Family matters: women's negotiation with Confucian family ethics in Qing and Republican China

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FAMILY MATTERS:
WOMEN’S NEGOTIATION WITH CONFUCIAN FAMILY ETHICS IN QUING
AND REPUBLICAN CHINA

by

Chia-Lan Chang

____________________________________________________

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES AND CULTURES)

December 2007

Copyright 2007 Chia-Lan Chang

ii
Dedication

To My Families

iii
Acknowledgments
Family matters. This dissertation is dedicated to the Quanzhou women
studied here, my mentors, and my friends. All are my families.
The selection of Quanzhou as the setting of this research is both a
coincidence and a natural development. Starting with women’s studies, Quanzhou
first caught my eye because of its widow chastity cult in late imperial China. Then,
Quanzhou as an emigrant society which received remittances from its sojourners in
Southeast Asia intrigued me with a new question: What happened to Quanzhou
women who were left behind at home?
In the process of searching for materials to answer this initial question,
property contracts, family genealogies, local gazetteers, stone inscriptions in local
temples, and public notices emerged one by one in front of my eyes and told me their
stories.
Quanzhou people held an open attitude to the world economy and dared to
start new lives in foreign countries. Yet Quanzhou people were conservative back in
their hometowns and eager to promote femlae virtue. According to the historical
records, Quanzhou women kept their chastity in large numbers, and chastity arches
were erected everywhere in the area. Most arches were torn down during the
Cultural Revolution, but many modern Quanzhou women still choose to be
vegetarian nuns and were determined to preserve their chastity. Quanzhou women
appearing in the Qing and Republican contracts demonstrated their independence
and great ability in managing households and the household economy. Today
Quanzhou women are still diligent workers. Women operate businesses while men

iv
sit around to sip oolong tea. Women also farm in the fields or carry stones in
construction sites while men are out of town fishing or are sojourning workers.
This is the starting point of my research. The life stories of these Quanzhou
women showed me a world, a cultural landscape similar to what I knew from my
upbringing. I was writing their stories and my family stories at the same time. They
constitute the first group of people I would like to thank.
But this research could not have been finished without the encouragement
and assistance from my mentors and friends.
First of all, Professor Bettine Birge is the most patient adviser a graduate
student could have. She not only gave me enough time to figure out my own way to
do this research, but also sacrificed a lot of family time to help revise this
dissertation. Moreover, her research on women’s property rights provided the
framework for the analysis in my research. Professor Dominic Cheung accepted me
into this graduate program and offered his sage advice to me as a graduate student
facing life in a foreign country and helped me to improve my academic performance
throughout these years. Professors Eugene Cooper and Joshua Goldstein read
multiple drafts of the dissertation chapters and provided their incisive comments on
my blind spots in the dissertation. In addition, I thank my other teachers in the
department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Southern
California. Professor George Hayden always graciously demonstrated in his
teaching and discussions with me the Daoist wisdom and attitude toward life.
Professor Lan-ying Tseng, though now teaching at Yale University, kindly shared
her knowledge and graduate experiences with us graduate students. Without the

v
instruction and assistance of these mentors, I would never have been able to finish
this dissertation.
Second, many Chinese friends have my deepest gratitude for providing
property contracts and family genealogies and introducing me to Quanzhou religious
institutions. The College of Humanities in Xiamen University and its dean Chen
Zhiping generously provided me access to the Quanzhou property contracts and
assistance with other Quanzhou libraries that made this research possible.
Meanwhile, I received very kind assistance in Xiamen from Zhou Xuexiang; in
Quanzhou from Chen Zhenzhen, Wu Songbo, Huang Zhenzhen, Cai Dan’ni, and Wu
Qiaosheng; in Hui’an from Yang Miaohong and Wang Feng; in Beijing from A Feng
and Du Lihong; in Shanghai and Nanjing from Wu Tao; and in Guangzhou from
Huang Guoxin and Wen Chunlai. The friendship from them and that of modern
vegetarian nuns were not only the forces driving me to finish this dissertation but
also warmed my heart all the time.
Third, life-long friends offered their selfless assistance and supported me
during the long graduate years and I would like to mention them here. Without the
encouragement and help of Dazhong Bu and Ariel Chen, I would not have come to
this country and this university to start a new chapter in my life. Ho-chun Wei
always stood by me with her calls, visits, and all types of help. May our 20-year
friendship last through the rest of our lives. Claude Wang and I discussed all types
of issues via emails all the time and witnessed each other’s growth in life. He not
only encouraged me with numerous words of wisdom but also offered me all kinds
of help in locating sources. Both Claude Wang and Henry Xiao also helped my

vi
family left in Taiwan while I have been away. I had great times discussing with
Shumei Ho, Jeffrey Newmark, and Dylan Ellefson all academic subjects and life
experiences. Jeff proofread my writing whenever he could. Dylan’s lovely family
and children particularly gave me the warmth and conviction that happiness can be
reached if we want it. Rui Zhang and Yuan Li became my close friends in the past
years and helped me a lot particularly when I was moving around to conduct my
research. Puck Brecher showed me precious life experiences and broadened my
vision of the world in addition to providing much academic assistance. From the
very first day at USC until today, we learned from each other and witnessed each
other trying hard to really “live” our lives in different places. May both of us have
more courage and wisdom than ever to face the unpredictable future. There are
many more friends on my side than those listed here. I cannot list all the names, but
their names have been imprinted on my mind. I always think that friends are my
most precious assets in life along with my mentors and my mother. I count all my
friends as my families too.
Yes, family matters. This dissertation is dedicated to my families.

vii
Table of Contents

Dedication .............................................................................................................. ii

Acknowledgments ................................................................................................. iii

Abstract .................................................................................................................. x

List of Tables ........................................................................................................ viii

List of Figures .......................................................................................................... ix

Introduction: Women and Families in Pre-Revolutionary Quanzhou Society…….. 1

Chapter 1: Women and Confucian Family Ethics: Evolution and Continuity…….. 38

Chapter 2: Women and Family Ethics in Quanzhou Property Contracts………… 84

Chapter 3: The Roles of Women in Quanzhou Property Contracts……………… 155

Chapter 4: Women in Republican Disputes………………………………………. 230

Chapter 5: Imagined Families: Sisterhood in and beyond the Living World…….. 293

Conclusion: Family Matters……………………………………………………. 367

Glossary ………………………………………………………………………... 380

Bibliography ……………………………………………………………………. 406

Appendix: Chronology………………………………………………………….. 433

viii
List of Tables
Table 1: The Population and Households in Jinjiang County
(1608-1946) .......................................................................................................... 18

Table 2: The Population and Households in Hui’an County
(1241-1946) .......................................................................................................... 19

Table 3: The Population and Households in Nan’an County
(1127-1946) ........................................................................................................... 20

Table 4: The Frequency of Quanzhou (Jinjiang, Nan’an, and Hui’an Counties)
Property Contracts Conducted in Different Periods .............................................. 88

Table 5: Women in Quanzhou (Jinjiang, Nan’an, and Hui’an Counties) Property
Contracts and Relevant Documents ...................................................................... 161

Table 6: Affine in Quanzhou (Jinjiang, Nan’an, and Hui’an Counties) Property
Contracts and Relevant Documents ...................................................................... 164

ix
List of Figures

Figure 1: Fujian Province and Quanzhou City in 2000 CE ................................ 10

Figure 2: Mahemo’s Contracts I (the seventh month, the second year of
the Zhiyuan reign period, 1336) .......................................................................... 109

Figure 3: Mahemo’s Contracts II (the ninth month, the second year of the
Zhiyuan reign period, 1336) ................................................................................ 110

Figure 4: Figure 4 Mahemo’s Contracts III (the tenth month, the second year
of the Zhiyuan reign period, 1336) ...................................................................... 111

Figure 5: Mahemo’s Contracts IV (the seventh month, the second year of the
Zhiyuan reign period, 1336); and the Ding family’s Contracts (the eighth month,
the twenty-sixth year of the Zhizheng reign period, 1366) ................................. 112

Figure 6: The Ding family’s Contracts (n.d.) ...................................................... 113

Figure 7: The Ding family’s Contracts (the eighth month, the twenty-sixth year
of the Zhizheng reign period, 1366) .................................................................... 114

Figure 8: The Ding family’s Contracts (the second month, the twenty-seventh
year of the Zhizheng reign period, 1367) ............................................................ 115

x
Abstract
This dissertation explores how individual women in Qing (1644-1911) and
Republican (1912-1949) Quanzhou , a port city in the Fujian province, preserved
the male-centered family system yet empowered themselves within it by negotiating
with Confucian family ethics. Focusing on gender and family, this study explores
how Quanzhou women utilized legal powers, concepts of morality, family status, and
community connections as cultural and social capital in pursuit of their own interests.
Chapter 1 presents the historical development of Chinese family ethics. The
gap between orthodox principles of patrilineality and local practices gave women an
opportunity to wield power in their families. Chapters 2 and 3 describe women’s
engagement with the contractual tradition. They show the decreasing influence of
agnates and the growing independence of women and their conjugal units. Women
used their legal powers and parental authority to further their self interests and that of
their families. Chapter 4 uses public notices in newspapers in the 1930s and 1940s
to analyze disputes between men and women, and older and younger generations. In
these notices, women claimed to be virtuous and appealed to public opinion among
the readers to guarantee their economic security in the family. Meanwhile, husbands
and in-laws displayed their anxiety about women’s loss of female virtue and used the
1931 Family Law to evict young widows from households and take their property.
Chapter 5 details how women created fictive family ties outside of their kin
organizations. Many women entered local monastic orders or justified their
marriage-resisting practices by highlighting their filiality, chastity, and by
conceptualizing a form of social motherhood. They maintained strong ties with their

xi
natal families and developed fictive mother-daughter bonds between religious
instructors and disciples.
Quanzhou women did not abandon Confucian family ethics, but they
manipulated concepts of virtue to benefit their own practical kin groups and
legitimized unorthodox religious practices. They thus enhanced both their family
status and their own authority. The process of negotiation reveals an interconversion
of their female virtues, family status, property rights, and social reputation. Most
women chose to stay within the family system and acted as the protectresses of
Confucian patrilineality and patriarchy.

1
Introduction
This dissertation explores how individual women in the Qing (1644-1911)
and Republican (1912-1949) periods devoted their efforts to preserve the male-
centered family system but empowered themselves within it by negotiating within
the boundaries of Confucian family ethics. During this period, most women’s
lifelong tasks and goals in the Confucian family ethical system were to act under and
protect the framework of the patrilineal and patriarchal family; they were defined in
the husband-wife relationship and placed in the inner quarters of marital families to
serve as filial, chaste, and competent wives and mothers. Women in Qing and
Republican Quanzhou , a port city in Southern Fujian province, mostly respected
male authority over marriage and property arrangements, continued the patriline, and
practiced ancestral sacrifices of their marital families. They, nevertheless, developed
changing meanings of family different from those of Confucian ideals. Both Qing
and Republican Quanzhou women routinely participated in religious affairs and
economic activities of their natal and marital families with or without the presence of
their husbands or agnates. They also utilized concepts of morality, family status, and
community connections as cultural and social capital to constitute dialectical
relationships between themselves and various social groups and to pursue the
fulfillment of their own interests.
1
Further inspired by the Western concepts of

1
Pierre Bourdieu identifies three types of capital—economic, cultural, and social capital. According
to him, “capital… as a potential capacity to produce profits and to reproduce itself in identical or
expanded form, contains a tendency to persist in its being [and] is a force inscribed in the objectivity
of things so that everything is not equally possible or impossible.” While economic capital refers to
profits and interest, the concept of “cultural capital” suggests that any advantage a person has, such as
knowledge, moral qualities, books, and intellect, could become a power resource, provide the person a
higher status, or be converted into economic rewards. Social capital is “the aggregate of the actual or

2
gender equality and the nuclear family in the Republican period, young women
questioned the marriage-oriented family structure and the parameters of the marital
family. Women in different contexts obtained their support respectively or
interchangeably from families, religious practices, and local communities to form
their own families.
Focusing on the intersection of gender and family, I explore how an
incomplete husband-wife relationship, such as when her husband was deceased or
absent, did not always deprive a woman of her female identity but rather highlighted
her personality and other types of relationships in her biological and religious
families, such as sibling, mother-son, and the mother-daughter relationships. The
husband was the hinge keeping patrilineal family relations together and maintaining
their functions. He should take the responsibility to continue the patriline through
the “husband-wife” and “father-son” relationships, the two basic human relationships
in the Confucian Five Relationships.
2
His absence would thus cause difficulty in
begetting sons, and his wife would take over his role and even represent his
household. Owing to the lack of the husband as the link to his joint family, the

potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less
institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition—or in other words, to
membership in a group—which provides each of its members with the backing of the collectively-
owned capital, a ‘credential’ which entitles them to credit, in the various senses of the word.” See
Pierre Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” in Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of
Education, ed. John G. Richardson (New York, Westport, London: Greenwood Press, 1986), 241-58;
David Swartz, Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu (Chicago and London: The
University of Chicago Pres, 1997), 75-82.
2
The Five Relationships are recorded in the Mencius, and include relationships between: father and
son; sovereign and minister; husband and wife; old and young; and friends. See James Legge, “the
Works of Mencius,”in The Chinese Classics, vol. 2, 2
nd
edition, revised (Taipei: SMC Publishing Inc.,
1998), 251-2.

3
wife’s relations with her natal and nuclear families and other religious groups could
be foregrounded in daily activities.
I use the word “traditional” to emphasize the continuity and preservation of
Confucian family ethics in Chinese or in Quanzhou society prior to 1949, while
disavowing presumptions that being “traditional” is merely static or anti-modern.
Prior to 1949, state power was not able to penetrate down to the sub-County
administrative level or rural society. The social life of ordinanry people retained a
certain degree of distance from state power or the ideal of social life exemplified in
modern forms or Western thought.
3
Nevertheless, there was not a fixed tradition.
Any “tradition” is constantly in flow and flexible to the results of the negotiations
among local customs, state laws and human relationships over the course of time.
The formation and transmission of a “tradition” is a process of re-creation and
remodification.
Traditional women were conscious of the ethical restraints of the family
system and the risk of losing female identity and family status if they escaped from it,
so they wielded their authority and used their social connections to redefine and
transform the nature of the family within the parameters of Confucian family ethics.
Although a traditional woman occupied no place in her natal patrilineage, her
affective ties with them could be preserved throughout her lifetime. In contrast, she
was an outsider in the eyes of her husband’s agnates although her female identity and
status were attributed to the marital family and reflected in her wifehood and

3
James Watson gives the label of “late imperial” to this period from 1500 to 1940, while noting that
“late imperial culture” is preserved in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, and rural areas of the People’s
Republic. See James Watson, “Rites or Beliefs?” in China’s Quest for National Identity, ed. Lowell
Dittmer and Samuel S. Kim (Ithaca and London: Cornell Univeristy Press, 1993), 82-3.

4
motherhood. The absence of a husband provided an opportunity for an individual
woman to impose her perspective of family on her close kin with whom she had
blood ties or strong emotional bonds. Her motherhood, sisterhood, and even
daughterhood would gradually put her wifehood in the shade.
The subject of this dissertation is how individual Quanzhou women, as a
daughter, wife, a widowed mother, or a marriage-resister, used institutionalized
power and cultural mechanisms to restructure her family relationships, create a
family surrogate, or maximize the “collective goods” of her family. I present
ordinary women’s conceptions of the family and family surrogates, as they appeared
within the patrilineal family and community structures and interacted with various
ethical and social systems. In the Qing and Republican periods, many family
relationships in Quanzhou were seemingly malfunctioning because of the tradition of
overseas emigration and the absence of males. This dissertation thus synthesizes a
variety of archival and secondary materials into three case studies of women’s status
and identity in late imperial and Republican China.

I. Organization
From the Han dynasty (206 BCE-220 CE) onward, Confucian family ethics
have constituted the behavior codes observed by both the state and people, elite and
commoners, men and women, but the contents of those ethical parameters were
under constant change and open to compromise. All of the actors involved in
maintaining this ethical system had to be concerned about family harmony, social
order, and affection, as well as reputation and social status. Chapter 1 presents the

5
historical development of Chinese family ethics, in which the principles of the family
system were gradually patriline-centered, when local and daily practices allowed for
numerous revisions and differences. The gaps between the orthodox principles and
daily practices gave women opportunity and space to expand their legal rights and
wield power in their families.
Chapter 2 describes women’s engagement in the long contractual tradition. It
shows that women used their institutionalized powers and parental authority in the
mechanisms of family and community to guarantee and maximize the interest of
their families. Daughters’ dowry rights and widowed mothers’ parental authority
gave women the legal rights to participate in the management of family property,
even though they were not deemed the inheritors or owners of the patrimony. The
imperial law codes ensured women’s legal rights and power in families and
particularly widows’ weak situations against being bullied by agnates or powerful
lineages.
During both the Qing and Republican periods, the different forms of women’s
participation in contract-making activities revealed the decreasing influence of
agnates and male authority, and the growing independence of women and their
conjugal units. Chapter 3 explores Quanzhou contracts to show how Quanzhou
women utilized the family structure to accumulate their personal economic and
maternal power. Women did not forget to preserve and strengthen patriarchy
because the latter was the traditional and legitimate source of their identity and
power. The development of intrafamilial relations with natal families through

6
property contracts nevertheless provided women with direct economic and moral
support to ensure their family status, property rights, and marital patriline.
The Republican Civil Code officially endowed women with equal rights with
men in property management and marriage arrangements, but these new legal
concepts caused disputes between men and women, and older and younger
generations in the Chinese family, as described in Chapter 4. After they learned the
principle of gender equality in the 1931 Family Law, many women published public
notices or filed lawsuits in the 1930s and 1940s to look for life support or divorce
from marital families, and sympathy from local communities. The opposing parties,
such as husbands and in-laws who were the supporters of the traditional family
system, mainly applied Confucian morality to attack these women’s lack of chastity,
wifehood, or motherhood. The redefinition of family and family responsibilities and
obligations in the Republican Civil Code enhanced women’s claims for agency and
property rights on the one hand, but demanded women’s absolute fidelity to their
conjugal and stem families on the other hand. Meanwhile, family matters were
publicized, examined, and put under public scrutiny.
As detailed in Chapter 5, religious institutions and practices offered Qing and
Republican women not only psychological comfort to relieve their tension with
mundane family responsibilities and in-laws, but also fictive family ties and family
surrogates outside of the kin organizations. First, many married women worshipped
female deities to enable them to fulfill their reproductive function in marital families
and to look for blessings over their conjugal units. However, Quanzhou female
worshippers imagined the existence of a sisterhood and fictive family ties among

7
these deities, which were identical to the sisterhood and family ties among ordinary
women in the mundane world. Second, other worshippers of female deities entered
local monastic orders or justified their marriage-resisting practices by highlighting
their filiality and chastity, as a gesture of mimicking female deities. They
maintained strong ties with secular families on the one hand. On the other, these
ascetic women created between instructors and disciples fictive mother-daughter
bonds and religious lineages within religious institutions. These female Quanzhou
monastic orders liberated women from marriage ties and constructed another
religious family for them to identify with. Within or beyond the religious institutions,
both female groups used moral qualities of Confucian family ethics as justified
reasons to strengthen their affective bonds with other women and to develop family
surrogates, which were irrelevant to the husband-wife relationship. Through local
history, oral tradition, and my personal interviews and observations, I explore the
intersection of Quanzhou women’s religious activities and family lives.
Qing and Republican women lived in but transformed oppressive
mechanisms, such as patriarchy and the widow chastity cult, to redefine their family
connections. They reformulated their agency, family, and social status within these
practical families. The Conclusion of this dissertation discusses the form of the
Quanzhou family, female virtue, and female power to sum up individual women’s
places and capital in the continuum from family to local society at different times.
Women did not abandon filiality, chastity, and social motherhood, the core values of
the Confucian family ethical system, but they negotiated and directed these virtues

8
toward their own practical kin groups or religious practices, thus empowering
themselves from within.

II. Quanzhou: The Historical Context
Quanzhou, located in Southeast Fujian province of China is an important port
city, has been an emigrant society and strongly relied on trade from the 12
th
century
onward. As the Classic of Mountains and Seas (Sanhai jing ) records and as
quoted by the Quanzhou scholar He Qiaoyuan (1557-1631), “Fujian is in the
sea” (Min zai hai zhong 救 ), meaning that Fujian people live on the sea.
4

Mountainous areas occupy 95% of Fujian’s area, while coastal plains and basins only
occupy 5% of it.
5
The Jin River and the Luoyang River flow through
the Greater Quanzhou area and carry dirt and sediment to create its alluvial plain for
the inhabitation and reclamation of Northern Chinese immigrants.
6
But monsoon
and typhoons often damaged crops and severely decreased the harvest on its 70,263
acres of arable land. Modern scholars such as Ta Chen, Hugh Clark and Angela
Schottenhammer have studied the characteristics of Quanzhou as an emigrant and

4
The Book of Min (Minshu 救 ), a general history of Fujian province, was written around 1620s. See
He Qiaoyuan , Minshu 救 , Vol.1 (Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chubanshe, 1994), 10. He
Qiaoyuan found this passage first appeared in the chapter of “Classic of Regions within the Sea:
South” (hainei nan jing ℏ ) (fascicles or juan 10) of The Classic of Mountains and Seas,
which is a pre-Qin classic and records produce and geography of ancient China. The earliest extant
version was the one annotated by Liu Xiang (ca. 77-6 BCE) during the Former Han dynasty
(206-208 BCE). Regarding the English version of this book, see The Classic of Mountains and Seas,
translated with and introduction and notes by Anne Birrell (New York, NY: Penguin Putnam, 1999).
5
All the numbers here are based on statistics of the current Chinese government. After decades of
economic development and population increase, it is likely that the mountainous area was larger and
the size of plains or arable land smaller in the late Qing and Republican periods than today.
6
There are another three coastal plains in Fujian province—the Fuzhou, Xinghua and Zhangzhou
plains. Quanzhou is the smallest of these four plains.

9
trade-oriented society during the medieval and Republican times. Their research
shows a historical trend lasting from the medieval to modern periods: Quanzhou’s
location and its natural background gradually made trade a major force in social
changes and development during the late imperial and Republican times, although
agriculture and fishing were recognized as the main occupations.
7

A. Administrative and Religious Territories in History
The appearance of Quanzhou and its administrative territory resulted from the
southward migration and settlement of Northern Chinese. The name of Quanzhou
first appeared in China in the 9
th
year of the Kaihuang reign period of the Sui dynasty
(589) as Quanzhou Commandery (jun ), although the official seat was in fact in
modern Fuzhou city, and the present Quanzhou City and its counties were all under
its administrative rule. The Tang (618-907) migration to the south and reclamation
of the frontier not only expanded its effective rule over this area, but also started a
process with numerous changes of its name and boundaries until the 20
th
century.
8

7
Ta Chen, Emigrant Communities in South China: A Study of Overseas Migration and Its Influence
on Standards of Living and Social Change, ed. Bruno Lasker (New York: Secretariat, Institute of
Pacific Relations, 1940); Hugh R Clark, Community, Trade, and Networks: Southern Fujian Province
from the Third to the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991);
Angela Schottenhammer ed., The Emporium of the World: Maritime Quanzhou, 1000-1400 (Leiden:
Brill, 2001).
8
The first emigration of Northern Chinese to Fujian happened at the turn of the 4
th
century, the Jin dynasty. As many Quanzhou family genealogies reveal, twenty-odd surnames entered the Quanzhou
area and gradually named the river “Jin” and the city “Jinjiang” in memory of their ancestral
origins. But a great wave of immigration did not start until the late Tang dynasty. The Wang
brothers—Wang Chao (d. 898) and Wang Shenzhi (862-925)—led a peasant army from
Gushi County of Guangzhou (in modern Henan province) to enter the Quanzhou area and
establish a well-organized political regime at the turn of the 9
th
century. Many lineages trace their
ancestors in genealogies as nobility from Gushi of Guangzhou to claim their superiority over other
local surnames and to nurture a common ancestry and identity inside lineages. The transmission of
these lineages in many genealogies, however, is usually vague.

