Tag: China

Cat Country: How Story Mirrors Reality

In Celestial Empire: The Emergence of Chinese Science Fiction, Nathaniel Isaacson discusses the emergence of Chinese science fiction in the early to mid 1900’s. He highlights many different Chinese science fiction stories, but one that especially stood out was City of Cats by Lao She, written in 1933.

The story follows that the narrator crashlands on Mars and finds a city run by cats in “Cat Country”.  The cats in Cat Country have a corrupt economic system, government, and education system, and everyone is addicted to the “reverie leaves”, which are drug-like leaves that are similar to opium. The narrator watches as the civilization falls into greater and greater disrepair, and tries to save it, but ultimately loses the civilization. An army of short people overruns Cat Country and kills all the cats. The narrator later leaves on a French ship back to earth, leaving Cat Country behind.

I found City of Cats more interesting than the other stories Isaacson covered, partially in its symbolism of China at the time by the author, and also from the simple dystopian plotline. In between the strangeness of cats on Mars, and armies of short people, the story boils down to a simple dystopia that reflected the anxieties of a person in China in the 1930s and can represent the anxieties of people around the world today.

There were many themes that were prevalent in Chinese science fiction in the early 1900s. Social collapse, colonial modernity, and the metaphor of the Iron House, popularized by Lu Xun–known as the father of Chinese science fiction– all came together in the anxieties of the writers of Chinese science fiction.  Lu Xun’s popular metaphor of the Iron House was a comparison of Chinese society to “an iron house: without windows or doors, utterly indestructible, and full of sound sleepers— all about to suffocate to death. Let them die in their sleep, and they will feel nothing. Is it right to cry out, to rouse the light sleepers among them, causing them inconsolable agony before they die?”1. This metaphor, along with the others above, is pertinent to the despairing society that cannot seem to bring themselves to shed their skins and work together to revive their society.

The parallels to Chinese society at the time, or at least what Lao She thought of Chinese society at the time are clear. As Isaacson so succinctly puts it “[t]hese observations lead to the diagnosis of social and institutional illness, and the prognosis is devastatingly bleak from the outset,”2. Lao She’s  “suffocating image of Chinese culture” is a human reaction to what he sees as China’s “own cultural decay and selfishness were to blame for the national plight” and is a stirring thought for those of us reading it ages later3.

The anxieties of any person at any time can be translated through writing and through time. City of Cats and the bizarre cats on Mars can be a warning to anyone about working as a community to do better, and can also be an interesting read for someone craving a story of cats on Mars.

  1. Isaacson, Nathaniel. Celestial Empire: The Emergence of Chinese Science Fiction. Middletown, Connecticut: Wesleyan University Press, 2017, p. 4 [↩]
  2. Ibid, p. 125 [↩]
  3. Ibid, p. 127 [↩]

An analysis of Ci Jiwei’s ‘Moral China in the Age of Reform’

Ci Jiwei’s Moral China in the Age of Reform argues that China, since the collapse of Maoist communism, has been facing a profound moral crisis with no end in sight.1 He attributes many reasons to this moral crisis, such as the faulty nature of the Chinese Party-Government and the lack of past moral standards. His work engages in interesting analytical philosophy with the influence of Nietzsche and Foucault, yet is often too philosophical and anecdotal for what he identifies as a real problem affecting over a billion people.

 

In his first chapter, Ci writes that China’s moral crisis is greater than any other societies’ and that every aspect of society is implicated. The nature of this crisis is that cooperation is breached on a massive scale; that elementary norms are violated; and that this state of affairs is normalised. Evidence of this is the prevalence of unsafe foods and medicine, poor quality of water and dangerous levels of traffic.

As the book progresses, he describes many reasons for why this moral crisis has come to be. For example, the end of communism saw the rise of individualism, in which ordinary people became uninterested in collective endeavours and thus abandoned altruism. His third chapter particularly deals with what he calls the progression from utopianism to hedonism via nihilism – that is, the progression from communist hopes to the open pursuit of wealth and pleasure through the erosion of the belief in communism.2 Yet also bearing responsibility for the moral crisis is the Party-Government, which has designated itself as the initiator and authoriser of morals and norms, yet is understood by nearly everyone to be corrupt. The Party-Government has replaced what Confucianism was for traditional China and what communism was for Maoist China; but unlike Confucianism and communism, the perception of the Party-Government is not as infallible.

