. 44. Lin Jensheng, “Jiating zhidu de zui’e he gaige de fangfa” (The evils of the family system and methods of reform), JTYJ 1, no. 2 (Fall 1920): 50. 45. Guo Moruo, in a letter to Cheng Fangwu on 9 August 1924, said it this way: “That frustration and weariness which we both feel—and which I fear is felt by the entire body of Chinese youth—stems from the fact that we lack the good fortune to be able to seek self-perfection for ourselves, and that we cannot discover a means of making free development possible for all.” (Roy, Kuo Mojo, 167.) 46. Vera Schwarcz, “Ibsen’s Nora: The Promise and the Trap,” Bulletin for Concerned Asian Scholars 7, no. 1 (January–March 1975): 3. 47. Ibid. 48. Roy, Kuo Mo-jo, 166.



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49. Wen-hsin Yeh, Provincial Passages, 4 and passim. For an early work on related issues see Charlton Lewis, Prologue to the Chinese Revolution: The Transformation of Ideas and Institutions in Hunan Province, 1891–1907 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976). 50. The enormity of the effort to modernize China’s economy continues to overwhelm the government even today. In the Communist era, too, frustration with China’s failure to industrialize has expressed itself in ideological campaigns. 51. Yi Jiayue, “Jiazhang wenti qianshuo” (A superficial discussion of the patriarch problem), JTYJ 1, no. 5 (December 1921) and 2, no. 1 (May 1922). Text of part one is taken from JTYJHK and the pagination given in the notes refers to that volume. References to a future when the family could be eliminated altogether were not uncommon in the magazine, but they remained firmly in the realm of the theoretical. No one offered a concrete plan of how this might be accomplished. (See also, for example, page 11 of the same article.) 52. Note that Yi’s historical relativism does not question the “naturalness” of patriarchal authority in past eras. 53. Yi Jiayue, “Jiazhang wenti qianshuo,” JTYJ 1, no. 5 (December 1921): 8. This chronology, derived from the work of Western anthropologists and sociologists, was widely accepted among contemporary Chinese interested in the family. 54. Ibid., 16–17. 55. Ibid., 21. 56. “Tao Lügong,” 9. 57. Yi Jiayue, “Jiazhang wenti qianshuo,” JTYJ 1, no. 5 (December 1921): 9–14. 58. Note that in their emphasis on voluntary associations and free marriage choice, New Culture radicals valorized the only horizontal relationship in the Confucian canon, friendship. 59. Yi Jiayue, “Jiazhang wenti qianshuo,” JTYJ 1, no. 5 (December 1921): 14; and 2, no. 1 (May 1922): 8. 60. According to Yi, these provisions appeared in articles 1323.2, 1338, and 1373 of the Chinese Draft Civil Code (Yi, “Jiazhang wenti qianshuo,” JTYJ 2, no. 1 [May 1922]: 8). He is likely referring to the Second Draft of the Beijing Civil Code issued by the Committee for Compilation of the Laws (Falü biancha hui) in 1915. Yi points out that Japan’s civil code contains very similar statutes. In fact, Marius van der Valk suggests that statutes on the family head’s rights and obligations may have been copied directly from the Japanese code (van der Valk, “An Outline of Modern Chinese Family Law,” in Monumenta Serica, monograph II [Beijing: Henri Vetch, 1939], 30–31). 61. Yi, “Jiazhang wenti qianshuo,” JTYJ 2, no. 1 (May 1922): 8. 62. Ibid., 10–11. 63. Ibid. Luo Dunwei also insisted that the democratization he saw in Chinese government, production, and social life must soon spread to the home (Luo Dunwei, “Jiating shenghuo minzhu hua,” 38–39). 64. Yi, “Jiazhang wenti qianshuo,” JTYJ 2, no. 1 (May 1922): 10–11. 65. Yi urged his readers to dismantle four manifestations of the family pa-


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triarch’s power—patriarchal control of all family members, ancestor worship, arranged marriage, and economic authority. His treatment of the first three was brief, almost perfunctory (ibid., 9–11, 16). 66. Ibid., 2. 67. Ibid., 14–15. 68. Ibid., 14. 69. See, for example, Patricia Ebrey, Inner Quarters; Dorothy Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers; Susan Mann, Precious Records; and Joseph McDermott, “The Chinese Domestic Bursar,” in Tradition and Modernization: Essays in Honour of the Seventieth Birthday of Professor Kiyoko Takeda Cho, ed. Uozumi Masayoshi (Tokyo: International Christian University, 1990). 70. Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers, 1–5. 71. Yeh, Provincial Passages, 4–6. 72. Yi, “Jiazhang wenti qianshuo,” JTYJ 2, no. 1: 6. See articles 1327, 1329, 1395, 1331, 1453, and 1468. 73. Ibid., 7. 74. Ibid., 6–7. 75. Ibid., 3. 76. The ideal marriage age for men and women was often debated in the Republican era. Liao himself seems undecided on the best age for men. Liao Shuan, “Hunyin wenti zhi yizhong zhuzhang” (An opinion on the marriage problem), JTYJ 1, no. 4 (August 1921): 46, 48. 77. Ibid., 46–47. 78. Ibid. 79. Guo Xun, “Jiu jiating hunzhi de bihai” (The evils of the old marriage system), JTYJ 1, no. 4 (August 1921): 38. The author’s metaphor is reminiscent of Lu Xun’s iron house. 80. Ibid., 39. 81. Ibid., 40. 82. Ibid., 41. 83. Ibid., 42. 84. Ibid. 85. Ibid., 43. The specter of suicide often accompanied Republican-era attacks on the joint family. Suicide’s role as trope in family-reform discourse deserves study. Suicide statistics for Shanghai from 1929 to 1933 suggest that people rarely killed themselves over problems with their romantic or marital partner. Less than 2 percent of recorded suicides were traced to “disappointment in love” and less than 1 percent to “marriage problems.” Domestic or family trouble (jiating wenti) accounted for anywhere between 19 and 55 percent of suicides. This category included conflicts between mothers- and daughters-in-law, parents and children, and siblings. Economic oppression accounted for 9 to 22 percent of suicides, quarrels for a low of 13 percent in 1930 to a high of 41 percent in 1931. (Shanghai tongji [Shanghai statistics] [Shanghai: Shanghai Civic Association (Shanghaishi difang xiehui), 1933], 5; and Shanghai tongji, buchong ziliao [Shanghai statistics, supplemental materials] [Shanghai: Shanghai Civic Association (Shanghaishi difang xiehui), 1934], 91.) 86. Guo Xun, “Jiu jiating hunzhi,” 43.



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87. Ibid., 43–44. Interestingly enough, Guo used a centuries-old expression— men till and women weave (nangeng nuzhi)—to denote men’s and women’s roles in the modern family and the developing economy. 88. Given the ideals of chastity and monogamy, young men were also interested in marrying women they found sexually attractive. However, erotic hopes and expectations were usually left unspoken, as family reformers tried to seize the moral high ground by emphasizing the spiritual nature of the love they sought. Yi and Luo roundly criticized those who did complain about a wife’s physical appearance. “Qingnian zili hui diyi ci baogao shu” (First report from the Youth Independence Association), JTYJHK 1, no. 3 (January 1921): 78. 89. Part of the problem in discovering women’s attitudes toward marriage is that those who did write about women’s rights seem to have been more concerned with individual rights, political participation, or education than with family reform. As Wang Zheng observes, New Culture Movement discourse offered two models of womanhood. One was the “new woman,” who strove to achieve “independent personhood” by identifying herself with male standards of education, profession, and privilege. The other was what Wang calls the taitai. Like the new woman, she had a modern education and would socialize in mixed company. Unlike the new woman, she derived her identity, as well as her economic support, from her husband (Wang Zheng, Women in the Chinese Enlightenment, 20). As Wang points out, further research is needed to understand the relationship between these two types. The conundrum we face in introducing women’s voices to family reform is that the “new women” did not write much about the family because they were not interested in finding their identity there, and the taitai, who did find their identity in the family, did not write about it either. My hunch is that these New Culture participants hoped to marry a taitai, not a new woman. 90. Chen Zhishin, “Women Zhongguoren you jiating de kuaile ma?” (Do we Chinese have happy homes?), JTYJHK 1, no. 2 (Fall 1920): 53–54. Guo Xun, in “Jiu jiating hunzhi de bihai,” also insisted on the necessity of compatibility in moral character, education, talent, and virtue. 91. Just how young men developed new expectations of their wives is not yet clear. Wen-hsin Yeh’s work suggests the possibility that newspaper literary supplements popularized new ideas about what qualities a wife should possess and to some extent commodified these qualities (“Progressive Journalism,” passim). A passage in a young man’s letter to the editor suggests she is correct: “Everyone must prohibit the old-style marriage. In newspapers and magazines I often read about those who have suffered all kinds of family anguish. These [accounts] disturb me greatly” ( JTYJHK 1, no. 4 [August 1921]: 65). 92. See, for example, Lu Zongyi, “Gaizao jiating cong shenme difang zuoqi” (Where to start in family reform), JTYJ 1, no. 4 (August 1921): 24. 93. Ellen Key (1849–1926), a Swedish writer and activist, glorified motherhood and urged feminists to focus their efforts on the elevation of women’s “natural” function rather than on expanded political rights. She argued for recognition of women’s right to live as sexual beings and bear children outside of marriage. She also believed that marriage without love was immoral and advocated divorce when love failed. Her views on love and marriage had been well known and often cited in China since the beginning of the New Culture Movement.


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94. Shili referred to the traditional marriage that fulfilled the moral standards expressed in Confucian classics like the Liji (Book of rites). 95. Jian Cheng, letter to the editors, JTYJ 1, no. 5 (December 1921): 118–120. 96. Chen Dongyuan, Zhongguo funü, 389–392. 97. Li Shuting, letter to the editors, JTYJ 1, no. 5 (December 1921): 120. 98. Yan Lanqi, letter to Luo Dunwei, JTYJ 2, no. 1 (May 1922): 153–154. 99. JTYJHK 1, no. 3 (January 1921): 75. Another expression—de, yan, rong, gong haowu ([She] is entirely without virtue, speech, beauty, or industry)— appeared frequently in the journal’s pages. JTYJHK 1, no. 3 (January 1921): 74, 76. Ironically, these were the four virtues that characterized the traditional ideal woman. I will address the perseverance of tradition later in this chapter. 100. Chen Guyuan, “Luosu hunyin wenti yu jiushi jiehun” (Bertrand Russell’s marriage problem and traditional marriage), JTYJ 1, no. 3 (January 1921): 1–21, passim. 101. Cheng Fangwu, Lihun (Divorce), JTYJ 2, no. 1 (May 1922): 105–119. The play was originally submitted to Chuangzao (Creation) magazine (“Zazhi fangmian,” JTYJ 2, no. 1 [May 1922]: 154). 102. Traditional Chinese theater was performed as stylized opera on practically bare stages. Spoken theater billed itself as realistic and modern and used vernacular spoken language, costumes, and stage sets. 103. Cheng Fangwu, Lihun, 106–109. 104. Ibid., 112–113. 105. Ibid., 110. 106. Ibid., 111–112. 107. Ibid., 112. 108. Li’s depiction of his wife as a vengeful ghost recalls the traditional belief that the aggrieved might commit suicide in order to take revenge on the living who had abused them. 109. Cheng Fangwu, Lihun, 115, 117. 110. Chen Heqin was a native of Shangyu in Zhejiang. He received his education at a number of universities, both Chinese and American. He entered St. John’s University in the spring of 1911. In the fall he transferred to Qinghua University, from which he graduated in 1914. Chen also earned a master’s degree in education from Columbia University in 1919. He returned to China after graduation and began a long career in education. Over the years he headed the National Normal School for Pre-school Education and the Gulou Pre-school. He taught at Nanjing Higher Normal School and Dongnan University, and served as advisor to the Nanjing Xiaozhuang Experimental Village Normal School (Nanjing xiaozhuang shiyan xiangcun shifan xuexiao). In 1927 he helped publish the periodical Youzhi jiaoyu (Pre-school education). Beginning in 1928 Chen served as the head of the Chinese Education Department of the Public Works Bureau of the International Concession. In the following decade he supervised a number of Shanghai educational programs, including ones on child rearing, adult education, and the education of refugees. Thereafter he continued in various highlevel governmental educational posts, including a stint as delegate to a United



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Nations committee on education in 1948. He remained active in governmental committees at least until 1964. (MGRWDCD, 1076.) Pan Guangdan came from Baoshan, Jiangsu. His family had ties to both the scholarly and the merchant worlds. His father earned a jinshi (the degree given to those who passed the third and most difficult in a series of three exams that qualified men to serve as government officials) and was honored with an appointment to the Hanlin Academy (a corps of the most qualified jinshi that served the literary needs of the court). Pan shared two of Chen’s alma maters. After a childhood education in the Chinese classics he attended Qinghua University. After graduation in 1922 he left for the United States to enter Dartmouth on a Boxer Indemnities scholarship. He earned a degree in zoology with honors in 1924. He then went to Columbia University, where he earned a master’s degree in natural sciences. In 1926 Pan returned to China. At the Wusong National University of Political Science (Wusong guoli zhengzhi daxue) near Shanghai, he took up a position as professor and director of studies. Pan became well known for his publications in eugenics. He served as editor of Shishi xinbao’s literary supplement, “Light of Learning.” In his editorials he explored many of the topics popularized by the New Culture Movement, including women’s education and marriage and family reform. He published his questionnaire in this supplement on 2, 9, and 16 June 1927. Pan joined the Crescent Moon Society (Xinyue she, 1928– 1933), where he associated with Hu Shi (a leading figure in the New Culture Movement who was instrumental in the promotion of vernacular literature), Liang Shiqiu (a literary critic and translator of Western literature), and poet Xu Zhimo. From 1930 to 1936 he served as professor of sociology at Qinghua University. He continued there for ten more years as dean of faculty. After the war he became director of Qinghua University Library. Critical of the GMD, he remained on the mainland after 1949. (MGRWDCD, 1467–1468.) 111. Chen published his results as a three-part article. His “Shehui wenti” appeared in DFZZ 18, no. 4 (25 February 1921): 101–112; DFZZ 18, no. 5 (10 March 1921): 97–109; and DFZZ 18, no. 6 (25 March 1921), 109–122. 112. Pan Guangdan published his results in book form as Zhongguo zhi jiating wenti (China’s family question) within a few months of conducting the survey. Although his questionnaire did not appear in “Light of Learning” until June 1927, he dated his preface October 1926, perhaps confusing the Chinese method of calculating the year in relation to the establishment of the Republic of China in 1911 with the Western calendar. All references to his survey here refer to a 1934 reprint that listed no place or publisher. 113. For the most part, Chen asked open-ended questions and then categorized the responses. For example, he asked men what qualities they found satisfactory and unsatisfactory in their wives and then grouped the answers as he thought appropriate. In the absence of the respondents’ original answers, it is difficult to assess how Chen’s interpretations shaped the results he presented. Pan created a much more structured survey. He provided answers to his questions, asking his respondents to mark “approve” or “disapprove,” “yes” or “no,” or to rank a series of choices. As a result, Pan’s respondents were forced to limit themselves to predetermined responses. Pan also presented his respondents with sev-


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eral variations on a question. For example, he offered scenarios for the adoption of the Euro-American conjugal family: (1) to adopt it “in its entirety,” (2) to adopt it but continue to live with and support parents and grandparents, or (3) to adopt it and continue to support the senior generation but live independently. As a result of this format, respondents’ answers often overlapped. Options two and three received almost the same approval rating, 64 percent and 61 percent, respectively. Although Pan’s results probably reflected the ambiguity that surrounded new ideas about family, they make it impossible to tease out a definitive sense of the majority opinion. Despite these difficulties, these surveys offer a unique opportunity to assess the impact of the New Culture family reform debate. The remainder of this chapter attempts to sketch a portrait of those interested in family reform. When Pan and Chen asked similar questions, their results will be presented together and compared. Chen varied his questions depending on whether his respondents were married, engaged, or not yet engaged. Such distinctions will be made throughout my discussion of the two surveys. The surveys also differ in their treatment of expectation and experience. Pan focused, almost without exception, on his respondents’ opinions. Chen not only explored his subjects’ expectations but also tried to discover whether they managed to live according to their ideals. Occasionally Pan and Chen miscalculated percentages and totals. I have tried to correct these errors by using figures that they provided in other parts of the survey. 114. Chen, 18.4, 103–104; 18.5, 103. Pan, 34–36. Of Chen’s respondents, 29 percent were married, 29 percent were engaged, and 42 percent were “not yet engaged” (18.4, 101, 103). Of Pan’s 273 male respondents, 55 percent (149) were unmarried, 40 percent (110) were married, four were widowed, four were separated, and one was practicing “free love.” The status of five was unclear. Of the forty-four female respondents, twenty-six were unmarried, fifteen were married, one was widowed, and one had vowed to remain single. The status of one was unclear. 115. Of the fourteen provinces represented in Chen’s survey, the top six appeared in the following proportions: Jiangsu, 44 percent; Zhejiang, 26 percent; Anhui, 11 percent; Shandong, 2 percent; Hunan, 2 percent (DFZZ 18, no. 4, 104–105). Of the fifteen provinces represented in Pan’s survey, the top six appeared in the following proportions: Jiangsu, 46 percent; Zhejiang, 31 percent; Guangdong, 7 percent; Anhui, 4 percent; Fujian, 4 percent; Sichuan, 2 percent (Pan, Jiating wenti, 21–22). 116. The full breakdown of the education level of all of Pan’s respondents looked like this: college graduate, 13 percent; college student, 24 percent; high school graduate, 1 percent; middle school graduate, 14 percent; some secondary education, 35 percent; elementary school education, 8 percent; other, 3.2 percent. Three percent did not respond (Pan, Jiating wenti, 31–32). 117. Of Pan’s female respondents, 23 percent had a college education, 61 percent had attended middle school, 9 percent received an informal education, and 5 percent attended elementary school. One woman did not respond (ibid., 37). 118. Ibid., 26–30. 119. Chen, DFZZ 18, no. 6, 115; DFZZ 18, no. 5, 102. 120. Chen, DFZZ 18, no. 6, 115–116. 121. Pan, Jiating wenti, 39–41.



