At Home in the World: Women and Charity in Late Qing and Early Republican China (Treasury of the Indic Sciences)

During the years spanning the late Qing dynasty and the early Republican era, the status of Chinese women changed in both subtle and decisive ways. As domestic seclusion ceased to be a sign of virtue, new opportunities emerged for a variety of women. Much scholarly attention has been given to the rise of the modern, independent "new women" during this period. However, far less is known about the stories of married nonprofessional women without modern educations and their public activities. In At Home in the World, Xia Shi unearths the history of how these women moved out of their sequestered domestic life; engaged in charitable, philanthropic, and religious activities; and repositioned themselves as effective public actors in urban Chinese society. Investigating the lives of individual women as well as organizations such as the YWCA and the Daoyuan, she shows how her protagonists built on the past rather than repudiating it, drawing on broader networks of family, marriage, and friendship and reconfiguring existing beliefs into essential components of modern Chinese gender roles. The book stresses the collective forms of agency these women exercised in their endeavors, highlighting the significance of charitable and philanthropic work as political, social, and civic engagement. Shi also analyzes how men - alive, dead, or absent - both empowered and constrained women's public ventures. She offers a new perspective on how the public, private, and domestic realms were being remade and rethought in early twentieth-century China, in particular, how the women navigated these developing spheres. At Home in the World sheds new light on how women exerted their influence beyond the home and expands the field of Chinese women's history. -- From dust jacket. Table of Contents 6 Acknowledgments 8 Introduction 14 Part I. Elite Women and Charity 48 1. Beyond a Personal Virtue 50 2. Being Female Philanthropists 81 Part II. The YWCA in China and “Women in the Home” 110 3. Reaching Out to Women in the Home 114 4. Women Interacting with the YWCA 138 Part III. Women in the School of the Way 166 5. Redefining Confucian Gender Doctrines 172 6. Women, Superstition, and the Reorientation Toward Charity 194 Epilogue 215 Notes 224 Glossary 254 Works Cited 260 Index 274 In late Qing and early Republican China, new opportunities emerged for Chinese women. Xia Shi unearths the history of how married nonprofessional women without modern educations moved out of their sequestered domestic life, engaged in charitable, philanthropic, and religious activities, and repositioned themselves as public actors. Introduction -- Beyond a personal virtue -- Being female philanthropists -- Reaching out to women in the home -- Women interacting with the YWCA -- Redefining Confucian gender doctrines -- Women, superstition, and the reorientation toward charity -- Epilogue. Xia Shi. Includes bibliographical references and index.