 

To combat this moral crisis Ci recommends a number of liberal reforms. He believes that democracy is a positive influence on society, as individuals contribute to the maintenance of societal norms; and that an increased presence of checks and balance limits corruption. However, this is where Ci begins to partly contradict himself; for he also writes that too much liberalism (i.e. individuality) can lead to selfishness, and he attacks the ‘superficial criticisms’ of China for its supposed lack of freedom when compared to Western societies.3

 

Although Moral China in the Age of Reform is interesting for its analytical philosophy, its real-world applications fall short. Firstly, it relies on mostly anecdotal evidence to confirm the presence of a moral crisis: reused cooking oil and overly-negative news stories from Jiaodian fangtan are definitely problems, but not evidence of a widescale moral collapse which has occurred since (not during) the reign of Mao. Widespread corruption is similarly anecdotal; China is only ranked 76th out of 180 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index, on par with the countries of Moldova and North Macedonia.4 This does not seem to suggest the vast and globally unique “moral crisis” China finds itself in.

Secondly, Ci engages in very strict analytical philosophy to describe the every motivation and moral character of over a billion people. It must be questioned if it really is the case that every person in China, deciding the practices of their everyday lives, enact moral agency either through freedom or identification.

Finally, Ci seems to support a form of Chinese exceptionalism. He criticises Thomas Metzger’s A Cloud across the Pacific – a book, as Ci writes, about the ‘profound’ differences between China and the West – because it makes too many comparisons between China and the West.5

But these criticisms should not undermine Ci’s entire book; Moral China in the Age of Reform is a deeply analytical and profoundly interesting evaluation of modern Chinese society, a cultural monolith with huge influence on the state of the world now and into the future. It will almost definitely remain a classic in the decades following its publication.

  1. Ci Jiwei, Moral China in the Age of Reform (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). [↩]
  2. Ibid, pp. 25-26. [↩]
  3. Ibid, p. 37 [↩]
  4. Transparency International, Corruption Perception Index 2023, www.transparency.org/cpi. [↩]
  5. Ci, Moral China, p. 106 [↩]

Morality in Anarchism and He-Yin Zhen’s Conception of Female Liberation

He-Yin Zhen is an early Chinese feminist and anarchist, who alongside her husband Liu Shipei, published the journal Natural Justice.1 Published between 1907-1908, it is in Natural Justice that He-Yin would articulate much of her feminist theories, in articles such as ‘On the Revenge of Women’, and ‘The Feminist Manifesto’. ‘On the Revenge of Women’ is a text which, through analyses of classical texts in Chinese literary canon, etymologies that embed in them the degradation of women, and the role of social institutions in formalising male domination of women, educe the “instruments of male tyrannical rule”.2 Examples from throughout Chinese history are used to argue that women had long been deprived of the right to bear arms, to hold political power, to be educated, and that in their hapless deaths they were denied their right to life itself.3 As with much of her other writings, the ultimate goal of the article is to advocate for a social, economic, and feminist revolution to the ends of the abolition of private property and the state, as a means of achieving true equality between men and women in the absence of the imbalance of power and wealth that results in domination and the oppression of women by men.4

Much like other Chinese anarchists of the time, He-Yin saw the necessity of a social revolution as a means of bringing an end to the oppression of the state, and to achieve true equality between men and women. The nature of the social revolution — the bounds of acts and acceptability, arguably constitute a standard of morality by which her feminist-anarchism is to be achieved. It is a standard of morality most explicitly articulated in the article ‘The Feminist Manifesto’, echoing ‘The Communist Manifesto’, of which the earliest Chinese translation can also be found in Natural Justice.5 The brief and direct nature of the article suggests her intentions towards the writing as a call-to-arms. In it, He-Yin lists seven actionable things which she implores women to carry out, as a means of combating four basic inequalities which she had identified: monogamy, maiden names, valuing daughters equally, raising daughters without discrimination, separation in marriage, rules for remarriage, and the abolish of brothels.6

Condemnation of prostitution and concubinage is a recurring point in her articles. Polygamy, too, is rejected even if extended to women, considered a transgression and a succumbing to lust.7 In imploring women to strive for the seven goals, He-Yin sees women’s role in rejecting the oppressive social institutions as paramount to achieving universal justice. The emphasis which she places on social revolution carried by women echoes the primacy which Chinese anarchists of her period accorded to social revolution and education in the struggle against the state for equality.