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122. Chen, DFZZ 18, no. 6, 116. 123. Ibid., 115. 124. Only 16 percent of Pan’s respondents approved of women marrying at age fifteen and men marrying at age twenty. Pan offered these as three separate alternatives (Pan, Jiating wenti, 66–68). Because some respondents approved of more than one choice, the total percentage exceeds 100. (This is true of many of his questions.) 125. Chen, DFZZ 18, no. 6, 114. 126. Ibid., 113. 127. Pan, Jiating wenti, 35–36. 128. Pan noted that a survey conducted around 1926 by Guanghua University’s Sociology Association reported similar results. Out of a total of 310 Guanghua respondents, 2.2 percent believed their parents should decide their marriages, 79 percent believed children and parents should cooperate in deciding the marriage, and 18 percent believed the decision should be made entirely by the individual. In comparison, in the latter two categories, Pan’s percentages came in at 78 and 22, respectively. Pan arrived at 78 percent by combining into one category those who had decided themselves but gained their parents’ approval and those whose parents had made the decision but had obtained their children’s approval. (Pan, Jiating wenti, 77.) 129. Chen, DFZZ 18, no. 5, 103; DFZZ 18, no. 4, 105. 130. Thirty-eight men explained why they were willing to go through with the marriage. Twenty were willing because their future wives were educated and moral. Eight consented because they believed children must follow their parents’ orders. Five believed that their parents understood how to choose a wife for them. Two respondents agreed by default, noting that they were too busy studying to have time to worry about it. One student did not think young people should decide their own marriages, one acquiesced because external pressure prevented him from rebelling, and one went along with the engagement because of old ties between the two families (Chen, DFZZ 18, no. 5, 104). 131. There was a smattering of other reasons: two found the differences in their ages too great. The following complaints appeared just once each: she was physically weak; the engagement was made at too young an age; she did not know how to make a living; she was not a Christian; and she had bound feet (ibid., 105–106). 132. One of the eighty-nine unhappily engaged did not respond to this question. Ibid., 106–107. 133. Ibid., 107. 134. Ibid., 108. 135. The other qualities were lively, 4 percent; patient, 3 percent; humble, 2 percent; sincere and kind, 2 percent; strong, 1 percent; heroic, 0.4 percent; and happy, 0.4 percent (Chen, DFZZ 18, no. 6, 110–111). 136. Ibid., 110. 137. Ibid. 138. Ibid. 139. Ibid., 111. 140. Ibid.


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141. Chen, DFZZ 18, no. 4, 108–109. 142. Chen, DFZZ 18, no. 6, 111. 143. Ibid. 144. Ibid. 145. Ibid., 109–110. 146. Ibid., 109. 147. Note the popularity of daughters: among the respondents, seventy-six (36 percent) wanted two boys and two girls; sixty-six (31 percent) hoped to have two boys and one girl; thirty-one (15 percent) wanted one of each. The combination of two sons and five daughters was the next most popular combination, garnering seventeen responses (8 percent). No one wanted just one child and no one hoped to have only sons (ibid., 114). 148. Ibid., 115. 149. Ibid., 116. 150. Pan, Zhongguo zhi jiating wenti, 100–103. 151. Chen, DFZZ 18, no. 5, 97–98. 152. Ibid., 98. 153. Pan, Zhongguo zhi jiating wenti, 77–80. 154. Chen, DFZZ 18, no. 6, 118–119. 155. Pan, Zhongguo zhi jiating wenti, 77–80. 156. Ibid., 64–65. 157. See, for example, Chao Sheng, “Qianchen yingshi: Guodu shidai de hunyin” (Shadows of the past: Marriage in a time of transition), Shenghuo zhoukan 2, no. 44 (4 September 1927): 318–319. 158. Chen, DFZZ 18, no. 6, 115. 159. Lu Xun, “Women xianzai zenmeyang zuo fuqin” (How are we to be fathers today?) New Youth 6, no. 6 (November 1919). Quoted in Schwarcz, Chinese Enlightenment, 109. 160. Frederic Wakeman, Jr. “The Price of Autonomy: Intellectuals in Ming and Ch’ing Politics,” Daedalus 101, no. 2 (Spring 1972): passim. 161. Arif Dirlik, The Origins of Chinese Communism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989); Wen-hsin Yeh, “Progressive Journalism.” 162. Chen, DFZZ 18, no. 5, 101.

chapter 2. making the national family 1. In this regard, they resembled members of the self-strengthening movement of the late nineteenth century, who had attempted to enlist state support of political, social, and cultural reforms. See, for example, Hao Chang, “Intellectual Change and the Reform Movement, 1890–8,” in The Cambridge History of China, ed. Denis Twitchett and John K. Fairbank, vol. 11, pt. 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). 2. See, for example, Zou Taofen, “Wei jieyue shi zaida Chen Feng” (Another response to Chen Feng about dissolving her engagement), Shenghuo zhoukan 3, no. 42 (2 September 1927): 496–497. 3. The Supreme Court was founded in 1910. Marius Hendrikus van der Valk, Interpretations of the Supreme Court at Peking (Batavia: Sinological Institute



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Faculty of Arts, University of Indonesia, 1949); Bernhardt, “Women and the Law,” in Bernhardt and Huang, Civil Law, 191. 4. Marius Hendrikus van der Valk, “Freedom of Marriage in Modern Chinese Law,” Monumenta Serica 3, fasc. 1 (1938): 14, 17. 5. Van der Valk, “Freedom of Marriage,” 12–13, 15–16, 20. 6. It is important to note that anyone with knowledge of such crimes was required to report them to the local authorities, and family elders were expressly forbidden to handle such matters themselves. 7. Fu, a native of Hainan in Guangdong province, earned a degree in engineering from Hong Kong University in 1916. In 1918 he started out as the section chief of the department under the General Affairs Office of the military government of Canton that kept records of chops. (Chops were stamps carved out of wood, ivory, or stone that bore a person’s full name. Chinese use chops to stamp their names on a document just as Westerners sign theirs.) Later that year he went to Shanghai, where he served in the Shanghai office of the ShanghaiHangzhou Railroad. He attended the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 as secretary to the Chinese delegation. Over the next eight years he served in various offices in the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In October 1928 he served as a committee member at the first session of the Nationalist government’s Legislative Yuan. He also headed the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Legislative Yuan and acted as the convener of the Civil Codification Commission. In 1929 he served as ambassador to Belgium. In 1931 he earned a doctorate in law from Hong Kong University. He continued to serve in a number of high-ranking posts throughout the Republican period; these included a stint as ambassador to the U.S.S.R. He was appointed secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in March 1949 but never assumed the post. He lived in Paris from 1949 until 1957, when he went to Taipei. There he was made an “advisor of national policy.” The following year he became vice president of the Judicial Yuan. MGRWDCD, 1158.) 8. Fu Bingchang, introduction to The Civil Code of the Republic of China, trans. Ching-lin Hsia et al. (Shanghai: Kelly and Walsh, 1931), vol. 2, books IV and V, vii. 9. Sun Yatsen, quoted in Strand, “Community, Society, and History,” 336. 10. “Hunli caoan” (Draft of the wedding ceremony), unnumbered document “B,” Guoshiguan (Academia historica; hereafter GSG). This document is undated. It is included with a bundle of documents on similar topics that are numbered 311 114.13–56. The language of the document marks it as a product of the New Life Movement (1934–1936). It was produced under the auspices of the Department of the Interior (Neizheng bu). 11. The government began drafting a protocol for weddings in 1928, at about the same time that it formed a Codification Committee for the New Family Law. The Central Political Council (Zhongyang zhengzhi huiyi) played a role in the formation of both the ritual guidelines and family legislation: it approved the proposal for ceremonial guidelines, passed its recommendation on to the Standing Committee, and set the agenda for the Civil Codification Commission of the Legislative Yuan. The earliest extant reference to a request for ceremonial guidelines comes from the Central Political Council's letter to the Civil Office of the


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Nationalist Government. The original letter made its way from the Guidance Committee for Party Affairs in Ciqi county to the Guidance Committee for Party Affairs of Zhejiang province. From there it proceeded to the Central Political Council, which approved of the proposal and sent it on to the Standing Committee, which would in turn send the document to the National Government (Guomin zhengfu). (“Zhongyang zhixing weiyuan hui mishuchu xinjian” [Memo from the Secretariat of the Central Executive Committee], 1 November 1928 [GSG 0121.11/4240.02–01, 002].) It also passed through the Department of the Interior, the College Yuan (which was established on 13 June 1927 with Cai Yuanpei as its head, and abolished in October of 1928 when it was replaced by the Department of Education [Chen Xulu and Li Huaxing, eds., Zhonghua minguo shi cidian [Dictionary of the history of the Republic of China] [Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chuban she, 1991], 15) and the Guowu huiyi (Conference of state affairs), probably as intermediary steps between the provincial committees and the Central Political Council. The Guowu huiyi formed a five-member committee to consider the matter. Whether this five-member committee was the same one that actually drafted the guidelines is unclear. (“Xingzhengyuan cheng guomin zhengfu” [Petition from the Executive Yuan to the national government], #964, 5 February 1930 [GSG 0121.11/4240.02–01, 013].) In 1938 the body handling the reform of ceremonies was known as the Bureau of Ceremony and Custom (Lisu si) (“Lisu si cheng Neizheng bu” [Petition from the Bureau of Ceremony and Custom to the Ministry of the Interior], May 1938 [GSG 311 114.13– 56/4]). The government also outlined an ideal funeral ceremony. 12. For a sense of how widespread this sentiment was see, for example, One Day in China: May 21, 1936, a collection of short essays contributed by Chinese from almost every province and from a wide range of socioeconomic strata. The book was “intended to reveal the entire face of China during one day.” The anthology includes a number of essays on the wastefulness of religion and ritual (Sherman Cochran, Andrew Hsieh, and Janis Cochran, eds. and trans., One Day in China: May 21, 1936 [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983], ix, xii, 147–165.) Many thanks to Ken Pomeranz for calling my attention to the prevalence of concern about ritual spending. 13. “Xingzhengyuan gonghan” (Official letter of the Executive Yuan), no. 782, 17 April 1930 (GSG 0121.11/4240.02–01, 033). 14. GSG unnumbered document “B.” 15. “Lizhi caoan yuanzi” (Principles behind the draft of a system of ceremonies) (GSG 311 114.13–56/3, 1) 1936 [?] (originally from petitions from the Department of the Interior and the Department of Education and an Executive Yuan directive, 19 October 1932). 16. GSG unnumbered document “B.” 17. “Lizhi caoan yuanzi” (GSG 311 114.113–56/3, 1936 [?]). 18. Hugh Baker, Chinese Family and Kinship (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976), 34–35; Shanghai baojian (Precious mirror of Shanghai), section 4, page 4 (Shanghai: 1925). 19. Even after his death in 1925, Sun Yatsen retained the title of prime minister. 20. GSG unnumbered document “B.”



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21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23. The author of this guidebook claimed that most weddings in Shanghai were based on this format (Shanghai baojian, section 4, page 13). 24. More than a decade later, the Bureau of Ceremony and Custom considered replacing “family head” with “wedding host” in their model ceremony (“Letter from the Bureau of Ceremony and Custom to the Ministry of the Interior,” 29 June 1938, GSG 311 114.13–56/4). 25. For a fairly typical treatment of these ideas see Pan Gongzhan’s preface to Lu Sihong’s Xin Zhongguo de hunyin wenti (New China’s marriage problems) (Shanghai: Xinsheng tongxun she, 1934). 26. Tao Huizeng, ed., Qinshufa dagang (An outline of the family law) (Shanghai: Commercial Press, 1928), 2. This book was part of a series on politics and law published by Shanghai’s Commercial Press. Tao’s work was recognized in legal circles. Jean Escarra praised Tao’s comparison of the four codification projects of family law (1910, 1915, 1925, and 1928) that preceded the Nationalists’ official May 1931 version. (Jean Escarra, La Codification du droit de la famille et du droit des successions: Rapport présenté au conseil législatif du gouvernement national [Shanghai: Université L’Aurore, 1931], 2.) 27. Stephanie Coontz notes that “states have tended to favor nuclear households, both for economic reasons (taxation and labor mobilization) and political ones (the greater ease of controlling an individual family unit as opposed to a united extended family).” Coontz, Social Origins, 24. 28. Escarra, La Codification du droit de la famille, 6–7. 29. The committee did not directly outlaw concubinage, although it claimed to agree that the practice should be eliminated. At the same time, it refused to legally recognize its existence. It did, however, point out that a concubine’s children belonged to the same category as children born out of wedlock who had been acknowledged by the father. As such, they were guaranteed the same inheritance rights as children born to an officially married couple. 30. Article 972; Ching-lin Hsia et al., Civil Code, vol. 2, book IV, 5. 31. Article 997; ibid., 6. 32. A double standard still existed in cases of adultery: a wife’s adultery was not only grounds for divorce, but also a criminal offense. Article 256 of the 1928 criminal code provided for a maximum of two years in prison upon a woman’s conviction of adultery. (Yu Tianxiu, trans., The Chinese Criminal Code [Shanghai: International Publishing, 1928], 175.) In contrast, a woman might divorce her husband for adultery, but no other legal recourse was open to her. Adultery for both men and women was defined as “where the other spouse has sexual intercourse with another person.” (Article 1052, line 2; Ching-lin Hsia et al., Civil Code, vol. 2, book IV, 23.) One could not divorce a spouse on these grounds if one “previously consented to the act or has since condoned it or has had cognizance of it for over six months.” (Article 1053; ibid., book IV, 24.) This condition prevented wives from divorcing men who had taken concubines before the new law went into effect. It also, in effect, allowed men to continue to take concubines as long as they could prevent their wives from suing for divorce within the first six months.


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33. Article 1124; Ching-lin Hsia et al., Civil Code, vol. 2, book IV, 43. 34. Article 1114 required lineal blood relatives, the spouse and his or her inlaws living in the same household, brothers and sisters, and the household head and household members to support one another. 35. Article 1084; Ching-lin Hsia et al., Civil Code, vol. 2, book IV, 31. 36. Article 1127; ibid., 44. 37. Hu Hanmin figures prominently in my analysis of Chinese guidelines and codes for two reasons. He had been a close associate of Sun Yatsen since 1905 and played important leadership roles in the Guomindang from its earliest days. In 1924 he was made the highest-ranking member of the Central Executive Committee. In the same year he also joined the seven-member Central Political Council. From September 1928 until February 1931 he was president of the Legislative Yuan. In 1931 he resigned in protest of Chiang Kaishek’s decision to adopt a provisional constitution. Hu, reiterating Sun’s vision of the Nationalist state, believed that China first needed a period of dictatorship in order to provide the people with political tutelage. Only then would China be ready for a constitutional government. (As it turned out, Chiang enforced a strict period of “tutelage” that lasted beyond his own lifetime, ending only with his son’s death in 1987.) Hu’s authority within the party and his position as president of the Legislative Yuan makes him a reliable voice for the intentions of the Nationalist government. To be sure, Hu was one of the strongest supporters of party authority, but it was these authoritarian views that most directly shaped policy. At the same time, Hu seemed to dominate party writing on family and legislation. I have not found essays on these topics among the collected works of other GMD leaders like Chiang Kaishek, T. V. Soong, and Wang Jingwei. 38. Article 27 of the 1915 “Minlu qinshu bian caoan” (Draft of the book of civil family law). Sifa xingzheng bu minfa yanjiu xiuzheng weiyuan hui (The Ministry of Justice’s committee to research the revision of the civil code), ed., Zhonghuaminguo fazhi ding shiliao huibian (The definitive collection of historical materials on the legal system of the Republic of China) (Taipei, 1976), vol. 2, 48. Also see article 53 of the 1925 “Minlu caoan qinshu bian” (The book of family law in the draft civil code), reprinted in ibid., 255. 39. Article 982; Ching-lin Hsia et al., Civil Code, book IV, 8. This requirement first appeared in article 14 of the “Xianxing minfa” (Civil law in force), which was in effect from 1927 until the New Family Law went into effect on 5 May 1931. Ibid., 353. 40. Judges usually refused to adjudicate cases in which a marriage had taken place with no witness present. This point will be discussed below. 41. The Communists’ strict birth control program and subsequent supervision of women’s menstrual cycles is a continuation of this process of state intervention. It is also a prime example of the state making society “legible” (Scott, Seeing Like a State, 219). 42. Ibid., 2. 43. Ibid., 81–82. 44. Ibid., 2. 45. Ibid., 82. 46. Hu Hanmin, “Minfashang xing, hunyin, jiating san wenti zhi taolun”



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(A discussion of three issues in civil law: sex, marriage, and family) (From a speech given 21 April 1930 on the memorial anniversary of the prime minister), in Hu Hanmin xiansheng wenji: Geming lilun yu geming gongzuo (The collected essays of Mr. Hu Hanmin: Revolutionary theory and revolutionary work; hereafter HHMWJ), ed. Wang Yangchong (Shanghai: Minzhi shuju, 1932), vol. 2, 884. 47. Guofu fazhi ju, “Qinshufa caoan zhi shuoming” (An explanation of the draft of the family law), in Qinshufa caoan (Draft of the family law; hereafter QSFCASM) (n.p.: 1928), 2–3. 48. Ibid., 10. 49. This was a significant innovation, but paternal family ties continued to be traced further than maternal ones. Marriage to male collateral relatives was prohibited within the eighth degree. In other words, one could marry a fourth cousin on one’s mother’s side or through the father’s sister, but cousins related through the father and his brothers were prohibited from marrying within the eighth degree (Ching-lin Hsia et al., Civil Code, vol. 2, book IV, 8, notes to article 983). 50. QSFCA, 2. Precise definitions of what constituted a “loathsome” disease are very difficult to find. Guidelines to the law note only that the disease had to be severe, contagious, and incurable. The physical exam required of participants in group wedding ceremonies disqualified those with venereal disease, tuberculosis, and leprosy. “Neizhengbu gonghan” (An official announcement from the Ministry of the Interior), 1 November 1942, Shanghai Municipal Archive (hereafter SMA) Q 1.12.1511. 51. A number of books appeared in the early 1930s that explained the new civil code. Many of them gave readers detailed explanations, and even graphic representations, of just who counted as kin under the new law. This suggests that many found the legislation confusing—especially with regard to legally sanctioned husbands and wives. 52. Ellen Judd, “Niangjia: Chinese Women and Their Natal Families,” Journal of Asian Studies 48, no. 3 (August 1989): 539. 53. For example, see Janet Theiss, “Dealing with Disgrace: The Negotiation of Female Virtue in Eighteenth Century China” (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1998), 49, 76–100. See also Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers, 196, 229; Judd, “Niangjia,” passim; Mann, Precious Records, 60–61; and Ida Pruitt, A Daughter of Han: The Autobiography of a Chinese Working Woman (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1973), 42, 48, 158. In my review of divorce cases in Shanghai in 1940 and 1941 I encountered several instances in which a woman took refuge at “her mother’s house” (niangjia) when her marriage fell apart. See, for example, Shanghai diyi tequ difang fayuan (Shanghai first special district court), SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 1395; SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 673; SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 465. 54. HHMWJ, 881. 55. Article 1115; Ching-lin Hsia, Civil Code, vol. 2, book IV, 39. 56. Article 1117; ibid., 40. 57. Article 1118; ibid. 58. Article 1087; ibid., 31. 59. QSFCA, 2–3.


