Crossing the Gate

Man Xu

Description

In Crossing the Gate, Man Xu examines the lives of women in the Chinese province of Fujian during the Song dynasty. Tracking women's life experience across class lines, outside as well as inside the domestic realm, Xu challenges the accepted wisdom about women and gender roles in medieval China. She contextualizes women in a much broader physical space and social network, investigating the gaps between ideals and reality and examining women's own agency in gender construction. She argues that women's autonomy and mobility, conventionally attributed to Ming-Qing women of late imperial China, can be traced to the Song era. This thorough study of Song women's life experience connects women to the great political, economic, and social transitions of the time, and sheds light on the so-called "Song-Yuan-Ming transition" from the perspective of gender studies. By putting women at the center of analysis and by focusing on the local and the quotidian, Crossing the Gate offers a new and nuanced picture of the Song Confucian revival.
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Gates in and out of the Jia
The House Gate (Men 門) and Lane Gate (Lü閭)
The Middle Gate (Zhong Men 中門)
Gate Titles for Mothers

2. Women on Journeys
Vehicles
Traces
Conclusion

3. Women in Local Communities
Inner Affairs (Nei Shi 内事) and Outer Affairs (Wai Shi 外事)
Women and Household Economy
Women and Local Welfare
Women and Public Projects

4. Women and Local Governments
Women’s Participation in Local Administration
Women and Governmental Structures
Women and Lawsuits
Women Under the Administration of Local Governments
Gender Consideration in Local Governments’ Public Projects
Conclusion

5. Women and Religion
Laywomen in Confucian Eyes
Personal Practices
Religious Communication with Relatives and Outsiders
Religious Excursions
Buddhist Funeral

6. Women and Burial
Tomb Structure: From Single Chamber to Multichamber
Joint Burial: Partition Wall and Passageway
From Inner/Outer to Left/Right
The Problem of One Man, Many Wives
Funerary Accessories from Seven Multichamber Tombs
Three Late Southern Song Tombs
Mural Tombs

Conclusion

Epilogue
Appendix: Bibliography of Excavation Reports of Song Tombs from Fujian
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• History of Asia
• China
• Gender studies

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 24 octobre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781438463223
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 12 Mo

Extrait

Crossing the Gate
SUNY SERIES IN C HINESE P HILOSOPHY AND C ULTURE
Roger T. Ames, editor
Crossing the Gate