  1. ‘Biography’, in Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca E. Karl and Dorothy Ko (eds), The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory (New York, 2013), p. 51. [↩]
  2. He-Yin Zhen, ‘On the Revenge of Women’, in Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca E. Karl and Dorothy Ko (eds), The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory (New York, 2013), p. 146. [↩]
  3. Ibid., pp. 147,152. [↩]
  4. Ibid., pp. 107-108 [↩]
  5. ‘Introduction: Toward a Transnational Feminist Theory’, in Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca E. Karl and Dorothy Ko (eds), The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory (New York, 2013), pp. 5-6. [↩]
  6. He-Yin Zhen, ‘The Feminist Manifesto’, in Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca E. Karl and Dorothy Ko (eds), The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory (New York, 2013), pp. 182-183. [↩]
  7. Ibid., pp. 183-184. [↩]

Lesbian love in Chinese fiction in the 1920’s

The May Fourth movement in China changed many aspects of Chinese society, and during this time, writers, male and female, used this time to create space in fiction for female same sex love. Because of the lack of prevalence of female same-sex love in Chinese society at the time, female same-sex love or desire was seen, especially in the fiction written by women, in more subtle ways. Female same-sex love was also seen often by Chinese society as a temporary state for young women in same-sex schools. There were many stories of girls in schools having same-sex relationships, but the overarching theme of these stories were that the desire, love, or romantic or sexual feelings for each other would leave when they graduated school and got married. This view of female same-sex love as temporary shaped how lesbian fiction was written in the 1920’s and how different genders wrote about female same-sex love.

Female writers of female same-sex love in the May Fourth movement were more nuanced in their lesbian subtext than men, who wrote predominantly to show their fantasies of female same-sex love and to reassure themselves that it was temporary in order to keep their importance in the growing independent woman’s life. Lu Yin, a writer in the early 1900’s, wrote predominately about the spiritual, ideal and liberating love of female same-sex attachment, which surpassed cross-sex love and marriage1. Her short story “Lishi’s Diary” is a little more overt in its female same-sex love, with the character Lishi feeling more for her female friend Yuanqing than her male friend, Guisheng. She and Yuanqing plan to live together, but when Yuanqing is forced into a (heterosexual) marriage, she dies of melancholy2. Lu Yin also experienced female same-sex desire herself. When visiting Japan with her husband, she remarked on the communal baths. She was self conscious in being naked around other women, but when she finally looked around she “admired their bodies” as she prepared to leave the bath, and her “nerves were excited” on her way home3. Her rapture with the female body is suggestive of female same-sex love she may have felt in her life, in addition to her love of her husband.

On the contrary, female same-sex love fiction written by men was very different. They wrote “more explicitly about female-female physical behaviour” and their stories were seen more as fantasies of the male imagination of female-female eroticism. Yu Dafu, a writer in the early 1930’s, “deployed sexological characterisations” of female same-sex love to “metaphorically represent social disorder and national weakness”4.  His story about a “monstrous third-sexed woman” who seduced young school girls demonises female same-sex love and desire5.  Another writer, Zhang Yiping, writes about female same-sex love with the intention of, again, suggesting that it was simply a precursor to a heterosexual relationship. A woman confides in her boyfriend that she had a same-sex relationship when she was younger and that she had died, but it brought them closer together in the sharing of the memory6.

A notable cross section of the difference of female versus male written lesbian love, a female rewritten story of male written story becomes far more popular than the original. Two female students play Romeo and Juliet, fall in love, and then when one has to get married to a man, the other faints.  Ling Shuhua brings more animation to the “barren” version of Yang Zhensheng’s7. Yang attributes the affair to the “lack of a proper emotional outlet”, whereas Ling proves their love with true intimacy7.

The dismissal of female same-sex love as temporary in many ways in Chinese society in the 1920’s showed the inability for male dominated society to accept that their place in a woman’s life could be unimportant. With the changing world and the rising women’s independence movement in the 20’s there came the fear that men therefore had no place in an independent woman’s life. This is seen overtly and subtly through the constant critique that female same-sex love had to be temporary in order to reassure men of their place in the world.

  1. Sang, Tze-Lan D, The Emerging Lesbian: Female Same-Sex Desire in Modern China  (Chicago, 2003), p. 133 [↩]
  2. ibid, p. 140 [↩]
  3. ibid, p. 146 [↩]
  4. ibid, p. 156 [↩]
  5. ibid, p. 153 [↩]
  6. ibid, p. 155 [↩]
  7. ibid, p. 149 [↩] [↩]

Cai Yuanpei’s ‘New Year’s Dream’ and the contradictions in its views of foreign powers

Cai Yuanpei was a Chinese anarchist intellectual, at first associated with the Paris anarchist societies and later Republican minister of education and chancellor of the University of Beijing.1 This text, ‘New Year’s Dream’, was written at the height of the Russo-Japanese War and describes Cai’s dream of the future, in which China reaches a period of happiness and prosperity, having defeated foreign invaders of the country and instructed the world on how to achieve global peace.2

The text follows Yimin Zhongguo, an intelligent young man from Jiangnan who, having travelled around the world for his education, returns to China during the Russo-Japanese War. Yimin’s life and, in particular, his foreign education draws similarities with the author, who studied in Paris and Leipzig.