10
Eventually, the seat of Quan Prefecture (Quanzhou) relocated to the present
municipal area, and its administrative territory started to emerge in the early eighth
century (Figure 1).
Modern Quanzhou
(After 2000 CE)
Jiangxi
Province
Guangdong
Province
Taiwan
Taiwanese Strait
Fuzhou
1
7
10
9
8
6
3
4
5
Quanzhou City
Jin River
Luoyang River
2

Figure 1: Fujian Province and Quanzhou City in 2000

11
Figure 1 shows the Projection Area of Quanzhou Women’s Religious and Economic
Activities in the late Qing and Republican Periods: 1. Hui’an; 2. Quanzhou (suburb);
3. Nan’an; 4. Jinjiang; 5. Shishi; 6. Xiamen; 7. Quangang; 8. Anxi; 9. Yongchun; 10.
Dehua.
The three counties closest to the coast—Nan’an , Jinjiang , and
Hui’an —always remained under the Quanzhou administration after each of
them was instituted, and they proved to be the gateway of China to foreign culture.
Nan’an, Jinjiang, and Hui’an counties are not only inseparable from Quanzhou city
in geography and culture, but also share with the prefectural seat—modern
Quanzhou City—the same economic feature: a seafaring and trade-centered
economy. Hui’an County was the frontal defense to shelter the other two counties.
The Northern Song dynasty (960-1127) established in Jinjiang County the Maritime
Trade Superintendency (Tiju shiboxi ), but officials always held the
Wind-praying ritual in Mt. Jiuri of Nan’an County for the prosperity of
maritime trade. Altogether, the three counties were included as the historical core
territory of Quanzhou and created a great amount of revenue from maritime trade.
The Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) established Quanzhou as the seat of Quanzhou
Branch Secretariat (xing zhongshusheng ) three times between 1278 and
1285 until Fujian province was included in the Jiangxi Branch Secretariat and
Quanzhou was restored as the Maritime Trade Superintendency. Quanzhou’s
administrative level was relegated to prefecture in the Ming and Qing dynasties
when its maritime trade went into decline, but the trend of overseas emigration in all

12
three counties was on the rise and remained so until the end of the Republican
period, with modern Quanzhou City as its epicenter.
9

The self-reference of urban Quanzhou people to a specific spatial institution—
“Precinct and Neighborhood” (pu-jing )—demonstrates the historical
development of a grass-roots administrative system on the border of the empire.
10

Sub-county administrative units in imperial China were the levels that ordinary
people lived within and dealt with to fulfill their tax and corvée obligations. The
official sub-county administration always lacked uniformity. For example, it was not
always the case that “Ward” (tu ) was the administrative unit under “Sector” (du
); neither did “Precinct” (fang or pu ) exist in each imperial urban area.
Charles Hucker argues that the usage of “Precinct” (pu ) as an urban unit
“apparently died out in early Qing.” Yet in Quanzhou the administrative system
survived until the end of the Qing period and the names are still adopted by modern
Quanzhou people to address the location of their dwellings or mark a special local-

9
Nan’an County was established in the ninth year of the Kaihuang reign during the Sui dynasty (589).
The same year saw the establishment of the Quanzhou Commendary. Jinjiang County was separated
from Nan’an district in the eighth year of the Kaiyuan reign during the Tang dynasty (720). Hui’an
County, 50 Chinese miles (li ) northeast of Jinjiang, was officially established in the sixth year of
the Taipingxingguo reign during the Five Dynasties period (981). The border lines of these three
counties were never fixed owing to the process of reclamation of land and the increase of population.
For example, the imperial Jinjiang County ruled a broader area covering present Jinjiang City,
Quanzhou City, Shishi City, and part of Hui’an County. Modern Jinjiang City is located in Qingyang
and away from its imperial official seat; modern Shishi City had been under the administration of
Jinjiang County until 1942 when it was singled out as a town. See Lin Longhai ed.
Quanzhoushi jianzhi zhi (Fuzhou: Haixia wenyi chubanshe, 1993), 4-17; Zhuang
Weiji 䑋 , Jinjiang xinzhi (Xiamen: Xinzhi chu ban wei yuan hui, 1948), 13.
10
Charles Hucker translated pu in the Ming-Qing periods into “Neighborhood” and explains that it
was “a unit of quasiofficial sub-District organization of the population in an urban setting” and
subordinate to a “fang,” (another sub-County unit in an urban setting). See Charles O. Hucker, A
Dictionary of Official Titles in Imperial China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985), 394.
Yet, there is no record or translation of jing in Hucker. I revise Hucker’s translation and use the
translations of “Precinct” for pu and “Neighborhood” for jing in this dissertation.

13
religious identity. Nevertheless, the administration was basically built as a hierarchy
in the Ming and Qing periods—“Township (xiang 悱 ), Sector (du ) or Precinct
(fang ), Ward (tu ), Community (li ) or Security Group (bao ), Tithing (jia ),” functioned for the sake of household registers, tax allocation and collection, and
security.
11
“Precinct and Neighborhood” and their upper unit—“District” (yu ),
however, constituted another three-level localized quasiofficial administration.
The variation in sub-County administrative systems in Nan’an, Jinjiang, and
Hui’an Counties is clear proof of the inability of state power to penetrate local
society. The urban Precinct-Neighborhood system was not standardized in the
Greater Quanzhou area. For the sake of convenience, four “Districts” were
established in the early Qing period to rule thirty-six Precincts in the official post of
Jinjiang County (modern Quanzhou city); two more Precincts were added during the
Daoguang reign period and the total number of Precincts reached thirty-eight. Other
counties such as Hui’an County also had sixty Precincts although there was no
establishment of Neighborhood. Nan’an County, nevertheless, had neither Precincts

11
The number of registered people and Tithings (jia ) in each li, bao or tu varied. But I do not
distinguish lijia (tax allocation and collection) from baojia (security) or tujia (household register)
systems here mainly because of the decline of lijia system from the mid-Ming onward. All functions
of lijia, baojia, Senior People (laoren ), Community Compact (xiangyue 悱 ) and Tax
Captaincies (liangzhang ) systems in late imperial China (mainly in the late Ming) overlapped or
combined with each other, and functioned on the basis of household registers. For details of Chinese
sub-County administrative units, see Hsiao Kung-chuan, Rural China: Imperial Control in the
Nineteenth Century (Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press, 1960); Zhao Xiuling ,
Zhongguo xiangli zhidu 悱 (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2002), 40-59; Liu
Zhiwei , Zai guojia yu shehui zhi jian—Ming Qing Guangdong lijia fuyi zhidu yanjiu — (Guangzhou: Zhongshan daxue, 1997); Timothy Brook,
“The Spatial Structure of Ming Local Administration,” Late Imperial China 6:1 (June 1985): 1-55.

14
nor Neighborhoods; local people referred to their address as a certain number of
Sector (du).
12

“Precincts and Neighborhoods” as widely accepted spatial units did not emerge
until the Qing dynasty but have complete historical and religious origins.
13
Tracing

12
Lin Longhai, Quanzhoushi jianzhi zhi, 31-192.
13
The terminologyand lexicon of Chinese administrative structures and functions has never been
standardized. The Chinese anthropologist Wang Mingming explains the historical
development of “Precincts and Neighborhoods” (pu-jing) and argues that their origins were post
stations in the Yuan dynast, when “pu” functioned as militia organizations (pubing zhi ) and
were also used for information gathering. The Ming magistrates soon “applied it as an instrument of
urban administrative control and a means of symbolizing the presence of imperial state structures in
the locality.” See Wang Mingming, “Place, Administration, and Territorial Cults in Late Imperial
China: A Case Study from South Fujian,” Late Imperial China 16.1 (June 1995): 33-78. Wang bases
his arguments mainly on two Quanzhou gazetteers. First, The Daoguang Edition of the Jinjiang
County Gazetteer (Daoguang Jinjiang xianzhi , hereafter, DJXZ) points out that the
original function for “pu” was postal service. Second, The Hui’an County Government Manual
(Hui’an Zhengshu , hereafter HZS) records the existence of military guards (wopu ).
See DJXZ, Book 21, (Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chubanse, 1989), 484-96; and Ye Chungji ,
Hui’an zhengshu , Book 1, 3, and 4 (Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chubanse, 1987), 12, 39, 68.
However, Wang does not explain how and when a “Precinct” as a postal unit or a military guard
transformed into an urban administrative unit; neither does he mention the appearance and division of
Neighborhoods. In fact, after comparing his essay and the original text of HZS, I found that Wang
replaces many administrative units with pu in order to establish his argument. For example, in his
translation of Book 12 of HZS he uses “Precinct” (pu) to replace bao , fang , “Altars of the Soil”
(she ), village (Xiangcun 悱 ) and other administrative units. See Wang, “Place, Administration,
and Territorial Cults,” 51-2. On the other hand, The Wanli Edition of the Quanzhou Prefecture
Gazetteer 㬟 (1612), records the three-level hierarchy in the Jinjiang urban area—
“District (yu)-Sector (du)-Ward (tu)” but makes no mention of Precinct (pu) or Neighborhood (jing).
The Book of Min (Minshu 救 ) records that Jinjiang County included 3 districts (yu) and 46
townships (du) and 134 wards (tu); it does not mention Precincts or Neighborhoods in Quanzhou,
either. The Qianlong Edition of the Quanzhou Prefecture Gazetteer (Qianlong Quanzhou fuzhi , hereafter QQFZ) and DJXZ record that Jinjiang County’s administrative hierarchy from
the Yuan to the Qing periods remained a three-level sub-County institution — “Sector (du)-Ward
(tu)–Tithing (jia),” in addition to the existence of the “District (yu)-Precinct (pu)” institution. Both
gazetteers emphasize the territories of each Sector (du) but only listed the names of Precincts.
Furthermore, QQFZ lists the Post Stations (pu) as an independent section in the “Book of Institutions”
(guizhi zhi ) but not in the “Book of Geography” (yudi zhi ). It seems that the “District-
Precinct” institution overlapped the “Sector-Ward-Tithing” institution while the latter could be the
official one in charge of tax and corvée obligations. See Wanli Quanzhou fuzhi 㬟 ,
(hereafter WQFZ), Vol. 1, Book 1, Zhongguo shixue congshu , series 3, reprint (Taipei:
Xuesheng shuju, 1987), 78-81; He Qiaoyuan, the Minshu, vol.1, 153-156; QQFZ, Book 5, Vol. I,
Fujian fuxianzhiji, no. 22, reprint (Shanghai: Shanghai shudian, 2000), 67-71; Qianlong Jinjiang
xianzhi, reprint, (1945), 7-12. As for the lowest unit—the Neighborhood, it was recorded in none of
these gazetteers. As far as we know, in each Neighborhood there was one tutelary temple which
remained the only religious center of local people from the imperial time. Wang argues that these
Territorial Temples were originally Community Compact Halls (xiangyue suo 悱 ) and gradually

15
the historical territories of these Neighborhoods (jing ), I found that the area of
many fang in Song Quanzhou was, for the most part, identical to those of the
Neighborhoods in Qing Quanzhou. For example, Yiquan Neighborhood in the Qing
was the “Barbarian Precint” (fanfang ) in the Song dynasty; the Jiadi
Neighborhood was once Jinjin fang; and Wanhou Precinct was once Zhonghou fang.
It is possible that the Neighborhood as the local spatial unit was developed on the
basis of historical (especially the Song) administrative units. The unrecorded
“Precinct-Neighborhood” system was further strengthened by the religious
parameters of hundreds of Territorial Temples (jingmiao ) or “Temples of the
Neighborhood’s Lord” (jingzumiao ). The religious atmosphere in Qing
Quanzhou urged local households to behave in accordance with practical Confucian
moral values and generated self-governance in terms of morality for the convenience
and welfare of the whole Neighborhood, as we will see in Chapter 5.
The Quanzhou grass-roots administration replaced the top-down administrative
hierarchy, took over community self-monitoring and self-governing functions as any
political regime required, and appeared in all kinds of documents, including property
contracts. This shows the importance of administrative history and religious identity
embedded in these local units. The emotional attachment to these spatial-religious
communities not only formed local identity and conditioned all types of
socioeconomic activities, but also manifested a certain degree of local autonomy.

transformed into the sites of popular festivals. Considering the vast number of Neighborhoods and
the small size of each neighborhood, which usually covers an area smaller than three or four blocks, it
is hard to accept Wang’s argument that territorial temples were originally Community Compact Halls
in the Ming. The topic of sub-County administrative units needs more study in the future.

16
B. Emigration and Family
Changes of the Quanzhou population were mainly influenced by socio-
economic ups and downs, such as natural disasters, famine, epidemics (like plague
and cholera), peasant uprisings, and emigration. Of these factors migration and
economic development were the major ones. Northern Chinese and other people
living in western Fujian migrated to coastal Fujian during the long transitional period
spanning the Tang, Song, and Yuan dynasties. Historical records did not show this
population increase at the time because the Chinese registration system was based on
tax-bearing males (ding ).
14
Yet the population of coastal Fujian increased thirteen
times from the sixth year of the Wanli reign period of the Ming dynasty to the
thirteenth year of the Guangxu reign period of the Qing dynasty (1578-1887). The
population of the three coastal counties of Quanzhou—Jinjiang, Hui’an, and
Nan’an—increased 11, 12.5, and 18 times respectively from the Wanli reign period
to the end of WWII. To take Jinjiang County as an example, the population was
recorded as 56,159 in 1608, 43,727 in 1661, 791,026 in 1829, and 599,801 in 1946
(Tables 1, 2, 3). The sudden increase of population in Quanzhou gazetteers actually
happened between the mid-17
th
and mid-18
th
centuries. This abrupt increase was
partly because of changes in state taxation policies. In the 50
th
year of the Kangxi

14
The changes in the recorded population in Quanzhou not only reflect the degree of local economic
development but also the degree to which state power penetrated local society. About the
underestimation of population, see Ping-ti Ho, Studies on the Population of China, 1368-1953
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Pres, 1959), 3-42. In other studies on Chinese tax obligations
and lineages, we can see that ding in fact meant tax-bearing “share” or “unit” in each household. On
this topic, Liu Zhiwei has a discussion about the changing nature of tax collection and the corvée
system in the Ming-Qing Guangdong province. See Liu Zhiwei, Zai guojia yu shehui zhi jian.
Regarding the relations between tax obligation and lineages, Michael Szonyi particularly emphasizes
the influence from the formation of lineages. “The lijia registered household could become virtually
synonymous with the lineage.” Michael Szonyi, “Local Cult, Lijia, and Lineage: Religious and Social
Organization in Ming and Qing Fujian,” Journal of Chinese Religions 28 (2000), 93-125.

17
reign period (1711) the emperor decreed that from 1712 onward the land tax of each
locality be based on the same amount of taxable shares as in 1711. Four years after
succeeding the throne (1740), Emperor Qianlong tried to further strengthen the local
security system and started a nation-wide census. The population in the 6
th
year of
the Qianlong reign period (1741) was five times that in the 12
th
year of the
Yongzheng reign period (1734).
15
On the eve of Opium War, the average size of
personally-owned arable land fell to 0.02 acre, lower than the basic self-sufficient
level of 0.025 acre.
16

15
See Zhongguo renming daxue lishi xi 㬟 and Shenzunshi bowuguan ⛛ , Zhongguo lichao xingzheng guanli 㬟 (Beijing: Zhongguo renmin daxue
chubanshe, 1998), 879.
16
Chen Zhiping , and Zhan Shichuang eds, Toushi Zhongguo dongnan: wenhua jingji
de zhenghe yanjiu : , vol. 2 (Xiamen: Xiamen daxue chubanshe,
2003), 1388.

18
Table 1: The Population and Households in Jinjiang County (1608-1946)
The number
of
households
The number of
population
Note
The 36
th
year of
Wanli reign period
in the Ming (1608)
21,368 56,159
The 18
th
year of
Shunzhi reign period
in the Qing
(1661)
-------- 43,727
Tax-bearing
males: 15,708

The 9
th
year of
Daoguang reign
period in the Qing
(1829)
168,135 791,026 Adults:
375,910

Children:
415,116
1935 -------- 669,785 Males:
352,720
Female:
317,065
1941 120,244 657,400 Males:
338,465
Females:
318,935
1944 120,890 595,455 Males:
305,374
Females:
290,081
1946 -------- 599,801 Males:
307,625
Females:
292,176

Sources: Adapted from Chen Jingsheng , Fujian lidai renkoulun kao 㬟 (Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chubanshe, 1991), 177-8.

19
Table 2: The Population and Households in Hui’an County (1241-1946)

The number
of
households
The number of
population
Note
Chunyou reign
period in the Song
(1241-1252)
36,870 49,107
The 1
st
year of
Jiajing reign period
in the Ming (1552)
4549 38,821
The 36
th
year of
Wanli reign period in
the Ming (1608)
4,274 30,795
The 40
th
year of
Wanli reign period in
the Ming (1612)
4,334 30,795
Tax-bearing males:
16,341
Female: 14,454
Adult
male:
10,720;
Non-
adult
female:
10,544
Non-
adult
male:
5,621;
Non-
adult
female:
3,910
The 14
th
year of
Shunzhi reign period
in the Qing (1657)
4,274 21,335 Tax-
bearing
males:
10,790
Women:
10,545
The 32
nd
year of
Qianlong reign
period in the Qing
(1767)
31,254 248,654 Tax-
bearing
males:
144,423
Women:
104,231
The 9
th
year of
Daoguang reign
period in the Qing
(1829)
71,015 395,240 Male:
272,318
Female:
210,479
1936 -------- 395,240 Male:
216,086
Female:
179,154
1941 48,318 372,166 Male:
170,063
Female:
202,103
1944 33,030 373,199 Male:
173,595
Female:
202,103
1946 -------- 384,449 Male:
188,268
Female:
196,181

Source: Adapted from Chen Jingsheng, Fujian lidai renkoulun kao, 176-7.

20
Table 3: The Population and Households in Nan’an County (1127-1946)

The number
of
households
The number of
population
Note
The Southern Song
(1127-1279)
58,806 82,257
The 14
th
year of
Hongwu reign
period in the Ming
(1381)
12,073 49,802
The 18
th
year of
Chenghua reign
period in the Ming
(1482)
6,395 22,345
The 36
th
year of
Wanli reign period
in the Ming (1608)
9,364 27,877
The 42
nd
year of
Wanli reign period
in the Ming (1614)
8,744 27,877
Male: 17,140
Female: 10,737
Adult male: 8,689
Non-adult male:
8,451
The 18th year of
Shunzhi reign
period in the Qing
(1661)
-------- 23,989
The 9
th
year of
Kanxi reign period
in the Qing
-------- 27,457
The 9
th
year of
Daoguang reign
period in the Qing
(1829)
49,501 334,087 Adult: 164,434
Non-adult: 169,653
1936 -------- 527,167 Male:
278,590
Female:
248,577
1941 95,261 546,798 Male:
279,427
Female:
267,371
1944 95,392 515,400 Male:
262,517
Female:
252,883
1946 -------- 509,346 Male:
260,040
Female:
249,306
Source: Adapted from Chen Jingsheng, Fujian lidai renkoulun kao, 178-9.

21
Quanzhou’s position on the empire’s frontier had given it more access to emigrating
overseas from the Song dynasty onward for various reasons. Its limited arable land
could not support its considerable population, which resulted in the emigration of
Quanzhou people to other areas for livelihood. Coastal Fujianese migrated to inland
China, to Taiwan, and to Southeast Asia during the Ming and Qing periods. Japan,
Ryukyu, Taiwan, British Malaya, the Philippines, and Batavia (modern Java) of
Indonesia were the main immigration destinations during different time periods.
According to a Chinese historian Su Liming, in a Yang family in Quanzhou there
were more than 600 males migrating to the Philippines from the late Qing to the time
of WWI; in another Jiang family more than one thousand males migrated to
Indonesia. In addition, more than forty men in a Chaokeng village escaped to the
Philippines in one day, and 300 people in a another 400-people village migrated to
Southeast Asia, in order to avoid local bandits and the conscription (zou tufei, tao
zhuangding , ) by the Nationalist government from the 1920s to
1940s.
17

During Qing and Republican era male emigration from Quanzhou damaged the
husband-wife relationship because men delayed getting married or left their wives in
their hometowns without providing enough for living expenses or the opportunity for
women to beget sons. The mass emigration of people from Fujian started in the late
Ming period and had several climatic moments afterwards. Quanzhou people also
had a tendency to migrate to a certain area and live with their surname groups for

17
Su Liming , Quanzhou jiazu wenhua (Beijing, China: Zhongguo yanshi
chubanshe, 2000), 233; Lai Baolin , “Wangri qiaoxiang de ‘zhua zhuangding’” 悱 , Jinjiang wenshi ziliao 4 (December 1983), 100-12.

22
extended periods. Massive waves of migration to Japan and the Ryukyus occurred
during the Ming period, while migration to Taiwan from the late Ming to the eve of
the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. And migration to Southeast Asia
(referred to by the Quanzhou people as “Nanyang” ) from time to time.
18
The
expansion of Chinese territory to Taiwan, the rise of the colonial economy in
Southeast Asia, and the world-wide commercialization movements of the late 16
th

and 17
th
centuries together called for sojourning craftsmen, merchants, as well as
laborers. Many Quanzhou people left behind the limited arable land and agricultural
sector in Southern Fujian to join in the pan-Pacific trade. Some others moved to the
Yangzi River area to start intra-provincial businesses or to northern Fujian’s
mountainous area to reclaim the land.
19
Qing policies often forbade overseas
emigrants to bring wives with them or to come back to China. Even though the ban

18
Chinese emigration to Taiwan mainly started because the Ming loyalist Zheng Chenggong (known to the West as Koxingya ) could not compete against the Qing and led his troops to
Taiwan. After the Qing annexed Taiwan as part of its territory in 1684, many Fujian people,
particularly Quanzhou and Zhangzhou people, immigrated to Taiwan and became the bulk of the Han
people in Taiwan until 1949. This immigration trend was hindered when the Qing government ceded
Taiwan to Japan “in perpetuity” after its loss in the First Sino-Japanese War. As for Chinese
emigration to Southeast Asia, it started very early and was the result of maritime trade. Dynastic
Histories such as The Old History of the Five Dynasties and other collections of documents
such as the Song Huiyao records the trade between Fujian and Southeast Asia. In the second
year of Taipingxinguo reign, a Fujian warlord Chen Hongjin (914-985) sent to the Song
government his tribute composed of numerous import goods from Southeast Asia. See Xu Song ,
Song Huiyao Jiben , Vol. 197, Book 7 (Taipei: Shijie shuju, 1964). There was no clear record
about Chinese emigration to Southeast Asia in the Northern Song. Wang Dayuan in the Yuan dynasty
recorded in his travelogue that a Wu family from Quanzhou sent one hundred odd kinsmen to
Gulidimen (today’s Timor Island, East of Java, Indonesia) for trade but more than eighty percent of
them died of malaria. The rest were forced to stay on the island and intermarried with the native
people. Similarly, many Chinese stayed in Longyamen (modern Singapore) and Gelam Island
(Southwest of today’s Kalimantan Barat, Indonesia). See Wang Dayuan , Daoyi zhilue jiaoshi
[1350], reprint (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2000), 209-18, 248-50. However, these
settlements were neither big nor the result of massive emigration.
19
Tang Wenji ed., Fujan gudai jingjishi (Fuzhou: Fujian jiaoyu chubanshe,
1995), 489-90, 501-15, 534-6, 592-606; Liao Dake , Fujian haiwai jiaotongshi (Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chubanshe, 2002), 300-68.

23
was lifted in 1732, most men still chose to sojourn alone without extra family
burdens and came back home once every few years or in old age as described in
Chapters 2, 3, and 4.
Because most emigrants did not obtain permission from the government for sea-
faring activities, it is difficult to know the exact number of migrants, especially
migrants from each county. Early Qing officials like the Governor-General Gao
Qizuo (1676-1738) and General Shi Lang (1621-1697) expressed their
worries at different times. As Shi Lang once reported to Emperor Kangxi, there
were one hundred and thirty-three emigrants stuffed in a small ship to the Philippines
in 1685 CE, two years after the Qing’s conquest of Taiwan. In 1727 after Emperor
Yongzheng allowed international trade with Southeast Asia, Gao Qizuo reported in
his memorial to the emperor that each junk illegally carried emigrants with the
number varying from two to five hundred.
20
Table One shows that the population
in Quanzhou decreased after the Daoguang reign period. Many coolies were shipped
from Xiamen to Southeast Asia since Xiamen became a treaty port after the Opium
War. Modern scholars Lau Yee-cheung and Lee Kam-keung have shown that 1.4
million coolies left for Southeast Asia from 1876 to 1898, and an average of 100,000
emigrants per year left Xiamen between 1900 and 1912.
21
According to another
estimate, the total number of Fujian emigrants was more than 4 million between

20
Liao Dake, Jiaotongshi, 412.
21
Lau Yee-cheung and Lee Kam-keung, “An Economic and Political History,” in Fujian: A Coastal
Province in Transition and Transformation, ed. Y.M. Yeung and David K.Y. Chu (Hong Kong: The
Chinese University Press, 2000), 33.

24
1886 and 1949; of them there were 250,000 Quanzhou people who moved overseas
between 1947 and 1949.
22

Many Quanzhou families encouraged their descendants to start overseas
adventures and leave parents and wives behind. Such behavior was seen as a family
strategy and a minor departure from patrilineal principles because the only purpose
of the men’s departure was to bring in more money for the prosperity of the family.
23

Family in Quanzhou thus constituted a collective force for inter-provincial trade, sea-
faring activities, and emigration. Once emigrants succeeded in these new immigrant
societies, they brought back their earnings or sent remittances back to renovate
ancestral shrines, establish village schools, and purchase more ancestral land, in
addition to providing the elementary needs of their families.
24
Successful emigrants
also encouraged more family members to emigrate and expand the family business
abroad.
25
For instance, three generations of the Zhuang family of Jinjiang County
took turns in developing their business in the Philippines during the second half of
the 18
th
century. After the member of the oldest generation came back in his 50s
with savings that were used to purchase sacrifice property for ancestral worship, the
younger generation went overseas to run the business.
26

22
Tang Wenji ed., Fujian gudai jingjishi, 586-606; Chen Zhiping, and Zhan Shichuang eds., Toushi
Zhongguo dongnan, Vol. 1, 1379-98.
23
Michael Szonyi, “Mothers, Sons and Lovers: Fidelity and Frugality in the Overseas Chinese
Divided Family before 1949,” Journal of Chinese Overseas 1.1 (May 2005), 52, 59, 60.
24
James Cook, “Currents of Education and Identity: Overseas Chinese and Minnan Schools, 1912-
1937,” Twentieth-Century China 25.2 (April 2000), 1-31; Michael Szonyi, “The Graveyard of Huang
Xiulang: Early Twentieth Century Perspectives on the Role of the Overseas Chinese in Chinese
Modernization,” Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 10.1 (2001), 81-98.
25
Ta Chen, Emigrant Communities in South China, 82-85, 130-1.
26
The Genealogy of the Zhuang Family in Qingyang, Jinjiang County, archived in the Fujian
Provincial Library.