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60. Fu Bingchang, introduction to Ching-lin Hsia et al., Civil Code, vol. 2, books IV and V, vii–viii. 61. Hu Hanmin, preface to Ching-lin Hsia et al., Civil Code, vol. 1, books I, II, and III, vi. 62. Fu, introduction to Ching-lin Hsia et al., Civil Code, vol. 1, books I, II, and III, xx–xxi. 63. HHMWJ, 886. 64. “You jiazu zhuyi, kuozhang dao guozu zhuyi” (Expanding familialism to nationalism), HHMWJ, 885. 65. Ibid. 66. My understanding of the Nationalists’ manipulation of authority, deference, and filiality has benefited much from discussions with Alan Cole and his ideas about “meta-family.” 67. HHMWJ, 885–886. 68. Zhonghua minguo xingfa: Code pénal de la Republique Chinoise: Texte chinois accompagné d’une traduction française, trans. P. C. Leblanc, C. M. Ricard, Wang Tse-sin, and Me. Ph. Kou Cheou-hi (Shanghai: Université L’Aurore, 1935), articles 240, 241, and 242, 64–65. In the 1928 version of the criminal code, no differentiation in punishment existed for those convicted of forcible abduction or the seduction of one who willingly departed from the family. There the two terms heyou (seduction) and lueyou (forcible abduction) were grouped together. The guilty could be sentenced to between six months and five years in prison. (The Chinese Criminal Code [Promulgated by the Chinese Nationalist Government], trans. Yu Tinn-Hugh, with Chinese text [Shanghai: International Publishing, 1928], article 257, p. 176.) Article 241 stipulated a one- to seven-year sentence for forcible abduction (lueyou). The code equated seduction of a young man or woman between the ages of fifteen and twenty with forcible abduction and provided for a prison sentence of between one and seven years (ibid., 167). 69. Because the crime was defined as alienation of a child away from those who had authority over him or her, these pleas were entered by the family head— usually the father. 70. Article 980; Ching-lin Hsia et al., Civil Code, vol. 2, book IV, 8. 71. Supreme Court Ruling no. 1509, 1931. Cited in the Jiangsu High Court’s letter to the Supreme Court explaining the High Court’s decision (Jiangsu gaodeng fayuan, 10 December 1936, shangzi 278. SMA uncatalogued). 72. Cited in a letter dated 16 January 1937 from the Jiangsu High Court to the Supreme Court explaining the High Court’s decision (Zuigao fayuan xingshi shangshu juanzong, Xingshi di 2 ting. SMA uncatalogued). 73. See, for example, Jiangsu Shanghai difang fayuan (Shanghai district court, Jiangsu Province), 20 October 1936, nian suzi 1780, zhenzi 4029. Jiangsu gaodeng fayuan (Jiangsu High Court), 23 November 1936, shangzi 278. Zuigao fayuan (Supreme Court), 30 March 1937[?], lunshangzi 278. SMA uncatalogued. 74. Shanghai was divided into three jurisdictions. The International Concession was run by a municipal council of Europeans and Americans. The French Concession was governed by the French. The “Chinese city” was run by the Chinese. In all three jurisdictions, Chinese were governed by Chinese civil and penal codes; those who lived in the foreign concessions were still tried by Chinese



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courts. Western foreigners enjoyed “extra-territoriality”; they were judged according to the codes of their own countries. 75. Shanghaishi nianjian (Greater Shanghai annual) (Shanghai: Shanghaishi tongzhiguan, 1936), G113. To place the quantity of such suits in perspective, the court heard 455 cases of gambling, 465 of physical harm, 3,658 of larceny, 299 of armed robbery and piracy, 210 of fraud, 196 of appropriation, and 67 of terrorism. 76. I do not know how many plaintiffs appealed their convictions. Nor do I know the rate at which the Jiangsu High Court overturned decisions on statute 240. In 1934, the Jiangsu High Court overturned more than half, 190 of 365, of all the Second Special District Court’s decisions. The Jiangsu High Court ruled that 87 of the suits were unreasonable. It found the remaining 103 suits reasonable but found the judgments inappropriate. (Table C, “Xingshi di 2 pan anjian nianbiao (2)” [Annual table of judgments of appeals of criminal convictions (2)], and Table D, “Xingshi di 2 pan anjian nianbiao (3)” [Annual table of judgments of appeals of criminal convictions (3)], both in Shanghaishi nianjian, G200.) 77. Table K, “Xingshi jueding anjian beigao nianbiao (1)” (Annual table of defendants in the judgments of criminal cases [1]), in Shanghaishi nianjian, G169. 78. In this district the number of offenses against family and marriage trailed far behind that of other crimes. In 1934 the court heard a total of 5,209 cases, 2,047 for opium, 1,373 for larceny, 584 for gambling, 255 for physical harm, 241 for robbery, 109 for hoarding, 81 for terrorism, and 78 for misappropriation. (Table A, “Xingshi di 1 pan anjian nian biao (1)” [Annual table of judgments of criminal cases (1)], Jiangsu Shanghai di 2 tequ difang fayuan 1934 xingshi anjian tongji [Statistics of criminal cases for the Second Special District Court of Shanghai, Jiangsu province, 1934], in Shanghaishi nianjian, G163–164.) 79. Table N, “Xingshi jueding anjian beigao nianbiao (3)” (Annual table of defendants in the judgment of criminal cases [3]), in Shanghaishi nianjian, G68. 80. Jiangsu Shanghai diyi tequ difang fayuan xingshi panjue (Shanghai First Special District Court, Jiangsu province, criminal case judgment), 10 January 1940, no. 129. SMA 180.2.129. All of the court cases that I was allowed to see at the Shanghai Municipal Archives dated from 1939, 1940, or 1941 and were heard in the Shanghai First Special District (International Concession) courts. Although the Nationalists were no longer in Shanghai at that time, these cases are still useful for investigating the Nationalists’ attitudes and policies toward family and marriage. Shanghai First Special District Court judges were appointed by the Nationalist government and, despite the efforts of the Japanese and the collaborationist Wang Jingwei regime to ruin their reputations and to terrorize them into submission, most judges remained loyal to the Nationalists and resisted Japanese interference even after the government moved its capital far inland to Chongqing in October 1938. (Frederic Wakeman, Jr., The Shanghai Badlands [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996], 117–119.) Moreover, the statutes and codes that guided the judges’ decisions at this time were written by the Nationalist government. It seems unlikely that in the course of several years the courts’ interpretation of these laws would have changed in any radical way. The courts’ bravely defended independence ended abruptly when the Japanese


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occupied the International Concession immediately following the bombing of Pearl Harbor on 8 December 1941. 81. The names used here are pseudonyms. Those who shared family names have been given identical pseudonymous family names here. 82. Jiangsu Shanghai diyi tequ difang fayuan xingshi panjue (Shanghai First Special District Court, Jiangsu province, criminal case judgment), January 1940, no. 129. SMA 180.2.129. 83. Kun, literally, “to be sleepy.” 84. Zhou Jiawei was referring to the Japanese attack on Shanghai, which began on 13 August 1937. 85. The phrase used here, kai fangjian, was, at least in the Shanghai dialect, a euphemism for illicit sexual behavior (Min Jiaji et al., Jianming wu fangyan cidian [Succinct dictionary of the Wu dialect] [Shanghai: Shanghai Cishu chuban she, 1991]). Reading the deposition, one senses that the participants played with the double entendre. “To live together” (tongju) is also used throughout the testimony. It can mean to literally live together and/or to have illicit sexual relations. 86. The intention of this question is unclear. The procurator may have been trying to determine whether someone aided Zhou Jiawei’s seduction of Shumei. Aiding and abetting the seduction of a minor was a criminal offense. 87. Jiangsu gaodeng fayuan di 2 fenyuan (Jiangsu High Court, second branch), shangzi 174, 17 February–2 April 1940. SMA 180.2.129. 88. Ibid. 89. Note that here the term xiao jiating simply indicates a stem family, as opposed to a joint family. 90. Only a man’s wife could charge him with adultery, so this infraction was beyond the court’s purview. 91. Jiangsu gaodeng fayuan di 2 fenyuan (Jiangsu High Court, second branch), shangzi 174. 92. Zhou Jiawei and Zhou Shumei rented the zaopi, an undersized room that adjoined the house proper and was usually used as a kitchen (Jianming wu fangyan cidian). Wang lived above the zaopi in the tingzijian, a makeshift room added over the shed that housed the kitchen, usually in the back of the house. In this case it was probably over the zaopi that Zhou Jiawei and Zhou Shumei rented. 93. It is impossible to say whether Wang invented this “memory” or whether he simply had not been asked the right questions in the deposition. 94. Lin Kanghou, ed., Shanghai shi hanghao lutu lu (Shanghai street directory or business map) (Shanghai: Fuli rongye gongsi, 1939), map 124. 95. Lu, Hanchao, Beyond the Neon Lights: Everyday Shanghai in the Early Twentieth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 246. 96. Article 1052.1–10; Chinglin Hsia et al., Civil Code, vol. 2, book IV, 23–24. 97. Children are conspicuous by their absence from these documents. In only four of these cases are children ever mentioned. One might expect the custody of children to be an issue on which the court would rule in the case of divorce or separation suits in which both spouses were present. But, in fact, in the cases in which children are mentioned, the issue of custody is a moot point. Two were divorce suits in which the other parent (one mother and one father) had dis-



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appeared. In the third, the wife’s request to divorce her husband because he is in jail was denied. In a fourth case, also for abandonment, the wife mentioned that they had no children. In the fifth case, a young woman asked that a cohabitation agreement be reinstated and that she receive support for her daughter. See SMA 180.1.62.7a, 1941, no. 492; SMA 180.1.62.2e, 1941, no. 42; SMA 180.1.62.9a, 1941, no. 978; SMA 180.1.62.1, 1940, no. 1382; SMA 180.1.62.5b, 1941, no. 290. 98. Bernhardt, “Women and the Law,” in Bernhardt and Huang, Civil Law, 8, 10. 99. Ching-lin Hsia, et al. Civil Code, vol. 2, book IV, 23–24. The court required proof that a spouse had been missing for over three years. Successful plaintiffs had usually taken out ads in popular newspapers like Xinwen bao (The news) soon after their spouses’ disappearance, asking them to return. After three years the abandoned spouse ran another ad for two or three days informing the missing spouse of the impending divorce suit. 100. SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 184. 101. SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 236. See also SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 179; SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 198; SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 42. 102. SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 312. For the other successful suits by men see SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 179; SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 198; SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 42; SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 13. 103. SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 184; SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 219; SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 1019. 104. SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 123. 105. Ibid. 106. SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 25. 107. SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 492. 108. SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 1008. 109. SMA 180.1.62, 1940, no. 1395. 110. For additional examples see SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 905; SMA 180.1.62, 1940, no. 1382; SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 234; SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 120; SMA 180.1.62, 1940, no. 9. 111. SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 13. 112. SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 987. 113. SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 563 and SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 862. 114. Established in November 1928, the Department of Military Administration operated under the jurisdiction of the Executive Yuan. In May 1945 it was abolished and replaced by the Ministry of Defense. (Chen Xulu and Li Huaxing, Zhonghua minguo shi cidian, 206.) 115. The case of Miss Xu, discussed later in this chapter, provides an example of a case in which the court granted a divorce on grounds other than those claimed by the plaintiff. 116. SMA 180.1.72, 1941, no. 1008. 117. A woman who found herself in a similar situation, but married to an allegedly dissolute musician, obtained her divorce easily. SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 905. Carlton Benson informs me that Republican Shanghai society continued to rank musicians on the lower rungs of the social ladder.


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118. “Dongyuan shiqi junren hunyin baozhang tiaoli cao an” (Draft regulations guaranteeing the marriages of soldiers on active duty), 8 November 1943, Nanjing Number Two Historical Archive, 22.2093. 119. Ching-lin Hsia, et al., Civil Code, vol. 2, book IV, 23. 120. Articles 1052.3 and 1052.10 respectively. (Ching-lin Hsia et al., Civil Code, vol. 2, book 1v, 23. SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 673.) 121. Ibid. 122. Ibid. For another instance in which the court took the husband’s word over the wife’s see SMA 180.1.62, 1940, no. 1158. 123. SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 718. 124. SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 727. 125. On 13 October 1940, Mrs. Li’s husband beat her viciously with a feather duster because she had lost a quilt cover. Two days later she showed her wounds to the police warden. The warden indicted her husband and a criminal court found him guilty and fined him 50 yuan. Insisting that he had beaten her before, Mrs. Li sued for divorce but lost. (SMA 180.1.62, 1940, no. 22.) In using the term guobi, a plaintiff specified the kind of currency in which she or he wanted damages to be paid. This was important because the regimes that controlled different parts of China each issued its own currency. Guobi referred to the Nationalist government’s currency, officially known as fabi (legal currency). The Nationalist government created fabi in 1935 when, in response to China’s hemorrhage of silver caused by the United States’ Silver Purchase Act of June 1934 and the ensuing depression of China’s economy, it took China off the silver standard. Nevertheless, the Chinese populace continued to refer to the fabi as guobi, the term for national Chinese currency based on the silver standard that had been current at least as early as the first decade of the twentieth century. The guobi’s chief competitor at this time in Shanghai was the Wang Jingwei puppet regime’s currency issued by its Central Reserve Bank. Despite the efforts of the Wang Jingwei regime and the Japanese to terrorize Shanghai’s residents into accepting the Central Reserve Bank currency in the International and French Concessions, it remained worthless. Thus the importance of specifying the form of currency in which damages were to be awarded. (Hanyu da cidian bianji weiyuan hui and Hanyu da cidian bianzuan chu [The editing committee and the compilation office of the great Chinese dictionary], Hanyu da cidian [The great Chinese dictionary] [Shanghai: Hanyu da cidian chuban she, 1997]; Frederic Wakeman, Jr., Policing Shanghai, 1927–1937 [Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995], 308–309; Frederic Wakeman, Jr., Shanghai Badlands, 118–123; Arthur Young, China and the Helping Hand, 1937–1945 [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1963], 6–7.) 126. This woman’s lawyer argued that psychological cruelty was, in fact, much worse than physical cruelty. It was also much harder to prove; the plaintiff’s lawyer admitted that she had very little, if any, evidence. (SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 1083.) 127. SMA 180.1.62, 1940, no. 147. 128. Article 999 allowed a party who had been harmed by the nullity or annulment of a marriage to sue for damages.