After entering into discussion with a group of strangers, in which he dismisses the celebration of New Year’s Eve as ‘just one day at random’ and accuses them of being selfish and idle, he goes home to rest. At this point his dream begins, which takes up most of the text and can be understood as Cai Yuanpei’s anarchist vision for the future.

In his dream he enters into a large assembly hall, its seating arrangement reflecting the country except divided according to China’s river basins, dialects and local customs rather than arbitrary provincial boundaries (as Cai would see them). A speaker begins to implore the audience that they must begin building the nation of China, lest their country becomes a battlefield for wars between Japan, Russia, England, Germany or France. He likens China’s population to selfish children who care only of their toys when their house is robbed, unaware that the money and deeds being stolen guaranteed their future. This argument is much the same that Yimin deployed on the idle strangers celebrating New Year’s Eve the day before.

The man then distributes a pamphlet with five proposals guaranteeing an effective administration of China: a survey of the land and of the population, a survey of the country’s planning and construction, discussions on employment, and ordinances dictating the life-cycle of a person (education between ages 7 and 24, work between ages 24 and 48) and their daily routine (8 hours work and 8 hours rest).

Another pamphlet is distributed, calling for the recovery of Manchuria: the eradication of foreign spheres of influence; and the dismantling of foreign concessions. Ways to grow China’s military strength are discussed at length.

After a discussion of Yimin’s next steps, his dream then accelerates into the future and describes a situation in which foreign powers repeatedly invade China but are ‘driven back every time’. The invaders convene in Berlin where they lament: “the love of the Chinese for their country is so pure that I fear there is no way to break it”!

Having defended their country, the Chinese propose the abolition of every country’s individual army and their replacement with a world army; this is so popular that other countries ‘took it as words from heaven’. From then on, there were no more wars, ‘and people lived happily and peacefully’ – although, Yuan adds of course, ‘with the happiness of the Chinese naturally greatly exceeding that of others’.

China reaches a Utopian state, with railways built across the country, a new easier-to-learn national language implemented, and designations such as ‘father’, ‘son’, ‘husband’ and ‘wife’ cease to have relevance.

Yim at this moment wakes up and, forgetting his previous dislike of New Years’ festivities, exclaims “Greetings! Congratulations! It is the New Year, a new world has come!”.

 

What is most interesting about Cai’s text is its seemingly contradictory views about foreign countries. Yimin is clearly a model Chinese citizen – smart, hard-working, and shrewd – a fact which might be owed to his education in the US (‘because he loved the ideas of freedom and equality’), Germany (‘the vanguard of technology’), France, England, Italy, Switzerland, and Russia. Cai, having also studied in Europe, clearly believed this education was both useful and a source of pride.

However, Cai laments the fact that Russia and Japan are at present warring over Manchuria, and fears for the future when the Yangtze region, Fujian or Guangdong might also be battlegrounds for foreign powers. When describing the invading foreigners of the future, he writes: ‘they looked at China and saw it as this wonderful melon that they had discussed carving up a number of times, and now their occasion had finally arrived’, describing them as malicious and power-hungry.

A further irony of this view is that, in Cai’s vision of the future, China sources her military strength from abroad. The speaker rejoices that ‘the cadets which we had sent to study in England have now returned’ and they plan to, instead of building their own warships, ‘send representatives to the largest shipyards abroad, and […] buy warships that are almost finished’. This contradiction – that one should expunge foreign influence, yet use foreign education and manufacturing to do so, is one of the defining contradictions of Chinese anarchist thought – a philosophy that originated outside of China, yet focused solely on China.

  1. Dirlik, Arif, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution (University of California Press, 1991), pp. 117, 120, 156. [↩]
  2. Cai Yuanpei, New Year’s Dream (1704). Published in Andolfatto, Lorenzo, Hundred Day’s Literature: Chinese Utopian Fiction at the End of Empire, 1902-1910 (2019), pp. 199-212. [↩]

“Mr. Earnest”: Shifu and dedication to Anarchism

Liu Shifu grew up in a changing time in China’s history. He was born in the 1880’s and died of tuberculosis in 1915, but was still a major figure in the anarchist movement in China. There were many movements that were slowly forming in the time period of Liu Shifu, and his dedication to the movement helped shape it to continue after he was gone. The chapter The New Beginning: Shifu Launches the Conscience Society in the book Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism by Edward S. Krebs detailed the later years of Shifu when he gains importance in China, started the Conscience Society and a printing press owned by himself and his close friends and family, spread his message through China, and unfortunately died of tuberculosis before his work is done. Shifu was astoundingly dedicated to his values of anarchism that he writes in 1912 with his close group of friends and colleagues, and they guided how he taught and lived anarchism for the three chaotic and jam packed years of his life before he died.