25
If the male emigrants died before they achieved business success abroad, male
emigration and absence forced many women to adopt sons of different surnames
(minglingzi ) or call in uxorilocal husbands. These prctices offered families
the most necessary capital—human labor and familial loyalty—to continue the
family line and further develop earlier emigrants’ overseas adventures.
27

After the male emigrants achieved career success, the inflow of a great amount
of remittances became the main income of many families in the late Qing and
Republican periods and stipulated consumption and economic activity in Quanzhou
society. Due to the import of silver by southern coastal Chinese emigrants and
smugglers, the Chinese economy was gradually integrated into the world economy
under the direct influence of the latter’s performance from the 16
th
century onward.
A deceased Chinese historian, Fu Yiling, found that as early as 1551, commoners
referred to the “silver owner” (yinzhu ) in a Quanzhou property contract as the
buyer. Fu thus argued that “the silver owner was also the land owner.”
28
As we will
see in Chapters 2 and 3, this term was widely used during the next three hundred
years in contracts concluded in Fujian, Anhui, and Taiwan, where the commodity
economy and property transactions flourished.
29
Meanwhile, Quanzhou people
started to use and accept foreign-style silver dollars, such as the Mexican foyin /

27
Chen Zhiping, Wubainian lai Fujian de jiazu yu shehui (Taipei:
Yanzhi wenhua shiye youxian gongsi, 2004), 154-9.
28
Fu Yiling , “Lun Ming-Qing shidai Fujian tudi maimai qiyue zhong de ‘yinzhu’ ,” in Fu Yiling zhishi wushi nian wengao
(Xiamen: Xiamen University Press, 1989), 242-9.
29
Yang Guozhen , Ming-Qing tudi qiyue wenshu yanjiu (Beijing:
Renmin chubanshe, 1988), 279-84.

26
fofanyin or yingyin / yinyang , in their daily transactions.
30
The
Governors of Guangdong province reported in an 1836 memorial that “wherever
there were foreign ships docking, there was foreign style money spreading around.”
31

It was the same in Quanzhou.

30
Foreign currency, such as the Mexican foyin / fofanyin or yingyin / yinyang in
particular, were the most common ones circulated in the Qing and early Republican Quanzhou area.
The character fo means folangji , the Chinese name for Portuguese (also including Spanish)
people in the mid-16
th
century when the Portuguese first sailed to China; and fan means barbarian.
Fofanyin first refers to the silver dollars or pesos brought back by emigrants or imported by foreign
merchants from Southeast Asia (the Philippines in particular) and originally from Mexico. It was
around the mid-18
th
century that the term fofanyin began to emerge in Quanzhou transactions.
Fofanyin was further accepted by people in formal and public occasions and displaced the role of
Chinese silver in the hinterland after the Daoguang reign (1821-1850) and particularly after the
Opium War and the establishment of treaty ports (after the 1840s). See Zhang Guohui , Wan
Qing qianzhuang han piaohao yanjiu 㘂 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1989), 183-4.
The Mexican silver dollars (or benyang in China) minted in the Spanish empire had flowed into
China for the transactions of pan-Pacific trade by the 17
th
century. Regarding yingyin, people usually
used ying to denote the British, but this was a phonetic mistake; yingyin was actually the Mexican
pesos minted by the newly independent Mexican government after 1821, and it acquired this name
because of the pattern of an eagle (ying ) on the dollars. After 1821, the Mexican government
continued using the Spanish monetary system but no longer used the old-styled Mexican dollars
(benyang); the new-styled Mexican dollars (yingyin) began flowing into China from 1854. Old-style
Mexican dollars were not immediately displaced by the new ones. In response to a memorial sent up
by the Fujian Governor in 1857, the Qing government claimed that both old-style and new-style
Mexican dollars were legal and could be exchanged for Chinese silver. See Taiwan yinhang jingji
yanjiushi ed., Fujian shengli , juan 21 (Taipei: Zhonghua shuju, 1964),
584-7. Other popular foreign dollars included the British silver (renyang ), the Japanese silver,
Anan silver, the American silver and so on. See Wang Yeh-chien , Zhongguo jindai huobi yu
yinhang de yanjin (1644-1937) (1644-1937) (Taipei: The Institute of
Economics, Academia Sinica, 1981), 45. Owing to the fact that people loved to store silver at home,
the silver coins of both the Spanish and Mexican pesos continued to circulate and still appeared in
early Republican contracts. This phenomenon had already caused the Qing government to worry
about rising price of silver in the early 18
th
century. See Shengli, juan 21, 579-83. In response, many
provincial governments, beginning in Guangdong province in 1890, started to mint the new Chinese
silver dollars—longyang (the dragon dollar ). During the early Republican period the national
silver dollar (guobi ), nicknamed “the silver dollar with Yuan’s head” (yuantoubi ) became
popular and gradually displaced all kinds of foreign dollars. After 1919 the association of banks
decided that the national silver dollars, the dragon dollars and the new-styled Mexican dollars were all
accepted as part of the national currency. See Wang Yeh-chien, Zhongguo jindai huobi, 46. Ordinary
people in Quanzhou generally adhered to using silver until 1935. After 1935, the currency used in
property transaction changed to national bills, and the local and household economy became closely
linked to the domestic economic decline or inflation.
31
“Memorial submitted by Qi Gong, Governor of Guangdong, Deng Tingzhen, Governor-in-General
of of Guangdong and Guangxi Provinces, and Wenxiang, Superintendent of Guangdong Customs ㏫ , , 䱝 ,” the First day of the Ninth Month, the Sixteenth

27
Quanzhou people’s common use of foreign silver dollars in the Qing and early
Republican periods not only manifests the big flow of sojourners between Southeast
Asia and Quanzhou, but also implies that Quanzhou’s economic ties were closely
bound with Southeast Asian trade as well as the silver supply in terms of the world
economy. The early 19
th
-century independence movements in Latin America
resulted in a decrease of the world-wide silver supply and in a global economic
decline. Indirectly influenced by the world economy, the junk trade between
Southeast Asia and Xiamen, then the biggest port city in the Greater Quanzhou area,
went down by 40%; and the price of arable land dropped, but the unemployed
population went up.
32
Whereas the Chinese believed in the proverb “Owning land,
owning wealth” (youtu si youcai ) and would therefore invest in property
to make a profit from the rent, the social circumstance since the mid-16
th
century and
particularly after the mid-18
th
century was in fact “Owning silver, owning land.”
Whoever possessed the silver had the control.
Successful overseas Quanzhou emigrants sent a great amount of earnings into
the whole of Fujian province, which became a pillar of household finance in the late
19
th
and early 20
th
centuries, and seriously influenced the husband-wife relationship.
The remittances reached three million silver dollars in the 1870s, ten million silver
dollars in the 1880s, twenty million silver dollars in the early Republican period,
forty-eight million silver dollars in the 1920s, between fifty and seventy million

Year of Daoguang Reign (1836), Copies of Qing Memorials 㨼 , quoted in Zhang Guohui, Wan
Qing qianzhuang, 10.
32
Lin Manhong , “Ming-Qing de chaodai weiji yu shijie jingji xiaotiao: shijiu shiji de jingyan”
: , Shin shixue 1.4 (December 1990): 133-7.

28
silver dollars in the 1930s, and more than ten million US dollars annually after
WWII. These tens of millions of silver dollars, in fact, were more than the profit
from exporting Fujianese agricultural and industrial products, which was between
twenty and thirty million silver dollars.
33
Sociologist Ta Chen’s survey shows that
remittances occupied at least 75% of the monthly income of each Quanzhou
emigrant family between 1934 and 1935. He assumes that the numbers from surveys
might be far below the real amounts and an estimation of the total amount of
remittances is out of the question because the rich were inclined to not tell the
truth.
34
To take the example of Hanban village in Jinjiang County in the end of the
Republican period, 127 of the 209 households that had overseas relatives relied on
remittances as their main income; for another 51 households remittances paid for 50
percent of all expenses; and the last 31 households only relied on remittances
occasionally.
35
According to another estimate, there were two hundred and ninety
thousand persons with family members as the main breadwinners overseas in the
Jinjiang County; seventy percent of the population in Yongning relied on remittances
as part of their household income; and in Shenlu Township the number reached 80
percent.
36
Stopping the remittances or loss of contacts with these overseas husbands
could cause family tension or divorce. In Chapter 4 we will see wives claiming
divorces in the newspapers because the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia
during World War II cut off the contacts between immigrant societies and Quanzhou.

33
Xu Xiaowang , Mazu de zimin (Shanghai: Xuelin chubanse, 1999), 356.
34
Ta Chen, Emigrant Communities in South China, 82-3.
35
Chen Zhiping, Fujian de jiazu yu shehui, 51-2.
36
Zhuang Weiji, Jinjiang xinzhi, juan 3 “Book of Society,” 49.

29
Overall, late imperial and Republican emigration from Quanzhou resulted in
a chain of socioeconomic changes, featuring a revision of Confucian family ethics
through commoditization, a new form of gendered division of labor, and many
conflicting conceptions of family in the Republican period. First, as returning
emigrants brought with them earnings, even family property, such as statues of a
deity and sacrifice land for ancestral worship, was commoditized. For instance,
Chen Zhang Xi’niang mortgaged a statue of the female deity—Lady Xiefeng
(Xiefeng furen )—to another Huang family for half a month.
37
Itinerant
merchants’ economic success was often reflected in the purchase of luxury goods,
buildings, and land in their hometowns. This was stark in contrast to those who
failed in Southeastern Asian businesses or lost contact with their overseas relatives.
The transactions involving of commodities and property transformed Quanzhou into
an early-modern consumption society following a trend that had been established in
the late 11
th
century.
38
The gap in household income between the rich
merchant/emigrant families and agricultural peasant families whose main income
was from fishing or limited arable land nevertheless widened rapidly in the late Qing

37
“Chen Zhang Xi’niang’s mortgage contract, 1922,” the Collection of Contracts, held in the College
of Humanities, Xiamen University, China, serial number 2003042014A. Regarding Lady Xiefeng,
there was no universal answer about her identity or local legends. In addition to domestic worship,
the temple of this female deity was also annexed to the Temple of Eastern Mountain (Dongyue
xinggong ) in modern Quanzhou City, which was right outside the East Gate of the imperial
city Wall. As for her identity, one interpretation is that she was Tagawa Matsu, the Japanese mother
of the late Ming military leader Zheng Chenggong (or Koxingya) who fought against the Qing army
in the middle of the 17
th
century. When her husband surrendered to the Qing and Quanzhou was
under the siege of the Qing army, she committed suicide to redeem the shame imposed by her
husband. Local people thus erected a statue and worshipped her from then on. See Quanzhou shiqu
daojiao wenhua yanjiu hui ed., Quanzhou shiqu simiao lu 抬 (Quanzhou, China: , 1996), 122.
38
Clarks, Community, Trade, and Networks, 168-70.

30
and Republican periods, while the failed merchants and the poor were frequently
forced to sell their lands.
39

Second, late Qing and Republican women living in this commoditized and
emigrant society were expected to be “loyal” to their families by demonstrating
womanly virtues such as filiality and chastity and by engaging in trade or family
businesses to further the prosperity of their families. Modern scholar Michael
Szonyi notes that a woman in merchant or richer families could conduct property
transaction on behalf of her husband, in order to accumulate family wealth, or collect
business funds for the male abroad, but she still lived under the supervision of her in-
laws.
40
The emigrant society of Quanzhou, in which many men acted against
traditional concepts like “when the parents are alive, children should not travel
away” (fumu zai, bu yuanxing , ), was adamant about upholding
women’s chastity and filialty in order to maintain the family order.
Third, male emigration threatened the continuation of family lines and caused
a new gendered division of labor. Being “a wife of a sojourner in barbarian society”
(fanke shen⫠ ) implies both the present hardship for women and a possible
future of fortune and honor at the same time. These women left behind were called
“living widows” (huo guafu ) or “wives of sojourners in barbarian society.”
The incomplete conjugal relationships and inability to bear heirs placed women in a
long-term unstable and marginalized position in marital families. If a peasant
decided to immigrate to Southeast Asia for any commercial opportunities, it was not

39
Ta Chen, Emigrant Communities in South China, 65-85.
40
Szonyi, “Mothers, Sons and Lovers,” 43-64.

31
uncommon to see his wife stay in his hometown and replace his abbsnetee labor in
the paddy fields, oyster farms, or construction sites. On the other hand, a traditional
woman in the hierarchical family system needed to respect her family elders or her
husband’s agnatic kin’s authority and rights in family affairs such as managing
household finance and marriage as well as adoption arrangements. Yet her wifely
status and parental authority would be honored when she was aged, her in-laws were
absent, or her natal family gave her considerable financial and emotional support.
As I will show in Chapters 2, 3, and 4, many Quanzhou women freely managed the
family economy, adopted heirs to carry on family lines, and redefined their practical
family relations thus minimizing the influence of marital families in this process. In
either situation, the Confucian ideal about gendered division of labor—“Men till
while women weave” (nangeng nuzhi ) became “Men sailed out while
women were tilling or leading families” in Quanzhou.

C. Religious Practices in and beyond Family
The popular religions in Quanzhou are mainly local and family-based because
each religious community was either developed within a few local families or
devoted to familial concerns. Buddhism and Daoism were the pioneering influences
entering Fujian as the Northern Chinese gradually moved to the South. Islam and
Christianity were also present in Quanzhou history, because the prosperity of Song-
Yuan maritime trade attracted many Arabian merchants to this port city. The closest
religious centers in the daily life of Quanzhou, in fact, were not orthodox religious
institutions but rather numerous small “Territorial Temples” and vegetarian convents,

32
where people worshipped protective deities and formed cult communities based on
personal connections.
41
During the Qing and Republican periods Neighborhoods
(jing ) and lineages usually fought for farmland and irrigation rights.
42
Quanzhou
people thus developed a utilitarian attitude toward religious beliefs. For instance,
there were two or three “Territorial Temples” located in each of the thirty-eight
Precincts in Quanzhou City, and each Neighborhood or lineage believed that the
main worshipped deities of each temple only answered to the prayers of local
residents or lineage members. Quanzhou people thus consciously formed various
religious territories on the basis of spatial units. People renovated these temples on
the street corners, visited them, and fought against people of other Neighborhoods to
mark and expand the cult territories. Popular religious beliefs were deeply
intertwined with familial and local interests.
Women in Quanzhou evolved a special tradition of worshipping Ladies (furen
) because these female deities were assigned the job of caring for women’s

41
Yuanmiao Guan, the most famous Daoist temple in Quanzhou, was first established in the late 3
rd

century. Kaiyuan Monastery (built in 686), Chengtian Monastery (built ca. 951-960), and Chongfu
Monastery (built in 960) have been the biggest three Buddhist monasteries. Quanzhou people’s
attitude toward the huge Buddhist and Daoist temples remained distant and had a certain degree of
awe. These temples received donations from “believers from all directions” so that their religious
communities were beyond any territorial limitation or family controls. No single Neighborhood or
family could dominate the operation of these temples; nor could any deity or Buddha prefer certain
regions or lineages. Whereas Islam was never forbidden in Quanzhou, its continuation was mainly
limited to descendants of several Arabian families such as the Dings and the Guos who settled down
in this area. Christianity first came to Quanzhou in the Yuan dynasty because many Mongolian
noblemen believed in Christianity and Christian merchants came from the sea routes. In the Ming-
Qing era more missionaries came to Quanzhou and won many scholar-gentry’s hearts and support
with their scientific and medical knowledge. But overall, Islam and Christianity were only spread
within lineages or a small area. Regarding these minor religions in Quanzhou, see Chen Zhiping ed.,
Fujian congjiao shi (Fuzhou: Fujian jiaoyu chubanshe, 1996), 297-459
42
Regarding the details of lineage feuds, see Harry J. Lamley, “Lineage Feuding in Southern Fujian
and Eastern Guangdong under Qing Rule,” in Violence in China: Essays in Culture and
Counterculture, eds. Jonathan N. Lipman and Stevan Harrell (Albany, NY: State University of New
York Press, 1990), 27-64.

33
fertility and childrearing, the keys to continuing family lines.
43
These female deities
include Guanyin (or the indigenized Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, whose Indian
origin was usually unknown to local worshippers), the Empress of Heaven (or Mazu
), Lady Linshui (Linshui furen ), Lady Wan (Wanshi ma or
Wan xiangu ), Lady Su (Su furengu ), the Immortal Lady Yin (Yin
xiangu惆 ), Lady Tiger (Hu furen ), Lady Hu (Hu furen ), Lady
Xiefeng (Xiefeng furen ), the Empress Di (Di niangniang ), and so
on.
44
Except Guanyin, Mazu, and Lady Linshui, who have been widely worshipped
in other areas, all other female deities were generated from local records or oral
traditions and were relatively confined to the local comunities. For example, Lady
Su was a Ming woman who suffered a premature death but repeatedly manifested
herself after her death to protect Quanzhou from bandits and pirates in addition to
caring for women and children.
45
Lady Wan is the protectress of the Wanling
Neighborhood because she was born there, cured people when she was alive, and
protected Quanzhou from warfare after her death.
46
The Immortal Lady Yin is the
female disciple of the Lord of Protecting Lives (Baosheng dadi ) and,
according to legends, she made a wish to save all women in the world from

43
Other important protective deities are male Daoist deities, deified historical figures and the Plague
Gods (Wangye , who spread and cure diseases). These male deities, however, did not specifically
answer prayers about marriage and family.
44
Quanzhou lishi yanjiu hui 㬟 , Quanzhou jiucheng pujing jilue
(Quanzhou: Quanzhou lishi yanjiu hui, 1990).74-7, 83.
45
QQFZ, juan 16, 17: a and juan 65, 46: b, 47: a, 47: b.
46
QQFZ, juan 16, 13:b, and juan 65, 46:a.

34
obstetrical trouble and all pains.
47
There are numerous female attendants to the main
goddesses in each of these temples, all addressed as Lady (furen ).
Most of the Ladies in this tradition of worship were anonymous, but we can
conclude that they shared a common territory- and family-based characteristics based
on their similar legends and origins. For example, Lady Su was a shaman-like girl
first worshipped by her natal lineage in the Ming dynasty for her protective power.
As the Su lineage expanded from the Su village to overseas countries, the worship of
Lady Su became a local cult. Many believers in branch temples that had received a
“division of incense” (fenxiang ) went back to the Mother Temple on her
birthday to receive an endowment of efficacy. There is another group called thye
“Mother Ladies” (furenma ) worshipped inside Quanzhou households.
Mother Ladies were mostly the transformation of unnaturally or prematurely
deceased (sworn) sisters of the worshippers, who were always married women. The
worshippers installed small figurines in their bedrooms, and prayed for their magical
power over their nuclear families.
48
Some worshippers sent the figurines to the
temples in order to receive more incense-offerings and thereby constituted the big
group of Ladies in those Territorial Temples of female deities. The worship of
Mother Ladies marks the early development of the worship of Lady Su and more
female deities in Quanzhou society. The similarities between the legends and

47
Quanzhou lishi yanjiu hui, Quanzhou jiucheng pujing jilue, 76.
48
Sara Friedman’s field work in modern Hui’an shows that a more diffused form of state power and a
stronger market mechanism in the post-Mao era than before has commoditized ethnic women’s bodies
as well as the practices of “extended natal residence marriage” and the worship of Mother Ladies
(discussed in Chapter 4) as “objects of an exoticizing Han gaze.” See Sara L. Friedman, Intimate
Politics: Marriage, the Market, and State Power in Southeastern China (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2006), 148-52.

35
worship of Mother Ladies, Lady Su, Lady Wan, and Lady Yin, discussed in Chapter
5, suggest that the cult community of a female deity was formed when a domestic
deity demonstrated her efficacy (ling ) and gradually received recognition beyond
the family/lineage.
Some women’s devotion to popular religions and their womanly virtue turned
them into core believers and consequently important opinion leaders in their
respective Neighborhoods. Many Quanzhou women left their families, joined the
localized monastic order, and become vegetarian nuns (caigu or zaigu )
living in small vegetarian convents (caitang ). There were six big nunneries or
monasteries which expanded from these small convents, but most of them remained
as neighborhood convents or Territorial Temples of Neighborhoods.
49
Vegetarian
nuns were dedicated religious followers of Bodhisattva Guanyin and won respect
from their families and communities because they preserved their purity and chose to
live a poor life and offered their respect to any local deities placed and worshipped
by the Neighborhood people. They were formally called “the pure laywomen who
practiced Buddhist doctrines” (fanxin qingxin nu ), from the Sanskrit
Brahmacarya upsikas. Yet local people usually gave them honorific names like

49
There are many examples showing that vegetarian convents were also Territorial Temples. Tielu
Temple in the Tielu Precinct is tended by vegetarian nuns but the main deities are the Daoist deity Lu
Dongbing, attended by Guanyin and Lady Su. The complex of Qingtong Nunnery and Erlang Temple
in the Renfeng Neighborhood is also tended by vegetarian nuns and its worshipped deity is another
Erlang deity in Daoism in the main hall with Guanyin worshipped in the rear hall. In both cases,
vegetarian nuns devoted their piety mainly to Guanyin and Lady Su but paid a certain degree of
respect to Lu Dongbing and Erlang diety. This shows how vegetarian nuns mediated different
religious beliefs. See Quanzhou lishi yanjiu hui, Quanzhou jiucheng pujing jilue, 35, 37.

36
“Clean Maiden” (qinggu ) or “Chaste Maiden” (zhengu ).
50
Daily worship
and gatherings in vegetarian convents became the occasions for Neighborhood
women to obtain vegetarian nuns’ religious teachings and to exchange local news
and gossip.
The monastic order that vegetarian nuns left their original families for were
different from those of orthodox Buddhist nuns and created an alternative family
structure in vegetarian convents while maintaining strong ties with the original
families. Unlike orthodox Buddhist nuns, many vegetarian nuns left their families in
order to carry on a family tradition. Different from Patricia Ebrey’s and Susan
Mann’s findings on womanly divotion, a Quanzhou family would feel honored to
send one daughter to be a vegetarian nun in search of the family’s prosperity and
blessings by the compassion of deities.
51
The daughter / nun’s brother would adopt
out one of his own daughters to be a disciple of this pious sister, in order that the
younger generation could succeed the abbacy at his sister’s old age and that this
family tradition would be passed down.
52
Quanzhou people’s religious piety and the
family-based practice of vegetarian nuns solved the dilemmas between entering the
Buddhist monastic order and abiding by Confucian filiality and loyalty to families.

50
Faqing , “Minnan caigu de qiyuan han diwei 救 ,” Minnan foxiuyuan
xiubao 救 7 (1992): 96.
51
Patricia Ebrey and Susan Mann argue that religious devotion was deemed by Confucian scholars as
part of the womanly virtue of traditional women. Entering the monastic order or becoming a nun,
however, was seen a disturbance to the Chinese family system and unaccepted by the elite and scholar
families. See Patricia Ebrey, The Inner Quarters: Marriage and the Lives of Chinese Women in the
Sung Period (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 124-8; Susan
Mann, Precious Records: Women in China’s Long Eighteenth Century (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1997), 10.
52
Chen Zhenzhen, “Tan Fujian de ‘Fanxing qingxin nu’” “ , Fayin yuekan 1 (January 2000): 63-68.

37
Family and the concept of family dominated most women’s material and
spiritual lives all the time. The anti-marriage practices recorded in legends of
Quanzhou female deities and vegetarian nuns show that many Quanzhou women
entered the religious sphere to defy their wifely duties and marriage tension. They
nevertheless demonstrated their loyalty (filiality and chastity) to their families by
saying prayers concerning family matters and looking out for the prosperity of their
families.
In this research I explore the following questions: When the males were absent
and when women had to take over family duties, what did the concept of family
mean to a Quanzhou woman in the late Qing and Republican periods and what did
she want from such a (re)conceptualization? How did she restore the “family” order
and conform to the requirements of other social institutions? I suggest that Qing and
Republican women utilized their womanly virtue as cultural capital to alter their
position in the family-state continuum and to negotiate with the most basic social
unit—the family. In this way, woman interacted with other members in the field of
the “family” structure as well as other social institutions in order to be empowered
through interrelationships and family identities.

38
Chapter 1:
Women and Confucian Family Ethics: Evolution and Continuity

This chapter first sketches the structure of the family in pre-Revolutionary
Chinese society and the evolution of orthodox Chinese family ethics, and then
discusses the local practices of Quanzhou. Focusing on the teachings of and
behavior codes proposed by Confucian scholars throughout history, I consider the
interactions and negotiations among the state and the people, elites and commoners,
and men and women over the significance of those teachings and codes.