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129. SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 1006. 130. Ibid. It is possible that recourse still existed for this woman in the criminal code, under the provision against seducing females under twenty away from their families. Miss Li’s age and whether she pursued this course of action are unknown. Note that it was to his advantage to use yuan. 131. SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 290. Although sexual relationships between men and women of the same surname were proscribed by tradition, it was not unheard of. At present, I do not know how common cohabitation contracts were or just what their legal standing was. The Nationalists, interested in clarifying and simplifying family organization, made no allowances in their civil code for alternative conjugal alliances. The court, however, seemed willing to recognize and adjudicate the cohabitation agreement as a contractual relationship with some legal weight. The suit thus points to one way around the prohibition against concubinage. Such agreements may have been used to regularize relationships between men and women who were, in effect, their concubines. 132. At this time the Japanese controlled the hinterland around Shanghai, and Chinese women were vulnerable to rape and kidnapping. See, for example, Susan Glosser, “Women’s Culture of Resistance: An Ordinary Response to Extraordinary Circumstances,” in Under the Shadow of the Rising Sun: Shanghai under Japanese Occupation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). 133. SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 736. 134. Article 976.8; Ching-lin Hsia et al., Civil Code, vol. 2, book IV, 6. SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 630. 135. SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 704. 136. SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 414. 137. SMA 180.1.62, 1940, no. 1335. 138. SMA 180.1.62, 1941, no. 465. 139. See Kathryn Bernhardt and Philip C. C. Huang, eds., Civil Law in Qing and Republican China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994); Melissa Macauley, Social Power and Legal Culture: Litigation Masters in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998); Matthew Sommer, Sex, Law, and Society in Late Imperial China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000); and Theiss, “Dealing with Disgrace.” 140. Florence Ayscough, Chinese Women: Yesterday and To-Day (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1937). Cited in Susan Mann, “The Cult of Domesticity in Republican Shanghai’s Middle Class,” Jin dai Zhongguo funü shi yanjiu (Research on women in modern Chinese history) 2 (June 1994), 183. An article in Kuaile jiating (Happy family) claimed the honor of hosting the first group wedding for Shanghai but gave no precise date, referring vaguely to the spring of 1935. Lu Wuzhen, “Canjia jituan jiehun de ganxiang” (Impressions about participating in group weddings), Kuaile jiating 1, no. 2 (April 1936): 10. 141. “Neizhengbu gonghan” (An official announcement from the Ministry of the Interior), 1 November 1942 (SMA Q1.12.1511, pp. 18–26). 142. Letter from Wu Kaixian, the head of the Shanghai Bureau of Social Affairs, to Shanghai Mayor Wu, 21 February 1947, SMA Q1.12.1551, 6. The Nationalists hoped to make group weddings popular in both cities and the


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countryside; the scope of their success is unclear (“Neizhengbu gonghan” [An official announcement from the Ministry of the Interior], 1 November 1942, SMA Q1.12.1551, 18–26). 143. Mann, “Cult of Domesticity,” 183, note 6. 144. GSG unnumbered document “B.” 145. Ayscough in Mann, “Cult of Domesticity,” 184, note 7. 146. “Neizhengbu gonghan” ( An official announcement from the Ministry of the Interior), 1 November 1942 (SMA Q1.12.1511, 18–26). 147. Ibid. 148. SMA Q1.12.1511, 29, 17 June 1947. 149. SMA Q1.12.1511, 31, 14 October 1947. 150. “Shanghaishi sanshiliu niandu diyi ci jituan jiehun canjia renming ci” (Participants in Shanghai’s first group wedding of 1947), Shanghai shehui ju (Bureau of Social Affairs), 21 February 1947 (SMA Q1.12.1551, 36–41). 151. On the emergence of the xiao jiating ideal among Shanghai’s petty urbanites, see Wen-hsin Yeh, “Progressive Journalism and Shanghai’s Petty Urbanites,” in Shanghai Sojourners, ed. Wen-hsin Yeh and Frederic Wakeman, Jr. (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, 1992), especially pages 203, 210–211, 213–214. Susan Mann points out that many Ningbo women who worked outside the home refused to acknowledge that work, preferring to be considered housewives (“Cult of Domesticity,” 183–185). The fact that each participant’s name, age, native place, and occupation were publicly announced a month before the ceremony meant that participants had a strong interest in presenting themselves in as favorable a light as possible (“Neizhengbu gonghan” [An official announcement from the Ministry of the Interior], 1 November 1942 [SMA Q1.12.1511, 18–26]).

chapter 3. marketing the family 1. Li Shaoling, “Shanghai zhi jiating gaige yundong—jiating rixin hui” (Shanghai’s family-reform movement—the society for daily renewal of the family), JTYJ 1, no. 2 (Fall 1920): 71. 2. For a full discussion of these issues as they appeared in Shenghuo zhoukan see Yeh, “Progressive Journalism.” 3. Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, “The Evolution of the Shanghai Student Protest Repertoire; or, Where Do Correct Tactics Come From?” in Shanghai Sojourners, ed. Frederic Wakeman, Jr., and Wen-hsin Yeh (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1992), 131. 4. You was born 28 September 1889, according to Cornell University registrar records. His given name was Zhimai. (Zhonghua zhiye jiaoyu she tongshe lu [China Vocational Education Society membership list], 1920, 3. Shanghai Municipal Library.) For more information on his career and on the dairy industry see Susan Glosser, “Milk for Health, Milk for Profit: Shanghai’s Dairy Industry under Japanese Occupation.” In Inventing Nanjing Road: Commercial Culture in Shanghai, 1900–1945, ed. Sherman Cochran (Ithaca: Cornell University East Asia Program, 1999). 5. Fundamental issues such as age at marriage, family organization, and hi-



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erarchy in the family remained important. Compare, for example, the following six article titles, the first three from Family Research and the last three from Family Weekly: “Wanhun zhuyi he danyi jiating” (Late marriage and the single family), 1, no. 2 (Fall 1920); “Jiating zhidu piping” (A critique of the family system), 1, no. 1 (August 1920); “Jiating shenghuo de ‘minzhuhua’” (The “democratization” of family life), 1, no. 1 (August 1920); “Nüzi shidang de jiehun nianling” (The appropriate age of marriage for women), 1, no. 30 (20 June 1936); “Da jiating zhi he xiao jiating zhi de youjian” (The pros and cons of joint family and conjugal family organization), 1, no. 30 (20 June 1936); “Jiating zhidu de cunzai yu nannü pingdeng wenti” (The survival of the family system and the problem of equality of the sexes), 1, no. 50 (8 November 1936). 6. This is all we ever learn of You’s father. The Boxer Indemnity was a $333 million dollar fine (equal to 180 percent of the Qing state’s annual revenues) levied against China to compensate foreigners for damages incurred during the Boxer Rebellion, the popular anti-foreign uprising that took place in 1900. In 1908 the United States used its share of the monies to create scholarships to bring Chinese students to the United States to study. Hu Shih, one of the most famous of the New Culture intellectuals and the one credited for sparking the movement’s literary revolution, also began his studies in the United States with this group. You does not seem to have formed a friendship with or traveled in the same social or academic circles as his brilliant classmate. 7. You Huaigao, “Liumei huiyi lu” (Record of my stay in America), Jiating xingqi (Family weekly; hereafter JTXQ) 1, no. 13 (23 February 1936): 14. This essay appeared in installments in each issue beginning with the first issue on 24 November 1935 and continuing at least through vol. 2, no. 17, 21 March 1937. 8. You Huaigao, “Liumei,” JTXQ 1, no. 27 (31 May 1936): 26. 9. You Huaigao, “Liumei,” JTXQ 1, no. 39 (23 August 1936): 215. 10. You received a bachelor of science in agriculture in 1913. “Liumei,” JTXQ 1, no.5 (22 December 1935): 281, and 1, no. 43 (20 September 1936): 11. “Liumei,” JTXQ 2, no. 17 (21 March 1937): 265. 11. Of course, frugality had long been a Confucian ideal. See, for example, Patricia Ebrey, Family and Property in Sung China: Yuan Ts’ai’s Precepts for Social Life (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), 47, 50, 121, 131–132, 168, 263–266. Joseph McDermott’s essay on household instructions for women suggests that the ubiquitous Republican-era manuals and family and women’s magazines that offered women advice on housekeeping were part of a genre that began in the late Qing. See Joseph P. McDermott, “The Chinese Domestic Bursar,” in Tradition and Modernization: Essays in Honour of the Seventieth Birthday of Professor Kiyoko Takeda Cho, ed. Uozumi Masayoshi (Tokyo: International Christian University, 1990). 12. For a discussion of this process in the United States see Coontz, Social Origins, passim and especially pp. 23–24. Coontz disrupts the assumption that certain economic changes precipitate particular family transformations: “Thus we can examine how the social relations of an emerging market economy interacted with the ideology of the American Revolution and the demography of the middle class to produce the domestic family, without concluding that the private family with the woman at its domestic center is an inevitable component of any


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industrialization process” (17). I appreciate Coontz’s insistence that we take account of historical particularities and not assume that all societies follow the same paths of development. At the same time, I believe it also behooves us to note and explain the times and places where family changes have taken similar forms. 13. For a larger picture of the forces shaping Chinese students’ desire to study agriculture in this period see Randall E. Stross, The Stubborn Earth: American Agriculturalists on Chinese Soil, 1898–1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). 14. Bolton Hall, Three Acres and Liberty (New York: Macmillan and Company, 1907). Hall’s book was part of a self-improvement genre that emerged in the late-nineteenth-century United States. Hall responded to the social and economic tensions created by urbanization by urging Americans to return to an idyllic rural lifestyle. 15. You Huaigao, “Sanmu di yu ziyou” (Three acres and liberty), part 1, JTXQ 1, no. 9 (19 January 1936): 1. This essay was published in twenty-three installments beginning with vol. 1, no. 9. You used the essay to introduce Bolton Hall’s ideas and to present his own ideas about how his readers could lead happy, productive lives. 16. JTXQ 1, no. 8 (14 January 1936): 1. A mu equals about one-sixth of an acre. 17. A short article in Jingangzhuan (Diamond) attested to the popularity of milk in Suzhou and attributed the fad to the desire to imitate Shanghai: “Everyone in Shanghai drinks cow’s milk as a tonic. Suzhou also has quite a few dairy farms that supply residents with milk.” The writer also noted, however, that recent scares about contracting tuberculosis from cows had convinced 50 percent of consumers to switch to goat’s milk. (Wu Nong, “Yangnai yu niunai” [Goat’s milk and cow’s milk] [24 March 1936].) Many thanks to Carlton Benson for this item. Although You and other dairymen promoted milk as the most digestible and nutritious of foods, many Chinese must have been lactose intolerant. In the absence of dairy products, the human body tends to stop making lactase, the enzyme required to digest milk. Once weaned from mothers’ milk, most Chinese did not drink any other milk. Nevertheless, affluent Chinese, convinced of milk’s health-giving properties, bought milk for themselves and their children. Many other urbanites consumed milk via Western baked goods and ice cream. For more on these issues see Glosser, “Milk for Health, Milk for Profit.” 18. “Riyong pin qianshuo—niunai” (A layman’s description of a daily necessity—milk), JTXQ 1, no. 4 (15 December 1935): 14. This was a condensed version of a report on a tour of Liberty Dairy published in the 3 November 1935 issue of Shenbao. At some point in the 1920s or early 1930s Chinese dairies adopted U.S. standards for grading milk. A 1939 business directory shows Liberty Farms still located at its original address at the corner of Yanping and Connaught Roads, near Shanghai’s Second Refugee Shelter and on the perimeter of the Barbarians Bowling Club. (Lin Kanghou, Shanghai shi hanghao lutu lu, 3, 15, 463.) 19. Zhonghua zhiye jiaoyu she tongshe lu, 3, Shanghai Municipal Library. 20. Yeh, “Progressive Journalism,” 194. 21. Wen-hsin Yeh, The Alienated Academy: Culture and Politics in Republi-



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can China, 1919–1937 (Cambridge: Published by Council on East Asian Studies, Harvard University and distributed by Harvard University Press, 1990), 119–120. 22. On the importance of native-place ties in business and progressive organizations see Bryna Goodman, Native Place, City, and Nation: Regional Networks and Identities in Shanghai, 1853–1937 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). 23. Yeh, “Progressive Journalism,” 198–214. 24. Rupin yeh (The dairy industry), SMA S118. 25. Yeh, “Progressive Journalism,” 219–221. You and Zou may have been acquainted. Zou joined the Vocational Education Society in 1922. You may have taken Wang Zhixin as his model; he shared both Wang’s interest in the nuts and bolts of business and his didactic style (“Progressive Journalism,” 194, n25). 26. “Jiating wenti zuotan hui” (A conference on family issues), part 1, Dagong bao, 1 October 1936, “Dajia guwen” (Everyone consults) section. The prominence of the banking community in the family-reform debate calls to mind MarieClaire Bergère’s characterization of the members of the Shanghai Bankers’ Association as a group interested not only in monetary rationalization but also in public and national reform (“The Shanghai Bankers’ Association, 1915–1927: Modernization and the Institutionalization of Local Solidarities.” In Shanghai Sojourners, ed. Frederic Wakeman, Jr., and Wen-hsin Yeh [Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1992], 26). 27. The four men were Tang Shaochuan (1860–1938), Rong Kui, Tang Jiechen (orig. Guoan, 1858–1913), and Tang Luyuan. The two men for whom we have dates would have been much older than You; it seems likely that they were friends or acquaintances of his father. 28. You Huaigao, “Liumei,” JTXQ 1, no. 42 (13 September 1936). 29. You charged non-subscribers just two fen (0.01 yuan) per issue. Annual subscriptions for non-customers cost six mao (0.10 yuan) for residents of Shanghai county and 1 yuan for those who lived outside the city. Subscriptions to commercial magazines cost at least four times as much; for example, an annual subscription to Xin jiating (New family) cost four yuan in the early 1930s. 30. All of these periodicals regularly featured articles on child care. Although it is, of course, related to the topics I cover in this study, the subject of attitudes toward child rearing is a large one that will have to wait for a study of its own. 31. Of course, not every Republican entrepreneur shared You’s vision. Jiankang jiating (Healthy family), a periodical published from 1937 to 1945 by pharmaceutical magnate Xu Guanqun, seems to have favored a more traditional, hierarchical family. Xu’s main concern seems to have been the preservation of filial piety. Nevertheless, he recognized that even as filial piety was preserved, the family had to be “adapted to meet the demands of the modern world.” He acknowledged problems with “old thinking” and large, joint families, but he believed that scientific child rearing, rather than radical restructuring, could solve them. Note the faith with which Xu, like You and others, turned to individualist and scientific (“rational”) approaches to solve China’s problems (Sherman Cochran, “Marketing Medicine across Enemy Lines: Chinese ‘Fixers’ and Shanghai’s Wartime Centrality,” originally presented at the Wartime Shanghai


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Workshop, Lyon, France, October 1997, revised paper courtesy of the author, 17–18). 32. In the process of gathering sources for this part of my study I surveyed a number of popular magazines and newspaper supplements through the issues held in the Hoover Institution’s East Asian Collection at Stanford University, the Shanghai Municipal Library, and the Shanghai Municipal Archives. The periodicals included the following: Funü zazhi (Ladies journal); Shenghuo zhoukan (Life weekly), 1925–1933; Xin jiating (New home), 1930–1933; Jiating yu funü (Family and women), 1939–1941; Kuaile jiating (Happy home), 1936–1938?; Jia (Home magazine), 1946–1953. The newspaper supplements included the following: in Chen bao, “Funü yu jiating” (Women and family), 1933; in Dagong bao, “Xiandai jiating” (The modern home), 1936–1937; “Funü yu jiating” (Women and family), 1937; and “Jiating” (Family), 1946–1948; in Shen bao, “Jiating” (Family), 1938–1941 (begun as “Yi shi zhu xing zhoukan” [Clothing, food, housing, transportation weekly]); in Shishi xinbao, “Xiandai jiazheng” (Modern housekeeping), 1931–1935, and “Jiating” (Home), 1947–1948. Because newspaper supplements often changed titles or temporarily stopped publication, the dates given here may not indicate the length of the entire run. 33. Citations provide the pen name used for each article. In the Republican period it was common for an author to use many pen names. For example, Zou Taofen used twenty-two pen names and wrote almost all the articles in Life Weekly (Yeh, “Progressive Journalism,” 195). However, unless a writer gained a degree of renown so that his or her pen names were well known, his or her true identity remains a mystery. 34. “Benkan qishi” (A notice per this journal), JTXQ 2, no. 4 (13 December 1936): 11. Zhi, “Wode xiao jiating shenghuo” (My conjugal family life), JTXQ 1, no. 6 (29 December 1936): 11. 35. Jun, “Cong jiu jiating li suo jian de Zhongguo shehui” (Chinese society seen from the perspective of the old family system), JTXQ 1, no. 49 (1 November 1936): 374. 36. Tao Yiren, Jiu Shanghai renkou bianqian de yanjiu (Research on population changes in old Shanghai) (Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chubanshe, 1980), 48, 59. For gender distribution by age see “Shimin nianling tongji” (Statistics on urbanites’ ages), Shanghaishi nianjian (Greater Shanghai annual) (Shanghai: Shanghaishi tongji guan, 1935), C23. 37. You Huaigao, “Sanmu di yu ziyou,” part 8, JTXQ 1, no. 17 (29 March 1936): 1. 38. Li Ruobing, “Lixiang de jiating jingji sheji” (The ideal family’s economic plan), JTXQ 1, no. 8 (17 Jan. 1936): 8–9; You Huaigao, “Yige xiaojiating de bu zhi” (Decorating the xiao jiating home), JTXQ 1, no. 1 (24 November 1935): 2. 39. JTXQ 1, no. 2 (24 November 1935): back page; 1, no. 3 (8 December 1935): back page. 40. You offered a subscription service that delivered black tea, hot milk, and biscuits to office workers and milk to anyone living on middle school or college campuses. He claimed to have successfully engaged subscribers from eight college campuses in and around Shanghai—Fudan, Hujiang, St. John’s, Jiaotong, Tongji, Daxia, Guanghua, and Shanghai Medical College.



