About the Speaker

Sara Schneewind, Sarah Schneewind, Professor of History, University of California at San Diego.

Slides for Classroom Use

Footbinding Confronting the Very Strange – PowerPoint [16 MB]

Teaching Guide

Outline & Key Points for Teachers

Background Readings and Classroom Resources

Videos and Exhibits

Women in Late Imperial China [Berkeley – ORIAS]
An introduction to early (Zhou- or Han-era) Confucianism often begins with the Five Relationships, which integrate the ritualistic, interpersonal, and political. This 15-min video with Beverly Bosser (UC Davis) reexamines each role using information about women’s lives in late imperial China.

Ling Long Women’s Magazine [C.V. Starr East Asian Library, Columbia University]
In its short run in Shanghai from 1931 to 1937, Ling Long Women’s Magazine was disproportionately influential. The articles, photographs, and advertisements offer an intimate view of the lives of women during a time of dramatic social change in Republican China.

Lesson Plans and Curriculum Units

Women’s Roles in China: Changes over Time [Primary Source/ Curriculum Unit]
Here students have three windows into the ways attitudes towards women in China have shifted over time: the design of an early nineteenth-century house; Communist propaganda posters from the Revolutionary period; and an oral history of a young woman growing up in today’s People’s Republic of China.

Women and Confucianism [Classroom Lesson from Women in World History Curriculum]
Uncover how Confucian ideology shaped Asian women’s lives across centuries. Students can explore Neo-Confucian sayings, delving into the effect of gender norms. In the words of scholar Xiao Ma’s poignant words, “Women always have been fighting for a way out of the Confucian shadows.”

“Private Life in the Song” [Visual Sourcebook of Chinese Civilization, University of Washington]
Explore Song dynasty art, where domestic scenes come alive through poetry, drama, and paintings with particular focus on Women and children and the intimate aspects often overlooked in official documents. This resource includes images, discussion questions, timelines, maps, and suggested readings throughout (by Patricia Buckley Ebrey, UW).

Primary Sources with DBQs

Oracle Bone Inscription, Shang Dynasty:”On Childbearing” [PDF] [AFE]
The oracle-bone inscriptions are the earliest written records of Chinese civilization. Inscriptions on the bones generated in divination practices for the king using tortoise shell or cattle scapula are translated here – with information on the ancient process of predicting the future.

Selections from the Confucian Analects: On Women and Servants [PDF] [AFE]
Confucius on nurturing women.

Excerpts from “Admonitions for Women” by Ban Zhao [PDF] [AFE]
Ban Zhao (c. 48-c. 116 CE), a learned aristocratic woman in Later Han dynasty, contributed to the renowned Ban family’s legacy of scholarship and service. Despite being widowed and highly educated, she completed the Former Han’s dynastic history after her brother’s passing. As a court instructor to the empress and imperial women, her substantial writings include ‘Admonitions for Women’.

Selection from the Lotus Sutra: “The Daughter of the Dragon King” [PDF] [AFE]
The Lotus Sutra is the most popular and influential Buddhist scripture in East Asia. It was translated into Chinese in several different versions, the most respected being the translation carried out under the direction of the Indian monk Kumārajīva in 406 CE. The passage below addresses the question of the salvation of women.

“The Ballad of Mulan” (Ode of Mulan) [PDF] [AFE]
This poem was composed in the fifth or sixth century CE. At the time, China was divided between north and south. The rulers of the northern dynasties were from non-Han ethnic groups, most of them from Turkic peoples such as the Toba (Tuoba, also known as Xianbei), whose Northern Wei dynasty ruled most of northern China from 386-534. This background explains why the character Mulan refers to the Son of Heaven as “Khan” — the title given to rulers among the pastoral nomadic people of the north, including the Xianbei — one of the many reasons why the images conveyed in the movie “Mulan” of a stereotypically Confucian Chinese civilization fighting against the barbaric “Huns” to the north are inaccurate.

Excerpts from “Analects for Women” by Song Ruozhao [PDF] [AFE]
Two of the most influential scholars on the issue of the education of women and girls, within a Confucian context, were women of the Tang dynasty: Song Ruohua and her sister, Song Ruozhao. Both were daughters of a high-ranking Tang official, Song Fen. Ruohua wrote the text below, while her sister, Ruozhao, propagated it. Ruozhao did not marry, but dedicated her life to the instruction of women, being invited to the court of the Tang Dezong Emperor in the late eighth century to serve as instructor of the royal princesses. The “Analects for Women” was one of the most popular texts for women’s education in pre-modern China. Document Excerpts with Questions (Longer selection follows this section)

Excerpts from “House Instructions of Mr. Yan” [PDF] [AFE]
“A common proverb says, ‘Train a wife from her first arrival; teacha son in his infancy.’ How true such sayings are!”

Excerpts from “It is Difficult for Widows to Entrust Their Financial Affairs to Others” by Yuan Cai [PDF] [AFE]
Women’s roles in imperial China varied with age, generational status, the bearing of sons, and with class. In both elite and commoner households, however, women were often in charge of managing the household — this involved the management and conservation of grain, cloth, and other goods, and the management of finances. The following excerpts are taken from a book of advice for family heads by the Song dynasty scholar and official Yuan Cai (ca. 1140-ca. 1195).