E VERYDAY L IVES OF W OMEN IN S ONG F UJIAN (960–1279)
MAN XU
Cover art: Golden silk wide sleeves robe (1235 AD). The garment is a dress for a female, excavated from a tomb sealed in 1235 and found by archaeologists in 1986 in the suburb of Fuzhou. The garment is at the Fujian Museum. Courtesy of The Fujian Museum.
Published by
STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK PRESS
Albany
© 2016 State University of New York
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Production, Laurie D. Searl
Marketing, Anne M. Valentine
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Xu, Man, 1979–
Title: Crossing the Gate : Everyday Lives of Women in Song Fujian (960–1279) / Man Xu.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2016] | Series: SUNY series in Chinese philosophy and culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016007755 (print) | LCCN 2016023269 (ebook) | ISBN 9781438463216 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781438463223 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Women—China—History—To 1500. | Women—China—Fujian Sheng—History—To 1500. | Sex role—China—Fujian Sheng—History—To 1500. | Social classes—China—Fujian Sheng—History—To 1500. | Social change—China—Fujian Sheng—History—To 1500. | Fujian Sheng (China)—Social life and customs. | Fujian Sheng (China)—Social conditions. | China—History—Song dynasty, 960–1279.
Classification: LCC HQ1147.C6 X8 2016 (print) | LCC HQ1147.C6 (ebook) | DDC 305.4095109/01—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016007755
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my parents
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1 Gates in and out of the Jia
The House Gate ( Men 門 ) and Lane Gate ( Lü 閭 )
The Middle Gate ( Zhong Men 中門 )
Gate Titles for Mothers
2 Women on Journeys
Vehicles
Traces
Conclusion
3 Women in Local Communities
Inner Affairs ( Nei Shi 内事 ) and Outer Affairs ( Wai Shi 外事 )
Women and Household Economy
Women and Local Welfare
Women and Public Projects
4 Women and Local Governments
Women’s Participation in Local Administration
Women and Governmental Structures
Women and Lawsuits
Women Under the Administration of Local Governments
Gender Consideration in Local Governments’ Public Projects
Conclusion
5 Women and Religion
Laywomen in Confucian Eyes
Personal Practices
Religious Communication with Relatives and Outsiders
Religious Excursions
Buddhist Funeral
6 Women and Burial
Tomb Structure: From Single Chamber to Multichamber
Joint Burial: Partition Wall and Passageway
From Inner/Outer to Left/Right
The Problem of One Man, Many Wives
Funerary Accessories from Seven Multichamber Tombs
Three Late Southern Song Tombs
Mural Tombs
Conclusion
Epilogue
Appendix: Bibliography of Excavation Reports of Song Tombs from Fujian
Notes
Bibliography
Index
List of Illustrations
Map Map 1 Fujian Circuit in the Southern Song dynasty.
Tables Table 6.1 List of Song Fujian Tomb Structures Table 6.2 Types of Song Fujian Tombs Table 6.3 Comparison of Accessories Table 6.4 Comparison of Individuals
Figures Figure 1.1 Illustration of a wutou gate in the Yingzao fashi. Figure 1.2 Women at the middle gate. From the twelfth-century scroll painting Lady Wenji’s Return to China: Wenji Arriving Home . Ink, color, and gold on silk. Photograph © Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Denman Wlado Ross Collection, 28.65. Figure 2.1 A woman in a sedan chair. Detail from the handscroll Qingming shanghe tu by Zhang Zeduan (fl. 1000–1130). The Palace Museum, Beijing. Figure 2.2 A maidservant in front of a sedan chair. Detail from the handscroll Qingming shanghe tu by Zhang Zeduan (fl. 1000–1130). The Palace Museum, Beijing. Figure 2.3 Sedan chair in the left chamber. Figure 2.4 Sedan chair in the right chamber. Figure 2.5 Two cattle-drawn carriages. Detail from the handscroll Qingming shanghe tu by Zhang Zeduan (fl. 1000–1130). The Palace Museum, Beijing. Figure 2.6 A woman riding a donkey. Detail from the handscroll Qingming shanghe tu by Zhang Zeduan (fl. 1000–1130). The Palace Museum, Beijing. Figure 6.1 The Layout of Tomb 23 (Single-Chamber Tomb). Figure 6.2 The Layout of Tomb 25 (Double-Chamber Tomb). Figure 6.3 The Layout of Tomb 8 (Triple-Chamber Tomb). Figure 6.4 Drawing of a Mural Painting of Human Figures and House Structures in Tomb 25. Figure 6.5 Rear Wall in the Left Chamber of Tomb 32 (Drawing). Figure 6.6 Rear Wall in the Right Chamber of Tomb 32 (Drawing). Figure 6.7 Drawing of a Mural Painting of a Bedroom in Tomb 30.
Acknowledgments
Eighteen years ago, when I was a junior in the History Department at Beijing University, Professor Deng Xiaonan opened a new course on Women in Tang and Song China. It was the first curriculum on women in pre-modern China available in Chinese universities, and it proved to be a fascinating experiment. The class introduced exciting new perspectives to conduct research on Chinese history and exposed me to the pioneering disciplines of women’s history and gender studies. It was in her class that I started to touch on primary sources about women in Chinese history. The narratives are scattered and fragmentary and are generally absent from official histories that I had been reading. They appeared unusual, while at the same time interestingly familiar. I was deeply moved by the biographies of women from more than one millennium ago, which surprisingly resonated with my knowledge of the life experience of my grandmothers and mother. It inspired me to seek women’s history that was largely invisible in historical records. Professor Deng offered me hands-on instruction on searching for and analyzing first-hand materials. Meanwhile, she gave me an inclusive reading list of influential books on women’s history in pre-modern China that American scholars had published in the 1990s. She generously lent me her collection, considering research books on humanities in English were not easily accessible at that time. Immersed in the scholarship, I was astonished at how thriving and productive this field had been in Western academia. In 2001, as the secretary of the “International Symposium on Tang and Song Women’s History,” I invited dozens of international leading scholars in Chinese women’s studies to Beijing University, including Susan Mann, Patricia Ebrey, Dorothy Ko, Beverly Bossler, and Bettine Birge. I was thrilled to meet with these well-known authors and to communicate with them in person, and I was encouraged to further my interest in women’s history in the United States.
In the fall of 2002, I joined Columbia University and achieved the good fortune of being assigned to two dedicated advisors—Robert Hymes and Dorothy Ko. At our first meeting, Robert Hymes gifted me his newly published book Way and Byway , which was awarded the Joseph Levenson Book Prize two years later. As a prestigious social historian, he appreciated my interest in local history and shared with me his research experience in the field and his insightful knowledge of women’s history. Dorothy Ko, in spite of her early devotion to literary history, developed great enthusiasm for cultural studies. By taking her courses and working as her research assistant, I was impressed with the glamour of material culture and was eager to apply it to my research. In addition to the two advisors, my dissertation was greatly indebted to a number of China historians at Columbia. Robert Harrist taught me the methodologies of art history, JaHyun Haboush and Wei Shang trained me in recovering history with literary sources, Feng Li led me to understand the value of archaeological discoveries, and Conrad Schirokauer conveyed to me the wisdom in deciphering intellectual history. Inspired by these experts from a wide range of fields, I adopted a distinctive interdisciplinary approach to conducting my research.
Whether we can contextualize women’s studies in local history largely depends upon the scope of available sources. A brief investigation of women’s records limited my choice to a few economically and culturally advanced areas in the Song. Fujian stood out to me because of its exceptional wealth of original material that remained largely unexplored. I had started to collect historical sources for my research for the writing of my master’s thesis, and I continued to expand my source pool for my dissertation. I explored sources available at Beijing University (China), Columbia University, the Library of Congress, Harvard University, Tokyo University (Japan) and the Oriental Library (Japan) and received great help from their librarians. Also, the CLIR Mellon Fellowship supported my field trips to