Feminism, Women's Agency, and Communication in Early Twentieth-Century China

313 Pages·2018·3.49 MB·English

by  Qiliang He

CHINESE LITERATURE and CULTURE in the WORLD
FEMINISM, WOMEN’S AGENCY,
and COMMUNICATION in EARLY
TWENTIETH-CENTURY CHINA
Th e Case of the Huang-Lu Elopement
Qiliang He
Chinese Literature and Culture in the World
Series Editor
Ban Wang
Stanford University
Stanford, CA, USA
As China is becoming an important player on the world stage, Chinese
literature is poised to change and reshape the overlapping, shared cultural
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national contexts. While seeking studies that place China in geopolitical
tensions and historical barriers among nations, we encourage projects that
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Imbued with a desire for mutual relevance and sympathy, this dialogue
aspires to a modest prospect of world culture. We seek theoretically
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ble of rendering China’s classical heritage and modern accomplishments
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parallels, contacts, influences, and inspirations.
More information about this series at
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Qiliang He
Feminism, Women’s
Agency, and
Communication in
Early Twentieth-
Century China
The Case of the Huang-Lu Elopement
Qiliang He
Illinois State University
Normal, IL, USA
Chinese Literature and Culture in the World
ISBN 978-3-319-89691-5 ISBN 978-3-319-89692-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89692-2
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P F , W ’ A ,
raise for eminism omen s gency
c e
And ommunicAtion in Arly
t -c c
Wentieth entury hinA
“Going beyond simply an empirical study of elopement and romance in the
Nanjing Decade, the author uses this controversial love affair as a prism to exam-
ine the urban networks of communication during the time. Through a careful
analysis of how various social groups respond to the love affair to generate com-
peting public discourses, the author contends that such a polyphonic and partici-
patory public is made possible by a booming urban popular culture and media
networks that also helped to vernacularize the May Fourth-style feminist theo-
ries and terms.”
—Hui Faye Xiao, Associate Professor of Modern Chinese Literature and Culture,
University of Kansas, USA, and author of Family Revolution: Marital Strife in
Contemporary Chinese Literature and Visual Culture (2014)
“He Qiliang gives Suzhou debutante Huang Huairu and Lu Genrong, the family
servant with whom she eloped, and their tragic 1928–1929 saga of love, prosecu-
tion, and death the insightful analysis and sympathetic retelling they have long
deserved. Drawing on newspaper and magazine reportage, film, fiction, operatic,
and tanci performance, He examines the disparate characterizations of contempo-
raries, who portrayed Huang and Lu according to their particular ideological per-
spectives, as variously a revolutionary new woman, casualty of female lust, and
victim of seduction in the case of Huang, and a noble lover whose passion sur-
mounted class differences, corrupting cad, and martyr to injustice in the case of
Lu. These sundry depictions made the Huang-Lu affair a contested allegory for all
v
vi PRAISE FOR FEMINISM, WOMEN’S AGENCY…
partisans in the Republican era cultural war over the power of love, the structure
of marriage and the family, and the reformation of the gender system.”
—Peter J. Carroll, Associate Professor of History,
Northwestern University, USA
a
cknowledgments
I would never have imagined that the present project would last so many
years when I began to read about publications about the elopement in
1999. Therefore, I have incurred many debts in working on the book in
the past two decades. The present study would have been inconceivable
without financial and moral supports from various institutions and indi-
viduals. First and foremost, I acknowledge the University of South
Carolina system for the RISE grant in 2013, Course Reallocation Awards
in 2012 and 2014, and TAPS grant (2006–2013); the Albert and Virginia
Wimmer Fellowship of the Department of History at the University of
Minnesota for the completion of my doctoral dissertation in 2005; Walter
Judd Fellowship from the Office of International Programs at the
University of Minnesota for my summer research trip in 2002. Many
thanks go to institutions such as the Shanghai Library, the Shanghai
Municipal Archives, the Zhejiang Provincial Archives, the Jiangsu
Provincial Archives, the Suzhou Municipal Archives, the Harvard-
Yenching Library, the Hoover Institution Library and Archives, the C. V.
Starr East Asian Library of the University of California, Berkeley, and the
East Asian Library of the University of Minnesota. Without their generous
supports, I could not have completed the bulk of the research. Douban.
com has fundamentally changed my way of putting together bibliography
and gaining access to up-to-date scholarly works.
I was fortunate to work with a number of eminent scholars during my
graduate years at the University of Minnesota. Liping Wang and Ann
Waltner, my academic advisors, led me to the fields of cultural history
and women studies. Lary May familiarized me with the history of
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
American films. I have also benefited from the intellectual depth of other
dissertational committee members, Ted Farmer, Chris Isett, and Maki
Isaka (then known as Maki Morinaga). Beyond the dissertational com-
mittee, Jason McGrath inspired me to understand the relationship
between Chinese film and society. Hiromi Mizuno pushed me to make
intellectual inquiry into issues of gender. William Schaeffer ushered me
into the field of literary modernism.
Other scholars have also offered me help and support at different stages
of this project. Gerald Izenberg prompted me to think more about the
issue of identity in summer 2005 when I attended a month-long disserta-
tional seminar at Washington University in St. Louis. Katrin Paehler
reminded me of news networks in other cultural contexts. Kathryn
Bernhardt was helpful in informing me of the existence of legal documents
of the trials. Bryna Goodman and Tani Barlow have also given me con-
structive suggestions and comments. Tang Lixing of the Shanghai Normal
University, Jiang Jin of the East China Normal University, and Xu Fenghua
of the Shanghai Academy of Social Science made arrangements for me to
give talks in China and exchange ideas with scholars in China. Hong Yu of
the Shanghai Normal University generously shares his research materials
with me. I would like to thank Shuen-fu Lin for having offered me sugges-
tions on how to apply for graduate programs at universities in the United
States back to the late 1990s. I feel pleased to be able to cite Professor
Lin’s work in this monograph.
I have benefited from comments, advice, and ideas given by my col-
leagues in Minnesota: Yong Volz, Dong Dong, Huang Reiping, Zhu
Jianfeng, Nakamura Masako, Park Bongsoo, Joe Dennis, Fang Qin (Emily),
Jiang Yu (Tony), Ye Zhiguo, Liu Lisong, Yuan Zujie, Ma Yuxin, Du
Weihong, Su Weiqun (Wendy), Jin Jun, Rock Zhang, Qin Fang (Vanessa),
Pan Tsung-Yi, Hu Xiangyu, and others. Among them, Qin Fang (Vanessa)
helped me gather information about the distribution of Way Down East in
1920s China and studies on women’s history in China.
Su Yuyin, a seasoned storyteller who has achieved remarkable accom-
plishments in staging the story about the Huang-Lu affair in China, has
been not only my source of information, but also my friend and sup-
porter. Two anonymous reviewers and editors of Palgrave Macmillan
deserve my special thanks for their criticisms, advice, and assistance. I
particularly thank Dr. Ban Wang for having served as the series editor of
both my books.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT S ix
Finally, I would like to take the opportunity to thank my family. My
parents understood and upheld my decision to quit a career as a banker to
pursue a degree in history. I finalize the book in fond remembrance of my
father, He Yulin (1938–2012). Finally, thanks go to Chen Wenyu, my
wife, for her unreserved support and unshakable belief in my success.