I. Definitions of Family
A. The Norm of the Chinese Family System
The concept of the Chinese family within traditional society refers to the basic
unit in the kinship system, a group of persons who were united by marriage, blood
ties, and adoption, and had common ancestors as well as corporate property.
Anthropologists like Olga Lang have classified traditional families with their various
compositions into three types—conjugal, stem, and joint families. The “conjugal
family, called also the biological, natural, nuclear or small family (xiao jiating in Chinese) consists of a man, wife or wives, and children;” the “stem family
consists of the parents, their unmarried children, and one married son with wife and
children;” and the “joint family consists of parents, their unmarried children, their
married sons (more than one) and sons’ wives and children …. This is also called the

39
‘large family’ (da jiating ) or the ‘greater family.’”
53
Myron Cohen,
nevertheless, argues that different types of families should be seen as different
developmental stages in the life cycle of any family. A conjugal or stem family
gradually expands and becomes a joint family in which three or more generations
live ideally under the same roof and share the same stove; but after household
division, a joint family will dissolve into smaller families and the whole life cycle
will start again.
54

Patricia Ebrey concludes that the Chinese family system was based on “three
sets of ideas and practices: those concerned with descent (patrilineality), with ethics
(filial piety), and with authority and property (patriarchy).”
55
I focus in this section
on patrilineality and patriarchy and add in patrilocality, to discuss the interaction of
both genders in the Chinese family system, and leave a discussion of family ethics
for the next section. The principle of patrilineality centers on the continuation of
patrilineal descent and surnames, and extends its foci to instituted ancestral sacrifices
and the kinship organization.
56
Under this first and foremost principle of
patrilineality, women married into their husbands’ families, which was the practice
of patrilocality and suggested women’s inferior family status and deference to men.
Family heads in Chinese families, ideally and usually male, had the control of family
property and legal authority over women and the younger generations, such as

53
Olga Lang, Chinese Family and Society (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1946), 15.
54
Myron L. Cohen, House United, House Divided: The Chinese Family in Taiwan (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1976).
55
Patricia Ebrey, “Women, Marriage, and the Family in Chinese History,” in Heritage of China:
Contemporary Perspectives on Chinese Civilization, ed. Paul S. Ropp (Berkeley and Los Angeles:
University of California Press, 1990), 200-16.
56
Ibid, “Women, Marriage, and the Family,” 200-2.

40
arranging their marriages and requiring the respect of each member by performing
filiality and obedience.
57
Because of patrilineality, traditional unmarried women
would never be heirs to succeed to their parents’ social status and identity; they
needed to marry patrilocally in order to acquire the family status affiliated with their
husbands but on the condition that they respected the husbands’ authority.
The ideas and practices of patrilinealy, patrilocality, and patriarchy
demonstrate that the traditional family system in China was an “androcentric model,”
in anthropologist James Watson’s words, presenting the developmental cycles of
patrilineal units but marginalizing women’s places and roles in them.
58
Japanese
historian Shiga Shuzo uses the concept of “one unit” to explicate the most important
“father-son” and then the “husband-wife” relationships in the Chinese family system.
According to Shiga Shuzo, a traditional father and his son formed “a single unit”
(fuzi yiti ) so that the father had legal authority and control of property.
When the father was alive, he had absolute authority over his son and provided him
with the same patrilineal surname, social identity, and wealth; the son, in return,
offered his deference and filiality to the father. When the father was deceased, the
son succeeded to the father’s social and family status to exert control over his
conjugal or stem family and property. A son in traditional China was his father’s
successor and the extension of his father’s personality.
59
Women, on the other hand,
were assigned to a secondary and auxiliary role to their husbands and sons under the

57
Ibid, 204-6.
58
James L. Watson, “Chinese Kinship Reconsidered: Anthropological Perspective on Historical
Research,” China Quarterly 92 (1982), 606.
59
Shiga Shuzo , Zhongguo jiazufa yuanli , trans. Zhang Jianguo and
Li Li (Beijing: Law Press, 2003), 104-8.

41
ideal design of patrilineal and patriarchal principles. A woman formed “a single unit
with her husband (fuqi yiti ) in the marital family rather than one unit with
her father in her natal family because her status in her natal family was unstable, and
because she had no part in the patrilineal privileges. Instead, her position, identity
and rights were tied to her husband after marriage. Her husband legally and
customarily represented her to dispose of her dowry and participate in the kinship
organization; he absorbed her property rights and personality, according to Shiga
Shuzo. If her husband died, she would serve as a placeholder, representing her
deceased husband’s personality with the family property under her custody and
acting on behalf of the heirs, but she was not the owner of her marital family
property.
60
The husband and wife together worshipped the ancestors of her marital
family and would be worshipped by her husband’s offspring.
61
Women’s agency
and thoughts about the family were thus always downplayed in the norm and ideals
of the Chinese patrilineal kinship organization.

B. Women’s Families
Married women, in fact, defined and created the family based on their
biological bloodline rather than on ethical or legal considerations. Margery Wolf
constructs the concept of the “uterine family” to refer to women’s self-identity and

60
Nevertheless, a woman in the Southern Song dynasty (1127-1279) could have a share in the family
division in addition to her dowry and take her property to enter remarriage. Bettine Birge has a
detailed discussion pertaining to the changing practices from the Song to subsequent dynasties. See
Bettine Birge, “Women and Confucianism from Song to Ming: The Institutionalization of
Patrilineality,” in The Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History, ed. Paul Jakov Smith and
Richard von Glahn (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 212-40.
61
Shiga Shuzo, Zhongguo jiazufa yuanli, 108-10; idem, “Family Property and the Law of Inheritance
in Traditional China,” in Chinese Family Law and Social Change in Historical and Comparative
Perspective, ed. David C. Buxbaum (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978), 120.

42
relationships with their sons in different stages of their lives. Built on the mother-
son relationship, the uterine family gives a woman the opportunity to exert her
authority over her sons and to affirm her status in her marital family. The uterine
family has no formal structure and would disappear after the mother’s death. Yet
especially when her husband was absent, a woman could exercise considerable
unofficial power over her sons and the extended connections to create her own
family and become the backbone of it. The son, in return, would defer to her
decision as we will see in Chapters 2 and 3. The concept of the uterine family
illuminates a different definition of family from that articulated by the Chinese
hierarchical patrilineal system.
62
Nevertheless, the concept of the uterine family also
overlooked the ties between married women and their relatives of natal families,
while it drew our attention in the mother-child bond.
Women also created family-like affective ties and family surrogates among
themselves and expected to have full control over these female spheres. Buddhist
nuns and Guangdong spinsters or “self-combers” (zishu nu ) constituted
particular groups of women. They entered religious institutions to resist marriage, or
to consolidate their sisterhood and create a social motherhood. Buddhist nuns
entered the monastic order to be free from household chores, childbearing, and
dependence on husbands.
63
Guangdong spinsters in particular moved into vegetarian

62
Margery Wolf, Women and the Family in Rural Taiwan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
1972); idem, “Beyond the Patrilineal Self: Constructing Gender in China,”in Self as Person in Asian
Theory and Practice, ed. Roger T. Ames, Wimal Dissanayake, and Thomas P. Kasulis (Albany, NY:
State University of New York Press, 1994), 251-71.
63
See Hillary Crane, “Resisting Marriage and Renouncing Womanhood: The Choice of Taiwanese
Buddhist Nuns,” Critical Asian Studies 36.2 (2004), 265-84; Beata Grant, “Female Holder of the
Lineage: Linji Chan Master Zhiyuan Xinggang (1597-1654),” Late Imperial China 17.2 (December

43
houses of the Great Way of Former Heaven (Xiantian dadao ) and relied on
sworn spinsterhood and the worship of Bodhisattva Guanyin to justify their
resistance to marriage, to leave male domination behind, and to be cleansed by
mimicking Guanyin’s rejecting marriage and preserving her purity.
64
Based on her
survey of American women in the 1990s, sociologist Mardy Ireland argues:

[F]or women who are not mothers, female friendship is crucial to the
structuring of the very meaning of ‘women,’ and provides a grounding of
their atypical identities. Although the meaning of ‘women’ is provided in
female friendship for women who are also mothers, friendship may not be
as essential to them for grounding their female identities, because they
have many historical definitions of woman as mother to which they can
attach and ground their female identity.
65

Ireland’s conclusion is applicable to traditional Chinese women as well. Sisterhood
among Chinese women and religious lineages between female instructors and
disciples prove that Chinese marriage-resisters unconsciously realized the possible

1996): 51-76; Karen Lang, “Shaven Heads and Loose Hair: Buddhist Attitudes toward Hair and
Sexuality,” in Off with Her Head! The Denial of Women’s Identity in Myth, Religion, and Culture, ed.
Howard Eilerg-Schwartz and Wendy Doniger (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1995), 32-52; Lily Hsiao Hung Lee, “The Emergence of Buddhist Nuns in China and Its Social
Ramifications,” Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia 18-19 (1987), 82-100; Shih Pao-ch’ang,
Lives of the Nuns: Biographies of Chinese Buddhist Nuns from the Fourth to Sixth Centuries (A
Translation of the Pi-ch’iu-ni Chuan), trans. Kathryn Ann Tsai (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
1994), 6-8.
64
See Cao Xuansi , “Xiantian dao de zishunu ,” in Huanan hunyin zhidu yu
funu diwei , ed. Ma Jianzhao , Qiao Jian , and Du Ruile (Guangxi minzu chubanshe, 1994): 124-40; Andrea P. Sankar, “Spinster Sisterhoods: Jing Yih Sifu:
Spinster-Domestic-Nun,”in Lives: Chinese Working Women, ed. Mary Sheridan and Janet W. Salaff
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984), 51-70; Janice E. Stockard, Daughters of the Canton
Delta: Marriage Patterns and Economic Strategies in South China, 1860-1930 (Stanford: Stanford
University Press, 1989); Marjerie Topley, “Chinese Women’s Vegetarian Houses in Singapore,”
Journal Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 27.1 (1954): 51-67; idem, “Marriage Resistance
in Rural Kwangtung,” in Women in Chinese Society, eds. Margery Wolf and Roxane Witke (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1991): 67-88.
65
Mardy S. Ireland, Reconceiving Women: Separating Motherhood from Female Identity (New York
and London: The Guilford Press, 1993), 11-2.

44
separation of wifehood, motherhood, and female identity, which were all united as
the elements of womanhood in traditional China to be the complementary quality to
manhood. Marriage-resisters rejected wifehood but still wanted the support from
sisters and wished to be mothers. Many women thus actively built female friendship
or sisterhood, and developed social motherhood by adoption or through instructor-
disciple relationships in religious lineages to create their family without male-
centered ideology.
Women practicing marriage resistance or entering a monastic order does not
mean that they ignored the omnipresent influence of the patrilineal family. Rubie
Watson notes that the aforementioned Guangdong spinsters bought girls to be their
replacements in marital families serving their nominal husbands and in-laws and
doing all the house chores, in order to escape from marriages but still acquire the
status of an ancestress worthy of worship and ensure themselves a peaceful afterlife
at the same time.
66
The practices of finding surrogate wives for their husbands and
looking for a place in the ancestral worship of the marital family show that spinsters,
who rejected wifehood nevertheless, could not overlook the risk of receiving neither
ancestral worship nor family-recognition. Scholars such as Lewis Lancaster and
Melford Spiro have argued that religious systems “are rooted in, and may be viewed
as a metaphorical expression of family (including kinship) relations.”
67
Lancaster
notes that Chinese monasteries are actually “family surrogates” because they

66
Rubie S. Watson, “Girls’ Houses and Working Women: Expressive Culture in the Pearl River Delta,
1900-41,” in Women and Chinese Patriarchy: Submission, Servitude and Escape, ed. Maria Jaschok
and Suzanne Miers (London and New Jersey: Zed Books Ltd, 1994), 13-4.
67
Melford E. Spiro, “Some Reflections on Family and Religion in East Asia,” in Religion and the
Family in East Asia, ed. George A. De Vos, and Takao Sofue (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA:
University of California Press, 1984), 36.

45
mimicked the Chinese family system to create fictive family relationships, fictive
lineage formations, and fictive ancestral tablets and rituals performed by younger
disciples who were adopted into the lineage.
68
“Leaving the (mundane) family”
(chujia ) was a form of entering another religious family.

II. Confucian Family Ethics in Historical Perspective: An Orthopraxy
I use “orthopraxy” as a conceptual guideline to analyze women’s practices of
conforming to or modifying Confucian family ethics. “Orthopraxy” is a term first
used by James Watson to contrast “orthodoxy” (or standardization) in order to
explore Chinese cultural unity. Watson explains, while orthodoxy usually refers to
“correct beliefs” or “a codified set of beliefs,” most Chinese believed in “correct
performance or practices” and developed standardized practices (uniform guideline)
in the name of the uniform beliefs.
69
He argues that “orthopraxy (correct practice)
reigned over orthodoxy (correct beliefs) as the principal means of attaining and
maintaining cultural unity.”
70
Yet he suggests that “correct practice” could be
recognized as “correct beliefs” through a transformation process. James Watson
uses the Cultural Revolution as an example to prove that bottom-up practices could
be eventually transfomed to be the standardized behavior by the state.
71
Watson

68
Lewis R. Lancaster, “Buddhism and Family in East Asia,” in Religion and the Family in East Asia,
ed. George A. De Vos, and Takao Sofue (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California
Press, 1984), 145.
69
James L. Watson, “Rites or Beliefs?” 80-103; idem, “Orthopraxy Revisited,” Modern China 33.1
(2007), 155.
70
James Watson, “Rites or Beliefs?” 84.
71
Ibid, 102.

46
further proposes the orthopraxy-orthodoxy continuum between correct practices and
correct beliefs in religions.
72

Donald Sutton, Michael Szonyi, and Paul Katz, et al. recently provided local
perspectives to modifiy the theory of orthopraxy, which by Watson presumed to be a
top-down and state-sponsored movement. Michael Szonyi notes that local officials
and elites could claim in their writings their conformity with state-sponsored
orthopraxy while actually covering up local variation. He argues that “substantive
standardization and adherence to orthoprax standardization should be distinguished
analytically from claims to standardization and adherence to orthopraxy.”
73
Paul
Katz also uses case studies to illustrate nonstate standardizztion or “heteroprax
standardization,” in which local elites and religioups speciliasts played significant
roles in standardizing practices but pursued different agendas. Katz stresses that
Chinese cultural unity was formed in a varied process and through the interaction of
top-down efforts and bottom-up assertions.
74
In other words, through this process
traditions and beliefs are reproduced. The line between beliefs and practices is thin.
Just as Donald Sutton points out, “the two terms (‘beliefs’ and ‘ritual’) were not
treated as a dichotomy in late imperial China.”
75
Furthermore, Watson’s orthopraxy-
orthodoxy continuum should be expanded in terms of scope and must include more
agents other than the state.

72
James Watson, “Orthopraxy Revisited,”155.
73
See Michael Szonyi, “Making Claims about Standardization and Orthopraxy in Late Imperial
China: Rituals and Cults in the Fuzhou Region in Light of Watson’s Theories,” Modern China 33.1
(Jan 2007), 47.
74
Paul Katz, “Orthopraxy and Heteropraxy beyond the State: Standardizing Rituals in Chinese
Society,”Modern China 33.1 (Jan 2007), 72-90.
75
Donald Sutton, “Ritual, Cultural Standardization, and Orthopraxy in China: Reconsidering James L.
Watson’s Ideas,” Modern China 33.1 (Jan 2007), 13.

47
The theory of orthopraxy is applicable to an exploration of the role of women in
the development of and interaction between various networks of power in Quanzhou
society. These networks would include the family, neighborhoods, religious
communities, and the reading public of the print media. Confucian family ethics
have never been exclusively fixed on a set of codified beliefs. The contents were
enriched and gradually modified in the interaction process between elite culture,
local customs, and legal codes. Francesca Bray has argued that traditional scholars
never applied elite values to the common people but expected that the corresponding
values would be unconsciously absorbed in the daily practices of common people. A
non-elite male did not need consciousness to bring welfare (li ) to his communities
or serve the emperor and the government; all he needed to do was stick to his
assigned place (fen ) being filial to parents, working in the fields, and representing
the family unit to participate in his community’s affairs and to fulfill his tax and
corvée obligations.
76
Such a class-inflected viewpoint can be enriched from the
perspective of gender too. A late imperial and early Republican woman was also
assigned an auxiliary and secondary place to help her husband in managing the
household. A woman did not have to be well-educated and need not be intellectually
or morally superior to men; all she needed to do was fully realize and practice her
family roles as a filial daughter, chaste wife, and benevolent mother as Confucian
family ethics required. Her various practices and functions to maintain her family,
however, would change the nature and significance of her assigned status in family.

76
Francesca Bray, “Towards a Critical History of Non-Western Technology,” in China and Historical
Capitalism: Genealogies of Sinological Knowledge, ed. Timothy Brook and Gregory Blue
(Cambridge University Press, 1999), 191.

48
A. Confucian Family Ethics: The Discourse on Family and Women
Filiality
Filiality (xiao ) has been highlighted by Confucian scholars as the core and
basis of all types of virtue in Chinese family and society throughout history.
Confucius (ca. 551-497 BCE) emphasized in the Analects (Lunyu ) that,
“being filial and fraternal” is the basis of humanesss (jen ) (Analects 1.2) and the
practices of filiality include “no discord” (Analects 2.5) and not altering the father’s
ways for three years after the father’s death (Analects 1:11 and 4:20). Confucius’
comments about filiality and emphases on the deference of juniors and their
obedience were further developed in the Classics of Filiality (Xiaojing ) of the
Former Han dynasty (206-208 BCE). In the form of a dialogue between Confucius
and his disciple Zengzi (ca. 505-435 BCE), the Classics of Filiality creates a
parallel between filiality to parents and loyalty (zhong ) to the emperor, because
Chinese familial units should be the building blocks of the society or the state. The
contents thus center on the universality of the parent-child relationship at all levels
because the rising imperial Confucianism stressed that the emperor stood at the top
of the state ruling a centralized government and the people, just as a parent wielded
authority over children. This text particularly attracted the attention of the Tang
Emperor Xuanzong (r. 627-649) and became one of the “Thirteen Classics” (Shishan
jing ). The popularity of this text is also expressed in the fact that Madam
Zheng , the wife of Chen Miao 怰 of the Tang dynasty, wrote the Classics of
Filiality for Women (Nu Xiaojing ) by using the same format of a dialogue

49
created between the educated Han female teacher Ban Zhao (ca. 48 – 116) and
court ladies and by applying identical chapter titles as in the Classic of Filiality to ten
of its eighteen chapters.
77

The practices of filiality, however, are differentiated by class and gender.
First, depending on capability, scholar-officials (shi ) and commoners were
required to practice differently to conform to the ethics of filiality. Chapter 5 of the
Classic of Filiality concludes about the filiailty of scholar-officials: that “if one
serves one’s prince with the filiality one shows to one’s father, it becomes the virtue
of fidelity (loyalty). If one serves one’s superiors with brotherly submission it
becomes the virtue of obedience.”
78
As for the filiality of the commoners, Chapter
Six illustrates that “in keeping with Heaven’s seasons and Earth’s resources, by
one’s industry and frugality one supports one’s father and mother. This is the
filiality of the common people.”
79
In contrast to elites’ redirecting filiality to loyalty
to the superior or the ruler, commoners should adhere to correct behavior inside their
families.
Second, female obedience was emphasized as a gesture of filiality in the
arena of family in another contemporary classic—the Book of Rites (Liji ). The
chapter of the “Single Sacrifice in the State Worship” (jiaotesheng ) states the
doctrine of “Threefold Obedience” (sancong ) at three stages in the life course of

77
Lisa Raphals, Sharing the Light: Representations of Women and Virtue in Early China (Albany,
NY: State University of New York, 1998), 252-4.
78
Wm. Theodore de Bary, trans, “The Classics of Filiality,”in Sources of Chinese Tradition, ed. Wm.,
Theodore de Bary, and Richard Lufrano, Vol. 2, 2
nd
edition (New York: Columbia University, 2000),
327.
79
Ibid, 327.

50
a woman: “The woman follows (and obeys) the man: In her youth, she follows her
father and elder brother; when married, she follows her husband; when her husband
is dead, she follows her son. ‘Men’ denotes supporters. A man by his wisdom
should (be able to) lead others.”
80
This statement expands a daughter’s filiality
toward her parents to a general female obedience and subordination toward males in
each life phase.
The influence of the Book of Rites was manifest in the Classic of Filiality for
Women of the Tang dynasty, in which the author started to redirect women’s filiality
from parents to parents-in-law, and stressed women’s intellectual talents and moral
admonitions for their husbands. Chapter 14 of the Classic of Filiality for Women
states that “because a daughter serves her parents with filiality, she can shift her
loyalty to [her] parents-in-law [italics added].” In other words, the Tang moral texts
started to extend a woman’s filiality toward parents to her loyalty toward parents-in-
law or her marital family.

Inner and Outer
The bipolar but complementary ideas in Confucian family ethics—inner (nei
ℏ ) and outer (wai )—assigned men and women to differential places in a spatial
house and differential functions and behaviors in a family. According to the Book of
Rites, which gave the clearest liturgical instruction in early China, gender separation
or gender distinction should be deeply rooted in family ethics to contribute to

80
James Legge trans, Li Chi: Book of Rites: An Encyclopedia of Ancient Ceremonial Usages,
Religious Creeds, and Social Institutions (New York: University Book, 1967), 441. See also Lisa
Raphals, Sharing the Light, 217.

51
domestic harmony. In the “Domestic Regulations” (Neize ℏ ) chapter of the book,
it reads: “The men should not speak of what belongs to the inside (of the house), nor
the women of what belongs to the outside;” “The observances of propriety
commence with a careful attention to the relations between husband and wife: The
men occupied the exterior, the women the interior.”
81

The concept of “inner and outer” in the following dynasties was thus
developed on the husband-wife relationship and comprises two meanings—gender
separation, and gender division of labor. Traditional Confucian classics usually
noticed and further explicated the aspect of spatial restrictions in the first place. In
the “Establishing the Self” (lishen ) chapter of the Analects for Women (Nu
Lunyu ), written by Song Ruohua , who was a consort of Tang Emperor
Dezong (r. 779-805), it is written:
Inner and outer each has their place. Males and females gather separately.
Women do not peek through the walls, nor step into the outer courtyard.
Women do not exchange names with non-relative males, nor become close
to women without goodness or virtue. Only after establishing themselves
as proper and correct could women be called human beings.
82

The Song Confucian scholar Sima Guang (1019-1086) further developed his
Precepts for Family Life (Jiafan ) from the Book of Rites and proposed in the
first chapter—“Regulating the Household” (Zhijia ) that siblings of different

81
Legge, Liji, 454, 470.
82
Chen Hongmou ed, “Song shanggong nu lunyu” , in Wuzhong yigui (Taipei:
Dezhi chubanshe, 1963), 4. Part of the translation is quoted in Patricia Ebrey, The Inner Quarters, 24.

52
sexes should not sit or eat together: Boys over 7 sui 㬚 should not sit together with
girls, and married sisters should never sit or eat together with their brothers.
83

Second, the concept of gender separation was reinterpreted to be the state
ideology “Men till, while women weave,” and was promoted from the mid-Ming to
Qing periods as a way to inculcate the minds of the people (min ) and commoners
in particular. Francesca Bray argues that agriculture and the textile industry were
cultural symbols that were recognized as “correct” male and female work
respectively and served as the “correct” practice of family ethics for commoners.
84

Gender separation and gender division of labor would lead to domestic harmony.
Therefore, even elite women were expected to do handicraft or embroidery to show
this womanly virtue.
85

The difference between didactic teachings and daily practices, however,
existed throughout history. Women overlooked the ideal of gender separation but
rather stressed gender roles; and the inner and outer spheres were overlapped or
interpenetrated each other. Both elite and ordinary women had forays into the male
or outer world by visiting natal families, attending temple fairs, making journeys,
and engaging in men’s political strategies or official decisions and so on. Lisa
Raphals uses examples from women’s biographies and standard histories in early
China, such as the Collected Life Stories of Women (Lienu zhuan ), and the

83
Sima Guang , “Wengong jiafan” 㹓 , in Zhongguo gudai jiaxun sishu , annotated by Yin Kuiyou , Qin Yanhua , Xie Xiwen (Shangdong: Shangdong
Youyi chubanshe, 2000), 172-3.
84
Bray, “Towards a Critical History of Non-Western Technology,” 166-9.
85
Bray, “The Inner Quarters,” in House, Home, Family: Living and Being Chinese, ed. Ronald G
Knapp, and Kai-Yin Lo (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005), 266-7.

53
History of the Former Han (Han Shu ), to show that women had freedom in
moving outside of the house, and that they managed the businesses of their deceased
husbands.
86
Beverly Bossler argues that late imperial women frequently had contact
with non-agnate males and used affinal relationships to maximize the interest of their
husbands or affines, such as securing office, offering emergency aid, or getting a
certificate for business.
87
While the natal family of a woman was called the
“mother’s family” (niangjia ) in colloquial Chinese, it was also called the “outer
(or alien) family” (waijia ) to distinguish it from the marital family to which the
woman should dedicate her fidelity. Enhancing affinal relationships or creating
close intrafamilial relations would thus blur the boundaries between inner and outer
spheres while still maintaining the advantages of both families. Dorothy Ko also
shows that some gentry women established poetry clubs and some courtesans
wandered to expand their social network and looked for future husbands in the late
Ming period without challenging Confucian family ethics. They built their female
networks within the arena of the family and self-identified as filial daughters,
virtuous wives, and responsible mothers. The gentrywomen, described by Ko, were
the guardians of family morality and obtained their prerogative in this innermost
realm.
88
Furthermore, Chinese historian Li Bozhong argues that it was not unusual
to see rural women working in the fields with their husbands if they lived in areas

86
Raphals, Sharing the Light, 226.
87
Bossler, Beverly. J., “A Daughter is a Daughter All Her Life: Affinal Relations and Women’s
Networks in Song and Late Imperial China,” Late Imperial China 21.1 (June 2000), 77-106.
88
Dorothy Ko, Teachers of the Inner Chambers: Women and Culture in Seventeenth-Century China
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994).

