When Lu Xun was born, Chinese society had been following the same traditions for generations. A pillar of these traditions, strict social hierarchies particularly oppressed women. Instead of having a say in their lives, they were subject to their father, their husbands, their husband’s family, and then even to their sons. Marriages were arranged, and in the event of the death of a husband, the woman would be expected to remain chaste even to the extent of choosing suicide over remarriage. Social hierarchies also restricted the intermingling of classes with strict social rituals separating the elite from the common. During Lu Xun’s early years, however, society had begun to get restless, and many pushed for change. At the forefront of the changing tides in Chinese society, Lu Xun advocated for change in the ancient social hierarchies that had directed Chinese society for generations in his stories “My Old Home” and “New Year’s Sacrifice” which specifically responded to the injustices of the traditional system against women and the arbitrariness of the separation between classes that the hierarchical system imposed. Lu Xun lived during what came to be known in China as the Republican period. During this period, China underwent major social changes. An emerging iconoclastic intellectual class, one of the most important societal shifts, began to attack traditional Chinese institutions through literature. Lu Xun, a prime example of this intellectual class, targeted traditional social hierarchies and their effects on the lives of women and the separate classes. During the May Fourth Movement, part of the Republican Period, women’s rights advocates sprung up around China pushing for marriage rights for women to choose their hus... ... middle of paper ... ...rarchies that governed interactions within China. In “New Year’s Sacrifice”, he attacked the expectations and oppressions of women that were a part of traditional society. In “My Old Home”, Lu presented the case of his childhood friend, engaging the sympathies of readers in an effort to turn them against traditional Chinese social divisions. Lu Xun’s writings were characteristic of the May Forth Movement in their iconoclastic nature and push away from traditional social rituals. Bibliography Lu Xun, “My Old Home.” In Modern Chinese Stories and Novellas, 1919-1949, edited by Joseph S. Lau, C.T. Hsia, and Leo Ou-Fan Lee, 11-16. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981. Lu Xun, “New Year’s Sacrifice,” In Modern Chinese Stories and Novellas, 1919-1949, edited by Joseph S. Lau, C.T. Hsia, and Leo Ou-Fan Lee, 17-26. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981.
Jonathan Spence tells his readers of how Mao Zedong was a remarkable man to say the very least. He grew up a poor farm boy from a small rural town in Shaoshan, China. Mao was originally fated to be a farmer just as his father was. It was by chance that his young wife passed away and he was permitted to continue his education which he valued so greatly. Mao matured in a China that was undergoing a threat from foreign businesses and an unruly class of young people who wanted modernization. Throughout his school years and beyond Mao watched as the nation he lived in continued to change with the immense number of youth who began to westernize. Yet in classes he learned classical Chinese literature, poems, and history. Mao also attained a thorough knowledge of the modern and Western world. This great struggle between modern and classical Chinese is what can be attributed to most of the unrest in China during this time period. His education, determination and infectious personalit...
There are little to no direct accounts of how individuals’ lives were a couple thousand years ago in Ancient China. With a wealth of information on the rise, decline, and fall of empires, Michael Loewe, a sinologist who specializes in oriental studies and theology, writes an imaginary story about a hero named Bing set around 70 BCE. Bing: From Farmer’s Son to Magistrate in Han China is Loewe’s fictional portrait of life during the Han Empire. It is by no means a comprehensive historical account of Han times, in fact, it was written with those readers who are not familiar with Chinese in mind, however through the life of Bing we can gage how the lives of laborers, those involved in military service, merchants, and government officials might
Friedman, Sara L. "Women, Marriage and the State in Contemporary China." Chinese Society: Change, Conflict, and Resistance. Ed. Elizabeth J. Perry and Mark Selden. London: Routledge, 2000. Print.
According to Jin Feng’s book entitled New Woman in Early Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction, Ling’s works can be divided into three sections throughout her career. While all of her stories focus around the struggles of women during the modernization of China, Ling used different methods to address their reality. The first method portrayed the social lives of women without giving a direct method of addressing the difficulties that they faced. The second involves women who renounce their current life to pursue Marxism and the revolution. The third romanticizes the lives of women after joining the revolution.
China has gone through many changes in its history. Changes include economic, political, and social. In the early 1500 and throughout history, mostly all social classes followed Confucianism. Confucianism is a type of religion based on an ideal society (Chang 2012, 22). China was molded though Confucianism but that slowly deteriorated as years went on. One main group that has been a main part in these changes is the Chinese literati. The Chinese literati include the higher-class people such as officials and scholars. The Chinese literati were the dominant social class during the 1500’s but their power slowly decreased throughout history. Throughout my paper, I will explain the Chinese literati involvement as centuries passed.