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41. Li Ruobing, “Lixiang de jiating jingji sheji” (Ideal family economic plan), JTXQ 1, no. 8 (17 January 1936): 8. 42. Qiu Bai, “Lixiang zhong de xiao jiating shenghuo” (Ideal conjugal family life), JTXQ 1, no. 7 (5 January 1936): 2. 43. Zhou Chun, “Xie gei jiating zhufumen de xin” (A letter to housewives), JTXQ 1, no. 21 (19 April 1936): 2–3. 44. It was customary for Chinese to use several given names. Yunmei may be Yunlong’s pet name for her, created by replacing the first character of her given name with the first character of his given name. It might also be a name she chose for herself. It was common for intimate couples to use “little sister” and “elder brother” as terms of endearment. 45. Chen Yunlong told the court that he ran a shop in Shanghai. At the time he wrote this letter, however, he had lost his business, if indeed he had ever had one. Chen seems to be glossing over this fact. Despite Wang Ximei’s desperate circumstances, to follow Chen Yunlong at this point would only take her from bad to worse. 46. Because Chen is already married, the date he is pressing Wang to set is probably the date of her departure from Shanghai to join him. In asking her to become his wife he is using “wife” as a euphemism for mistress. 47. SMA 180.2.48, January 1940, no. 48. The records for this case included the judgment, depositions, and supporting evidence like the letter and the photo. Many thanks to Wang Lihua for her assistance with the translation. 48. Just what Wang Ximei was doing and where she was going remain a mystery. She may well have been meeting Chen. 49. You Huaigao, “Fakan xun” (Editor’s opening statement), JTXQ 1, no. 1 (24 November 1935): 1. 50. Hu Hanmin, preface to Ching-lin Hsia et al., Civil Code, vol. 1, books I, II, and III, vi. 51. You Huaigao, “Fakan xun.” 52. You Huaigao, “Wode xiao jiating shenghuo,” 12. 53. You Yi, “Zhufu de xiuyang he renwu” (Housewives’ self-cultivation and duty), JTXQ 1, no. 49 (1 November 1936): 5. 54. Jun, “Zenme zuzhi yige kuaile jiating” (How to organize a happy home), JTXQ 2, no. 17 (21 March 1937): 260. 55. Fei Xiaotong, in his description of the joint family in gentry society, noted that in contrast to the Western family, the Chinese family had no room for the inefficiency of individual satisfaction because it was devoted to religious, economic, and political functions (“‘Da jiating’ hai shi ‘xiao jiating’” (The “joint family” or the “conjugal family”), Shijie pinglun (Commentary on the world) 3, no. 8 (21 February 1948): 14). 56. Jun, “Cong jiu jiating li suo jian de Zhongguo shehui,” 375. 57. Xin, “Xin jiating de tantao” (Inquiry into the new family), JTXQ 2, no. 2 (29 November 1936): 21. 58. Ibid. 59. Fu Lu, “Lun lihun” (On divorce), JTXQ 1, no. 6 (29 December 1936): 2–3. 60. Le Wen, “Hebi taohun” (Why need one run from marriage?), JTXQ 1,


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no. 24 (10 May 1936): 8. Lu Xun used this pseudonym. I am not, however, convinced that he wrote this article. 61. Ibid. 62. Shou Wen, “Zenmeyang bimian lihun” (How to avoid divorce), JTXQ 1, no. 26 (24 May 1936): 5. 63. Chun, “Fufu hexie zhi dao” (The path of cooperation between husband and wife), JTXQ 1, no. 36 (2 August 1936): 161. 64. Xin, “Xin jiating de tantao,” 21. 65. Qui Bai, “Lixiang zhong de xiao jiating shenghuo,” 2. 66. You did make a foray into marital sexuality, but even there he applied his managerial logic; he advised men to keep their wives sexually satisfied in order to ensure marital tranquility. (“Ni furen manzu le meiyou?” [Is your wife satisfied?], JTXQ 1, no. 34 [19 July 1936]: 138.) 67. These issues did find expression in Republican fiction. See, for example, Lu Xun’s stories “Shang shi” (Lingering sorrow) and “Kuaile jiating” (The happy family). Lu Xun, Lu Xun quanji, comp. Wu Longhui et al. (Changsha: Xinjiang renmin chuban she, 1995). For English translations see Lu Xun, Diary of a Madman and Other Stories, trans. William A. Lyell (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1990). 68. Chun, “Tantan jiating” (A chat about family), JTXQ 1, no. 33 (12 July 1936): 1. 69. Xin, “Xin jiating de tantao,” 21. 70. Man Ru, “Duiyu yinhang de yunyong” (On the use of banks [in the “Housewife” section]), JTXQ 2, no. 7 (3 January 1937): 99. 71. Xin, “Xin jiating de tantao,” 21. You Huaigao, “Liumei huiyilu” (Record of my stay in America), JTXQ 2, no. 17 (21 March 1937): 265. 72. JTXQ 1, no. 2 (24 November 1935): back page. 73. Ibid. You estimated the Chinese population of Shanghai at 3,530,000, which included 800,000 Chinese children. He estimated that there were 3,000 cows locally, producing 30,000 pounds of milk a day. Of the 30,000 pounds, 10,000 went to commercial use and 20,000 to families; of the milk that went to families, foreign families consumed 12,000 pounds, Chinese families 8,000. Of the 8,000 pounds consumed by Chinese families, You estimated that adults consumed 6,000 pounds and children 2,000. 74. JTXQ 1, no. 5 (2 Dec. 1935): back page. Christopher Reed pointed out to me that missionary publishing houses provided similar services to their customers in the nineteenth century. He suggested that the missionaries may in turn have taken the idea from Sears, Roebuck, and Company. 75. Ibid. 76. JTXQ 1, no. 1 (24 November 1935): 8. 77. You Huaigao, Advertisement for the Home Service Society, JTXQ 1, no. 11 (9 February 1936): back page. 78. JTXQ 1, no. 1 (24 November 1935): 32. These advertisements appeared throughout the year-and-a-half-long run of JTXQ that I examined. Dagong bao and Shishi xinbao carried similar advertisements. 79. JTXQ 1, no. 5 (22 December 1935): 13. 80. JTXQ 1, no. 1 (24 November 1935): 32.



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81. Wang Shoufu, “Lixiang zhong de xiao jiating shenghuo” (Ideal conjugal family life), JTXQ 1, no. 3 (8 December 1935): 6–7. 82. Christopher Reed told me that the house Wang describes is strikingly similar to Lu Xun’s Hongkou home. For a brief but insightful discussion of this form of housing see Hanchao Lu, Beyond the Neon Lights (143–145). He has described shikumen as row houses occupying both sides of an alley within a walled residential compound with a large wooden gate framed in stone at the entrance. Luo Suwen, who has written an in-depth history of the shikumen, believes the term referred to the individual houses themselves. Luo also argues that by the 1930s shikumen had become overcrowded, run-down, and déclassé. Perhaps their previous status as comfortable homes of small merchants, artists, and the selfemployed in the late Qing and early Republican period lingered into the 1930s. (Luo Suwen, Da Shanghai: Shikumen, xunchang renjia [Greater Shanghai: Gates of carved ornament, homes to ordinary households] [Shanghai: Shanghai renmin chuban she, 1991], 18, 46–48, 58–61, 86–88.) There is great potential for comparative work on Japan and China and the meaning of “home.” On Japanese notions of domesticity see, for example, Nishikawa YÜko, “The Changing Form of Dwellings and the Establishment of the Katei (Home) in Modern Japan,” U.S.–Japan Women’s Journal: English Supplement 8 (1995): 3–36, and Jordan Sand, “At Home in the Meiji Period: Inventing Japanese Domesticity,” in Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan, ed. Stephen Vlastos (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 191–207. 83. Fei Hong, “Chumen yi li bu ru jiali” (Traveling a third of a mile outside one’s door cannot compare with staying home), JTXQ 1, no. 42 (20 September 1936): 259. 84. You Huaigao, “Sanmu di yu ziyou,” part 2, JTXQ 1, no. 12 (16 February 1936): 1. 85. Janet Theiss, “The Limits of Consensus and Cooperation in Women’s Political Organization and Ideology in Shanghai in the 1920s” (unpublished paper, University of California, Berkeley, 1991), courtesy of the author. 86. In the professions, women’s participation remained small, but they made an impression that far exceeded their numbers (see Wang Zheng, Women in the Chinese Enlightenment). The predominance of women in the textile industries meant that from very early on, women held the majority of factory jobs. In 1929, the Shanghai Bureau of Social Affairs counted 173,432 women working in Shanghai’s factories. They accounted for 61 percent of the industrial work force. In 1946 that number fell to 54,508, but women still accounted for the majority (66 percent) of factory workers. (Emily Honig, Sisters and Strangers: Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919–1949 [Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986], 24–25.) 87. You Huaigao, “Jiating zhidu de cunzai yu nannü pingdeng wenti” (The survival of the family system and the question of equality of men and women), JTXQ 1, no. 50 (8 November 1936): 8. 88. Ibid. This is the only article that I found in Jiating xingqi that recognizes reproductive labor and suggests that women should be paid for it. 89. Shi Ling, trans., JTXQ 1, no. 6 (29 December 1935): 14. Orison Swett Marden wrote books on success and self-improvement. 90. Man Ru, “Duiyu yinhang de yunyong,” 99.


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91. Ibid. 92. Zhou Chun, “Xie gei jiating zhufumen de xin,” JTXQ 1, no. 25 (17 May 1936): 2–4. 93. Zhou Chun, “Xie gei jiating zhufumen de xin,” JTXQ 1, no. 21 (19 April 1936): 3. 94. Ibid. 95. Ping, “Jiating he shehui” (Home and society), JTXQ 1, no. 34 (19 July 1936): 133. 96. Le Wen, “Duiyu xiao jiating de yijian” (Suggestions for the conjugal family), JTXQ 1, no. 34 (19 July 1936): 134. 97. Ibid. 98. Le Wen, “Zenme zuo yige shidai de furen” (How to be a new age woman), JTXQ 1, no. 30 (20 June 1936): 68–69. 99. Zhou Chun, “Xie gei jiating zhufumen de xin,” JTXQ 1, no. 21 (19 April 1936): 3. 100. On the socio-political repercussions of consumption see de Grazia and Furlough, The Sex of Things, especially de Grazia’s chapter “Nationalizing Women: The Competition between Fascist and Commercial Cultural Models in Mussolini’s Italy” and Leora Auslander’s “The Gendering of Consumer Practices in Nineteenth-Century France.”

chapter 4. love for revolution 1. Roxane Witke, “Mao Tse-tung, Women and Suicide,” China Quarterly 31 (July–September 1967), 128–147. Mao’s comments on women’s burdens appeared in his 1927 “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement of Hunan.” In Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung (Beijing: Foreign Language Press, 1975), vol. 1, 44–47. 2. Johnson, Women. For an early article on the Jiangxi Soviet and marriage policy see Chi-hsi Hu, “The Sexual Revolution in the Kiangsi Soviet,” China Quarterly 59 (July 1974): 477–490. On the difficulty of implementing reform in Yan’an see Patricia Stranahan, Yan’an Women and the Communist Party (Berkeley: Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, 1983). 3. Hu reports that initially the CCP allowed most people to divorce at will. From 6 March to 25 June 1932 he counts 4,274 divorces. This compares with 853 in Shanghai and only 62 in Beijing for the entire year of 1930. (Hu, “Sexual Revolution,” 486.) 4. Johnson, Women, 63. 5. Ibid., 60–61. 6. Johnson, Women, 98. See pages 93–114 for an informative discussion of land reform and the marriage law. 7. Phyllis Andors, The Unfinished Liberation of Chinese Women, 1949–1980 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1983), 33. The effects of women’s land ownership varied. It seems that women were often forced to relinquish their land to the family head. There is, however, some evidence that land ownership sometimes gave women a bargaining chip in divorce suits. A husband’s family might



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agree to a divorce if the wife gave up some or all of her new land holdings. (Stranahan, Yan’an Women, 108.) 8. Johnson, Women, 104–106; Andors, Unfinished Liberation, 33–34. 9. These campaigns included the Anti-Traitor, the Aid Korea Resist America, the Three-Antis, and the Five-Antis campaigns. Johnson, Women, 101. For a history of the Marriage Law campaign see Croll, Feminism and Socialism, 235–238, and Johnson, Women, 138–153. 10. Johnson, Women, 101. 11. “Shixing xin minzhuzhuyi de hunyin zhidu” (Putting into practice the new democratic marriage system). In Hunyin wenti cankao ziliao huibian (Edited reference materials on the marriage question), ed. Zhongyang renmin zhengfu fazhi weiyuan hui (Central Legislative Committee) (Beijing: Xinhua shudian, 1950), vol. 1, 1. (Originally published as a People’s Daily editorial, n.d.) The head of the Judiciary Department, Shi Liangda, used almost exactly the same words to describe the Marriage Law to a reporter from China’s women (Zhongguo funü). (Wang Qiucong, Xin hunyin fa wenti jieda huibian [A collection of answers to questions about the new Marriage Law] [Shanghai: Liangrong shudian, 1950], 9.) 12. “Shixing xin minzhuzhuyi de hunyin zhidu,” vol 1, 2. 13. Most historians have noted, if not explained, the similarity. See, for example, Johnson, Women, and Croll, Feminism and Socialism. Ono Kazuko’s claim that under the Communist Marriage Law “for the first time women gained the freedom to choose their husbands and to obtain divorces of their own free will” is mistaken (Chinese Women, 185). For judicial decisions that prove her wrong on both counts see Bernhardt, “Women and the Law,” in Bernhardt and Huang, Civil Law, 187–214; and Glosser, “Women Test the State’s Limits: Marital Cases in Shanghai’s Local First Special District Court,” chap. 6 in “Contest for Family and Nation,” 188–203. Ono’s ideological biases also lead her to ignore the state-building characteristics of the GMD’s family law (Chinese Women, 151). Jeffrey Wasserstrom has observed that both the CCP and the GMD have used the language of family to iterate their claims on the people’s loyalty. (Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, “Was There a Family Romance of the Chinese Revolution?” Unpublished conference paper presented at the January 1993 American Historical Association meeting in San Francisco, cited with the author’s permission.) 14. Remember that Yi Jiayue joined the GMD in 1924. The CCP often used rhetoric reminiscent of the New Culture Movement in its criticism of the traditional family. For example, the provincial court of Guangdong proclaimed that “the feudal marriage system is a great mountain obstructing social progress.” (Guangdongsheng renmin fayuan bangongshi [Office of the people’s court of Guangdong province], Jige hunyin wenti de jieda [A few answers to the marriage question] [Guangzhou: Hua’nan renmin chuban she, 1953], 1.) For a discussion of New Culture participants’ contribution to CCP ideology see Johnson, Women, 95–96. Many of the ideas popularized during the New Culture Movement spread beyond the parties and cliques in which they originated. Several aspects of Engels’s analysis of the family were accepted by non-Communists. For


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example, many likened traditional marriage to prostitution and insisted that women had to become economically independent if they were to achieve equality. (Gilmartin, Engendering the Chinese Revolution, 32.) 15. Many scholars have recognized that a number of cultural, political, and social trends continued beyond the 1949 divide. See, for example, Elizabeth Perry, Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993) and Wakeman, Policing Shanghai. Wakeman has been particularly interested in the deeper similarities of China’s various regimes. His study of Shanghai’s governance is ultimately “about the lamentable durability of governmentalized autocracy, whether Nationalist or Communist: it suggests the staying power of bureaucratic instruments of control and coercion that are institutionalized in the modern police state” (xvii). 16. “Biaoxian zai hunyin wenti de xinjiu douzheng” (The struggle between old and new manifested in questions about marriage). In Hunyin wenti cankao ziliao huibian (Edited reference materials on the marriage question), ed. Zhongyang remin zhengfu fazhi weiyuan hui (Central Legislative Committee) (Beijing: Xinhua shudian, 1950), vol. 1, 7. 17. Chapter 2, article 3. For the Marriage Law in Chinese see Zhongyang renmin zhengfu fazhi weiyuanhui, Hunyin wenti cangai ziliao huibian, vol. 1, 145–154. For an English translation see Johnson, Women, 235–239. 18. Chapter 2, article 5. 19. Chapter 4, article 13. 20. Chapter 2, article 4. 21. Chapter 3, article 10. Although the GMD code expanded women’s property rights, it still gave husbands the right to manage family property. 22. Chapter 3, article 11. Under the GMD code, a couple had to use either the husband’s or the wife’s family name as their common family name. This was in keeping with traditional practices. It is likely that men took their wives’ names only when they married the daughter of parents who had no sons; then, as in the imperial era, the bridegroom might take his wife’s family name in order to continue her father’s family line. 23. Chapter 2, article 6. 24. Wang Qiucong, Xin hunyin fa, 34–35. (Originally published in Gui bao, 18 April 1950.) 25. Neil Diamant, Revolutionizing the Family: Politics, Love, and Divorce in Urban and Rural China, 1949–1968 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 44. 26. Ibid., 59. 27. Ibid., 43. 28. Chapter 5, article 17. 29. See Bernhardt, “Women and the Law,” in Bernhardt and Huang, Civil Law. 30. Previous CCP marriage codes had listed specific grounds for divorce that resembled those included in the Nationalists’ marriage law. (M. J. Meijer, Marriage Law and Policy in the Chinese People’s Republic [Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1971], 286, 288). But the provision of specific grounds for di-