54
without booming sericulture.
89
Some others became the “Six Grannies” (liu po )
entering the inner quarters and bringing in news from the outside world to
respectable women.
90

Yin and Yang
Yin and yang constitute another pair of bipolar ideas to address the
complementary forces or hierarchical polarity between women (dark, passive, female,
emotional) and men. Lisa Raphals points out the correlation of the sequential
progress of the nature of yin-yang theory and the usual analogy of “men and
women.” The yin-yang concept experienced a “layering process” from
“complementary polarity,” to “oppositional distinction,” and finally to “hierarchical
distinction” in pre-Qin and Han thoughts. The male-female polarity in the
philosophical texts of these early Chinese periods revealed the same process of
conceptual changes. Men and women constituted a complementary and equal
polarity in the Daoist text—the Huainanzi , which was complied by Liu An (ca. 179-122 BCE). Yet Dong Zhongshu (ca. 179-104 BCE) started to
build gender hierarchy between men and women by preferring the yang principle in
his Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn (Chunqiu fanlu ). In the
Discussion in the White Tiger Hall (Baihutong ), compiled by Ban Gu
(32-92), the hierarchical view of yin and yang was referred to as the essential

89
Li Bozhong , “Cong ‘fufu bingzuo’ dao ‘nangeng nuzhi’—Ming Qing Jiangnan nongjia funu
laodong wenti tantao zhi yi” — ,
Zhongguo jingjishi yanjiu , no. 3 (1996), 99-107.
90
Victoria Cass, Dangerous Women: Warriors, Grannies and Geishas of the Ming (Rowman &
Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1999), 47-64.

55
difference between men and women, and became a source of the social identity and
inferior family roles of women. According to the Discussion in the White Tiger Hall,
“Yang sings and yin harmonized. Man leads and woman follows.”
91
Such a view
was embodied in the Admonitions for Women (Nujie ), written by Ban Zhao,
who was the sister of Ban Gu and is known to the West as Cao Dagu . Ban
Zhao stated that a husband is a woman’s “Heaven” and the “polar star” of her life.
92

By the end of the Later Han dynasty, the hierarchical yin-yang and women-men
analogies were firmly formed and influenced the gender discourse in subsequent
dynasties.
The hierarchical concept of yin and yang was applied in signifying the
differences between the living and ancestral spirits. Worshiping ancestral spirits was
a gesture of a male heir’s filiality and an element of the patrilineal principle in
Confucian family ethics. In general, the souls of the deceased belonged to the yin
world. Ancestral spirits, however, were seen as yang in the eyes of the living
descendants because they had a place in the patriline and had duties and rights to
remain concerned about the family welfare on the one hand and receive sacrifices
from descendants on the other. Family duties and status were thus tied together and
decided a person’s spiritual essence. An ancestral spirit had no obligation to non-
family members and would be seen as yin by other families. Arthur Wolf clarifies
this relativity and pinpoints that “one man’s ancestor is another man’s ghost.”
93

91
Raphals, Sharing the Light, 158-65,
92
Ibid, 236-9.
93
Arthur P. Wolf, “Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors,” in Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society, ed.
Arthur P. Wolf (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1974), 146.

56
The hierarchical concept of yin and yang also signifies the family status of
daughters and male heirs. A daughter was an outsider to her natal family but would
get her membership and female identity from her marital family. If a woman died
after marriage, her tablet would be worshipped by the descendants of her marital
family because she had formed a “single unit” with her husband. If a woman
suffered a premature death before marriage, she would not have a place on the altar
of her natal home. She would become a yin spirit or hungry and wandering ghost
that enjoyed no incense-offering. In addition, because a premature death was an
unfilial act, the dead child should be punished or denied.
94
Such an unmarried
daughter who died prematurely would usually be forgotten and become a yin ghost.
This explains why Guangdong spinsters, as I mentioned earlier, bought girls as their
replacements to fulfill duties in marital families: women, either unmarried daughters
or married women, needed to be remembered, and they sought their family status
even if they wanted to reject marriage. In some cases her tablet would be placed in
“maiden temples” outside the natal family, as those noted by Arthur Wolf in
Taiwan.
95
Although the spirits of these unmarried daughters were remembered and
worshipped, being placed outside their families or houses clearly showed that they
were outsiders to their families and their social or spiritual status was no better than
that of anonymous ghosts. In other words, the yin-yang concept also signifies family
membership. A woman’s membership in a family thus decided her yin-yang nature
both before and after death.

94
Ibid, 147-8.
95
Ibid, 148-50.

57
The subtlety of the yin-yang nature of male and female members in a family not
only signifies family duties and status, but also manifests their potential in restoring
the family order. Steven Sangren proposes a schematic device—remembered /
forgotten, and kin / non-kin to explain how the supernatural entities (ling ) mediate
between order and disorder: All kin are yang in relation to non-kin; and the
remembered and worshipped spirits are yang in relation to forgotten and
unworshipped ones who are yin. Forgotten and unworshipped kin, therefore, are
yang in relation to forgotten ghosts (outsiders to a family), but they are yin in
relation to remembered kin or ancestors. Forgotten and anonymous ghosts resided in
purgatory, rarely threatening the living and the familial order of the yang world. Yet
the spirits placed between the yang and yin realms would have reasons to threaten
the living in order to receive worship and incorporation into the patriline, because
ancestral sacrifices ensure the transformation of the yin souls to yang ancestral
status.
96
For example, a forgotten ancestor would express his anger and anxiety by
disturbing the yang order in the family, such as causing sickness in certain family
members, to remind the descendants to perform proper rituals in exchange for his
power and blessing to restore the order. The soul of a dead daughter, as I will
discuss in Chapter 5, would receive family recognition and worship by the living for
her protective power.

96
P. Steven Sangren, History and Magical Power in a Chinese Community (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1987), 141-8.

58
The Song Discourse on Family and Women
Confucian scholars in the Song dynasty, such as Yuan Cai (1140-1195),
and Zhu Xi (1130-1200) proposed conceptions of family ethics based on
complementary and hierarchical yin-yang concepts by emphasizing women’s
auxiliary family roles and inferior moral quality at the same time. The Song scholar-
officials faced both the failure of the Song government in fighting against the
northern non-Chinese people and the threat from the expanding networks of affinal
kin through marriage. Therefore, Song scholar-officials of different regions or levels
developed ideas and practices from the Book of Rites to strengthen the hierarchical
husband-wife relationship and reform the patrilineal family system.
97
They saw
womanly virtue and the religious piety of elite women as the assets of their families
and society; elite women, in return, obtained authority inside their households as
managers.
98

Yuan Cai, being a local educated property owner, argued in his Precepts for
Social Life (Shifan ) that the family head must take full responsibility in
managing the household and family property and have more tolerance and
forbearance in preserving the family and interpersonal ethics (renlun ). He
wrote that women were often the source of family discord because they “lacked a
sense of the common interest or of fairness” and did not have blood ties but only

97
Ebrey, “Women, Marriage, and the Family,” 209-10; idem, The Inner Quarters, 4.
98
Patricia Ebrey, Family and Property in Sung China: Yuan Ts’ai’s Precepts for Social Life
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984); idem, Chu Hsi’s Family Rituals: A Twelfth-Century
Chinese Manual for the Performance of Cappings, Weddings, Funerals, and Ancestral Rites
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991); idem, The Inner Quarters; Patricia Buckley Ebrey,
and James L. Watson, eds. Kinship Organization in Late Imperial China, 1000-1940 (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, 1986).

59
marital relations with her in-laws. In addition, women should not be trusted in
managing households and educating children because of their general lack of moral
quality and literacy; their only responsibility was the rearing of young children.
99

Zhu Xi, a representative of Southern Song Confucian scholars, strongly
argued that the most important concern and practice for people in a family was to
follow rules of ritual and decorum (li ) in addition to managing households.
100

Like another Song scholar Cheng Yi (1033-1107), who emphasized ancestral
rites and the descent-line heir in the Chinese family and lineage system, Zhu Xi
focused on rebuilding Confucian orthodoxy in family ethics by promoting the revival
of the ancient descent-line (zongfa ) system. This system, according to the
Confucian ritual classics of the Zhou and Han periods, divided the family into two
parts: the senior line of the eldest son or “main descent line” (dazong ), and other
collateral lines of younger sons or “lesser descent lines” (xiaozong ). The
descent-line heir should be the ritual head of the family, control the family property,
and preside at cappings and weddings in which he pledged the young person’s
entering adulthood and family duties. Zhu Xi also compiled Zhu Xi’s Family Rituals
(Zhuzi jiali ), a synthetic manual of the Confucian tradition of rituals, to
standardize the private performance of four family rituals: initiations, weddings,

99
Bettine Birge, “Chu Hsi and Women’s Education,” in Neo-Confucian Education: The Formative
Stage, ed. Wm. Theodore de Bary and John W. Chaffe (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1989), 330, 336, 353; Ebrey, Yuan Ts’ai’s Precepts, particularly chapter 3, 4, and 5
of Part One.
100
Ebrey, Yuan Ts’ai’s Precepts, 35, 49.

60
funerals, and sacrifices to ancestral spirits.
101
He believed that both elite and
commoners can accomplish self-cultivation through the practice of rituals.
102

As for married women, whose family roles and status were confirmed
through marriage, Zhu Xi argued that they were indispensable members in their
families and they should dedicate themselves to preserving their husband’s descent-
line. Based on the principle of the “differentiation [of function] between husband
and wife” (fufu zhibie ),

Zhu Xi argued that women should be their
husbands’ inner helpers, receiving education to manage the families and educate
children, particularly boys, although he believed there was no equality in intellectual
capability between men and women.
103
Zhu Xi also stressed spatial restrictions for
men and women in his Family Rituals; in all Confucian rituals the men should stand
on the west and women on the east, showing that “male and female are parallel and
yet male is superior to female.”
104
A woman should also practice filiality by serving
her parents-in-law unfailingly and attending ancestral rituals, and a widow should
resist remarriage, both to demonstrate her loyalty to the descent-line of her marital
family.
105
He included a statement of Cheng Yi in his own book, the Reflections of
Things at Hand (Jinsilu抬 ), to address this sagely ideal: “to starve to death is a
very small matter. To lose one’s integrity, however, is a very serious matter.”
106

Zhu Xi’s expectation to build a higher standard of family ethics for women, who

101
Ebrey, Chu Hsi’s Family Rituals, xiii-xxii.
102
Ebrey, Confucianism and Family Rituals in Imperial China: A Social History of Writing About
Rites (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 52-61, 66-67, 123-38.
103
Birge, “Chu Hsi and Women’s Education,” 331-52.
104
Ebrey, Chu Hsi’s Family Rituals, xxv; idem, Confucianism and Family Rituals, 227.
105
Birge, “Chu Hsi and Women’s Education,”335-9.
106
Quoted in Birge, “Chu Hsi and Women’s Education,”33-9.

61
were the weaker sex and should obey their husbands, was highly regarded by his
followers like Huang Gan 湫 (1152-1221). Huang Gan further argued that a
widow should stay chaste, should stay in the marital family, and should donate her
dowry as part of the conjugal property, all the while assisting the impoverished
household economy, tending to the children’s education, and buying the tomb lands
for their marital family.
107

The Ming-Qing Ethical Discourse and Practices
During the Ming and Qing periods, Zhu Xi’s teachings, the Family Rituals in
particular, received both political support as the substance of family ethics and
numerous revisions to accommodate local customs and interests at the same time.
The first Ming Hongwu emperor (r. 1368-1398) declared that Zhu Xi’s Family
Rituals should be the guideline of marriages among the people, and the book was
included in the Great Ming Commandment (Da Ming huidian ). In the
Qing dynasty, Emperors Kangxi (r. 1662-1722) and Yongzheng (r. 1723-1735)
issued the “Sixteen Maxims of the Sacred Edicts,” which was developed from Zhu
Xi’s Community Compact (xiangyue 悱 ), and listed filiality and brotherly
submission as the first maxim.
108
Yet the core argument in the Family Rituals—the
descent-line system—was downplayed. Because the descent-line heir could be
younger than or junior to the practical family head, Patricia Ebrey argues, this system

107
Bettine Birge, Women, Property, and Confucian Reaction in Song and Yuan China (960-1368)
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 189-96, 200.
108
Wm. Theodore de Bary, and Richard Lufrano ed. Sources of Chinese Tradition, vol. 2. 2
nd
edition.
(New York: Columbia University, 2000), 70-1.

62
was revised to cope with ordinary family practices and to respect the parental
authority of the family head.
109
Fathers were therefore allowed to preside at
cappings and weddings in their families.
110
Other adjustments included Zhu Xi’s
arrangement of ancestral tablets and the incorporation of local religious practices.
Nevertheless, Ebrey also notes that “the wide circulation of revised versions of the
Family Rituals shows that people wanted ritual manuals that were based on standard
beliefs and simultaneously universal and comfortable.”
111
The elites of different
localities consciously imitated correct rituals standardized by the imperial state and
transformed deviant family practices in the eyes of the state.
112
Ebrey’s arguments
attest to James Watson’s concept of an “orthodoxy-orthopraxy continuum,” in which
people sought a balance between “correct performance” and “heteroprax practices,”
in order to conform to the top-down inculcation of universal practices on the one
hand and to “feel comfortable” with their local practices on the other. Whatever the
scholars and commoners’ intentions or revisions were, neither the revised works nor
orthoprax practices intended to challenge gender or generational order in the
tradition of Chinese family rituals.
Responding to commercialization, migration, and extreme social mobility,
late Ming and Qing elites were eagerly engaged in an emerging discourse on family
morality and confirmed women as indispensable inner helpers to their husbands.
The Qing scholar-officials promoted the state ideology of “men till while women
weave” as a norm among commoners, in order to “enhance local self-sufficiency”

109
Ebrey, Confucianism and Family Rituals, 151.
110
Ebrey, Chu Hsi’s Family Rituals, xxviii.
111
Ibid, xxviii.
112
Ebrey, “Women, Marriage, and the Family in Chinese History,” 211, 223.

63
and restore the orthodox gender division of labor.
113
As Francesca Bray illustrates,
many late Ming and Qing male commoners became skilled laborers in urban areas so
that men gradually took over at the loom, ignored rice-growing, and allowed women
to farm in the fields. Commercialization thus became a threat or disturbance to the
self-efficiency of each household. The gendered division of labor was reversed in
many areas that saw “men weaving and women tilling the fields.” The Qing scholar-
officials believed that such socioeconomic disorder would soon lead to family
discord and “these same wives would be suing their husbands, and husbands their
wives.”
114
In addition, the High Qing scholar-official Chen Hongmou
(1696-1771) compiled the Sourcebook on Women’s Education (Jiaonu yigui ) to educate women with moral virtue and “rational intelligence” (xinghui ).
115

As William Rowe notes, “women should play the major practical role in the sacred
task of managing the household, ensuring proper etiquette in intrafamilial relations,
controlling the household budget, and overseeing servants.”
116
This family moralism
instilled Confucian values in elite women’s literary works as well. Just as Qing
scholar Zhang Xuecheng (1738-1801) believed that female writing would
express a “Womanly Dao” (fudao ) or the “Four Womanly Attributes” (side ), a Qing elite woman Wanyan Yun Zhu (1771-1833) compiled a

113
Susan Mann, “Household Handicrafts and State Policy in Qing Times,” in To Achieve Security and
Wealth: The Qing Imperial State and the Economy, 1644-1911, ed. Jane Kate Leonard and John R.
Watt (Ithaca, NY: East Asia Program, Cornell University, 1992), 75-96; Bray, “Towards a Critical
History of Non-Western Technology,” 175-94.
114
Bray, “Towards a Critical History of Non-Western Technology,” 197
115
William Rowe, Saving the World: Chen Hongmou and Elite Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century
China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001),
116
William Rowe, “Women and the Family in Mid-Qing Social Thought: The Case of Chen
Hongmou,” Late Imperial China 13.2(1992), 14-15.

64
collection of poetry, the Correct Beginnings: Women’s Poetry of Our August
Dynasty (Guochao guixiu zhengshi ji ), to present the truest moral
voice of High Qing women. Wanyan Yun Zhu further used family roles and moral
qualities as criteria to rank the literary value of women’s literary works.
117

The most important feature in the Ming-Qing ethical discourse, however, is
that women’s filiality toward parents-in-law and chastity to their marital family
replaced filiality toward parents. A woman’s fidelity toward her husband and marital
family was appraised as the highest womanly virtue. Using the Biographies of
Exemplary Women as a model, Ming scholar Lu Kun (1536-1618) complied the
Female Exemplars (Guifan ) and included 14 life stories of filial daughters at the
beginning of a volume of 138 biographies.
118
He explains, “the ‘Wifely Way’ (fudao
) and ‘maternal rectitude’ (muyi ) must start with ‘daughterly virtue’ (nude
). There was never a daughter who had no goodness but became a wife of
virtue.”
119
The fourteen life stories, nevertheless, occupy only 10 % of the whole
text and reveal the decreasing importance of daughterly filiality toward parents.
Fangqin Du and Susan Mann analyze biographies of exemplary women in dynastic
histories and conclude that filiality was directed by Ming-Qing people to the marital

117
Susan Mann, “’Fuxue’ (Women’s Learning) by Zhang Xuecheng (1738-1801): China’s First
History of Women’s Culture,” Late Imperial China 13.1 (June 1992), 43; idem, Precious Records,
chapter 4.
118
The Biographies of Exemplary Women was compiled by Liu Xiang (ca. 77-6 BCE). The book lists
six types of virtue as qualifications of a virtuous women; these virtues include maternal rectitude
(muyi ), sage intelligence (xianmin ), benevolent wisdom (renzhi ), purity and obedience
(zhenshun ), chastity and righteousness (jieyi ), and skill in argument (biantong ). Lisa
Raphals argues that the Biographies of Exemplary Women values the “learned instructress” motif
more than other instruction texts published in subsequent dynasties. For details, see Raphals, Sharing
the Light, particularly chapters 1, 5, and 10.
119
Lu Kun , Guifan (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1994), 185-6.

65
family. Filiality was an important womanly virtue before the Ming-Qing period.
Yet “Ming and Qing records of female virtue marginalize tales of filial daughters.”
120

In addition, Ming women and scholars emphasized purity (jie ) and martyrdom (lie
), and Qing women and scholars promoted filiality as the core wifely virtue.
121

The fact that the Four Books for Women (Nu sishu ) did not include the
Classic of Filiality for Women, according to Susan Mann, proves that the moral
emphasis in the Ming-Qing periods had formally shifted from daughterly virtue to
the filial deeds (xiao xing ) of married women toward in-laws.
122

Chastity to the marital family became the analogy of scholars’ loyalty to the
ruler and community honor in the Ming-Qing periods. Chastity (zhen ) was not a
virtue highlighted in the Book of Rites or the Analects. It appears only five times in
the Book of Rites and once in the Analects. In the Ming and Qing periods, however,
women’s suicides were seen as the proof of their purity and loyalty to families.
Many Ming-Qing scholars felt frustrated by the corrupt government but anxious to
serve the government, as argued by Susan Mann, Ju-k’ang T’ien, and Shuhui Yang.
These late imperial scholars made women’s chastity a metaphor for community
honor and scholars’ political loyalty to the government.
123
Widows remaining in full

120
Fangqin Du, and Susan Mann. “Competing Claims on Womanly Virtue in Late Imperial China,”in
Women and Confucian Cultures in Premodern China, Korea, and Japan, ed. Dorothy Ko, Jahyun
Kim Haboush, and Joan R. Piggot (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003), 227.
121
Ibid, 220, 233-41.
122
The Four Books for Women include The Admonitions for Women, The Analects for Women, The
Instructions for the Inner Quarters (Neixun ℏ , by Empress Xu of the Ming dynasty), and A Concise
Account of Basic Regulations for Women (Nufan jielu 抬 by Mrs. Liu of the Ming dynasty).
Ibid, 237-9. Lisa Raphals also argues that the husband-wife relationship and mother’s authority were
put to the foreground in the Ming dynasty. See Raphals, 113-8.
123
See Susan Mann, “Widows in the Kinship, Class, and Community Structures of Qing Dynasty
China,” Journal of Asian Studies 46.1 (1987), 42-7; Ju-k’ang T’ien, Male Anxiety and Female

66
service to their marital family also represented local moral standards to the outside
world.
124
As Katherine Calize points out, the change of ethical discourse from the
Song to the Ming and Qing periods can be seen in the transition from almost no Song
shrines to exemplary faithful widows, to the enshrinment of the faithful widows as
an ideological expression after the 1490s.
125

The transmission and enforcement of the concept of female chastity in the
High Qing period was in fact the result of the efforts of moral communities in each
locality, but they were full of compromise and unorthodox practices. Janet Theiss
uses criminal cases to examine norms of female chastity and virtuous behavior of
women in the Qianlong reign of the Qing. Female chastity, according to her, was
interpreted and enforced by “local moral communities” or “patriarchal authority”
composed of the magistrate, local literati elite, the marital and natal families. When
any moral transgression happened, local moral communities would prioritize family
and community harmony, affective ties, face, and social status to orthodox moral
standards. Although the state desired to impose the orthodox view of gender order
upon the people, local moral communities were not the upholders of the orthodox
ethical system and state laws.
126
In addition, while the Qing government promoted

Chastity: A Comparative Study of Chinese Ethical Values in Ming-Ch’ing Times (Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1988); Shuhui Yang, “Ventriloquism through Women Characters,” in Appropriation and
Representation: Feng Menglong and the Chinese Vernacular Story (Ann Arbor, MI: University of
Michigan, 1998), particularly 99-152.
124
Mann, “Widows in the Kinship, Class, and Community Structures,” 40-7.
125
Katherine Carliz, “Shrines, Governing-Class Identity, and the Cult of Widow Fidelity in Mid-Ming
Jiangnan,” Journal of Asian Studies 56.3 (1997), 612-3.
126
Janet Theiss uses the term “local moral communities” in her dissertation but changes the
phraseology to “patriarchal authority” in the book. See Janet Mary Theiss, “Dealing with Disgrace:
The Negotiation of Female Virtue in Eighteenth-Century China” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of
California, Berkeley, 1998), 45-58, 75-96; idem, Disgraceful Matters: The Politics of Chastity in
Eighteenth-Century China (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004), 8-9, 39-
53, 69-81.

67
life-long female chastity and focused on women’s fulfillment of family duties and
the maintenance of gender distinction, “women of the inner quarters were the most
public of women.”
127

Scholar-officials’ reasons for emphasizing chastity and redirecting women’s
filiality from natal to marital families may not have been well known among
commoners but they definitely helped imprint in the public mind the significance of
patrilineality and patriarchal authority. The economic activities practiced by women,
as discussed in Chapters Two and Three of this dissertation, generally attest to their
acceptance of the Qing intellectual trend.

Late Qing and Republican Ethical Discourse
In the late 19
th
and early 20
th
centuries, urban intellectuals and politicians
reconsidered the nature and applicability of Confucian family ethics, but most of
them still “believed in patriarchal authority and the traditional link between family
and state.”
128
The New Culture Movement of 1915-1923 absorbed a lot of urban
intellectuals who felt that one reason for China’s defeat by the Western countries was
the traditional family-lineage system and Confucian gender hierarchy in which each
member was required to blindly submit to those above them. With imported
concepts, such as Western individualism and the conjugal family ideal, reformers
designed a vision for China’s new political order: The husband-wife relationship
would replace the father-son relationship to be the core of the family, and the family

127
Theiss, Disgraceful Matters, 13, 30-37.
128
Susan Glosser, Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915-1953 (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 2003), 12.

68
would, in turn, be the building block of the state; women should follow their free will
to enter into and create happy marriages, to be companions to their husbands, moral
and competent mothers to their sons, and citizens of the new state.
129
Responding to
New Culture radicals, scholars of neo-traditionalism, such as Feng Youlan
(1895-1990), Liang Shuming (1893-1988), and Zhang Junmai ⊙ (or
Carsun Chang, 1866-1969), devoted themselves to tightening the link between
families and the nation by using Confucian values to cope with socio-economic
changes.
130
Political power was not absent from this intellectual debate. Chiang
Kai-shek (1887-1975), the leader of the Nationalist Party, inaugurated in
1934 the New Life movement to create and emphasize Confucian self-cultivation,
and to build up people’s morale for dedication to the nation.
131
Chiang highlighted a
revised set of Confucian ethics and indoctrinated the four principles—“regulated
attitude” (li ), “right conduct” (yi ), “clear discrimination” (lian ), and “real
self-consciousness” (chi )—in the people.
132

In 20
th
-century China, modernization and nationalism dominated the
discourse on women’s rights, the ideal woman, and ideal family. Both state policies
and market forces promoted such “morality movement” exerted upon women. Tani

129
Ibid, 1-23.
130
For more details, see Charlotte Furth, “Intellectual Change: From the Reform Movement to the
May Fourth Movement, 1895-1920;” and Benjamin I. Schwartz, “Themes in Intellectual History: May
Fourth and After;” both in An Intellectual History of Modern China, ed. Merle Goldman and Leo Ou-
fan Lee (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 13-141.
131
Charlotte Furth, “Culture and Politics in Modern Chinese Conservatism,” in The Limits of Change:
Essays on Conservative Alternatives in Republican China, ed. Charlotte Furth (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University, 1976), 35; K.C. Liu, “The Nationalist Revolution,” in Sources of Chinese
Tradition, ed. Wm., Theodore de Bary, and Richard Lufrano, Vol. 2, 2
nd
edition (New York:
Columbia University, 2000), 340.
132
K.C. Liu, “The Nationalist Revolution,” 341-2. Here I follow the translation of K. C. Liu.