Throughout the Chinese history, peasants, especially women have always aimed for a recognized position in Chinese society, their roles and positions in both their family and society have not been quite pleased with them. Generally, Chinese women have had almost no legal rights or career opportunities compare to Chinese men until early twentieth century. However, it started to change right after a movement known as “The May Fourth movement in 1919 .” The May Fourth movement was based on Western principles to create a new Chinese culture. Through this revolutionary movement, the peasants and intellectuals had a unified voice to express radical ideologies in Confucianism, traditional civil service hiring exams, patriarchal family structures,
Jonathan Spence’s The Death of Woman Wang looks at rural life in the small county of T’ang-ch’eng during late 17th century China. In the novel, Spence looks at the lives of peasants and rural farmers, those often overlooked in studying this period of China. Through four crises that had occurred in the small county, the novel displays the bleak and unfortunate lives of those living in T’ang-ch’eng and how the major changes taking place in China would leave the county in disarray, low morale and for women such as Woman Wang an ill-fated demise. Using three sources, two based on recounting the crises in the county (Local History of T’ang-ch’eng, a personal handbook by Huang Liu-hung) and one imaging more fable like stories based on certain incidents that had occurred (P’u Sung-ling’s written works), Spence creates a picture of how life was like for the small county.
Quinn, Edward. “Cultural Revolution in China.” History in Literature. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2004. Bloom’s Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 14 May 2014
Yeh, Wen-Hsin. Becoming Chinese: Passages to Modernity and Beyond. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Print
Tse-Tsung, Chow. The May 4th Movement: Intellectual Revolution in Modern China. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 1992.
Kingston uses the story of her aunt to show the gender roles in China. Women had to take and respect gender roles that they were given. Women roles they had to follow were getting married, obey men, be a mother, and provide food. Women had to get married. Kingston states, “When the family found a young man in the next village to be her husband…she would be the first wife, an advantage secure now” (623). This quote shows how women had to get married, which is a role women in China had to follow. Moreover, marriage is a very important step in women lives. The marriage of a couple in the village where Kingston’s aunt lived was very important because any thing an individual would do would affect the village and create social disorder. Men dominated women physically and mentally. In paragraph eighteen, “they both gav...
...he goal of communism to work towards the benefit of the whole, many would argue that this is not being accomplished in China today. The information that the Chinese government feed to their people is affecting their citizen’s ability to decipher from what is true and what is false. Government-controlled media compare life in China today to life before liberation, where the people lived in poverty. However, many Chinese people of the younger generation view this as the past and instead compare China to its neighboring countries, such as Japan, which has accomplished much more in the same amount of time. The next generation of the Chinese people is determined initiate a change and perhaps a revolution to bring back the true harmony in China where there is trust and a lack of oppression on civil rights, and in result fulfilling Lu Xun’s wish to, “Save the children...”
Wei Hui’s proper upbringing, compared to a contemporary writer Mian Mian, has often had critics wondering if Shanghai Baby, the novel she claims is semi-autobiographical, is authentic. Wei Hui was the daughter of an army officer and was raised in a strict household in Shanghai. She went through a year of military training and graduated from Fudan, a top university in Shanghai, in 1995 earning a degree in Chinese Literature. This vastly contrasts with Mian Mian who was a high school dropout and was clearly active ...
The Cultural Revolution destroyed countless lives; while some died during reeducation, the Revolution drove others to suicide, madness, or depression by the shame, humiliation, and isolation they faced. The government of China, however, often denies that such suffering occurred. Instead, it promotes a positive, romanticized image of the Cultural Revolution in sanctioned fiction and in official history. Therefore, one of the few ways we can see the true effects of the Communist regime is through the fiction that the disillusioned Chinese citizens wrote about the actual experience and impact of the era. Through these writings, we can see clearly who were the victims and who were the oppressors
The first type of rebellion identified by the respondents concerned romantic relationships. Marriage has always been seen as business between two families in Chinese traditions (Watson & Ebrey, 1991). It is not a bond forged just by the individuals who exchange vows; rather, it is an interfamilial matter (Pimentel, 2000). The joining of two families brings benefits in terms of advancing in the social ladder, especially in more historical times (Watson & Ebrey, 1991). This is depicted in the myth, as Zhu’s father betrothed her to the wealthier Ma family. Liang’s lower social background ultimately prevents him from being with Zhu. To marry down the social ladder was thought to bring the family dishonor; hence, class endogamy was commonly practiced (Watson & Ebrey, 1991). Although this belief is less heavily emphasized in today’s average Chinese American family, the emerging second generation confronts similar restrictions and pressures as Chinese individuals in the past.