In 1912, Shifu and his close compatriots convened for the spring and summer, during which Shifu created a list of twelve points that were “essential” to his personal brand of anarchism.1 The twelve points were abstinence from meat, liquor, tobacco, servants, riding in sedan chairs or rickshaws, marriage, use of the family name, serving as an official, a member of a representative body, a political party, the army or navy, and religion.1 For the rest of his life, he committed himself to these values. While his colleagues would ride rickshaws to a block before their office where they printed their paper and taught about anarchism, and then walk the last block, Shifu would walk every day back and forth.2 When his doctor suggested that he eat meat in order to help his ailing health that turned into tuberculosis that killed him in 1915, he refused because of his promise to never eat meat, as it was seen as upholding the labor structure of the corrupt government. His values above everything else earned him the nickname of “Mr. Earnest” by his fellows, and was mainly a good way to describe Shifu in his quest for anarchism.2

There are many things that can be said about Shifu’s dedication to the cause of anarchism and his commitment to his values, however, there are places within his life where he seemed to be hypocritical in his values. Shifu’s continued closeness to his siblings and employment of them when printing the Cock-Crow Record in in the face of one of his 12 points, do not use a family name. His belief that family should not be especially important in an individuals life is forgotten when it came to his own siblings and their prominence in his employment of them. One of his sisters married one of his friends who was also intimately involved with his cause. His fathers support and familial monetary funds that went into his printing press also showed his blindness towards his values. “Did he fail to see the irony in this situation?” the text asked, voicing the question that I also had when thinking of his title as “Mr. Earnest”.3 Additionally, Shifu’s partner, Ding Xiangtian, felt no support or affection from Shifu when she was pregnant with their daughter in 1912.2 After she was born, he refused to create a public nursery to raise his child in.4  To him it was compromising his values, but in doing so, he was leaving his child to no education or support from her father.

While Shifu was determined to stay true to his values of anarchism and the twelve points that were made by the group in 1912, Mr. Earnest may have strayed from being totally earnest in his dedication to anarchism.

  1. Edward S. Krebs, Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism (1998) pp. 102. [↩] [↩]
  2. Edward S. Krebs, Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism (1998) pp. 115. [↩] [↩] [↩]
  3. Edward S. Krebs, Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism (1998) pp. 108, 115. [↩]
  4. Edward S. Krebs, Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism (1998) pp.116. [↩]

The Creation of Identity and Community in Print

In his chapter ‘Piety in Print’, DuBois uses the Shengjing Times as a case study to trace the development of religion in print, as controlled by the Japanese, in Manchuria/Manchukuo. He argues that the images of religion presented related to both social trends and political needs, and the images tended to mirror the larger aims of Japan in the region. In his analysis, he refers to the theories of nationalism and community building of Anderson and Weber, which both include the role of print journalism/language in developing identities, ideas, and community. DuBois notes there is a key difference between their two theories however, turning on the question of whether mass media reflects existing identities or creates new ones:

‘In other words, the former [Anderson] shows publications expanding to fit the contours of an existing community, the latter [Weber] shows them creating a new one’.[1]

DuBois concludes that even at its most propagandistic, the paper was never able to simply impose its ideas onto its readership and that its later propagandistic messages probably ‘changed fewer minds than Weber’s example would suggest’.[2] Rather, the paper reflected existing identities, adhering closer to Anderson’s theory, due to newspapers being a product to be consumed and discarded at will and its readership holding the ability to simply disagree with its contents. This is illustrated best in the Shengjing Times’s attitude towards religious practices which promoted superstition; its theme of anti-superstition in its early publications (1906-1924) appealed to an intellectual readership and the iconoclastic May Fourth generation. DuBois argues that it was this image of religion the paper provided that was most successful, because it was a message its readership was keen to hear. Here we see the paper appealing to the pre-established intellectual community of ideas which subscribed to ideas of anti-superstition and anti-religious vision of social progress.