69
Barlow pinpoints to a new term—nuxing —that was coined and assigned to
women as a new identity in response to the calls of nationalists, who expected these
new-age women to bear more new citizens for the modern nation-state.
133
The ideal
new woman forged in the family-reform debate should be an ideal wife and mother
to fulfill her civic duties for the nation and to satisfy the male desire and interest in
obtaining a compatible companion.
134
Women’s familial roles, particularly as
mothers, were reemphasized rather than undermined in the late Qing and Republican
national discourse of service to the newly established nation. In Linda Kerber’s
words, these Republican women were expected to become “Republican mothers.”
135

The emphases on the husband-wife relationship and motherhood in the late
Qing and Republican ethical discourse were reiterated by urban intellectuals but did
not effectively appeal to the general public. Confucian family ethics were still
pervasive among family elders and rural people, who stressed the father-son
relationship and valued patriarchal authority as a “tradition” recreated by followers
and undergoing change with the passage of time. As Chapters 4 and 5 will show, the
clashes between late imperial and Republican ethical discourses on family were
manifest in family disputes published in newspapers and in religious practices, which
were seen as being aberrant from the orthodoxy. In addition, local communities
were actively engaged in these disputes to defend their local social order and family
interests. While the values of Confucian family ethics, such as the patrilineal

133
Tani E Barlow, “Theorizing Woman: Funu Guojia, Jiating (Chinese Woman, Chinese State,
Chinese Family),” in Body, Subject and Power in China, ed. Angela Zito and Tani E. Barlow
(Chicago: University of Chicago, 1994, pp. 253-89.
134
Glosser, Family and State, 72-99.
135
Linda Kerber, “Foreword,” in Glosser, Chinese Visions of Family and State, xi.

70
principle and female virtues like filiality and chastity, remained at the core of family
dynamics, ordinary people believed that the Confucian “tradition” was preserved and
modified to be in accord with the new familism. For many ordinary people,
“tradition” was rooted in their life and was not unchanging or outdated. Family and
local communities together mediated and developed social norms and local customs,
which were not always consistent with the national discourses.

B. Family Ethics and the Law Codes
The principles and practices of Confucian family ethics were embodied in the
following major concepts and existed in the changing law codes throughout history:
family division rules and women’s property rights, “communal living, common
property” (tongju gongcai ), widows’ authority, adoption and combined
succession (jiantia䤏 ).
The basic inheritance law and the correct household division in late imperial
China should ideally happen after the family head died and only among brothers, in
order to preserve the patriarchal authority and keep the patrimony from dispersion.
The Tang and Song inheritance law instituted the regulation of “equal division
among brothers” (xiongdi junfen ): Each son of the family should receive
an equal share of the father’s property.
136
Although the practice of drawing lots
appeared on the occasion of household division from the Han dynasty on, the
division was usually witnessed by respected middlemen, such as neighbors and
affinal relatives, and written down as a household division document (fenjiadan
136
Birge, Women, Property, and Confucian Reaction, 76-9, 138.

71
) to ensure fairness.
137
In other words, a private household division not only had
to conform to community norms but also became a publicized event, under the
supervision of local moral communities. As we will see in Chapters Two and Three
of this dissertation, the engagement of communities in family property disposal, even
in the Qing and Republican periods, was not unusual.
Regarding daughters’ property rights, because daughters were seen as
outsiders of their natal family, each was only entitled to a dowry share from the
household division during most of Chinese history, with the exception of the
Southern Song period (1127-1279) when daughters’ property rights experienced a
temporary expansion. The basic inheritance law of “equal division among brothers”
was reinterpreted by Southern Song judges in South China as “equitable division
among brothers and sisters,” meaning that people should follow the two-to-one ratio
to divide family property between orphaned sons and daughters. If there was no son
alive, unmarried daughters could inherit all the property.
138
This expansion of
daughters’ property rights did not last long. In the Yuan, an unmarried daughter
without a brother could not inherit her father’s property unless she conducted an
uxorilocal marriage and her husband could replace the absent heir or family head to
ensure the supply of men for the military and to take charge of tax and corvée
obligations.
139
As Bettine Birge argues, the Yuan state emphasized its control over
people to ensure the supply of taxes and conscripts so that it required a

137
Birge, Women, Property, and Confucian Reaction, 78; Kathryn Bernhardt, Women and Property in
China, 960-1949 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 49.
138
Birge, Women, Property, and Confucian Reaction, 79.
139
Birge, “Women and Confucianism from Song to Ming: The Institutionalization of Patrilineality,”
in The Song-Yuan-Ming Transition in Chinese History, ed. Paul Jakov Smith and Richard von Glahn
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2003), 217-21.

72
reconceptualization of family inheritance and privileged male agnates over
daughters. The transformation of ideas about patrilineal principles in the Yuan
marriage and property law deprived women of control over property and freedom of
movement.
140
From then on, a woman in the official family system was further
marginalized because her social gender did not allow her to be an heir in the
patrilineal family system and because she would not receive any family property
other than her dowry even if her parents died without sons.
The concept of “communal living, common property” refers to the ideal norm
of a Chinese family, in which sons and their conjugal units should share one stove,
take meals together with their parents in a joint family, and contribute their labor and
income to family property which was the source of the living expenses of all family
members, held by the whole family, but managed by the family head (jiazhang ).
141
In contrast, the concept of “establishing separate household registration and
dividing the family property” (bieji yicai ) refers to sons moving out of the
houses of their parents, dividing stoves, and establishing or managing their private
property without the approval of their parents. This concept of “establishing separate
household registration and dividing the family property” was adopted into the Tang
Code (the most important revision was issued in 737), and the Tang government
instituted a punishment of three years of penal servitude for it.
142
The Great Ming
Code and the Great Qing Code both followed this moral principle and the Tang

140
Birge, Women, Property, and Confucian Reaction.
141
Shiga, “Family Property,” 112-4.
142
Xue Yunsheng , Tang Ming lu hebian , annotated by Hui Xiaofeng , vol.
1, juan 12 (Beijing: Falu chubanshe, 1999), 268.

73
precedents. Without the consent of family elders, according to the Qing laws, “in
every case where paternal grandparents and parents are living, and sons, and sons’
sons establish separate household registrations and divide the family property, they
will be punished with 100 strokes of the heavy bamboo. (Unless the paternal
grandparents or parents complain, there cannot be a prosecution.)”
143

A late imperial widow’s authority in her marital family resulted from the
interaction and mediation among state laws, intellectual proposals, and familial
practices. Because she had formed a single unit with her husband, a Tang or Song
widow without sons could inherit her husband’s share in household property division;
she also had exclusive authority to establish an heir for her husband. It is not
unusual for widows to adopt children from natal families if the children were under
three sui. If a widow had any son, she became her son’s property manager on his
behalf and could sell the property if her family was impoverished. Nevertheless, a
widow’s son could not sell family property without her consent even if he had
reached adulthood. Her signature or mark must be indicated on any sale contract
concluded by her son; otherwise, the transaction would be illegal and her son could
be punished for “inferior or younger family members making use of family property
without authorization.” After the Yuan had incorporated many patrilineal ideas in to
the laws, the Ming laws also took away a widow’s sole authority in establishing an
heir. A lineage elder must be engaged in the selection of the heir from the agnates of
proper generational order, meaning that the heir should not come from a family of a

143
William C. Jones trans., The Great Qing Code (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 112.

74
different surname like her natal family.
144
Yet the Qing government gave greater
credence to the widows’ will and preference. The Qing code even allowed
“combined succession” (jiantiao 䤏 ), meaning that one individual agnate in the
proper generational order could succeed his father’s and one of his father’s brother’s
lines.
145
In practice, there were also affinal, sororal and maternal adoptions of sons
through the female line.
146

Matthew Sommer, however, suggests that a widow’s ability to retain her
property and property rights was closely related to her ability to remain chaste. A
widow could claim chastity as a defense to resist the pressure from in-laws who
intended to take her property by forcing her to remarry. Other widows with little or
no property had few alternatives but remarriage, prostitution, or non-normative
sexual relationships.
147

An imperial or early republican woman’s family status and authority in
relation to her father, husband and sons, according to the above Confucian ideals and
law codes, resulted from the competition of the generational order and gender
hierarchy in the Confucian ethical system, and social and legal changes from
imperial to Republican times. Before 1931, the gender hierarchy and generational
order were constantly in flux. Shiga Shuzo’s concept of “one unit” points out that a
woman was subject to the gender hierarchy and male relatives: mainly her father and
husband. Yet the generational order weighed over the gender hierarchy when she

144
Birge, “Women and Confucianism from Song to Ming,” 222-30.
145
Bernhardt, Women and Property, 44.
146
Ann Waltner, Getting an Heir: Adoption and the Construction of Kinship in Late Imperial China
(Honolulu: University of Hawai’i press, 1990), 94-9.
147
Matthew Sommer, Sex, Law and Society in Late Imperial China (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2000), particularly chapter 5.

75
became a widow and could represent her husband even though her son became the
successor to her deceased husband’s estate. Because she was a proxy of her husband,
her son must honor the generational order, her legal rights, and decisive authority in
managing transactions of family property even if he had reached maturity.
Radical challenges and different practices came from the New Culture
intellectuals during the Republican period and the 1931 New Family Law. The
Nationalist government used the conjugal family ideal to redefine kinship based on
blood ties rather than the traditional five graded mourning system.
148
In its 1931
Family and Inheritance Laws the regulations were based on the responsibility and
obligations of members in a nuclear or stem family rather than in a joint family.
Furthermore, the principles of “equality between men and women” (nannu pingdeng
) and the concept of “individual property/ postmortem inheritance” in the
1931 Family and Inheritance Laws replaced the single units of “husband and wife”
and of “father-son,” and overshadowed the traditional gender hierarchy and
generational order.
149
The new laws gave an adult woman equal rights with an adult
man to freely enter and leave a marriage, and to jointly manage family property.
Women also gained individual inheritance rights from their husbands and natal
families, which liberated women from the material concern hidden in the chastity
cult. A widow could legally inherit an equal share of her deceased husband’s
property with her children, both male and female. She was allowed to bring her
share of inheritance to enter into another marriage. Yet she lost the parental

148
Bernhardt, Women and Property, 106-10.
149
Ibid, 118.

76
authority to manage the whole property as a proxy of her husband and on behalf of
her non-adult sons; neither could she wield her “veto” power in her adult son’s
property transactions. The new Inheritance Law also deprived a traditional widow of
the opportunity of inheriting from her parents-in-law on behalf of her deceased
husband and living sons because of the redefinition of family which excluded a
widow from the group of potential property inheritors.
150

Furthermore, the joint matrimonial property regime (lianhe caichan zhi䓊 ) in the new Family Law downplayed women’s property rights during the
Republican period. While most Republican people were unable to distinguish the
differences in the three main statutory matrimonial property regimes—the joint
property regime (Articles 1016-1030), the common property regime (gongtong
caichan zhi䓊 , Articles 1031-1041), and the separate property regime
(fenbie caichan zhi䓊 , Articles 1044-1048), married women were
presumed to adopt the joint property regime (Article 1005). A husband thus
remained the manager of household finance (Article 1018); he had legal rights to
own the profit generated from his wife’s property (Articles 1017 and 1019) and
could sell his wife’s property without her consent (Article 1020), because he was
legally seen as the family head. A wife could not dispose of the property under her
name or avoid paying an inheritance tax on her property after her husband’s death, if
she could not offer evidence that she had had the money or financial ability to
purchase the property after marriage. In such cases, the wife’s property was seen as

150
Ibid, 196-9.

77
belonging to the deceased husband and should be divided to all inheritors, although it
was under her name (Article 1017).
The enforcement of the Republican legal code was obstructed by endless
warfare, the limited area ruled by the Nationalist Government, and the objection of
the senior generation of Chinese families who tried to adhere to both the gender
hierarchy and generational order. Conflicts regarding women’s family status and
property rights thus happened between men and women, younger and elder
generations, and legal and social practices, as will be discussed in Chapter4.

IV. Women and Confucian Family Ethics in Quanzhou Practices
A. The Quanzhou Followers of Zhu Xi’s School
Quanzhou people often attributed the prevalent and strong lineage and family
systems to Zhu Xi and his followers’ efforts in transforming local customs because
Zhu Xi once served in the Greater Quanzhou area and Quanzhou people were proud
of it.
151
As a Qing scholar Shi Hongbao (d. 1871) recorded, Quanzhou
during the Ming period had the most successful candidates in provincial civil service
examinations, and had the higher success ratio among candidates after Fuzhou
during the Qing period.
152
These local scholars were doubtless the followers of Zhu
Xi’s teachings, which had been standardized as the contents of the examinations and
the state ideology. Ming-Qing scholars in Quanzhou were also proud of being the

151
Gao Lingyin , and Chen Qifang , Fujian Zhuzi xue (Fuzhou: Fujian
renmin chubanshe, 1999), 1-15.
152
Shi Hongbao , “Ming zaji” 救 in Ming Xiaoji 救 / Min zaji 救 , annotated by
Lai Xinxia (Fuzhou: Fujian renmin chubanshe, 1985), juan 6, 99.

78
followers of Zhu Xi’s teachings, referred to by Quanzhou people as the “Learning of
Zhu Xi” (Zhuzi xue ), because most famous Fujian scholars like Zhen Dexiu
(1178-1235), He Qiaoyuan (1557-1631), Li Guangdi (1641-
1718), and Chen Qingyong (1745-1858) were followers of Zhu Xi.
According to the Qianlong Edition of the Quanzhou Prefecture Gazetteer, the spread
of education in Jinjiang County after the Longqin reign period (r. 1567-1572) of the
Ming dynasty was so widespread that “there must be one study in every ten houses;
the sons of peddlers and clerks also learned composition and sentences.”
153

The Li Guangdi and Li Guangpo (1651-1723) brothers in the early Qing
dynasty, with their contributions to the Li family and writings, became
representatives of the Quanzhou followers of the Zhu Xi school. Li Guangdi served
as the Grand Secretary during the Kangxi reign period in the capital of Beijing and
Li Guangpo stayed behind to care for the Li family, both cooperating to honor their
family. Li Guangdi suggested building the Kaoting Academy and enshrining Zhu Xi
in the main hall in 1715, when he retired from the court.
154
Echoing the Qing state
ideology, such as the “Sixteen Maxims of the Sacred Edicts,” Li Guangdi wrote the
Complete Annotation of the Classic of Filiality (Xiajing quanzhu ) and the
Compilation of the Rites of Master Zhu (Zhuzi li zuan ).
155
He further
asserted the primacy of sacrifices to the ancestors and the establishment of the

153
QQFZ, juan 20: 6a.
154
Chen Dubin and Su Liming , Quanzhou gudai shuyuan (Shandong:
Qilu shushe, 2003), 174.
155
Gao Lingyin and Chen Qifang, Fujian Zhuzi xue, 370-93; Jinjiang wenhuaju and
Jinjiang wenguanhui , Quanzhou lidai minren zhuan 㬟 (Jinjiang: Jinjiang
wenhuaju and Jinjiang wenguanhui, 1982), 269-7; QQFZ, juan 45.

79
descent-line system. Ironically, he built a Li family shrine in 1665 and wrote two
essays—“A Brief Account of the Rites of Offering Sacrifices in the Official Family
Shrine” (Jiamiao jixiang li lue ) and “Briefly on the Rites and
Sacrifices of the Temple of the First Ancestor” (Shizu ciji li lue )—to
emphasize family rituals, even though his family was not in the descent-line.
Historian On-cho Ng argues that Li Guangdi’s efforts in promoting the family rituals
but violating the principle of descent-line system was to maintain the gentry’s
control within the framework of the lineage and over localities.
156
His younger
brother Li Guangpo stayed behind in Quanzhou to care for the family and lineage.
He compiled the Annotation of the Three Rites (Sanli shuyi ) and was
recommended by the local authority to receive the honorary title of “filial and
disinterested” (xiaolien ).
157

Zhu Xi’s influence in Quanzhou is reflected in two other respects: (1) the spread
of education as well as the transmission of Zhu Xi’s teachings; and (2) the practice of
genealogy compilation. First, two modern Quanzhou scholars, Chen Dubin and Su
Liming, note that eleven official or private local academies (xueyuan ) were
established in Jinjiang, Nan’an and Hui’an Counties from the early 16
th
century to
the end of the Ming period; another sixteen academies were built during the Qing in
the same three counties. Scholars in these academies enshrined Zhu Xi and his
Learning as “orthodox teaching” (zhengxue ). This trend of highlighting Zhu Xi

156
On-cho Ng, Cheng-Zhu Confucianism in the Early Qing: Li Guangdi (1642-1718) and Qing
Learning (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2001), 188-92.
157
QQFZ, juan 45.

80
and his teachings was continued until the 19
th
century, when these academies were
transformed into modern schools (xuetang ) and western knowledge began to
gradually replace the traditional examination-oriented teaching.
158
Second,
compiling genealogies and strengthening lineages became popular in Quanzhou from
the mid-Ming era, and compilers of these genealogies and lineage member
emphasized family rituals (ancestral sacrifices in particular), gender separation and
generational order, and the gendered division of labor in family genealogies. In
addition to following the Family Rituals to record the establishment of ancestral
shrines, compilers of Quanzhou family genealogies often directly claimed that they
followed Zhu Xi’s instruction. For example, the Xie family cited Zhu Xi as an
authority in the preface of its family genealogy to stress that compiling the genealogy
was to serve the purpose of respecting ancestors and to fulfill the duties of the
offspring.
159
Another Zhao family recorded in its “Genealogical Instruction” that the
performance of the four family rituals—initiations, weddings, funerals, and sacrifices
to ancestral spirits—must conform to Zhu Xi’s Family Rituals and should not have
Buddhists attending these rituals.
160

B. Quanzhou Women and Confucian Family Ethics
Surrounding the husband-wife relationship, Quanzhou women’s conformity to
Confucian Family ethics was manifest in the widow chastity cult, but their departure

158
Chen Dubin and Su Liming, Quanzhou gudai shuyuan, 94-212.
159
The Genealogy of the Xie Family, in Dongmen, Nan’an, archived in the Quanzhou Municipal
Library.
160
The Genealogy of the Zhou Family of the Nanwai Lineage in Quanzhou, archived in the Quanzhou
Municipal Library.

81
from Confucian family ethics could be attributed to their husbands’ absence. As I
have discussed in the Introduction, the widow chastity cult was actively enforced in
Quanzhou. Erecting chastity arches was a common practice by which the Ming and
Qing states honored widows. The local valuation of widow chastity was so strong
that there was a chastity arch named the “Arch of an Outstanding Man” (qinanzi fang
) and erected outside the Eastern Gate of Quanzhou to highlight the
unusual virtue of the wife of Shi Tiande.
161
Nevertheless, the same chastity cult in
Quanzhou became the notorious vogue for “public platform suicide” (datai ).
Qing scholar Shi Hongbao argued that this practice happened among both
commoners and local scholars’ families because they wanted to state canonization
and therefore built chastity arches in order to demonstrate themselves as the
“families of ritual teachings” (lijiao zhi jia ).
162
Modern historian Tien Ju-
k’ang thus explains that it was Confucian scholars’ anxiety that encouraged the rise
of the chastity cult and the practice of “public platform suicide” in Quanzhou
throughout the late Ming and Qing periods.
163

Male emigration from Quanzhou not only damaged the husband-wife
relationship but also disturbed family order throughout Qing and Republican history.
When a Quanzhou man left his house and hometown for years to operate businesses
or be an artisan, he left behind his familial and tax responsibilities of the household
for other members to bear. While he temporarily gave up his identity as a family
head, his wife could have lost family support, taken over his roles, or become a

161
Shi Hongbao, “Min zaji,” juan 3, 50.
162
Ibid, “Min zaji,” juan 7, 106.
163
T’ien, Male Anxiety and Female Chastity, 48-52.

82
surrogate family head for her blood family. In addition, Ta Chen’s research on
emigrant communities in the 1920s and 1930s has shown that the husband-wife
relationship was the core of both continuity and changes in the activities of the
kinship organization. When the family heads were away, their wives often replaced
the aged father or mother to manage the family affairs in the village, no matter what
social class they were in. Yet these women were still deemed inferior to men, and
they accepted this inferiority without protest.
164
“Minnan women’s life is very
bitter” (Minnan nuren hao ku de 救 ), an aged Quanzhou woman
revealed in an interview conducted by anthropologist Siumi Maria Tam.
165
Yet Tam
observes that, when a Quanzhou woman’s husband was absent, her “identification of
herself as keepers of her husband’s family was the underlying force for her
survival.... her responsibility as the breadwinner and her assumption of the dual role
of mother and father were important means for her to acquire both domestic and
public recognition in a chauvinistic culture.”
166
Although there was no state
canonization during the Republican period, women’s chastity and loyalty to their
marital families were still demanded by local persons. Michael Szonyi’s study of
emigrants’ families shows de facto female control over the household estate and
investments in the 1930s and 1940s on the one hand, and other family members’

164
Ta Chen, Emigrant Communities in South China, 82-5, 119-23, 129-30.
165
Siumi Maria Tam, “Engendering Minnan Mobility: Women Sojourners in a Patriarchal World,” in
Southern Fujian: Reproduction of Traditions in Post-Mao China, ed. Tan Chee-Beng (Hong Kong:
The Chinese University Press, 2006), 156.
166
Tam, “Engendering Minnan Mobility,” 145-62.

83
supervision over women’s chastity on the other hand, both in order to maintain
family reputation.
167

The irony however lies in the fact that when a Quanzhou woman stepped out of
the threshold of her family home or replaced her absent husband as a breadwinner,
she left both the house and the family behind and violated the principles of gender
separation and gendered division of labor emphasized in the Confucian ideal. In the
end, an incomplete husband-wife relationship was either justified as the norm or
ignored by women who resisted marriages. And the concept of family, for
traditional Chinese women, had changing meanings at odds with the uniform
patrilineal definition. Margery Wolf’s concept of the uterine family has shown that
women’s creating blood and affective ties with their children had drawn the
boundaries of her family from the bigger marital family composed of in-laws. If a
woman was economically self-sufficient and capable, she could leave the marital
family and create a social or religious lineage to be respected as a mother-instructor,
cared for in old age, and remembered after death. The following chapters of this
dissertation show Quanzhou women’s efforts and negotiations with Confucan family
ethics when they took over the roles of absent husbands and managed household
finances under a system of malfunctioning husband-wife relationships.

167
Szonyi, “Mothers, Sons and Lovers,” 43-64.

84
Chapter 2:
Family Ethics in Quanzhou Property Contracts

The participation of Quanzhou women evident in extant property contracts
reflects the changes in their property rights from the Yuan (1271-1368) to the
Republican periods (1911-1949) and also demonstrats their manners and skills in
transforming the disadvantageous socioeconomic surroundings around them into
resources for their family members and household economy. As Chapter 1 has
shown, prior to 1949 women generally played secondary roles or were marginalized
in the patriarchal family system, but widowed mothers enjoyed legal protection from
government laws and parental authority in managing family assets and establishing
heirs. During the volatile period between the mid-18
th
and mid-20
th
centuries, male
emigration threatened these patrilineal and patriarchal principles, and Western
concepts of family arrived to challenge the traditional joint family system in
Quanzhou.
This chapter illustrates how Quanzhou women in the Qing and Republican
periods deferred to the androcentric family ideology. Clearly conscious of it, they
applied their limited legal rights and parental authority to guarantee their family
interests. Imperial women did not enjoy separate property rights from their living
husbands and rarely had the legal right to dispose of property in their own names
because of the impact of the principles of patrilineality and the “single unit of
husband and wife” in both Confucian family ethics and legal codes. It is thus
especially significant that women’s family roles, such as (widowed) mothers, were
remarked upon property contracts and put in the foreground as the legal grounds for

85
their participation when they were the proxy of their absent or deceased husbands.
This chapter discusses the continuity in the application of Confucian family ethics in
Quanzhou property contracts in order to show Quanzhou women’s role in upholding
patrilineality and recreating patriarchy during the late imperial and the Republican
periods.
The Quanzhou contracts used in this and the following chapters were
collected from the Collection of Southern Fujian Contracts and Documents (Minnan
qiyue wenshu zonglu救抬 , hereafter cited as MNC), the Selected
Collection of Economic Contracts and Documents in Ming-Qing Fujian (Min-Qing
Fujian jingji qiyue wenshu xuanji , hereafter cited as
ECD), and an uncatalogued collection of contracts held by the College of
Humanities, Xiamen University (hereafter cited as CHX).
The first collection of contracts and documents was compiled and published
in the journal—Studies on Chinese Social-Economic History (Zhongguo shehui jingji
shi yanjiu )—by professor Yang Guozhen of Xiamen
University in 1990.
168
The dates of these contracts and documents span from 1336 to
1869. Of the 186 Jinjiang-Nan’an-Hui’an property contracts or documents, 31
documents recorded married women (two Yuan and twenty-nine Qing cases) who
consulted with or served as contract executors, middlemen, and witnesses,
constituting 16.67 percent of the total.