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vorce did not guarantee that the government would grant one. The Party issued particular grounds for divorce in Yan’an, but obtaining a divorce there seems to have been particularly difficult (Stranahan, Women of Yan’an, 104–108). Neil Diamant’s recent study offers a “thick” description of the dynamics of divorce in the PRC. He believes that in urban areas divorce did indeed become more difficult after 1953 but draws our attention to the complexities of this phenomenon. He suggests that the working classes continued to file divorce suits but the state increasingly refused to grant them. The elites, on the other hand, proved increasingly reluctant to sue for divorce. Diamant also suggests that the decline in the number of divorces may fail to reflect the number of “informal separations that took place” (Revolutionizing the Family, 178, 204–205, 214). And he suggests that in rural China divorce did not, in fact, become increasingly difficult after 1953 (chap. 6). 31. Johnson, Women, 147. 32. Emily Honig and Gail Hershatter, Personal Voices: Chinese Women in the 1980’s (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 206–207. 33. Honig and Hershatter, Personal Voices, 207. Elizabeth Croll, Chinese Women Since Mao (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1983), 83. 34. Chapter 3, article 8. 35. Wang Qiucong, Xin hunyin fa, 10–11. 36. Ding Ling et al., Qingnian de lian’ai yu hunyin wenti (Young people’s questions about love and marriage) (Beijing: Qingnian chuban she, 1953 [first published 1950]), 33. 37. Ibid., 19, 33. 38. See, for example, Zhongnan renmin chuban she (Zhongnan people’s press), Jianjue guanche zhixing hunyin fa (Resolutely implement and execute the Marriage Law) (Hankou: Hankou renmin chuban she, 1951). 39. Yeh, “Progressive Journalism,” 186–238. 40. Zhang Fan et al., Lian’ai hunyin yu fufu shenghuo (Love, marriage, and married life) (Shanghai: Zhanwang zhoukan she, 1953), 91. The advice column became a common vehicle for the Party’s views on social and cultural questions. For more recent examples and a nuanced analysis of the complex significance of this forum see Hong and Hershatter, Personal Voices, passim. 41. Ding Ling et al., Qingnian de lian’ai, 33. 42. For another example of CCP influence on periodicals that survived the transition to the People’s Republic of China see Funü zazhi (Women’s journal). 43. The English titles I use here were chosen by the editors, presumably to give their periodicals a certain cachet. In the first two years of its publication, 1935 to 1937, Xu Baiyi’s magazine was called Happy Home (Kuaile jiating). Later he called it just Home ( Jiating). I refer to it throughout as Happy Home in order to help the reader distinguish it from Home Magazine. 44. Xu Baiyi first edited Dagong bao’s (The impartial’s) “Xiandai jiating” (Modern home) from 8 October 1936 to 1 April 1937. He then moved to Shishi xinbao’s (China times’s) “Shidai jiating” (Contemporary home), which he edited from 27 March 1937 to 24 July 1937. Xu’s third editorship was at “Funü yu jiating,” a supplement of the Dawan bao (Evening news), from 11 July 1939


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to 25 November 1941. His final stint as an editor of family newspaper supplements was with Shen bao’s “Jiating” (Home) from 8 September 1941 to 25 October 1942. (Xu Baiyi, “Zhongguo de jiating wenti” [China’s family question], Jiating niankan [Home almanac] [1943–1947], [n.p., 1948, 1].) 45. Huang Jiayin graduated from Shanghai’s St. John’s University in 1937. From 1936 to 1949, he ran the West Wind Society (Xifeng she) with his brother Huang Jiade and Lin Yutang. He edited Western wind monthly (Xifeng yuekan), the Western wind supplement (Xifeng fukan), and The Cream of Western Literature (Xishu jinghua). During the War of Resistance he contributed to the magazines All under Heaven (Tianxia) and War Songs (Zhange). From 1946 to 1953, he ran the Family Publishing House (Jia zazhi she) and published Home Magazine. During this period he also served as editor of the supplement to Damei Evening News (Damei wanbao) and Free and Easy Conversation (Ziyoutan), a supplement of Shenbao. After 1954 he served as the editor of Shanghai Culture Publishing House (Wenhua chubanshe) and as the head of the “five editors room” (Wubianshi zhuren), in addition to serving as the editor of the Wenhui News (Wenhui bao) supplement. In 1956 he participated in the Movement to Unite the People (Minmeng). In 1958 he was sent to the far-flung province of Ningxia to teach middle school, probably as part of his reeducation in the wake of the anti-rightist campaign. He died there in 1960. (Chen Yutang, JXDRWDCD, 814.) 46. Huang Jiayin, “Jia zazhi ziwo jiantao” (A self-criticism of Home magazine, no. 55 (August/September 1950). 47. Xiaomei Chen, Occidentalism: A Theory of Counter-Discourse in PostMao China (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 5. 48. SMA 31.2.60, “Plan for the preparation of the Marriage Law Propaganda Exhibition Room” (Hunyinfa xuanchuan zhanlanshi choubei gongzuo jihua), 3.1. (For these records, the number before the decimal point indicates the page number in the juan. The second number indicates the page number within the document. I have assigned page numbers to unnumbered pages.) The Shanghai Women’s Federation held a ten-day exhibit on the Marriage Law in December as well. It reportedly drew 160,000 people. (C. Yang, cited in Croll, Feminism and Socialism, 232.) 49. SMA 31.2.60, “Work Plan for the Marriage Law Propaganda Tent” (Hunyinfa xuanchuan peng gongzuo jihua), 8.1, 9.2, 10.1. 50. Ibid., 9.2. San Mao was a young street urchin who struggled to survive in Shanghai. In recounting San Mao’s misadventures, Zhang Leping critiqued the suffering caused by capitalism and imperialism. 51. The most popular topics were divorce, bigamy and concubinage, and engagements. SMA 31.2.81, “Marriage Law Propaganda Project Final Report” (Hunyinfa xuanchuan jihua zongji), 48. 52. SMA 31.2.60, “Marriage Questions Desk Report” (Hunyin wenti xunwen shi baogao), 19. 53. Ibid., 20. The majority of problems seem to have been handled in this informal fashion. If a crime had been committed, or if a problem arose that deserved informal attention, the cadres notified the proper authorities. See, for example, SMA 31.2.81, “Marriage Law Propaganda Project Final Report,” 105.



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54. SMA 31.2.81, “Marriage Questions Desk Summary” (Hunyin wenti xunwen chu zongjie), 6. 55. SMA 31.2.81, “Marriage Law Propaganda Project Final Report,” 45–47. 56. SMA 31.2.60, “Marriage Questions Desk Report,” 18.1. Someone recommended setting up a traveling exhibit in order to reach these two excluded groups. This is, in effect, what the rural marriage reform movement did in 1953. The women most likely to be kept home by housework were laborers. Housewives were more likely to have the leisure time to attend the exhibit. For an account of the heavy domestic responsibilities of women workers see Honig, Sisters and Strangers, 132–201. 57. SMA 31.2.60, “Marriage Questions Desk Summary,” 6. 58. Ibid., 7. 59. Carlton Benson, “Consumers Are Also Soldiers: Subversive Songs from Nanjing Road during the New Life Movement.” In Inventing Nanjing Road: Commercial Culture in Shanghai, 1900–1945, ed. Sherman Cochran (Ithaca: Cornell University East Asia Program, 1999). 60. In Republican popular literature, women were not consistently singled out as the more romantic of the two genders. Young men, in fact, were not necessarily ashamed to be romantic. 61. Zhang Fan et al., Lian’ai hunyin, 67. 62. Ding Ling et al., Qingnian de lian’ai, 74–75. 63. Zhang Fan et al., Lian’ai hunyin, 10. 64. Ibid., 12–13. 65. Ding Ling et al., Qingnian de lian’ai, 24. 66. Ibid., 20–22. Also see Zhang Fan et al., Lian’ai hunyin, 5. 67. Zhang Fan et al., Lian’ai hunyin, 4. 68. We are, of course, dealing with prescriptive literature. Diamant reports that especially among the working classes, politics seem to have had very little role in romantic liaisons and marriage (Diamant, Revolutionizing the Family, 190–198, 224–225). 69. Zhang Fan et al., Lian’ai hunyin, 4. 70. Ding Ling et al., Qingnian de lian’ai, 2–3. 71. Zhang Fan et al., Lian’ai hunyin, 11. 72. Ibid., 2–3. 73. Ibid., 6. 74. Ding Ling et al., Qingnian de lian’ai, 75–76. 75. Zhongnan renmin chuban she, Jianjue guanche zhixing hunyin fa, 24. 76. Johnson, Women, chapter 9; Davin, Woman-Work, 84–95; Stacey, Patriarchy and Socialist Revolution, 164, 178–179, 185, 218–219. In Revolutionizing the Family, especially chapter 2, Diamant takes issue with our present understanding of peasant attitudes toward the Marriage Law and argues that, in fact, people in the hinterland were more likely to take advantage of marriage reform laws. 77. “Shixing xin minzhuzhuyi de hunyin zhidu,” vol. 1, 3. 78. Kay Ann Johnson has claimed that the Central Committee emphasized education and the presentation of positive role models as a way to effect change but avoid “interpersonal” and gender conflict (Women, 144).


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79. Liaodong renmin chuban she bianjibu (Editorial department of the Liaodong people’s press), “A word from the editor” (Bianzhe de hua), Meiman hunyin (Happy marriage) (Shenyang: Liaodong renmin chuban she, 1951). 80. Huanan wenxue yishu jie lianhehui et al. (The Huanan literature and arts circle association et al.), Zhonghua renmin gongheguo hunyin fa: Tujie ben (The People’s Republic of China Marriage Law: An illustrated volume) (Guangzhou: Huanan renmin chuban she, 1951), 5. 81. Ibid., 5, 17, 25, 31. 82. In his study of adopted daughters-in-law in Taiwan, Arthur Wolf observes that “the sim-pua [adopted daughter-in-law] was a stock character in the Taiwanese cultural repertoire, a standard image evident not only in scolding and teasing but also in proverb and song, where it was one way of saying a person had been assigned a good deal more than his or her fair share of misery” (Wolf, Sexual Attraction, 369). 83. Wolf, Sexual Attraction, 58–77. 84. See, for example, Dongbei renmin zhengfu sifa bu xuanchuan ke (Propaganda section of the Ministry of the Judiciary), “Feichu fengjian hunyin zhidu” (Eliminating the feudal marriage system), in Hunyin fa xuanchuan shouce (Marriage Law propaganda handbook) (Shenyang: Dongbei renmin chuban she, 1951), 3–4; Li Xianzhong, Zhonghua renmin gonghe guo hunyin fa jianghua (A talk about the Marriage Law of the People’s Republic of China) (Xian: Xibei renmin chuban she, 1951), 1–2; Huanan wenxue yishu jie lianhehui et al., Zhonghua renmin gongheguo hunyin fa: Tujie ben, 4–8. 85. Johnson, Women, 126, 132. 86. “Meiman hunyin,” Meiman hunyin, 29. 87. Johnson, Women, 134. 88. Wolf, Revolution Postponed; William Parish and Martin Whyte, Village and Family in Contemporary China (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). 89. Johnson, Women, 124–125. 90. “Shixing xin minzhuzhuyi de hunyin zhi du,” vol. 1, 2. 91. Zhongguo gongchandang zhongyang huanan fenju xuanchuan bu xuanchuan chu (Central Huanan Branch Office Propaganda Department of the Propaganda Ministry of the Chinese Communist Party), Hunyin fa xuanchuan tiyao (Synopsis of Marriage Law propaganda) (Guangzhou: Huanan renmin chuban she, 1953), 2. Li Xianzhong made a similar claim in Zhongguo renmin gongheguo hunyin fa jianghua, 2. 92. Anmei, “Mofan aiqing de mofan” (Models of model love), Meiman hunyin, 4. 93. “Meiman hunyin,” Meiman hunyin, 27. 94. Ibid., 33. 95. Anmei, “Mofan aiqing de mofan,” Meiman hunyin, 5–6. 96. “Shixing nannü hunyin ziyou” (Implementing freedom of marriage for men and women), Hunyin fa xuanchuan shouce, 13. 97. Li Bing and Li Ruhua, “Jiemei liang” (Two sisters), Meiman hunyin, 14. 98. Hunyin fa xuanchuan shouce, 15. 99. “Meiman hunyin,” Meiman hunyin, 34–35.


Notes to Page 195

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100. Yu Changqing and Han Zhifei, “Shuzhen he Xingya” (Shuzhen and Xingya), Meiman hunyin, 22–23. 101. Zhongguo gongchandang zhongyang huanan fenju xuanchuan bu xuanchuan chu, Hunyin fa xuanchuan tiyao, 35. The primacy of state claims to the fruits of marriage reform is underscored by the government-instituted voluntary program whereby a couple signed a “Family Patriotism Contract” (jiating aiguo gongyue). In this contract a couple committed itself to increased production and frugality (“Jiemei liang,” Meiman hunyin, 14). This seems to have been introduced after the initiation of the Resist America Help Korea campaign.



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Glossary

airen RH bazi gengtie Kr∞´ biaomei Ìf Chen bao ·¯ Chen Dongyuan ØFÏ Chen Heqin Øb^ Cheng Fangwu ®È^ chuangzao de benneng –y∫ª‡ Chuangzao she congshu –y¿O— da jiazu ja⁄ Dagong bao jΩ¯ Dajia tan jaÕ Dali Yuan jz| Daxue j« duixiang Ô≥ duli renge WflHÊ fabi kÙ Falü biancha hui kflsd| Fendou she ƒ´¿ fengsu ∑U Fu Bingchang «√` funü jiefangzhe ¸k—ÒÃ

gongjia gongji ΩaΩπ gongkai Ω} gongren uH gongzi ge’r ΩlÙ‡ Guo Moruo ¢jY guobi ÍÙ guofu Í˜ guofu fazhi ju Í≤kÓΩ guojia Ía guoshi L¢ guozu Í⁄ helihua Xz∆ Hu Hanmin J~¡ Hu Shi JA huaju ‹@ Huang Jiayin ¿≈µ Huang Yanpei ¿¢ˆ huji li ·«O huqin J^ Jiang Wenyu ø›Æ Jiating fuwu she axA»¿ Jiating rixin hui axÈs| jiating wenti ax›D Jiating xingqi axP¡

263


264 Jiating yanjiu ax„s jiating zhuyi axDq jiazhang a¯ jiazu a⁄ juepan ben MPª Junzheng bu xF° kun t Li Dazhao ıjx lian’ai ?R Liang Qichao d“W Liang Shiqiu dÍÓ lijiao ß– liyou z— Luo Dunwei π∞∂ Luo Han π~ Makesi zhuyi yanjiu hui ®J‰ Dq„s| Meiman hunyin ¸°B√ Minguo ribao ¡ÍÈ¯ minzu ¡⁄ minzu zhuyi ¡⁄Dq mu a nacai «ˆ naji «N nazheng «x niangjia Qa Pan Gongzhan ÔΩi Pan Guangdan Ô˙π Pan Yangyao ÔWÛ panjue PM pojia Ca Qingnian zili hui C~¤fl| qingqi –¡ qinjian ‘¸ qinying ÀÔ Shanghai fulian W¸¸p Shaonian Zhongguo ÷~§Í Shehui zhuyi yanjiu hui ¿|Dq„ s| Shen bao ”¯

Glossary Shenghuo zhoukan Õ°gZ Shi Cuntong IsŒ shikumen ¤w˘ shili ÷ß shishi ∆Í Shishi xinbao …∆s¯ Shiye bu Í~° shudaizi —bl Taidong shuju ıF—Ω Tan Sitong ”‡P Tang Jiechen (Guo’an) ∂⁄ ]Íw^ Tang Luyuan SÈ Tao Huizeng ≥Jø Tao Lügong ≥i• tianlun zhi le —¤ß÷ tingzi jian Fl° tongyangxi Pi@ Wang Zhixin ˝”Ò Weiyi ribao ©@È¯ wenming Â˙ Wenxue yanjiu hui Â«„s| wu cai bian de L~Ko Wu Yu d∑ xiangshang de tianxing VW∫—? xianhui Âf xianmu liangqi Â¿}d xiao jiating pax xiao shimin p´¡ Xifeng Ë∑ Xin chao sÈ Xin qingnian sC~ xin sixiang s‰Q Xinwen bao sD¯ Xinzhi bianyi she sæs∂¿ xiuzheng ◊ø Xu Baiyi }?q Xu Zhimo }”Ø Xuedeng «O Yan Fu Y_ Yi Jiayue (Junzuo) âµ]g™^ You Huaigao (Zhimai) ◊h™ ]”⁄^


Glossary youxi yundong Â∏B? Yu Dafu {F“ yuan ∏ zaopi _‹ Zeng Guofan øÍø Zhang Leping i÷≠ Zhang Yintang i±Û Zhiye zhidao suo æ~¸…“ Zhongguo qingnian §ÍC~

265 Zhongguo zhiye jiaoyu she §Íæ ~–|¿ Zhonghua zhiye suo §ÿæ ~“ Zhongyang ribao §°È¯ zhuwen DÂ ziyuan ¤@ zongzu v⁄ Zou Taofen Q¸ƒ Zuigao fayuan Ã™k|



