{"id":19505,"date":"2012-02-03T18:40:30","date_gmt":"2012-02-03T23:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yfiledev.uit.yorku.ca\/?p=19505"},"modified":"2025-04-02T08:49:00","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T12:49:00","slug":"what-a-biographical-tradition-reveals-about-chinese-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.yorku.ca\/yfile\/2012\/02\/03\/what-a-biographical-tradition-reveals-about-chinese-culture\/","title":{"rendered":"What women's stories tell about Chinese culture"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>For 2,000 years, Chinese women have\u00a0traditionally modelled themselves on the\u00a0biographies of 124 women first recorded in 34BC. They include exemplary mothers, chaste, obedient and faithful wives, and eloquent speakers. The original biographies were repeatedly revised over the centuries and historians such as York\u2019s Joan Judge are mining the variations \u2013 and a treasure trove of other sources \u2013 for a mirror on the cultural preoccupations and values of different eras.<\/p>\n<p>What they have unearthed so far can be found in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ucpress.edu\/book.php?isbn=9780984590902\"><em>Beyond Exemplar Tales: Women's Biography in Chinese History<\/em><\/a>, a volume of essays co-edited by Judge and Hu Ying, a <a href=\"https:\/\/yfile.news.yorku.ca\/2012\/02\/03\/what-a-biographical-tradition-reveals-about-chinese-culture\/chinesebook1\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-19569\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft wp-image-19569 size-full\" style=\"margin: 8px;\" src=\"https:\/\/yfile.news.yorku.ca\/files\/2012\/02\/ChineseBook11.jpg\" alt=\"&quot;Beyond Exemplar Tales&quot; book cover \" width=\"350\" height=\"538\" \/><\/a>professor of East Asian languages and literatures at the University of California, Irvine. The book was published last fall by the University of California Press.<\/p>\n<p>Drawing upon a vast array of sources \u2013 from formal biography to poetry, letters and oral interviews \u2013 the authors examine how women\u2019s biography served particular cultural, political and world-making projects. They also offer new strategies for reading, contextualizing and interpreting the long Chinese tradition of women\u2019s biography.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/people.laps.yorku.ca\/people.nsf\/researcherprofile?readform&amp;shortname=judge\">Judge<\/a> is cultural historian of modern China with a scholarly focus on print culture and women\u2019s history at the turn of the 20th century. \u201cI find it to be one of the most interesting periods,\u201d says the history and humanities professor, \u201cbecause this is when China had to come to terms with the West \u2013 its military power, political system and social values.\u201d A previously isolated China had lost the Opium Wars with England and was forced to open its doors to the \u201cGreat Powers\u201d in an unprecedented way.<\/p>\n<p>Judge explored this transitional period in her book, <em>The Precious Raft of History: The Past, the West, and the Woman Question in China<\/em> (Stanford University Press, 2008). (See <em>YFile<\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.yorku.ca\/yfile\/archive\/index.asp?Article=10604\">June 3, 2008<\/a>.) From 1890 to 1912, while still reappropriating traditional women\u2019s biographies, the Chinese started to translate, publish and discuss biographies of Western women, including Joan of Arc; Madame Roland, politically active as a Girondist during the French Revolution; Harriet Beecher Stowe, the American abolitionist and author of <em>Uncle Tom\u2019s Cabin<\/em>; and Mary Lyon, an American pioneer of higher education for women. In trying to understand the West, the Japanese, then the Chinese, turned to a genre already central to their cultural repertoire \u2013 the life story narrative \u2013 and extended that repertoire to include biographies of Western women, says Judge. \u201cThis is why biographies were central to my research for <em>The Precious Raft<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>As she researched <em>The Precious Raft<\/em>, Judge discovered that scholars of other eras were also discovering the ubiquity of traditional biographies of women in Chinese sources. \u201cA colleague of mine also began to see that these biographies were an important way to understand women\u2019s history in China,\u201d said Judge. That colleague was Hu Ying.<\/p>\n<p>It was 2006\u00a0when the two decided the time was ripe for a conference. They invited eminent scholars of Chinese women\u2019s history to talk about their research. Their papers comprise <em>Beyond Exemplar Tales<\/em>. One scholar wrote about a woman who became a Taoist teacher, traditionally a man\u2019s role, and uses the Taoist adept\u2019s own writings to counter official criticisms of her. Another author pieces together a profile of a Sung Dynasty empress from references to her in the diary of a high official. Other scholars use epitaphs, fiction, women\u2019s poetry and alternative sources to get closer to women\u2019s lives, \u201cbecause conventional sources only tell a fraction of the story,\u201d says Judge.<\/p>\n<p><em>Beyond Exemplar Tales <\/em>spans two centuries,\u00a0ending after the Second World War in China and Taiwan. \u201cIt is fascinating to see that communist labour models felt compelled to emulate many of the same female virtues \u2013 like chastity \u2013 lauded in 34BC,\u201d says Judge. For scholars of Chinese and women\u2019s history, \u201cthe book is a prism through which we can reach a better understanding of Chinese culture.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Judge came to York from the University of California\u00a0 in 2005 as a history and humanities professor. She is also a faculty associate at the York Centre for Asian Research. Currently on sabbatical, she is creating an online database of Chinese women\u2019s journals and wrapping up research on the journal <em>Fun\u00fc shibao<\/em> (<em>The Women\u2019s Eastern Times<\/em>) as part of an international collaborative project.<\/p>\n<p><em>By Martha Tancock, YFile contributing writer<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Historian Joan Judge has co-edited a book of essays about how Chinese women continue to model themselves on portraits compiled in 34BC and revised over the centuries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":19739,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"yfileauthor":[],"qualifier":[],"yfile-author":[],"tags-to-show":[],"workflow":[],"class_list":["post-19505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editors-picks"],"acf":{"internal_publish_date":null,"original_image":null},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.0 - 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