Perhaps Weber’s theory of community and identity building is instead demonstrated in the ‘revolution plus romance’ literary genre of China which appeared in the first half of the twentieth century. In his chapter ‘Revolution of the Heart’, Haiyan Lee provides a critical genealogy of sentiment and highlights the transformations of love as a concept of social and cultural life in twentieth century China. Through this literary genre, we see love used as a discursive technology for constructing individual and collective identities by the KMT and CCP, and literature participating ‘in (re)defining the social order and (re)producing forms of self and sociality’.[3] Love was supplemented to the revolutionary agenda, argued to threaten revolution and diminish revolutionary zeal. The genre therefore was able to use the concept of ‘love’, popular as a symbol of freedom, autonomy, and equality among the May Fourth generation, in order to promote the collective over the individual and further the revolutionary agenda.

Both the Shengjing Times and the Chinese literary genre of ‘revolution plus romance’ serve to illustrate the potential language has in the creation of identities and communities. While the Shengjing Times reflected existing identities and formed a community of readership based upon them, the Chinese literature aimed to form new identities aligned to the revolutionary movements. Overall, both demonstrate the use of language to further political agendas, and as case studies indicate both Anderson and Weber’s theories as feasible.

[1] Thomas David DuBois, Empire and the Meaning of Religion in Northeast Asia: Manchuria 1900-1945 (Cambridge, 2017), p. 87.

[2] Ibid., p. 107.

[3] Haiyan Lee, Revolution of the Heart: A Genealogy of Love in China, 1900-1950 (Stanford, 2010), p. 7.

Understanding Cosmopolitanism within the context of reformation.

Ban Wang engages with the idea of Cosmopolitanism in China by primarily focusing on Confucian ideals. Cosmopolitanism according to Bang Wang can only be established through Aesthetic interests, which would enable the population to become less fixated on categories such as race, class or nation and instead could form connections world wide by focusing on their shared human qualities. Wang is able to strengthen this idea by engaging with other like-minded scholars. The main focus of this is on K’ang You-wei, which therefore, allowed Wang to delve further into Confucianist ideals, revealing how these can help to shape a world centred around Cosmopolitan values. ‘By this widening gyre of sympathy, imagination, and obligation, K’ang You-wei suggests that a member of the local community could become a citizen of the world’.[1]  Therefore, by using K’ang You-wei’s ideal vison of the world, Wang is able to grasp the human qualities which would be essential to creating universal values. However, these humanistic values which Ban Wang highlights within K’ang You-wei’s writings are somewhat misleading. Confucianism was a large focus with K’ang’s writing work, but Ban Wang depicts K’ang’s life and ideals to be idealistic and a form of utopia. Instead, these Confucianism ideals were used to initiate reformation within China’s sovereignty and politics.

‘K’ang believed that the best hope for China was to bring about reforms within the framework of the traditional systems, with the modification of the absolute monarchy in a constitutional monarchy.’[2]

This, therefore, leads onto how and why K’ang You-wei and his Confucianist writings can be used to understand Cosmopolitanism and its role within Eastern Asia. Perhaps Aesthetics and Confucianist values could be used to create a formation of a universal community, but for K’ang You-wei, according to historians such as Chen Jianhua[3] and Laurence Thompson was primarily focused on reforming China within the context of its traditions, therefore, to ensure that China would not fall into disaster. Jianhua and Thompson, although have written up separate texts focus on this historical figure manage to somehow tag team and cover the groundwork of K’ang’s motivations for reformation. Furthermore, they both focus on a broader scale to understand K’ang’s timeline and the connection to the wider context outside of China. Thompson primarily focuses on K’ang’s education, which later in life transitions into a curiosity towards western society and politics, enabling him to adapt this to his reformist writings. Therefore, this brings more context to the idea of cosmopolitanism because it promotes this idea of shared education and adapting them to reshaping politics and customs. However, it is not surprising that this revolutionary form of ideas leads to K’ang living a life on the run.

Chen Jianhua gives little time for K’ang’s timeline and instead uses his ideas of reformation and rebellion to connect it to a wider context relating to translation. The primary focus on their text it to understand reformation through different terms and how they can be connected in a universal context. Jianhua picks apart K’ang’s use of the term ‘geming’ which has caused debates surrounding its meaning. Whether it be revolution, rebellion or reformation, it can perhaps be better understood by attaching it to K’angs goal for change. To strengthen this, Jianhua uses other terms which K’ang had placed alongside ‘geming’ that were linked to the same meaning and goal. Bianfa, which is a term used that translates to ‘change the rules’ and another which is weixin which translates to ‘keep the newness’. This, therefore, establishes another idea of a universal understanding of reformation. K’ang was aware of these shared ideas for change and used revolutions such as the French revolution and the British glorious revolution to understand western politics. Furthermore, in the context of cosmopolitanism it does not have to be only applied to one shared community, but instead it can be linked through universal understandings of politics and how this form of education can be used to create change.