Index

abduction, 226n68 abuse: physical, 118–12; psychological, 120–121. See also divorce; domestic violence addiction, 125 adultery, 47, 100, 104, 126; criminality of, 223n32; as grounds for divorce, 110, 119, 223n32 advertisements, 139, 140, 155, 158–159 Alger, Horatio, 36 Anarchism, 8, 30; and family reform, 9; women’s rights, 9, 205n29. See also He Zhen ancestors: displacement of, 39, 87–88, 89; homage to, 86 banking, 154 beauty, 55 Beecher, Henry, 37 Beijing University, 28, 30 Bernhardt, Kathryn, 112, 172 betrothal: dissolution of, 82, 91, 124; reform of, 86; right to refuse, 82, 125; traditional steps in, 86 bigamy, 121–122, 131, 171, 180 birth control, 224n41 Boxer Indemnity scholarships, 136, 233n6 budgets, 142, 150, 154, 163 capitalism, 22 Central Daily News (Zhongyang ribao), 163

chastity, 51, 54, 120–121, 144, 145, 146, 147, 153, 162, 188, 215n88 Chen Duxiu, 8, 209n10, 210n16; “Call to Youth,” 9, 19, 211n28; “1916,” 201n2, 204n24, 205n32 Chen Heqin, 15, 57; biography, 216n110; survey, 57–80, 217n113, 218n114, 218n115 Chen, Xiaomei, 179 Cheng Fangwu, 30, 52–53 Chiang Kaishek, 79 children: depictions of, 178, 188–189; desire for, 73, 74, 75, 76, 122, 154; and divorce, 53, 228n97; education of, 7, 8, 16, 31–32, 48, 73, 135, 157, 160, 174, 207n57; health of, 7, 8, 155, 174, 188; rearing of, 21, 25, 45, 73, 158, 178, 188, 235n30; rights of, 95, 223n29 Children’s Milk Drinking Society, 140, 154 China Times (Shishi xinbao), 30, 35, 57, 58 China Vocational Education Society, 134, 138–140 China Vocational Institute, 134 Chinese Communist Party (CCP), 79, 139, 166, 197–200, 210n20; champion of women, children, and youth 170, 188, 189–190, 191; and family reform, 13, 25–26, 167–174, 214n13, 214n14; male dominance of, 16; New Culture Movement radi-

267


268 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) (continued) cals in, 170; similarity to Nationalist Party, 170, 171; state building, 170–171, 173–174, 195; and statesociety relations, 168, 169–174, 195; and women’s rights, 13, 167– 168, 169, 170, 171. See also Communist Marriage Law; marriage ceremonies; Marriage Law Exhibit; xiao jiating Chinese Youth (Zhongguo qingnian), 176 Chow Tse-tsung, 11, 27, 205n32 Christianity: desirability of in a wife, 70; wedding customs, 89 citizens, 6, 13, 150, 188; duty to state, 25, 83 cohabitation, 101–110, 122–123, 231n131 colonization, 13, 19 Commercial Press, 29 commercial presses, 134 commercialization, 21, 133, 135, 147, 151, 154, 162, 165, 178 commodification, 21, 135 Communist Marriage Law (1950), 15, 25, 167, 241n13; application and interpretation of, 175; campaigns to implement, 169, 200; claims for, 175–176, 186, 192; compared with GMD’s, 170, 171, 172, 173, 200, 241n13, 241n14; goals of, 169–170, 186; grounds for, 91, 93, 172–173, 242n30; individual in, 175–176, 190–191; legislation of, 168, 169, 170, 173; peasant resistance to, 1, 167–168, 169, 173, 186, 191– 192, 194–195, 245n76; philosophy behind, 168–171; place of individual in, 169; propaganda for, 168, 169, 173, 174–180, 181, 186–195; relation to other reforms, 169, 180, 186; reluctance to implement, 13, 169; and revolution, 171, 175, 180; and state-building, 169, 170– 171; women’s use of, 191. See also divorce and marital suits; xiao jiating companionate marriage, 1, 21, 33, 45, 49, 137, 145–147, 153, 157, 179 concubinage, 47, 53, 57, 74–75, 77, 91, 186, 223n29, 231n131 concubines, 42, 45, 223n32 Confucian family values, 6, 38, 40, 42, 151, 185

Index Confucianism 149. See also NeoConfucianism Confucius, 50, 202n7 conjugal family ideal: Chinese (see xiao jiating); Western, 3, 4, 9, 13, 63, 137, 179, 202n4 consumer economy, 25, 199 consumer goods and services, 155, 156–158 consumerism, 21, 155, 159, 165, 175, 199–200 consumers, 21, 135, 149, 154, 182–183 consumption, 21, 133, 135, 151, 155, 158–159, 177, 184 Coontz, Stephanie, 14, 22, 23, 202n4 courtship, 67–68 cousins, 176, 181 Creation Society, 30 Croll, Elizabeth, 13 currency: guobi, 120, 122, 230n125; fabi, 230n125 customs: and relationship to law, 81–82, 85, 94. See also ritual da jiazu, 3, 197. See also family, joint Dali Yuan, 81. See supreme courts daughters, 189; desire for, 220n147; inheritance, 93; and natal family, 94, 119, 225n53; and parents, 43, 100, 101–110, 143–144, 181 daughters-in-law, 151, 192. See also tongyangxi de Grazia, Victoria, 22 democracy, 14, 213n63 depositions, 101–110, 112 desire, 36, 52, 69, 75, 76, 145, 146, 152, 153, 215n88 Diamant, Neil, 243n30, 245n68, 245n76 Ding Ling, 176, 177, 183, 184 Dirlik, Arif, 10, 32, 210n20 discourse, 14 Divorce (Lihun), 52–57 divorce and marital suits, 25, 45, 51, 152, 225n50; frequency of, 173, 240n3, 243n30; in imperial China, 110–111; stigma of, 54. See also Communist Marriage Law; Nationalist New Family Law A Doll’s House, 9, 11, 38 domestic conflict, 34–36. See also divorce and marital suits domestic violence, 83, 110–112, 114, 118–121, 172, 186, 188; as grounds for divorce, 118–121; public trials for, 172. See also divorce and marital suits


Index domesticity, 15, 21, 72, 137, 150, 166, 232n151, 233n11 Draft Civil Code, 40, 42, 213n60 Duara, Prasenjit, 208n75 egoism, 38 entrepreneurs: and family reform, 25, 79, 132–133, 138–140, 165–166, 173–174, 184, 235n26, 235n31. See also You Huaigao; xiao jiating, entrepreneurial eugenics, 7, 14, 19, 50, 51, 93, 129, 217n110, 180, 188–189, 190 Everybody Chats (Dajia tan), 176 Evolution and Ethics, 2 extended family, 202n3. See also family, joint; family, traditional family: authority of, 36, 82, 83, 97, 137, 171, 180, 185; changes in, 137, 151–152, 155, 233n12; definition of, 202n3; evolution of, 32–33, 40, 210n19, 211n26, 213n53; “feudalism,” 169–170, 190; function of, 21, 23, 99, 185; head of, 91, 95, 98–101, 109, 110, 137, 223n24, 226n68; Japanese, 16; joint, 3, 137, 147, 148, 150, 151, 197, 203n3; name, 171, 242n22; natal, 94, 119, 225n53; and state order, 4–6, 10,11,12, 20, 23, 37, 38, 79, 82–83, 99, 101, 110, 133, 149, 150–151, 166, 169, 185, 197–200, 202n7; site of production and consumption, 21, 199–200; and society, 14, 99, 150–151, 197–200; state intervention in, 18, 38, 79, 82–83, 91, 113, 171–172, 173, 195, 200. See also daughters; daughters-in-law; family, conjugal; family, traditional; family reform; fathers; mothers; mothersin-law; sons; xiao jiating family, conjugal: Chinese (see xiao jiating); definition of, 14, 94, 156; Western, 3, 4, 9, 13, 63, 137, 179, 202n4 family, traditional: critique of, 3, 4, 31, 32, 34, 41, 44, 46, 63, 94, 148, 151–153, 190; and dependency, 44, 63, 153; desire to live in, 57, 77; economics of, 33, 41, 44, 46, 69, 94, 148, 152, 156, 157; elders role in, 9, 42, 65–66, 78, 82, 83; ideal, 9, 42, 151, 173, 192, 201n3; individual’s place in, 44–46, 148; junior members’ place in, 9, 36, 65–68; origins of, 31–33; and “parasitism,”

269 94, 95, 153; patriarch’s power in, 38, 94, 98; satisfaction with, 57, 77, 78, 235n31; and social organization, 28, 185; women’s place in, 49, 92 family reform, 1, 30, 31, 81, 134–135, 140–141, 147–148, 167–174, 184, 197–200; and individualism, 27, 91; and nationalism, 27, 83–84, 98, 148, 149, 166, 185, 202n3; rationale for, 4–6, 10, 11, 12, 20, 25, 27, 32, 38, 135, 152–153, 174; similarities with other countries, 20, 21, 137–138, 203n15; and socioeconomic concerns, 27; and state-strengthening, 83, 84, 133, 174, 197–200. See also marriage ceremonies, marriage laws and policies; xiao jiating Family Research (Jiating yanjiu), 28, 29, 30–31, 44, 49, 50, 57, 135; contributors, 52; major themes, 37, 65– 66; readers, 29 Family Research Society: activities of, 29, 34–36; formation of, 28; goals of, 28–29; membership, 29 Family Weekly (Jiating xingqi), 135, 139, 140–141; advertisements, 139; key themes, 137, 140–141, 142, 156, 158, 165; readership, 138, 140, 141–142 fathers, 41; and children, 40–41, 43; rights and duties of, 42–43. See also family; parents; patriarch Fei Xiaotong, 237n55 feminists, 8, 136, 159 feudalism, 175–176; persistance of, 16, 171; resistance to, 186 foot-binding, 6, 7, 14, 70 Foucault, Michel, 18 Franklin, Benjamin, 37 French Concession, 100 frugality, 17, 84, 129, 132, 137, 142, 160–163 Fu Bingchang, 83, 95, 96, 97, 221n7 gender: as cultural construction, 7, 11, 204n19; and difference, 54, 73, 135, 147, 153, 154, 159–160; equality, 15, 56, 72, 74, 56, 72, 74, 82, 89, 93, 94, 159, 171, 175, 188, 192; ratio, 141 Gilmartin, Christina, 15 The Goddesses, 30 Goode, William, 33 guardians, 100 Guo Moruo, 30, 33, 37, 211n25, 212n45


270 Guomindang. See Nationalists Great Learning, 4–5, 38, 149 group weddings. See marriage ceremonies, Nationalists’ group Hall, Bolton, 138, 160 happiness, 62, 72, 151, 152, 160– 161, 164, 175, 188; and national strengthening, 150, 184; and productivity, 45, 156, 162, 166, 185. See also under xiao jiating, Communist; xiao jiating, entrepreneurial; xiao jiating, New Culture Happy Home, 177–178, 243n43 Hastings, Sally, 16 He Zhen, 8, 205n35 historiography, 15, 32 history, 24, 33, 208n75, 211n28 home: decorating, 154, 156–158; furnishings, 156–158; as haven 21, 72, 150–151, 153–154, 160, 164, 185, 202n5 Home Magazine, 177–179, 182, 243n43 Home Publishing House, 179 Home Service Society, 140, 155, 156 housewives. See wives; women hotels, 102, 103, 109, 143 housing, 33, 107, 109, 142, 158 Hu Hanmin, 32, 91, 93, 94, 96, 97, 98–99, 148, 210n20, 224n37 Hu Shi, 37 Huang Jiayin, 178–179, 182, 244n45 Huang Yanpei, 134, 140 Hunt, Lynn, 14 husbands, 176; duties of, 174; feudal expectations of, 183; ideal qualities of, xv, xvi, xvii, 75–76, 77 hygiene, 19, 140, 154 Ibsen, Henrik, 9; and egoism, 37; A Doll’s House, 9, 38 identity, 53, 132; search for, 27; source of, 11, 12, 17, 52, 207n59, 215n89; value of, 23 illicit sex, 101, 180, 228n85 illiteracy, 154, 180, 203n12 The Impartial (Dagong bao), 140 imperialism, 2, 20, 195 incest, 94, 211n26 independence, 29, 37, 41, 44, 45, 49, 63–64, 71, 98, 137, 139, 148, 160, 164, 165, 184, 192, 197 individual: autonomy, 31, 37, 42, 44, 63–64, 184, 185; and family, 25, 38, 91, 96, 148, 173, 184; fulfillment of, 21, 27, 48, 54, 133, 149, 165, 166, 173, 177, 182, 198; and self, 38, 53,

Index 54, 184, 198; and society, 21, 37– 38, 90–91, 96–97, 148, 149, 173, 185; and nation-state, 10, 20–21, 25, 31, 81, 83, 90–98, 133, 148, 149, 173, 184, 185, 195, 198–200; rights, 19, 20, 48, 97, 199 individualism, 27, 78, 165, 166, 198– 200, 205n32 industrialization, 22, 24, 25, 27, 32–33, 34, 135 infanticide, 172 inner/outer, 4, 207n59 International Concession, 100, 112 Japan: occupation of Shanghai, 230n125, 231n132; Sino-Japanese War, 1–2, 5; Twenty-One Demands, 3; family in, 16 Jiang Wenyu, 140 Jiangsu High Court, 104 Jiankang jiating, 235n31 jiating, definition of, 206n41 Jin Tianhe, 8 Johnson, Kay Ann, 13, 167–168, 173, 191, 245n78 Judd, Ellen, 94 Kang Youwei, 6, 7, 9, 10 Key, Ellen, 50, 51, 152, 215n93 kidnapping kin: definitions of, 93–94, 225n49; obligations to, 94–95 Ko, Dorothy, 42 leisure activities, 134, 154, 158, 161. See also rationalization Lenin, Vladimir Ilich, 13 Leninism, 210n20 Levenson, Joseph, 211n28 Li Dazhao, 32 Liang Qichao, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 174 Life Weekly, (Shenghuo zhoukan), 15, 134, 139, 148, 176 “Light of Learning” (Xuedeng), 30, 57 Literary Research Society, 30 Liu, Lydia, 203n13 love, 70, 153, 176, 180; and duty, 54, 55, 183–184; importance of, 45–46, 183; individualistic, 175, 182, 183; marital, 153, 175, 176, 183–185; and politics, 184, 245n68; and productivity, 138, 150, 156, 163, 166; proper foundations for, 45, 152– 153, 175, 183–185, 192; revolutionary, 182, 183, 184; romantic, 66–67, 75, 76, 146, 147, 153, 182, 183; and social responsibility, 89, 145,


Index 182, 183–184; as source of encouragement, 44, 45, 47, 49, 145–147, 149; as source of happiness, 45, 47, 49, 183, 192–195; and the state, 45, 47, 49, 89, 183–184; subjectivity of, 54; voluntary nature of, 152, 175; and work, 183, 184, 185, 192–195. See also under xiao jiating, Communist; xiao jiating, entrepreneurial; xiao jiating, New Culture “love” letter, 143, 145–146 Lu Xun (Zhou Shuren), 78, 203n11 Luo Dunwei, 28, 197, 210n24, 213n63; biography, 29, 30; on the patriarch, 38–44; role in Family Research Society, 28 Mann, Susan, 4, 207n56, 208n75, 232n151 Mao Zedong, 167, 168, 170, 195, 200 Marden, Orison, 160 marriage, 97, 176; age at, 33, 45, 57, 58, 59, 64, 65, 77, 78, 91, 93, 131, 171, 188; arranged, 1, 45, 46–47, 53, 65– 68, 69, 79, 82, 86, 127, 151, 153, 172, 186, 187; choice in, 1, 21, 45, 57, 64–68, 77, 78, 82, 91, 145, 147, 152, 171, 187, 191, 192, 200; companionate, 1, 21, 33, 45, 49, 137, 145–147, 153, 157, 179; “irregular,” 172; prohibitions against, 93, 171, 181, 225n49, 225n51; purpose of, 75, 76, 183–184. See also xiao jiating marriage ceremonies: Communist, 171, 194; Nationalists’ group, 128–133; Nationalists’ private, 84–89, 91– 92, 122, 128, 171, 221n11; popular Shanghai-style, 89–90, 129; traditional Han, 84, 86–87, 91–92 marriage contract, 9 marriage customs, modernization of, 82 marriage laws and policies, 79; Draft Civil Code, 40, 42, 213n60; Japanese, 213n60; reluctance to implement, 13, 167–168. See also Communist Marriage Law; Nationalist New Family Law Marriage Law Exhibit, 179–182 Marx, Karl, 13 Marxism, 14, 30; and family reform, 25, 40; study societies, 28; and theories of family organization, 33, 34; and theories of history, 25, 32, 33, 210n20 Marxism-Leninism, 37 Marxism Study Society, 29 masculinity, 36 material culture, 136, 155–156, 165