Excerpts from “Empress Xu’s ‘Instructions for the Inner Quarters'” [PDF] [AFE]
Empress Xu (d. 1407) was the third wife of the Ming Yongle emperor (r. 1402-1424). She was the daughter of General Xu Da, who had played an important part in the campaigns of the Ming dynasty’s founder, Zhu Yuanzhang, the Hongwu emperor. Empress Xu, who was well read and of strong character, wanted to write a guide for the cultivation of women. In doing so, she was inspired by the instruction that she received from her mother-in-law, Empress Ma. Empress Ma was a fine role model: a self-educated, well-read woman, a humane and supportive mother-in-law, she viewed herself as sharing her husband Hongwu’s responsibilities as ruler and did not back off from offering her advice and criticism to her famously short-tempered husband.

Poetry by Women: “Poem to be Sung to the Tune of ‘Southern Song'” by Li Qingzhao [PDF] [AFE]
Li Qingzhao (1084-ca. 1151) lived during the Song dynasty (960-1279). Li Qingzhao was raised in a family of notable scholar-officials. Both her parents were highly educated, and Li Qingzhao herself began to attract attention for her poetry when she was still in her teens. In the poem below, Li describes her autumn dress decorated with a lotus-pond scene.

Preface to “Models for the Inner Quarters” by Lu Kun [PDF] [AFE]
Lü Kun (1536-1618), a scholar-official of the Ming dynasty, wrote on education from a number of perspectives. The following document on the education of women is an example.

“What Women should Know about Communism” by He Zhen [PDF] [AFE]
The intellectual life of early twentieth century China was a rich mixture of Confucian scholarship (clearly a fading tradition), along with a variety of western ideas — social Darwinism, feminism, anarchism, anti-Manchu revolutionary thought and so on. He Zhen was the wife of the anti-Manchu anarchist leader Liu Shipei (1884-1917). The essay below appeared in the journal Natural Justice, which He Zhen and Liu Shipei published while in exile in Japan.

“Purchase Marriage in Not Allowed” – 1960 [Women in World History Curriculum]
Starting in the 1930s, the Communists made a conscious effort to free peasant women from their subjugation to fathers, husbands, and in-laws. In 1950, now in government, they passed the Marriage Law of 1950 giving women full legal equality to men inside the family.

Articles and Books

Women in Traditional China [Asia Society]
Written for teachers, Patricia Ebrey, professor of history at the University of Washington, reviews the place of women in Chinese society from earliest times down to the 20th century.

Empress Wu Zetian (Tang dynasty, 625-705) [Women in World History Curriculum]
Even though according to the Confucian beliefs having a woman rule would be as unnatural as having a “hen crow like a rooster at daybreak,” Wu Zetian (the only female emperor in Chinese history) ruled during the Tang dynasty.

“Gender Difference in History: Women in China and Japan” [Women in World History Curriculum]
In China, the concept of gender difference appears in the yin/yang Taoist symbol with the dark color representing the feminine and the light representing the male. Each aspect may contain aspects of the other. Learn how within Taoism gender roles where similarly flexible.

“The Grievance Rhetoric of Chinese Women: From Lamentation to Revolution,” by Anne McLaren [Australian National University: Intersections]
An article from Intersections: Gender, History, and Culture in the Asian Context, Issue 4, September 2000.

“How the One-Child Policy Improved Women’s Status in China” [WhatsonWeibao.com]
An article on Chinese social media argues that the One Child Policy has greatly benefited the status of Chinese women, and that the shift to a so-called Two Child Policy is a setback for women’s rights. By Manya Koetse. Feb 7, 2017.

The Legend of Mulan [Children’s Book]
In ancient, war-torn China, there secretly stood one female among the male soldiers. Disguised as her brother, in order to take her father’s place in the army, heroine Mu Lan bravely defends her country with superior martial arts.

Every Step at Lotus, Shoes for Bound Feet by Dorothy Ko [Berkeley: University of California Press]
Explores the practice of footbinding in China, including its origins, purpose, and spread before the nineteenth century. Women’s own voices reconstruct the inner chambers of a Chinese house where women with bound feet lived and worked.

Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China by Dorothy Ko [Stanford: Stanford University Press]
This pathbreaking work argues that literate gentry women in seventeenth-century Jiangnan China were far from being oppressed or silenced and reconstructs the social, emotional, and intellectual worlds of these women from the interstices between ideology, practice, and self-perception.

Cinderella’s Sisters A Revisionist History of Footbinding by Dorothy Ko [Berkeley: University of California Press]
Neither condemning nor defending foot-binding, Dorothy Ko debunks myths and explores the entanglements of male power and female desires during the practice’s thousand-year history, starting from its origin in the dance culture of China’s medieval court to its demise in the twentieth century.

The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the Sung Period by Patricia Buckley Ebrey [Berkeley: University of California Press]
A preeminent scholar of premodern China brings to life women’s lives in the paradoxical Sung Dynasty (960-1279) – when increase property rights and status in marriage coexisted with the rise of footbinding and Confucian scholars’ belief that a window should starve rather than remarry.

Courtesans, Concubines, and the Cult of Female Fidelity by Beverly Bossler [Cambridge: Harvard University Press]
Shows how the intersection of three critical categories of women – courtesans, concubines, and faithful wives – transformed ideas about family relations and the proper roles of men and women from the tenth to fourteenth centuries.