[1] Ban Wang, Chinese visions of world order: tianxia, culture, and world politics (Duke University Press, 2017) p.97.

[2] Laurence G. Thompson, Ta t’ung shu: the one-world philosophy of K’ang Yu-wei (Routledge, 2005) p.18.

[3] Chen Jianhua, World revolution knocking at the heavenly gate: Kang Youwei and his use of in 1898 (Routledge, 2011).

No Country for Old (Wo)Men: The Evolution of the ‘Patriarchal Paradigm’

Throughout history, the role of women in China has been riddled by a ‘patriarchal paradigm’ that took hold both in familial and societal life. Dorothy Ko, JaHyun Kim Haboush, and Joan Piggott (2003) write of the ‘patriarchal family paradigm’, in which, “the ideal family thus prescribed [was] marked by gender hierarchy, patrilineal descent, and virilocal residence.”1 They go on to support this view by focusing on the legislative nature of this paradigm through avenues such as the Tang penal and administrative codes. Here, we see the differing roles in society of women and men, as the privilege of a husband’s status was not equally upheld for their wives.2 This is evidenced when assessing the Myörei Ritsu, which stated that murder, among other things such as failing to mourn a husband, was seen as a seditious offence. However, these offences were not as harshly punished for female victims. Ultimately, the role of women in society was one of a second-class citizenry that was in place to provide for husband’s and fundamentally, society. Thus, the ‘patriarchal paradigm’ is evident.


Despite this, however, as society evolved and developed, traditional family values that were upheld for centuries, began to find themselves on the end of criticism from some intellectuals. From these intellectuals, a critical movement grew which promoted reforms regarding the role of women, making the ultimate argument that “China needed healthy, educated mothers to produce citizens sound in mind and body.”3 

Upon further inspection, however, this reform for women was a goal-driven movement that focused on assisting the overall development of Chinese male citizenry, not the true liberation of women and their role in society. Susan Glosser corroborates this when she writes that, “men’s interest in educational and physical reforms for women grew out of this desire to maximise their own contribution to the nation.”4 Thus, the argument arises that the role of women did not truly evolve with these reforms, rather the ‘patriarchal paradigm’, as coined by Ko et al. (2003) evolved. Critically, the main role that these reforms played in altering the role of women was solely effective on the surface and no deeper. Thus, the ‘patriarchal paradigm’ evolved with the times, rather than the overall role of women in society. Ultimately, women were still categorised as the second-class citizenry, critically in place to aid the male population. As highlighted by Glosser once again, the approach to reform was one where young elite men shifted an age-old focus from good mothers to ideal wives.5 Thus, as this piece argues, it was still a woman’s kinship role over anything else that dictated their place in society.

This is exemplified when focusing on the explicit directive for women to improve themselves, otherwise known as the wenming, or ‘civilisation’ of women. This is evidenced most when focusing on the work done by Liang Qichao, who grouped the reforms for women into three categories of, productivity, education, and the cultivation of a strong and healthy body. He argued that by women educating their children before the age of 10, as was done in the Western world, China could ultimately compete with their western counterparts. As a result of Liang Qichao’s work, the first Chinese Girls’ school opened in 1898. Regardless of the clear benefit that this had regarding the liberation of women, at least in educational circles, the overall aim behind this move was driven by the ever-existing categorisation of women by their kinship role.

Thus, as argued throughout this piece, despite some reforms for women in late nineteenth-century China, the overall reason behind the reform was still driven by the ‘patriarchal paradigm’. The ultimate move to liberate women in certain capacities was not compelled by a movement to provide women with rights, rather it was galvanised by a drive to improve the role of man, and to a greater extent, China.


  1. Dorothy Ko, JaHyun Kim Haboush, Joan Piggott. Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea, and Japan. (California, 2003). pg.27 [↩]
  2. Ibid. [↩]
  3. Susan Glosser. Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915-1953. (California, 2003). pg. 5 [↩]
  4. Ibid. pg.5 [↩]
  5. Ibid. pg.6 [↩]

How Ibsen came to influence the revolutionary movements of China

Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen has been hugely influential in the history of theatre and his plays are among the most performed ones in the world. Not only did Ibsen infuse the world of theatre with a more realistic and character-driven style but his plays are also very political – which is indeed the case with his perhaps most famous work, A Doll’s House (1879). The political significance of Ibsen’s plays travelled across Eurasia to Japan and China in the early twentieth century and ended up influencing not only new radical movements such as anarchism and feminism, but its significance also garnered significant critique from far-right movements in China, showing that Ibsen’s writings had a meaningful role in the tumultuous political climate of China in the first half of the twentieth century.