271 May, Elaine, 36 May Fourth Movement, 3. See also New Culture Movement Mencius, 22 Mencius’ mother, 16 mental illness, 125 milk, 73, 135, 138, 140, 141, 142, 147, 154–155, 158–159, 161, 234n17, 234n18, 236n40, 238n73 misogyny, 52, 53 mistresses, 42 mobility, 32 modernity, 2, 25, 27, 33 modernization, 137 Mohanty, Chandra, 19 monogamy, 9, 27, 45, 74–75, 215n88 moral autonomy, 36 Morning Journal (Chen bao), 35 mothers: and education of children, 7, 16, 21, 25, 160; health of, 7, 8, 155; power of, 42, 192; as victims, 42 mothers-in-law, 94, 118, 152, 189, 192 murder, 83, 126 natal family (niang jia), 94. See also kin; daughters nation, 6, 7, 186 national strengthening, 2, 10, 12, 13, 83, 97, 155, 165, 166, 185, 195, 197– 200, 202n10 nationalism, 27, 83, 89, 98, 148, 149, 150, 165, 166, 195 Nationalist New Family Law (1931), 15, 25, 79, 83, 110, 111, 112, 170, 200; compared with Western, 96; court’s reluctance to grant, 119, 172; and customs, 85, 94; economic factors in, 113–114, 116, 117, 118; family obligations, 95–98; goals of, 84, 93–95, 96, 97; grounds for, 110, 113, 114, 118–119, 125–126; as instrument of family reform, 93–95, 98; legislation of, 82; men’s use of, 114–116, 127; and New Culture ideal, 91, 96, 98; other marital suits, 114, 121–125; philosophy behind, 83, 84, 90–93, 95–98; plaintiff’s, 126–128; process of, 115, 116, 118, 127, 229n99; purpose of, 92–98, 148, 170, 174; relation to ritual, 85–86, 91–92; role of individual in, 91, 92–98, 185; state’s interest in, 117–118, 127–128; suits, 15, 110– 128; women’s use of, 112–113, 116– 128. See also divorce and marital suits; “Offenses Against Marriage and Family”; xiao jiating


272 Nationalist Party, 7, 9, 80, 81, 197– 200; Central Political Council, 91, 221n11; Civil Codification Commission of the Legislative Yuan, 91, 93; Codification Committee for the New Family Law, 221n11; Department of the Interior, 84, 131, 221n11; Executive Committee, 84; Executive Yuan, 128; Guidance Committee for Party Affairs, 82, 221n11; Judiciary Office of the National Government, 93; relationship to family, 88, 98–99, 128, 184; and tutelage, 79, 97; vision of state-society relations, 79, 81, 82, 83, 90, 92–99, 129, 156, 202n3. See also divorce and marital suits; marriage ceremonies; marriage laws and policies; xiao jiating, Nationalist Natural Justice (Tianyi bao), 8 Neo-Confucianism, 5, 6, 150 New Age Woman, 164 New Culture Movement, 10, 185, 201n2; critique of patriarch, 11, 38–44, 170; critique of traditional family, 6, 8, 9, 10, 13, 38, 148, 170; and family reform, 3, 8, 10, 11, 24–25, 79–80, 166, 173–174, 192; and gender roles, 56–57; importance of independence in, 36–37; importance of individual in, 8, 10, 27, 37; and nationalism, 27; and national strengthening, 27, 56, 83, 197–200; origins of, 1, 3; and women, 6, 11, 25, 49–80; and women’s rights, 8, 9, 11, 159, 166. See also Chen Duxiu; family reform; xiao jiating, New Culture New Culture radicals, 28, 197–200; and Confucian ethics, 38, 42; identity, 11, 27, 52, 53, 215n 89; independence, 10; motivations, 11, 17–18; obstacles to reform, 34; as proletariat, 211n25; roles in CCP and KMT, 79, 170; similarities with Americans, 36; vision of state-society relations, 10, 81. See also xiao jiating, New Culture New Tide (Xin chao), 57, 135 New Woman, 215n89 New Youth (Xin qingnian), 28, 30, 37, 57 The News (Xinwen bao), 115, 229n99 Nolte, Sharon, 16 Nora, 9, 11, 38 nutrition, 19, 140, 154–155, 159

Index “Offences Against Marriage and Family”: definition of, 99, 100; enforcement, 100, 101, 105, 106, 109–110, 143, 147; history of, 99, 100; implications of, 99–100; suits, 101–110, 143–147 On Benevolence, 7 On Evolution, 2 Only Daily (Weiyi ribao), 35 Ono Kazuko, 11 Pan Gongzhan, 223n25 Pan Guangdan, 15, 19; biography, 217n110; survey, 57–80217n112, 217n113, 218n114, 218n115, 218n116, 218n117 Pan Yangyao, 140 parent-child relationship, xvii, 40, 47, 62–63, 75, 76, 78, 91, 139, 195 parents: authority of, 91, 99–101, 152, 191–192; duty of, 91, 171 patriarch: authority of, 1, 12, 42, 94, 98–99, 151, 174; critique of, 34, 40–44, 170; displacement of, 39, 40; historical origins of, 39, 40. See also family, traditional; New Culture Movement, critique of patriarch; Yi Jiayue patriarchal family. See family, traditional peasants: and family reform, 13; images of, 177, 178. See also marriage laws and policies; xiao jiating periodicals, 79, 128, 134–135, 176, 243n42; CCP intervention in, 177– 179; commercial, 25, 141, 165; cost of, 235n29; survey of, 232n5, 236n32; reform, 141, 165, 212n42, 232n5. See also individual titles petty urbanites (xiao shimin), 132, 157, 232n151 political culture, 4, 6, 10, 24, 149, 185, 195 political economy, 7 pregnancy, 7, 123, 143–144 privacy, 22, 110 private/political, 185 productivity, 135, 149, 173, 174, 185, 198, 199, 200 property rights, 25, 95, 169, 171 prostitution, 53, 105, 106, 108, 109, 123 public/private, 4, 22, 82, 171, 172, 174 public welfare, 22 Qing dynasty, 2, 8, 81, 140 Qiu Jin, 8 rape, 83, 143–144, 145, 146, 147, 171 rationalization, 135, 158–163, 164; of


Index money, 19, 133, 140, 141, 147–148, 150, 151; of time, 19, 133, 158– 159. See also leisure activities reform: individual, 78–79, 139, 198; systemic, 79, 139, 198 remarriage, 54, 117, 188 reproduction, 48, 111, 188–189 Republican Daily (Minguo ribao), 35 ritual, 83, 84, 85, 194; expenses of, 84, 222n12; as superstition, 190. See also marriage ceremonies Rorty, Richard, 208n75 Rowe, William, 4–5, 203n5 Roy, David, 33, 37 Ryan, Mary, 28, 137 Sacred Edict, 83 Schwarcz, Vera, 11, 27, 37 Schwartz, Benjamin, 20, 209n77 Scott, James, 18–19, 92, 206n40 Scott, Joan, 206n44 Second Party Congress, 82 seduction, 15, 100, 101, 102, 105, 110, 172, 226n68, 228n85 self-cultivation, 6, 149–150, 161–162 self-improvement, 6–7, 21, 160–161 separate spheres, 4, 207n59 sex, 97, 153, 204n19, 238n66; illicit, 101, 102, 105, 106 Shanghai, 79; banks, 230n125; courts, 100, 227n80 (see also names of particular courts); jurisdictions, 226n74 Shanghai China Public School, 30 Shanghai Chinese Court, 100 Shanghai First Special District Court: civil suits (divorce and marital), 111–128; criminal suits, 100, 143–147 Shanghai News (Shen bao), 123 Shanghai People’s Court, 180 Shanghai Second Special District Court, 100 Shanghai Women’s Alliance, 179, 180, 182 Shi Cuntong, 42 shi kumen, 156, 239n82 simpua, 246n82. See also tongyangxi Sino-Japanese War, 1–2, 5 Smiles, Samuel, 37 Social Darwinism, 2, 19, 31; and family organization, 33; Huxley on, 2; and national strengthening, 2, 7; Spencer on, 2 Socialism Study Society, 29 Society for the Daily Renewal of the Family, 134

273 sons: desire for, 220n147; duties of, 62; importance of, 192; and parents, 42, 43; as symbol of success, 194 Stacey, Judith, 11, 13 state, 197–200; authoritarianism, 19, 24, 198–200, 242n15; building, 17–18, 97, 197–200; and civil society, 17, 18, 19; and extra-state space, 185; and family, 79, 81, 83, 90–99, 128, 148, 168, 170, 173–174; and high modernism, 18–19. (see also Scott, James); and individual, 19, 20, 93– 98, 148, 149, 165–166, 170, 195; as leader of reform, 13–14, 18–19, 38, 78–80, 81–99, 149, 179, 198; and nation, 17, 186; and reformers, 13, 78–79, 198–200; resistance to, 20, 24, 132, 171, 199; revolutionary, 13–14, 179, 185, 206n40; and society, 13, 21, 22, 26, 38, 49, 56, 81, 135, 141, 148, 156, 165–166, 168, 169–174, 195, 197–200; surveillance, 93, 94, 131, 171, 223n27. See also divorce and marital suits; individual; marriage ceremonies, marriage laws and policies; nation; national strengthening; ritual, xiao jiating Stranahan, Patty, 240n2, 240n7 Struggle Society, 29–30 suicide, 34, 48, 53, 55, 214n85, 216n108 Sun Yatsen, 2, 17, 79, 83, 88, 98, 129, 148, 149, 203n3 supreme courts, 83; Dali Yuan (Beijing), 81–82, 127; Nationalist (Zuigao fayuan), 82 surveys, 57–80, 219n128 Taidong Press, 30 Tan Sitong, 9; on gender, 204n19; On Benevolence, 7; on sex, 204n19 Tang Junyi, 8 Tao Huizeng, 91 Tao Lügong, 210n17 Tao Menghe, 9 Three Principles, 96 Tilly, Louise, 206n44 tongyangxi, 176, 180, 189–190, 246n82 Treaty of Versailles, 3 urbanization, 137, 234n14 van der Valk, Marius, 213n60 Victorians, 15 wages, 33, 105, 141 Wakeman, Frederic Jr., 242n15


274 Wang Huiwu, 14 Wang Zheng, 215n89 Wang Zhixin, 134, 139 Wasserstrom, Jeffrey, 135 weddings. See marriage ceremonies Welter, Barbara, 15 Westermarck, Edward, 211n26 Western Wind (Xifeng), 178 widows, 186, 188, 189 Wilde, Oscar, 212n42 Witke, Roxane, 27 wives, 215n89; age of, 69, 77; attitude of toward husbands, 40–41, 49, 70, 75–77, 153, 183; attitude toward marriage, 215n89; as companions, 17, 49; expectations of, 11, 12, 52, 71–72, 75–80, 135–136, 153, 166, 174, 215n91; as housekeepers, 17, 69, 72, 77, 132, 135–136, 145, 146, 147, 153, 159–166, 178, 182, 233n11; ideal qualities in, 49, 57, 66, 68–72, 75, 76, 77–80; men’s dissatisfaction with, 50–57, 66–67; responsibilities of contemporary, 77, 78, 135–136; responsibilities of traditional, 49; romantic notions of, 183; service to society, 73, 77; as source of male identity, 12; in xiao jiating ideal, 49–57. See also xiao jiating Wolf, Arthur, 246n82 Wolf, Margery, 13 women: attacks on traditional, 54– 55; attitudes toward marriage, 49, 183; “civilization” of, 6–7, 12; as consumers, 159, 182–183; and divorce rights, 25; and dress reform, 163; economic independence of, 29, 44, 45, 49, 159, 160, 164; education of, 2, 6–7, 50, 51, 57, 66, 69, 70, 72, 73, 75, 76, 159; and equality, 56, 72, 74, 136; as ghosts, 55, 56; history of, 7–9; and “independent personhood,” 11, 31, 50; and male identity, 12; Mao on, 167, 170; modern, ideal, 16, 17, 77–80, 164, 166; and modernity, 71; as mothers, 6–7, 16, 21, 164, 166, 188; and national strengthening, 7, 17, 54, 56, 164, 166; New Age, 163, 164; in New Culture Movement, 49–57; nineteenth-century reform for, 6–7; as “parasites,” 6, 165; and patriotism, 70, 77; and physical fitness, 2, 7; and productive labor, 16, 17, 132, 159, 161–162, 192; and productivity, 7; and property rights, 25,

Index 169, 171, 240n7; and reproductive labor, 16, 17, 20, 21, 22, 72, 73, 78, 135–136, 159–166; seclusion of, 6, 162; and socialism,12–13; and society, 16, 21, 49, 54, 56, 70, 73, 164; Tan Sitong on, 204n19; Tao Menghe on, 9; traditional attitudes towards, 15, 94; traditional, ideal 16, 17, 164, 166, 216n99; as trope for male rebellion, 11{-12}, 208n75; virtuous, 207n56, 208n59; Western, ideal 15; workers, 239n86, 245n56; and xiao jiating, 16–17, 132, 135– 136, 159–166; You Huaigao on, 159–166. See also divorce and marital suits; gender; wives; women’s rights; xiao jiating Women’s Bell, 8 women’s rights, 7–8, 11, 12, 20, 52, 72, 111, 128, 159, 163–166, 175, 180, 190; CCP’s reluctance to support, 167–168; New Culture proponents, 7, 8–9, 49 Women’s Rights Recovery Association, 8 Women’s Studies Journal, 8 work: separation from home 22–23, 147, 154, 185; value of, 22–23 Wu Yu, 9 Wu Zhihui, 202n10 xianmu liangqi, 203n13 xiao jiating, 3, 4, 14, 23–24, 25, 44, 145–148, 156, 174, 179, 184, 195, 197–200, 232n151; definition of, 3, 9, 197; rhetoric of, 142, 145, 146–147, 164–165, 166, 168, 195, 241n14; significance of, 198–199; as stem family, 105, 141–142, 228n89; women in, 16–17, 215n89. See also xiao jiating,Communist; xiao jiating,entrepreneurial; xiao jiating, Nationalist; xiao jiating, New Culture xiao jiating, Communist, 25–26, 197– 200; children in, 174, 175; critique of “bourgeois” version, 25, 166, 174, 175–179, 182, 183–184, 200; and emotional fulfillment, 192; and family harmony, 187, 192, 193; and happiness, 166, 174, 175–176, 187; individual in, 190–191; introduction into countryside, 25–26, 166, 174, 186–195, 245n76; and joint family, 192, 193–194, 197; and love, 25, 174, 182, 183–184, 200; models of, 186, 192–195, 245n78; and nationalism, 174; and productivity,


Index 25, 166, 174, 175–176, 187, 188, 191–195; resistance to, 1, 167–168, 169, 173, 186, 191–192, 194–195; similarity to other xiao jiating ideals, 26, 166, 168, 173–174, 179–180, 183, 184, 192, 193, 195, 200; similarity to traditional ideal, 194; similarity to Western ideal, 179; and society, 174, 175–176, 183–184, 191, 194–195; spouses’ duties in, 174, 175, 183, 184, 195; and the state, 25, 166, 168, 174, 175–176, 184–185, 191, 194–195, 200; urban origins of, 13, 191; and women’s role, 197; and work, 183–184 xiao jiating, entrepreneurial, 25, 79, 132–133, 134–136, 140–141, 147–151, 156, 164–166, 174–175, 177–179, 197–200; compared to New Culture xiao jiating, 135, 148, 150–151, 153, 156, 159, 163, 165, 166; compared to Nationalist xiao jiating, 135, 148, 150, 153, 156, 163, 165, 166; and consumption, 25, 135, 156–158, 159, 160–163; description of, 156–158; and economic rationalization, 141, 147– 148, 150, 151, 154, 158–163; and emotional fulfillment, 158; and happiness, 156, 166; as haven, 150–151, 153–154; home management, 141; individual in, 148, 150– 151, 199–200; and joint family, 197; love in, 136, 138, 162; men in, 25, 135, 153, 157, 160, 162, 164; and national strengthening, 38, 135, 141, 148, 150, 151, 164–165, 199; and political culture, 4–6, 149; and privacy, 22; and productivity, 25, 135, 136, 138, 148, 149, 150, 153, 156, 162–163, 165; and sex, 238n66; and society, 141, 145, 148, 149; and state, 141, 148, 199–200; as symbol of modernity, 156–158; women in, 25, 132, 135, 153, 156, 159–166, 197. See also Family Weekly; You Huaigao xiao jiating, Nationalist, 25, 147, 197– 200; individual in, 91, 93–98; and joint family, 91, 93–94, 95–96, 98, 197; and legislation, 91, 128; and nationalism, 81, 89; promotion of,

275 81, 91; relationship to state, 81, 89, 91–99, 135, 156; women in, 197. See also divorce and marital suits; marriage laws and policies; “Offences Against Marriage and Family” xiao jiating, New Culture, 24, 44, 77– 80, 81, 98, 147, 197–200; and emotional fulfillment, 46, 135; happiness, 45, 47, 49; individual in, 27, 31, 37–38, 42, 44, 48, 54, 78, 148, 151, 156, 198; influence on family debate, 79–80, 135; and joint family, 45, 57, 62–64, 77, 197; love in, 44, 45, 47, 49; and national strengthening, 3, 4, 44, 45–49, 148, 197–200; productivity in, 45, 47, 49, 148, 212n40; and society, 46–49, 51; women in, 45, 49–57, 77–80, 197. See also Family Research Xinhua Bank, 134, 139 Xu Baiyi, 177, 243n44 Yan Fu, 2, 9, 20, 50, 51, 149, 202n3, 211n31 Yeh, Wen-hsin, 15, 38, 42, 138, 176, 210n20, 215n91, 232n151 Yi Jiayue (Junzuo), 28, 197; biography, 29–30; on patriarchy, 38–44, 213n65; role in Family Research Society, 28; translations, 29 You Huaigao, 135, 174, 175, 199; biography, 136–138, 232n4; as entrepreneur, 138–140, 158–159, 165–166; and Family Weekly, 135– 136, 139, 140–141, 147, 177; on women, 159–166 Young China Association, 29 youth culture, 28 Youth Independence Association, 34, 212n36 Yu Dafu, 30 Yuan Shikai, 2, 3 Zarrow, Peter, 202n10, 205n29 Zeng Guofan, 140 Zhang Fan, 183, 184 Zhang Leping, 180 Zhang Yintang, 136 Zou Taofen, 15, 78, 81, 134–135, 139, 148, 176, 236n33


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Integrated Composition Systems Sabon Sabon Thomson-Shore

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