Nanxiu Qian

The Shih-shuo hsin-yu, conventionally translated as A New Account of Tales of the World, is one of the most significant works in the entire Chinese literary tradition. It established a genre (the Shih-shuo t'i) and inspired dozens of imitations from the later part of the Tang dynasty (618-907) to the early Republican era of the 20th century. The Shih-shuo hsin-yu consists of more than a thousand historical anecdotes about elite life in the late Han dynasty and the Wei-Chin period (about AD 150-420).

The Shih-shuo Hsin-yü and Its Legacy

Spirit and Self in Medieval China

Harriet Thelma Zurndorfer

Grace S. Fong

"Beyond Tradition and Modernity" is a collection of original essays which considers the complexities behind the dramatic changes generated in China at the end of the nineteenth century and exposes the new ideals and ideas voiced by men and women that reflect the changing boundaries of gender at this time.

Gender, Genre, and Cosmopolitanism in Late Qing China

Beyond Tradition and Modernity

In 1898, Qing dynasty emperor Guangxu ordered a series of reforms to correct the political, economic, cultural, and educational weaknesses exposed by China's defeat by Japan in the First Sino-Japanese War. The "Hundred Day's Reform" has received a great deal of attention from historians who have focused on the well-known male historical actors, but until now the Qing women reformers have received almost no consideration. In this book, historian Nanxiu Qian reveals the contributions of the active, optimistic, and self-sufficient women reformers of the late Qing Dynasty. Qian examines the late Qing reforms from the perspective of Xue Shaohui, a leading woman writer who openly argued against male reformers' approach that subordinated women's issues to larger national concerns, instead prioritizing women's self-improvement over national empowerment. Drawing upon intellectual and spiritual resources from the freewheeling, xianyuan (worthy ladies) model of the Wei-Jin period of Chinese history (220–420) and the culture of women writers of late imperial China, and open to Western ideas and knowledge, Xue and the reform-minded members of her social and intellectual networks went beyond the inherited Confucian pattern in their quest for an ideal womanhood and an ideal social order. Demanding equal political and educational rights with men, women reformers challenged leading male reformers' purpose of achieving national "wealth and power," intending instead to unite women of all nations in an effort to create a just and harmonious new world.

Xue Shaohui and the Era of Reform

Politics, Poetics, and Gender in Late Qing China

The Shih-shuo hsin-yu, conventionally translated as A New Account of Tales of the World, is one of the most significant works in the entire Chinese literary tradition. It established a genre (the Shih-shuo t'i) and inspired dozens of imitations from the later part of the Tang dynasty (618-907) to the early Republican era of the twentieth century. The Shih-shuo hsin-yu consists of more than a thousand historical anecdotes about elite life in the late Han dynasty and the Wei-Chin period (about A.D. 150-420). Despite a general recognition of the place of the Shih-shuo hsin-yu in China's literary history (and to a lesser extent that of Japan), the genre itself has never been adequately defined or thoroughly studied. Spirit and Self in Medieval China offers the first thorough study in any language of the origins and evolution of the Shih-shuo t'i based on a comprehensive literary analysis of the Shih-shuo hsin-yu and a systematic documentation and examination of more than thirty imitations. The study also contributes to the growing interest in the Chinese idea of individual identity. By focusing on the Shin-shuo genre, which provides the starting point in China for a systematic literary construction of the self, it demonstrates that, contrary to Western assertions of a timeless Chinese "tradition," an authentic understanding of personhood in China changed continually and often significantly in response to changing historical and cultural circumstances.

Nanxiu Qian

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