168
Yang Guozhen , “Preface,” in Minnan qiyue wenshu zonglu 救抬 (Xiamen,
China: Xiamen University, 1990), additional volume, 1.

86
The second collection, published in 1997, mainly includes contracts from
areas outside southeastern Fujian; Quanzhou contracts only occupy a very small part
in it—62 in the total 1794 contracts. In 11 contracts women were from Jinjiang,
Nan’an and Hui’an areas and actively participated in the contract-making process.
The percentage of contracts with women participants is 17.74%.
The third and unpublished collection of contracts and documents includes
copies of contracts in Fujian province; they were roughly organized according to
counties or prefectures but not always given serial numbers. The time period they
cover spans from 1631 to 1962.
169
I acquired the typed copies of these contracts in
an electronic file from Prof. Chen Zhiping of Xiamen University, and then compared
this file with the archived contracts, in order to ensure the correctness of their
contents and serial numbers. After this comparison, I found fourteen additional
contracts. Of the original 534 contracts, I therefore located 218 contracts which
indicate women’s participation from 1631 to 1949; thus the percentage of women’s
participation in these contracts, based on this collection, reaches 40.82% (Table 5).
Out of a total number of 782 Quanzhou contracts, women participated in or
were mentioned in 260 contracts, and most property contracts conform to the
requirements of the imperial state laws in terms of the prescribed format and basic
components. The majority of these documents are mainly but not exclusively
property contracts, which were concluded after the mid-18
th
century or after the Qing
government lifted the ban on sojourners and emigrants traveling to Taiwan and

169
My highest appreciation goes to Professor Chen Zhiping, the dean of College of Humanities at
Xiamen University, who kindly shared with me the electronic file of this collection and allowed me to
reexamine the original copies of these contracts.

87
Southeast Asia (Table 4). A widowed Qing mother should participate in contract-
making activities, acting on behalf of her young son or giving consent to her son’s
transaction in family property. Quanzhou customs, however, stressed women’s
secondary but auxiliary place in Confucian family ethics. Many widowed mothers
thus played secondary roles—as witnesses—in property contracts. Yet women’s
parental authority remained a decisive factor in the Republican contracts. In
addition, when local gentry were engaged in these property contracts as the third
party, like middlemen for example, to supervise the fairness of these contracts, they
were concerned about human feelings and inclined to protect the interests of
disadvantageous sellers like widowed mothers.

88
Table 4: The Frequency of Quanzhou (Jinjiang, Nan’an, and Hui’an Counties)
Property Contracts Conducted in Different Periods

Time periods Number of
documents with
women’s
engagement in
CHX*
Number of
documents with
women’s
engagement in
MNC**
Number of
documents with
women’s
engagement in
ECD***
The Yuan 0 2 0
The Ming 1 0 0
The Qing 149 29 11
1647-1683 0 1 0
1683-1727 1 0 0
1728-1754 4 4 0
1755-1842 53 9 3
1843-1895 71 15 6
1896-1911 20 0 2
The Republic (1912-1931) 24 0 0
1912-1918 9 0 0
1919-1931 15 0 0
The Republic (1932-1949) 44 0 0
1932-1937 9 0 0
1938-1949 35 0 0
Total 218 31 11

Sources:
*: CHX, the Collection held by the College of Humanities, Xiamen University
**: MNC, The Collection of Southern Fujian Contracts and Documents
***: ECD, The Selected Collection of Economic Contracts and Documents in Ming-
Qing Fujian

Annotation of years:
1647—The Qing conquered Fujian
1655/1656—The Qing started the embargo (jinhai ) and coastal evacuation and
resettlement (qianhai ) policy (no seafaring activities; no residents 30 li
from the coast). There are two worst periods: 1661-1666 and 1678-1681.
Quanzhou became the illegal port for smugglers.
1661-1683—The Qing and the Zheng regimes had their confrontation across the
Taiwan Strait.
1683—The Qing conquered Taiwan.
1684—The Qing lifted the embargo, evacuation, and resettlement policies in the
twenty-third year of Kanxi reign (1684 CE) and gradually imposed some
conditions: (1) the size of junk (small); (2) the time limit of travel—3 years for
legal travelers; ban on illegal travelers; (3) The Qing forbade the Southeast
Asian trade in 1717 (the 56
th
year of Kangxi reign); only the Dongyang trade
was permitted. Therefore, there were fewer emigrants during this period. Most
Quanzhou people either took a detour to Xiamen to start their seafaring
activities or went to Taiwan instead of Southeast Asia.

89
1727 (The 5
th
year of the Yongzheng reign)—The Qing opened trade with Southeast
Asia, but there were still restrictions: (1) detailed registration and inspection of
passengers, their families and baojia, and the owners and crew of the junk. (2)
The Qing only allowed Xiamen to be the port city; but Xiamen experienced a
decline after Jiajing reign (r. 1796-1820), so that many people went to Suzhou,
Ningbo, or Guangzhou instead of going overseas. Quanzhou was still the port
of smugglers. (3) The Qing forbade the export of rice, wheat, iron (1731), silk
(1759), and tea (1817).
1754 (the nineteenth year of Qianlong reign)—The Qing government gave
permission for licensed travelers to return to Fujian if they went to Thailand for
building and buying new ships. But seafaring activities started to decline in the
Jiaqing reign.
1843 —The British started to build its consulate in Gulangyu Island (near Xiamen)
in the November, which marked the start of foreign influence and trade.

China’s communication and relations with Southeast Asia:
With Thailand—They were mostly private trade, especially the rice trade. But the
rice was mainly shipped from Xiamen.
With the Philippines—They were mostly via Xiamen; but the relations started to
decline in Qianlong reign. From the 19
th
century onward, there were fewer
Spanish ships to Fujian; they preferred to stay out on the public sea for the
opium trade.
With Batavia—The rise of Fujian people’s relations with Batavia started from the
period between 1654 CE and 1683 CE; it was mostly due to the effort of the
Zheng regime. This relation reached its climax between 1684 and 1740. In
1740 the massacre under the supervision of the Dutch government hastened the
decline in these relations.
With Singapore—The climax was between 1819 CE, when the British started to
colonize it, and 1840 CE.

Sources: Liao Dake . Fujian haiwai jiaotongshi (Fuzhou:
Fujian renmin chubanshe, 2002).

90
I. Legal Effectiveness and Format of Quanzhou Property Contracts
The varying types of contracts generally included Red Contracts (hongqi ), White Contracts (baiqi ), and Drafts (caoqi ), depending on whether they
were signed and recognized by both contracting parties and whether they were
reported to the local government. Yet these three types of contracts have the same
prescribed format, and the Quanzhou people used them interchangeably in their daily
lives. Red Contracts were registered in the county magistrate’s court, with both
official stamps and registration receipts attached to them. White Contracts have
neither official stamps nor registration receipts, meaning that the contracts might
have lacked the same legal protection from the court, as Red Contracts would have,
to regulate the responsibilities and obligations of parties. As for drafts, they lack any
legal effectiveness to bind the two main contracting parties because of incomplete
signatures or content. Although I do not discuss drafts in this dissertation, a series of
drafts before concluding a Red or White Contract was a typical negotiation process
between the two parties. Generally and legally speaking, the government only
recognized Red Contracts and protected the Red Contract-holders. Contracting
parties in late imperial China and particularly in the Southeastern Chinese coast were
nonetheless inclined to conduct redeemable or conditional sales (dian or dianmai
, ), meaning that the seller was entitled to the right to redeem the sold
property with the original transaction price in a certain period of time.
170
Both

170
“Conditional sale” is different from “pawn” (diandang ), “mortgage” (diya ), or “pledge”
(zhi ). First of all, these terms refer to disposal of different types of property. In imperial and
Republican times, “conditional sales” were usually conducted over immovable property such as land
and houses, while “pawn” was mainly about movable property. “Pledges” under the Republican Civil

91
contracting parties thus drew up White Contracts, with which the buyer could avoid
tax transfer and the seller could maintain the hope of redeeming the property by
avoiding the permanent transfer of property. Owing to the prevalence of conditional
sales in Fujian, the effectiveness of White Contracts was recognized not only by the
local people but by the Qing government as well, which I will discuss later. I
therefore give the same attention to White Contracts and discuss women’s roles in
both Red and White Contracts to expand my samples.
Of all three collections of Quanzhou property contracts, the percentage of
women’s participation is highest in the uncatelogued collection of contracts held by
Xiamen University (CHX), because many of them are informal White Contracts,
unlike the other two collections in which registered or Red Contracts are the
majority. The Quanzhou contracts in CHX reveal many different practices from
those in other areas, such as women participating in their husbands’ transactions as
witnesses and selling the property of their natal families, and widowed mothers
conceding to be witnesses of their sons’ property transaction. Confucian family
ethics discouraged a woman from taking the initiative to sell family property which

Code of 1929-30 were also about movable property. Second, these terms point out different time
frames in the transference of ownership/possession and usage rights. The original owner of a
conditional sale needed to transfer both ownership and usage rights of the immovable property to the
buyer when they concluded the transaction contract. Yet a mortgagee under the Republican Civil
Code could never take the ownership rights of the property even if the loan was unpaid and the
obligation was unfulfilled by the mortgager. He could only claim the right of payment of the sale of
the property. A pledge refers to the transfer of usage rights but not ownership rights with the
transaction. A pledgee, however, can take over ownership rights when the pledger was in default.
Philip Huang has a detailed discussion on this subject, and he compares the difference of the Qing and
Republican laws with regard to the continuity of this practice. For more details, see Philip Huang,
Code, Customs, and Legal Practice in China: The Qing and the Republic Compared (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 2001), 71-98. Chinese scholar Liang Zhiping further takes the
perspective of customary law to present in the daily practices of ordinary people the similarities and
differences among redeemable sale, irrevocable sale (mai , juemai 䳽 , or maidun ) and pledge.
See Liang Zhiping , Qingdai xiguanfa: shehui yu guojia : (Beijing:
Zhongguo zhengfa daxue, 1999 [1996]), 92-107.

92
belonged to their fathers, brothers, husbands, or sons. Although there was no law
forbidding women’s being witnesses in contracts, serving as witness means that a
woman went beyond the parameters of gender separation and was exposed on public
and social occasions. If she served as the witness to her husband’s property
transaction, it means that she acquired a relatively independent personality from the
“single unit of husband and wife,” because a witness was a social identity and was
charged with certain social duties, which I will discuss in the third section. A
woman being engaged in the property sales of or with natal families was against the
principle of patrimony because she would have encroached on the economic interest
of her brothers. The imperial laws required a widowed mother to be the placeholder
of her deceased husband and to enjoy the authority to express her consent and cosign
with her son on the property contract for living expenses.
171
A widowed mother
being anonymous or serving as witness in her son’s property transaction would not
offer enough legal ground for the son’s disposal of family property and would
engender the doubt of the son illegally “establishing a separate household
registration and dividing the family property.” Yet on White Contracts which were
not registered in local governments, these problematic practices were more or less
tolerated as local custom and beyond the regulation of state laws. The higher
percentage of women’s participation in White Contracts thus presents an example of
women’s activeness in familial relations, albeit on that is veiled under the behavior
codes of Confucian family ethics.

171
William Jones trans, The Great Qing Code, 112; Birge, “Women and Confucianism from Song to
Ming,” 222-30.

93
A. Women and the Legal Effectiveness of Different Types of Property Contracts
The legal effectiveness of property contracts was gradually accepted by the
state after the Song dynasty. Whereas the Tang Code instituted in 737 served as the
precedent for subsequent Chinese legal codes, there were no statutes referring to
contract-making regulations. The subsequent Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing
governments all sought to levy taxes on contracts. The Song Penal Code (Song
xingtong ) included one statute of conditional sale and regulated that people
needed to apply for permission from the local court in order to proceed with property
transactions; any property transaction was not finalized if the contract parties did not
register the contract with the local government and transfer the tax responsibility.
172

According to one precedent in the Statutes from the Comprehensive Regulations
(Tongzhi tiaoge , 1323) of the Yuan dynasty, the government requested
people: (1) to report their property transactions to the local government; and (2) in
the case of conditional sales, to draw up two copies of the same contract for each of
the contract parties to hold in order to prevent possible disputes.
173
The Great Ming
Code included an independent section for “Fields and Houses” (tianzhai ) in the
chapter pertaining to the Laws of Revenue, and two of its statutes stipulated that
people purchasing fields or houses should make written contracts and register them
in the local court for tax purposes.
174
This independent section of “Fields and

172
Song xingtong , juan 13, ed. Xue Meiqing (Beijing: Falu chubanshe, 1999), 230-2.
173
This is a reply from the Board of the Rites to the Censorate in the tenth year of Dade reign (1306).
See Tongzhi tiaoge jiaozhu , orig. 1323, ed. and punctuated by Fang Linggui ,
“Tianling ,” “Dianmai tianchan shili 䓊 ,” juan 16 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2001)
479.
174
Jiang Yonglin ed, The Great Ming Code/Da Ming lu (Seattle: University of Washington Press,

94
Houses” and its statutes were carried out into the Qing laws. For example, the
Article of “Purchase of Fields and Houses by redeemable sale” in the Great Qing
Code reads as follows:
In every case of purchase by dian (conditional sale) of fields and houses, if
there is no payment of the deed tax, punish with 50 strokes of the light
bamboo. [Moreover levy] one half of the price as stated in the deed for the
fields and houses. This will be forfeit to the government. If [the seller]
does not transfer the property, for 1 mou to 5, punish with 40 strokes of the
light bamboo. For each [additional] 5 mou, add one degree. The
punishment is limited to 100 strokes of the heavy bamboo. The fields [that
are not transferred] will be forfeited to the government.
175

These regulations suggest that the government wanted to control land and secure
their tax revenue; only after the buyer paid the deed tax and registered the transfer of
property could a White Contract become a legal Red Contract, thereby allowing the
transaction to be acknowledged and protected by government laws. Modern scholars
like Yang Guozhen argue that the reason why people used White Contracts instead
of Red Contracts was to avoid the registration fee, although White Contracts lacked
the same legal protection found in Red Contracts and thus White Contracts may have
caused many legal disputes to ensue.
176
For example, it is not unusual to see that a
son falsified his widowed mother’s signature in a White Contract as the legal
grounds to illegally sell family property without her consent. In addition, people did
not register contracts to the local government but kept using White Contracts
because of the time lag between the times of transaction and the receipt of
government-instituted registration. According to Yang Guozhen, before the end of

2005), 78-9.
175
Jones trans., The Great Qing Code, 118.
176
Yang Guozhen, Mingqing tudi qiyue wenshu yanjiu, 31-3.

95
the Yuan dynasty people registered their transactions whenever the transaction was
finished, but the Ming government required that people register their transactions of
property and transfer the tax responsibilities every ten years when they were
updating the Yellow Register (huangce 湫 ). This was done to create consistency
between household registration and tax responsibility. Of course, this delay would
engender many disputes over property, such as illegal resale or supplemental
payments (zhaotie , or xitie ), which I will discuss in the third section of this
chapter. When the government was not able to update the Yellow Register and when
its sub-county administrative system started to lose control over the people, the
government also lost control over transfers of property ownership.
177

The Chinese scholar Tian Tao argues that the increasing number of White
Contracts under the Qing was a result of and evidence of the high frequency of
property transactions as well. The difference between White Contracts and Red
Contracts lies in their convenience and the occasions for which they were used. He
states that a buyer had no strong motive to avoid the registration fee while risking the
possible disputes over his property rights, because the fee represented only three
percent of the sale price. White Contracts were usually used among lineage
members, for loans, and for transactions of movable property, but Red Contracts
were utilized for land and houses. According to Tian Tao, the distinction between
White and Red Contracts in terms of legal effectiveness was gradually blurred in

177
Ibid.

96
day-to-day practice, and legal effectiveness was not the sole factor distinguishing
Red Contracts from White Contracts.
178

In Quanzhou, the social reality was that the prevalence of White contracts in
Quanzhou from the Qing to Republican periods did not save local people from taxes
but resulted in more exploitation by tax clerks. A late Qing scholar Wu Zeng ⏛ (1868-1945) noted in the section “No Tax Registration Fee” (wu qishui䦭 ) of
his Collection of Criticism against Quanzhou Customs (Quansu jici pian ) that the use of White Contract in his home town, Nan’an County, had been around
for more than two hundred years by his time. Local people refused to register
property transactions with the local government. Yet in order to demonstrate their
accomplishments in tax-collecting, tax clerks forced each local village to falsify a
certain apportionment of property transactions. Not only did tax clerks bullying of
small households annoy Quanzhou people, the fraudulent property contracts and
receipts also became the source of property disputes.
179

Little known by contemporary Confucian scholars, a Fujian provincial
substatute in 1759 in fact stated that conditional sales need not be registered to the
local court. This rescript was issued in April 1759, and was titled in the Fujian
provincial sub-statute as the “Tax Exemption for Property of Conditional Sale”
(dianye mianshui䦭 ), and was followed by a sentence interpreting that “this is

178
Tian Tao , Hugh Scogin, Jr., and Zheng Qin eds. “Preface,” in Tiancang qiyue wenshu
cuibian 䓊 (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2001), 1-5. This collection spans from 1408
to 1969 and includes mostly Huizhou (Anhui province) and northern Chinese contracts. It includes no
contracts concluded in Fujian province or by women.
179
This book was first published in 1908 under the pen name “Gu Fengzhoure” . Most
scholars agree that the author is Wu Zeng. I found one copy archived in the Quanzhou Municipal
Library. See, Wu Zeng ⏛ , Quansu jici pian (Quanzhou: Xiaoyun shanguan, 1908).

97
one rescript informing the matters of land and house [italics added] as property in
conditional sales” (yijian chizhi tianfang huoqi dianye dengshi ). Instead of explicating the details about the exemption, the content focuses
on how local officials and clerks did not transmit emperor’s “sacred benevolence”
(shengze ) down to ordinary people. It says: “Now this substatute about tax
exemption of property of conditional sale is particularly what the clerks in charge of
taxes and contracts would not learn with pleasure. It would result in [their]
intentional concealment of the regulation [from the people] and thereby preventing
the sacred benevolence from being passed down.” The following content of this
rescript continues with instructions on how to print and post the announcement at all
local administrative levels.
180
This substatute firmly attests to the fact that
conditional sales had been prevalent in the early Qing before 1759, at least in Fujian
province and locally recognized by the government.
Modern scholars recognize that economic development and overseas
emigration in the Qing and Republican periods were main reasons for Quanzhou
people to frequently conduct property transactions. Madeleine Zelin, Jonathan K.
Ocko, and Robert Gardella argue that the late imperial and early modern people did
not have enough funds or motivation to start a variety of businesses in order to

180
The Fujian Provincial Substatutes records that 484 regulations applied only to the Fujian province
but perhaps issued from the central government as “established regulations” (dingli ) or
“substatutes” (tiaoli ); the time spans from 1752 to 1872. The original title was “Provincial
Substatutes” (shengli ) only; the compilers of the Taiwan Bank add Fujian before it to clarify its
locality. There was no preface, general examples or date in the original copy which the Taiwan Bank
used for this reprint. According to the preface to this issue of The Provincial Substatues, it might have
been first published in 1873 or 1874. See Taiwan yinhang jingji yanjiushi, Fujian Shengli, vol. 2
[1964], reprint, 441. Regarding the nature of provincial substatutes, see Endymion Wilkinson,
Chinese History: A Manual, revised and enlarged edition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
2000), 550.

98
accumulate capital for developing industry or enterprise but they did have enough
funds to conduct frequent transactions of commodities. Everything, such as
collected taxes or shares in a temple association, was marketable. A
commodification process had appeared.
181
Michael Szonyi’s research of emigrant
families in the Republican period further shows that remittances and overseas
earnings mostly went into the reinvestment of property to improve long-term family
finances.
182

The prevalence of conditional sales and White Contracts in Quanzhou
demonstrates the general concern for leaving patrimony intact throughout the late
imperial and Republican periods and the emotional attachment to immovable
property among the people. While these contracts are all about transactions of
family (or personal) property with only two exceptions about selling a son or
conducting a contract on behalf of a son, most of them are either White contracts of
conditional sales, or White Contracts of irrevocable sales that were to finalize the
previous conditional sales. Few irrevocable sales of property were conducted
without previous conditional sales or requirements of supplemental payments
between the same two contract parties.
183
In the unpublished collection of Quanzhou
contracts—CHX, only two of seven property contracts concluded before 1759 were
for irrevocable sales, showing people’s preference of conditional sales to irrevocable

181
Madeleine Zelin, Jonathan K. Ocko, and Robert Gardella, “Introduction,” in Contract and
Property in Early Modern China, ed. Madeleine Zelin, Jonathan K. Ocko, and Robert Gardella
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 4-5.
182
Szonyi, “Mothers, Sons and Lovers,” 45.
183
Supplemental payments refer to the additional money requested by the original owner after a
transaction has been completed. I will come back to this topic in the third section of this chapter.

99
sales.
184
The low percentage of irrevocable sales suggests that Quanzhou people did
not sell family property for making profit but for coping with family economic
difficulties.
In short, what lies behind the rational economic strategy of conducting
redeemable sales during the Qing and Republican periods is a moral reason in hope
of redeeming family property and restoring the wholeness of the patrimony. By the
time of 1759 when Emperor Qianlong (r. 1736-1795) issued the rescript about the
practices of Fujian conditional sales, Emperor Kangxi (r. 1622-1722) and
Yongzheng (r. 1723-1735) had ordered the local governments to inculcate the
“Sixteen Maxims of the Sacred Edicts” into the people’s mind. Its first maxim was
to “esteem most highly filial piety and brotherly submission, in order to give due
importance to human moral relations”
185
Meanwhile, the Quanzhou prefectural
government had established eight new local academies for Confucian education in
Nan’an, Jinjiang and Hui’an counties.
186
The intellectual reaction of Chinese family
moralism in 18
th
century China, as I discussed in Chapter One, the Qing
government’s moral inculcation, and tax exemption of redeemable sales in Quanzhou
constituted the social and economic context for the legal prevalence of redeemable
sales.

184
In all three collections—CHX, MNC, and ECD—there are not many examples of early Qing
contracts. The reasons could be many, such as the long passage of time, many natural disasters, and
much warfare, as well as the effects of the coastal evacuation policy in the Quanzhou coastal area in
the early Qing period, all resulting in the loss of many Ming-Qing contracts. The reason why I single
out the collection of CHX as an example here is because the other two collections were publications,
so I did not see the original documents or copies. I could not verify if they only included Red
Contracts. Yet because CHX is uncategorized and I saw the original copies, the collection is like a
random sample which would reflect more local practices of social and economic activities. That is
also the reason why there is a high percentage of White Contracts in this collection.
185
de Bary and Lufrano, Sources of Chinese Tradition, Vol. 2, 2
nd
edition, 71.
186
Chen Dubin and Su Liming, Quanzhou gudai shuyuan, 158-9.

100
We should pay more attention to White Contracts, not only because most
conditional sales were conducted in the form of White Contracts and recognized by
the local government, but also because we can find in them more women’s
participation than in Red Contracts. These women were either married woman or
widows, who were not supposed to be as visible as men in public occasions. White
Contracts would save women from being exposed in any public space like the local
government office for registering or transferring tax duties; thus they could better
fulfill their family duties and conform to gender separation at the same time. In
disposing of property of marital family, married women would feel more
comfortable with their acquaintances than with tax clerks. Finally, any illegal aspect
of such transactions, such as widowed mothers serving as witnesses rather than main
contract executors, would be tolerated by the local people.

B. Women’s Participation in the Itemized Format of Property Contracts
Women’s names appeared in various parts of these contracts, as sellers, in the
inquiries, and as signatures or finger prints in both Red and White Contracts. Prior
to 1949 Quanzhou women’s property rights and authority in managing household
finance could be inferred from their function in these contracts. In terms of the strict
principle of gender separation in Confucian family ethics it was improper for elite
women to participate in any stage of this contract-making process. The Song Penal
Codes has noted that family heads and elders of the selling party and the buyers or
the buyers’ agents must all be present to sign or give finger prints on contracts in
person. Negotiating the sale price with buyers and middlemen and signing with all

101
parties around would put women in a position of being exposed in public. The Song
Penal Codes therefore detailed the proper behavior for women who had to be present
in public and available for negotiation and transaction purposes: A curtain should be
provided blocking women from the view of other males when women were involved
in contract-making activities.
187
In other words, since it was not unusual for Song
women to participate in contract-making, state laws instituted a behavior code for
women’s economic activities. In the Great Ming Code or the Great Qing Code there
were no similar detailed regulations as compared to the Song legal codes regarding
women’s presence on the occasion of property transaction. The Ming and Qing laws
emphasized only the legal aspect: married women had their rights to express consent
in contracts and served as witnesses when their husbands sold their dowry; and
widowed mothers had legal rights to act on behalf of their sons or to give consent in
contracts.
188
As for the ethical concerns such as gender separation, it was not
mentioned. It is likely that the Ming and Qing law makers assumed a strong
moralism and Confucian ethical codes had been imprinted in the mind of women and
no need to reassert them.
The proscribed format of property contracts clearly states the responsibility
and obligations of the three main parties—the seller, the buyer, and the
middleman/witness (or the third party). The basic components of either an
irrevocable sale or a conditional sale included: the purpose of the contract; the
executor’s (usually the seller’s) name; the origin, location, and boundaries of the
property; the amount of transaction payment, and the dated signature of all parties.

