Sold People: Traffickers and Family Life in North China PDF
Preview Sold People: Traffickers and Family Life in North China
SOLD PEOPLE S o l d P e o P l e Traffickers and family life in norTh china Johan na S . RanSm eie R Harvard University Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 2017 Copyright © 2017 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer i ca First printing Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data Names: Ransmeier, Johanna S., author. Title: Sold p eople : traffickers and family life in North China / Johanna S. Ransmeier. Description: Cambridge, Mas sa chu setts : Harvard University Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016038100 | ISBN 9780674971974 (alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: Human trafficking— China— History. | Families— China— History. Classification: LCC HQ281 .R26 2017 | DDC 306.850951— dc23 LC rec ord available at https:// lccn . loc . gov / 2016038100 For my parents, Judith Dunlop Ransmeier and John Christian Ransmeier CONTENTS Conventions ix Introduction 1 1 A Young Woman as Portable Property 24 2 The Flow of Trafficking in the Late Qing 62 3 New Laws and Emerging Language 102 4 Fictive Families and Children in the Marketplace 138 5 Moving beyond the Reach of the Law 170 6 The Warlord’s W idow and the Chief of Police 209 7 Domestic Bonds 239 8 Talking with Traffickers 273 Conclusion 310 Appendix 331 Notes 335 Chinese Terms 371 Acknowle dgments 375 Index 379 CONVENTIONS I use the pinyin romanization system for Chinese terms, people, and place names except when a dif fer ent spelling would be more familiar (Hong Kong, Sun Yatsen). Although the city of Beijing became Beiping when the Guomin dang moved the Chinese capital south to Nanjing in 1928, to avoid confusion, I use Beijing throughout. In judicial and police sources for both the Qing and the Republican pe- riod, w omen’s names appeared as the husband’s surname, followed by father’s surname, and then the appellation shi 氏. I have chosen to trans- late these names. Thus, Wang Cheng Shi I render as Mrs. Wang née Cheng or Mrs. Wang- Cheng. I have retained original names in the notes. The Chinese calculated age in sui 歲, starting with one sui at birth, and counting the passage of each lunar new year. For all ages listed in this text, I have subtracted one year from the sui listed in the archival material and described individuals in terms of Western “years o ld.” This still risks over- estimating ages for those with birth dates just before the new year, but given the nature of trafficking, this approach best conveys to the En glish reader an approximation of the relative youth of many of the p eople involved. ix
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