 

Edward Krebs’ book Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism, shows how the anarchist faction within the New Culture Movement embraced Ibsen’s A Doll’s House not only as a feminist critique of the institution of marriage and a call for women’s liberation, but also as a call for the emancipation of love in Chinese society.1 For anyone familiar with A Doll’s House, the most obvious interpretation of the play is the perhaps more practical side of female emancipation from the structural limitations of life as a woman. That is, the limitations of marriage and family life where the woman has little room for freedom and expression, which, in the play, leads the protagonist, Nora, to reject all of this by the end of it. Interestingly, it seems that the New Culture and May Fourth movements in China not only embraced this but also used the, now perhaps taken for granted, search for love as a concept of both female emancipation and rebellion against the old way of life by a new focus on individuality, as is pointed out by Haiyan Lee. Indeed, Lee claims that ‘[n]o other translated text electrified the May Fourth generation more than Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll’s House’.2 Lee goes on to write that it was not before anarchist takes on the play emerged that the inherent critique of bourgeoise domestic life in particular of A Doll’s House was used politically. Naturally, the combined implications of female emancipation and rejection of bourgeoisie life was then used as a rebellion against the Confucian family ideals. Moreover, the anarchist interpretation developed into a rejection of love as an ‘ideological camouflage’ for the lies of the Confucian family ‘covering up the unnatural and unjustified private ownership of sex’.3

 

Curiously, the apparent rejection by Nora of bourgeoisie life touted by the anarchists was used against them by the far right and the New Life Movement (NLM). As the illustration titled ‘Nora after Leaving Home’ from the magazine New Life Women’s Monthly implies, Nora’s rejection of family ideals leads to immorality, and in opposition to the leftist interpretation, she continues to embrace the capitalist bourgeoisie or perhaps a sleazier underground life.4 Obviously, the NLM, promoting a fascist and highly conservative ideology, was staunchly against the ideals of the New Culture and May Fourth movements and their rejection of the Confucian family ideal. As Clinton points out, the NLM critique highlights the futility of Nora leaving the traditional family structures given the lack of opportunity for independent women in Chinese society, which would lead her to a life of degeneracy.5 Thus, A Doll’s House did not only act as a critique of the Confucian family in China, but the open ending also allowed for some rather easy refutation of the leftist interpretation.

 

A Doll’s House was not the only Ibsen play that proved to be influential among leftist revolutionaries in China in this period. In The Birth of Chinese Feminism, Liu, Karl and Ko highlights how The Lady from the Sea, which was first translated into Japanese then into Chinese in 1920, fits perfectly into the anarcho-feminism of a significant figure in anarchism and feminism in China as He-Yin Zhen. The passage they focus on is one where Ibsen is very critical of the whole institution of marriage, which he describes as an arrangement similar to prostitution.6 This passage in itself is perhaps a more direct and radical critique of traditional family structures than most of what is said in A Doll’s House. By being so direct in the description of marriage as a form of prostitution, The Lady From the Sea might even have put off some not so radical leftists at the time, which might explain why A Doll’s House was more popular, and thus more influential.

 

The curious case of Ibsen’s influence on revolutionary movements in China is another proof of Ibsen’s skill as a playwright and it shows the relevance of his writings across cultures and time, which is furthermore exemplified by his continuous significance today. Ibsen, who may or may not have been an actual feminist himself, did write plays – such as those mentioned above and Hedda Gabler – which presents rebellion against society in the form of female rebellion. This made him a favourite among anarchists and feminists, and also an ‘easy’ target for more conservative voices. However, plays such as A Doll’s House obviously did not only inspire the most extreme leftists at the time since the message can be easily applied to wider society as a whole. It is for that reason Ibsen’s story of Nora’s rebellion became the most ‘electrifying’ foreign piece of writing in the eyes of the May Fourth generation.

  1. Krebs, Edward S., Shifu, Soul of Chinese Anarchism (Lanham, Md, 1998), p. 162. [↩]
  2. Lee, Haiyan, Revolution of the Heart: A Genealogy of Love in China, 1900-1950 (Stanford, 2007), p. 109. [↩]
  3. Ibid., pp. 182-183. [↩]
  4. Clinton, Maggie, Revolutionary Nativism: Fascism and Culture in China, 1925-1937 (Durham, 2017), p. 154. [↩]
  5. Ibid., pp. 152-155. [↩]
  6. Karl, Rebecca, Ko, Dorothy and Liu, Lydia, The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Text in Transnational Theory (New York, 2013), p. 93. [↩]