187
Song xingtong, juan 13, 231.
188
Birge, “Women and Confucianism from Song to Ming,” 230.

102
Extra components included the buyer’s name, the currency style, the old or
antecedent contracts, the official registration deed, and so on. In the case of an
irrevocable sale, the seller had to mark in the contract that “this property is given to
the buyer for management in perpetuity” and, according to local custom, he or she
drew up only one copy for the buyer to receive, since the seller had relinquished all
rights to the property.
189
The following is an itemized list of the basic format of a
property contract.
190

1. The name and address of the executor(s), the nature of the sale of certain
properties. Example: I/We, AAA [individual name(s)] who live in the
CCC [place name], execute this contract for the [irrevocable/
redeemable] sale of BBB [the property name].
2. The explanation of the property ownership and location of the property.
Example 1: I have inherited BBB [property name] from my [relatives]
through succession by drawing lots, and it is located in DDD [property
location expressed in sub-county administrative units]. Example 2:
BBB was purchased by me [or other persons] and it is located in DDD.
3. The boundaries of the property. Example: Its boundaries extend
eastward to…, westward to…, southward to…, and northward to….
The boundaries in all four directions have been inspected and clearly
demarcated in the presence of … [the middleman or licensed broker].
4. The quantity of the tax rice and the size of the property. Example: The
field has a tax payment in unhusked rice of …dou … sheng and …he
[the weight of the taxed rice.]
5. The reasons for sale. Example 1: Owing to lack of funds.… Example
2: Because of lack of funds for [special reasons, such as tax payments
or funerals].
6. The name of the buyer. Example: I am willing to transfer the
ownership/redeemable sale rights over this property to EEE [the buyer’s
name].
191

189
Yang Guozhen, Tudi qiyue wenshu yanjiu, 34.
190
This itemized format is based on my examples of Quanzhou property contracts with reference to
the format published as a Fujian provincial substatute (shengli ) in the 25
th
year of the Qianlong
reign. See Taiwan yinhang, Shengli, Vol. 3, 443-5.
191
According to the Report of an Investigation of Civil Practices among the People, it was the
Jinjiang County’s custom that the buyer’s name was not necessarily listed. See Ministry of Judicial
Administration, the Former Republican Government in Nanjing ed.,

103
7. The procedure of concluding the property contract.
a. An inquiry of close agnates for their intention to purchase the
property, which means that the owner had given close agnates
preemption but the latter did not use it. Example: After having
thoroughly inquired among those closest agnates who are my paternal
uncles, none of whom is able to make the purchase.
b. The participation of the third party, like middlemen. Example 1: I
have relied on a middleman for an introduction to EEE of … [the
buyer’s address]; Example 2: Through the introduction of a
middleman, EEE of … [the buyer’s address] has come forward to
contract for these fields.
c. The exchange of money and property. Example 1: On the day
contract and money have been directly exchanged. The land sale
price is … taels/silver dollars exactly. With no prior guarantee of
redeemable sale to another party, this sale of the land is to be given to
the buyer to cultivate as his property in perpetuity. Example 2: In the
presence of the middleman, the three parties agree on the market price
to purchase/dian the property for the price of ….., without delay or
shortage. With no fraudulent practices of this property, the property
is to be given to the buyer for him to manage as the contract allows.
d. The seller’s guarantee of the clarity of the ownership rights and of no
intention to redeem it. Example 1: Should original ownership rights
be unclear, it is the seller who is fully responsible; the buyer need not
worry about it. Example 2: The seller is not to dare to speak of
redeeming the property or supplemental payments; the close agnates
of the seller are not to dispute over the ownerships or create any kind
of disturbances.
8. The time and means transferring the tax burdens and obligations of both
parties. Example 1: The amount of taxed rice is to be paid by the buyer
from now on. Example 2: The seller will pay for the taxed rice until the
year when the Yellow Register was reexamined and the buyer will take
over the tax obligation from then on.
9. The list of the redeemable period. Example: The period of redeemable
sale lease is … years, starting from … and extending to …. At the
expiration of this period, the land will be redeemed upon return of the
purchase price. If the land is not redeemed, the party holding it in
redeemable sale will continue to control it in accordance with this
contract.
10. The disposal of the antecedent contracts. Example 1: Because the three
documents making up the text of the contract and the attached
antecedent contracts cannot really be separated, they are given to EEE
[the buyer] for him to retain, but in the future he must not take these

Minshi xiguan diaocha baogao lu 㞍抬 , vol. 1, punctuated and edited by Hu Xuchen
, Xia Xinhua , and Li Jiaofa , orig. 1930 (Beijing: Zhongguo Zhengfa daxue
chubanshe, 1997), Chapter 2, “Jinjiang xian xiguan,”311.

104
properties as his own and engage in abuses. Example 2: Neither the
antecedent old contracts nor the family division contract are attached; if
in the future these are brought forward they cannot serve as evidence of
ownership.
11. The date of concluding the contract.
12. Signatures or finger prints of the executor(s), middlemen, witnesses, and
scribe.

In this format a widowed mother could be the joint contract executor, listed
as the first seller in the beginning of the contract (Item 1) and give her finger print at
the end (Item 12). Sometimes, her name was not mentioned in the contract but her
son clearly stated that he “followed his mother’s order” (feng mu ming ) to
proceed into the transaction. This phrase was usually added as one part of the
reasons for sale in Item 5. In addition, a widowed mother or married woman could
be listed in the body of the contract to take joint responsibility with her son or
husband to guarantee the clear ownership right of the sold property (Item 7d),
although she was not listed as a joint seller. It is not uncommon for the contract
executors or the scribe to change this format, wording, or content in order to conform
to women’s presence or other local customs.
In different modes of women’s participation in contracts, a widowed
mother’s signature or finger print (Item 12) was the most important legal grounds for
any property contract concluded by or in the name of her sons. The Song Dynastic
History (Songshi , 1345) records how a County magistrate Yuan Jiang
(1008-1083) judged the effectiveness of a contract by examining a widowed
mother’s finger print. A young man Zhou Zheng was tricked and lost in gambling;
he was forced to sell a piece of land to Long Yu. Zhou’s widowed mother repeatedly

105
appealed to the court, arguing against the effectiveness of the sale because she did
not give her finger print on the property contract in person; the print on the contract
was falsified. Yuan Jiang found that the mother’s finger print was covered by the
ink of the date (Item 11) instead of the finger print covering the ink of the date as the
last confirmation, so he ruled that the widowed mother’s finger print was collected
from other documents and falsified by Long Yu. The property transaction was thus
ineffective because the widowed mother did not give her consent and finger print.
192

We cannot tell from this record whether the widowed mother’s role on this contract
was a contract executor or a witness. In fact, neither contemporary magistrate nor
extant legal cases or laws specify the specific legal role of a late imperial widowed
mother in a property contract. Yuan Jiang’s verdict nevertheless proves the
indispensable function of a widowed mother’s signature or finger prints, as the first
and foremost source of legality, in her son’s property transaction.
In order to highlight Quanzhou women’s function in contract activities, the
following sections of this chapter will focus on two aspects: (1) the history of
Quanzhou women’s participation in contract-making activities; and (2) how
Quanzhou women made use of the characteristics of Quanzhou property contracts to
maximize the economic interest of their families. In Chapter Three, I will move
forward to discuss women’s various roles in property contracts and their mediating
function between natal and marital families.

192
Song shi , the “Grouped Biographies” 102, in Bainaben ershi si shi , vol.
42 (Taipei: Taiwan shangwu yinshuguan, 1981), 4233.

106
II. The Yuan and Ming Precedents in Quanzhou
The Yuan and Ming contracts discussed in this section are the earliest
property contracts that Quanzhou women participated in and demonstrate their
function in household economic activities to demonstrate their loyalty to both marital
and natal families. Women’s participation in Quanzhou property contracts of the
Qing-Republican periods was under the guidance and restriction of the precedents set
by Yuan and Ming legal codes regarding their property rights and family status,
although the contractual tradition has been traced back to the Zhou dynasty.
193
This
section aims to present the continuity of this contractual tradition.
When adult males were absent, female elders usually became the surrogate or
de facto family heads. Before the Qing dynasty, the contracts made in the western
frontier Turfan (in modern Xinjiang province) of the Tang empire contained the
basic format of a contract—the executor, the object and ownership of the transferred
property, the buyer, and the amount of money required.
194
It was not uncommon for
Turfan women who had no male members at home to become heads of their families
(called as danu ) and serve as guarantors or contract executors in these
contracts.
195
Modern Chinese historian A Feng’s research of Huizhou contracts of

193
Valerie Hansen notes a passage in the Rites of Zhou which states that people used two copies of
contracts “to make a binding agreement and to prevent lawsuits.” See Valerie Hansen, Negotiating
Daily Life in Traditional China: How Ordinary People Used Contracts 600-1400 (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1995), 8.
194
Ibid, 24-33.
195
Deng Xiaonan, “Women in Turfan during the Sixth to Eighth Centuries: A Look at their Activities
Outside the Home,” Journal of Asian Studies 58.1 (February 1999): 95-6.

107
the Ming-Qing period attests to the fact that women exerted strong parental authority
as the main executor in concluding contracts.
196

A. The Yuan Contracts in 1336
The oldest property contract in Quanzhou is included in a series of six Yuan
documents written from 1336 to 1367 and collected by Chinese historian Yang
Guozhen from the Ding family genealogy (Figures 2-8).
197
The earliest Quanzhou
contract was concluded in the second year of the Zhiyuan reign of the Yuan
dynasty. Two Yuan emperors—Shizu (r. 1264-1294) and Huizong (r.
1335-1340)—had the same reign title of Zhiyuan . Yang Guozhen thought that
the earliest Quanzhou contract was dated in 1265. Yet we can see it must refer to the
later reign period and was concluded in 1336, the second year of the second Zhiyuan
reign period, because the Mongols did not siege Quanzhou until the end of 1276,
when Quanzhou people should have still been using the Song reign title in all
activities, such as the first year of the Xianchun reign (1265). Yang thus mistakenly
dates the year of the earliest Quanzhou contract. In addition, these contracts show a
lot of Yuan administrative terms and legal regulations regarding contract-making,
which further rules out the possibility of dating them back to 1265.
There are two subsets of these contracts, three in each subset: in the first set
the mother Shilin and her son Mahemo , who took the place of the only

196
A Feng , Ming-Qing jidai ni okeru fujyo no chii to kenri: Ming-Qing keiyaku bunsho to
soshyo touan wo chushin to shite ᪺ ΰ ᫤௥ ࡞ ࠽ࡄ ࡾ ࡡ ᆀన ࡛ ᶊฺ 㸯 ᪺ΰ ዉ ⣑ᩝ ᭡ ࡛ セガ ᱗ ᱄ࢅ ୯ ᚨ࡛ ࡊ ࡙ (Ph.D. dissertation, Kyoto University, 2006).
197
In addition to MNC, the Ding family genealogy was preserved in the Fujian Provincial Library,
where I collected the pictures for use here.

108
main executor, jointly sold a complex containing a garden, land, and house in 1336;
in the second set, the Ding family sold the same property in 1366 and 1367.
198

Valerie Hansen has discussed these contracts, particularly the second subset in her
book Negotiating Daily Life in Traditional China, and she states that these
documents well illustrate the many procedures during property transactions of the
Yuan dynasty and how Arabs in China, like both sellers and buyers in this example,
accepted Chinese economic practices.
199
Since there were no women involved in the
second set of three Quanzhou contracts made by the Ding family in 1366 and 1367,
my discussion will focus solely on the first set of contracts made in 1336. The
following is the translation of the third document without the official certificate.

198
Yang Guozhen ed., MNC, 27-30.
199
Hansen, Negotiating Daily Life, 136-8.

109

Figure 2: Mahemo’s Contracts I (the seventh month, the second year of the Zhiyuan
reign period, 1336)
Sources: The Ding family genealogy, archived in the Fujian Provincial Library,
Fouzhou, China.

110

Figure 3: Mahemo’s Contracts II (the ninth month, the second year of the Zhiyuan
reign period, 1336)
Sources: The Ding family genealogy, archived in the Fujian Provincial Library,
Fouzhou, China.

111

Figure 4: Mahemo’s Contracts III (the tenth month, the second year of the Zhiyuan
reign period, 1336)
Sources: The Ding family genealogy, archived in the Fujian Provincial Library,
Fouzhou, China.

112

Figure 5: Mahemo’s Contracts IV (the tenth month, the second year of the Zhiyuan
reign period, 1336); and the Ding family’s Contracts (the eighth month, the twenty-
sixth year of the Zhizheng reign period, 1366)
Sources: The Ding family genealogy, archived in the Fujian Provincial Library,
Fouzhou, China.

113

Figure 6: The Ding family’s Contracts (n.d.)
Sources: The Ding family genealogy, archived in the Fujian Provincial Library,
Fouzhou, China.

114

Figure 7: The Ding family’s Contracts (the eighth month, the twenty-sixth year of
the Zhizheng reign period, 1366)
Sources: The Ding family genealogy, archived in the Fujian Provincial Library,
Fouzhou, China.

115

Figure 8: The Ding family’s Contracts (the second month, the twenty-seventh year of
the Zhizheng reign period, 1367)
Sources: The Ding family genealogy, archived in the Fujian Provincial Library,
Fouzhou, China.

116
Mahemou’s willing contract for sale of the garden and the house, the 10
th

month, the 2
nd
year of Zhiyuan reign (1336)

I, Mahemo, am living in the southern corner of the Administrative Office
(Lushi si 抬 ) of Quanzhou Route (lu ), and had inherited from my
ancestors a garden and a parcel of hill land in which one pavilion, one
house, and flowers and orchards are included. This property is located in
the 37
th
Sector (du ), west of the temple of the East Pond and has walls
built on four sides as boundaries, extending eastward to the mountain
owned by the Sun family, westward to the garden of the Xie family,
southward to the fields of Ruifeng nunnery, and northward to the mountain
of the Xie family. There is another section of land for the foundation of a
building in the west of the garden, which extends eastward to a small road,
westward to the Chen house, southward to a piece of empty land, and
northward to the garden of the Xie family.
Owing to [the lack] of funds for management and livelihood, I am willing
to sell the above garden and land, and I have [obtained] the official
confirmation from Jinjiang County that the [land boundaries] have been
clearly inspected. I have also drawn up a document to [prove that I have]
inquired of my kinsmen and neighbors, but none of them is able to
purchase [the property]. Now, I have asked Cai the Eighth to introduce
Ding the Elder living around the east corner of the city to come forward to
purchase. The current price was negotiated by the licensed broker to be
sixty taels of Zhongtong chao . On this day when the contract was
drawn up and the money received, the antecedent’s old contracts of the
garden and the land are being received by the buyer, and he will manage it
as his property. I have no more ownership rights over them.
The garden and land were owned by Mahemo himself; they were not
stealthily sold properties of my agnatic relatives or others. They were not
obtained from fraudulent practices; neither [did I use them as] prior
guarantees of redeemable sales to another party. Should the ownership
rights be unclear, the seller is fully responsible and there is nothing the
buyer need to be concerned with.
In addition, the property tax borne by Mahemo’s household, which is equal
to two dou and eight sheng of tax rice, will be paid by the buyer from the
2
nd
year of Zhiyuan reign period. Because we fear that the oral agreement
is unreliable, I draw up a contract for sale and hand it to the buyer for the
use of the stamped tax.

The 10
th
month, the 2
nd
year of Zhiyuan reign, the Yuan
Willing seller of the garden and the house Mahemo
Joint seller of the garden Mother Shilin
Introducer Cai the Eighth
Witness of the sale for garden and the house Uncle Heandula
Scribe Lin Dongqing

117
The mother Shilin participated as a joint seller, but her son did not list her name in
the body of the contract. This phenomenon was not unusual, as we will see in other
contracts included in this and the next chapter. According to the Ding family
genealogy, these contracts of the first set were originally written and signed by
Mahemo in 1336. It is not unusual to see that family genealogies “record” property
contracts concluded decades or hundreds of years ago, in order to serve as evidence
of long-time family property like graveyards (mudi or fengshui ), in order to
avoid dispute over the property.
200
For instance, the genealogies of the Xie family at
the East Gate of Nan’an and of the 5
th
branch of Chen family of Chenjiang both
include the contents of a lot of property contracts.
201
Yang Guozhen and Valerie
Hansen have both identified Mahemo and his family as Arabs residing in
Quanzhou.
202
In these documents four names were recorded other than Mahemo;
they are Aunt Huluhe , Aunt Bibi , Aunt Amida , and Uncle
Husamading . From the pictures I took from the Ding family genealogy

200
Xu Jianhua . Zhongguo de jiapu (Tianjin: Baihua wenyi chubanshe, 2002), 38.
201
The Ggenealogy of the Xie family at the East Gate of Nan’an, archived in the Quanzhou City
Library; The Genealogy of the Fifth Branch of the Chen Lineage of Chenjiang, archived in the Fujian
Provincial Library.
202
Hansen, Negotiating Daily Life, 136. The content of the documents reveals more historical facts.
The documents record that Mahemo was living in the South District (nanyu ) ruled by the
Administrative Office (Lushi si 抬 ) in Jinjiang, Quanzhou Route Command (Quanzhou lu ).
This statement is basically in accordance with the historical fact, that the Yuan government
established two Administrative Offices (one south, one north) in the Quanzhou area in 1278 and
combined these two Offices into one in 1279. See Lin Longhai, Quanzhou jianzhi zhi, 7. In addition,
Quanzhou foreigners used to live in the South District of Quanzhou, which was next to the Jin River,
outside the Quanzhou city wall, and was well known as a foreign residential area. See Richard
Pearson, Li Min, and Li Guo, “Port City, and Hinterlands: Archaeological Perspectives on Quanzhou
and its Overseas Trade,” in The Emporium of the World: Maritime Quanzhou, 1000-1400, ed. Angela
Schottenhammer (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 188-9; Su Jilang , “Lun Songdai Quanzhou cheng de
dushi xingtai,” , in Tang-Song shidai Minnan Quanzhou shidi lungao 救 (Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu yinshuguan, 1991), 112-7.
202
Tang Wenji ed., Fujian gudai jingjishi, 548.

118
we learn that Mamemo’s surname is Pan ; yet all the first names here do not look
like Han names but rather foreign first names. Because the Pan family has adopted a
Han surname, the question is: To which degree did this Arabian family adopt the
laws and the Han practice regarding women’s property rights in the Yuan period?
Mahemo’s documents and contract record the Yuan requirements of the three
stages of property transaction. The three stages of a property transaction in the Yuan
dynasty include: (1) asking for the permission and receipt of the local government
with a reason for sale; (2) sending out an “inquiry announcement” (lizhang piwen ) first to kin, then to neighbors, and finally the original buyer of a conditional
sale, asking for their intention for purchase; and (3) estimating the property price
through middlemen as well as conducting the sales.
203
The Pan family contracts
conform to this Yuan government regulation. The initial inquiry announcement of
the first set of contracts served as a public notice declaring Mahemo’s intention to
sell such and such property and to inform potential buyers. It also lists the signatures
of his mother Shilin, an official broker, and another four people having no intention
of purchasing (bu yuan mai ren )—one patrilineal uncle and three aunts
from the Pan family. The second document is a receipt from the local government,
which inspected and confirmed the validity of the origin and boundaries of this
property complex. In fact, the Yuan government stipulated that the inquiry
announcement should not be released to agnates and the public until the local
government has approved the seller’s application of sale, which is the second
document or the official receipt described above. The legal requirement to list the

203
Tang Wenji ed., Fujian gudai jingjishi, 548.

119
four “people who had no intention to purchase” guaranteed no future disturbance
from the seller’s lineage to claim any unclear ownership rights on the property and
protected the buyer’s interests. The third document is the property contract between
Mahemo and the Ding family. In addition, the witness of this property contract was
Shilin’s affine—her husband’s sister’s husband (gufu ). And the last document
attached to the third contract is the “official certificate of the transfer of tax
obligations” (keshui geitie䦭 ), issued by the Yuan government to the Ding
family as a confirmation.
Mahemo’s contracts show that these Arabian women’s authority and
influence in the family remained as strong as the Song women’s and may have been
stronger than that of one century ago. First, the mother Shilin co-signed at the end of
the property contract, suggesting that her consent and signature gave the necessary
legal effectiveness to this contract. From the Song period onward widows were
managers of family property and had to give their consent to their adult sons’
disposal of family property by signing on the property contracts.
204
Shilin’s consent
demonstrates the continuity of a widowed mother’s parental authority over her sons
from the Song to the Yuan.
Second, the fact that Mahemo inquired of his three aunts their intention of
purchasing the property implies that these Arabian daughters also enjoyed the
preemption to purchase property from their natal family and that these daughters
could have had property in land adjoining Mahemo’s complex for sale. Bettine
Birge has shown that orphaned daughters in the Southern Song dynasty enjoyed an

204
Birge, “Women and Confucianism,” 222.

120
“equitable division” of property with other sons in a two-to-one ratio if the family
division happened before they married out.
205
She further argues that the legal
interpretation of the half-share rule was abandoned and that orphaned daughters’
inheritance rights were curtailed on a large scale because the Yuan (and the
following dynasties) strengthened the property rights of agnates in order to ensure
the supply of tax and military service.
206
In other words, women’s property rights
were gradually deprived by state laws during the Yuan and Ming periods. The
presence of the three aunts in the “inquiry announcement” was nevertheless unseen
in any other Quanzhou contracts that I have read. Its rarity cannot confirm or deny
the property regime in the Yuan. Yet these Arabian (married or unmarried)
daughters did have a say in the property transaction of their natal families and could
have another share of family property other than a dowry. There are two alternative
assumptions to interpreting this difference between the Yuan laws and Quanzhou
practice. First, it was a gap between state law and local practices. Arguing the
existence and application of the half-share rule regarding Song daughters’ dowry and
inheritance rights, Birge has pinpointed that it would take time for a local practice to
become a local precedent, then a statute applied to the whole country.
207
It is likely
that each locality or household could slightly revise the laws to account for their
interests, just as women’s roles and modes of participation in property contracts
changed all the time. Second, the Yuan government applied different laws to non-

205
Birge, Women, Property, and Confucian Reaction, 79-90.
206
Birge, “Women and Confucianism,” 217-21.
207
Birge, “Gender, Property, and Law in China [Review Article of Kathryn Bernhardt’s Women and
Property in China, 960-1949],”Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 44.4 (Nov
2001), 580-5.

121
Han people and allowed non-Han women to enjoy more property rights than Han
women. But it remains unknown whether other Han daughters could ever enjoy this
preemption right, which indirectly shows daughters’ strong financial relationships
with their natal families.
In general, the “inquiry announcement” and demands for signatures of those
having no intention to purchase the property demonstrates legal adherence to
Confucian family ethics. It also suggests that immovable property, such as land and
houses, was only partially or imcompletly commoditized. Mahemo must offer his
family members the first opportunity of purchasing the inherited property prior to the
general public (qinlin youxian quan ) by inquiring of their intention to
purchase the property.
208
Because this property was “inherited from his ancestor”
(chengzu , referring to the inheritance based on household division), Mahemo’s
sale of the property directly influenced his uncle and aunts’ interests, and as such, it
might elicit a buyer’s suspicion over ownership rights in the case that there was any
unclear division or a dispute over the household estate. To eliminate the buyer’s
suspicion, Mahemo’s three (paternal) aunts and one uncle signed on the first “inquiry
announcement” and marked themselves as “people who had no intention to
purchase.”
Endowing close kin with priority to purchase property reflects that the state
has recognized the growth of the lineage system. Valerie Hansen argues that the

208
According to the Song Penal Code, from the 9
th
century onward the custom of giving relatives and
neighbors the preemption to purchase property had been regulated in the government documents. See
Li Jiaju 惰 , “Liang Song shiqi tudi suoyouquan de zhuanyi” ,
Zhongguo shi yanjiu no. 4 (1988), 26.

122
Song government followed the Tang practice of giving priority of purchase to
neighbors first, and then relatives. She cites a passage from the General History of
Institutions and Critical Examination of Documents and Studies (Wenxian tongkao ): “Those who are going to mortgage (to conditionally sell) or sell things
should first ask their neighbors if any of them wishes to mortgage or buy the land by
writing the inquiry on a placard and waiting for the reply.”
209
In the Collection of
Decisions by Famous Judges to Clarify and Enlighten (Minggong shupan qingming
ji ) of the Southern Song, there are four verdicts regarding prior
redemption rights. In the first case Judge Hu Shibi noted that “common
people mostly did not realize the ‘method of kin and neighbors’” (baixing duo
buxiao qinlin zhi fa ). According to Hu Shibi, only the
“kinsmen of the same lineage” (qin ) who were included in the five mourning
grades to the original owner and whose property was also ‘contiguous to’ (lin ) the
plot of the redeemable property” could enjoy this priority to redeem a property
“conditionally sold” by their kin to others.
210
Because Hu Shibi’s verdicts and
discussion here were about the qualification as a “kinsmen and neighbor” to
“redeem” rather than to purchase property, it shows that Southern Song people
actively applied the “method of kin or neighbors” to claim their redemption rights to
a parcel of land sold by their “kinsmen or neighbors.” This practice helped keep
lineage property from dissipation.

209
Ma Duanlina , Wenxian tongkao , quoted in Hansen, Negotiating Daily Life, 79-80.
210
Minggong shupan qingming ji , juan 9, “Huhun men ㇞ ,” “qinlin zhi fa ,” reprint (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 2002), 308-9.

123
The priority to redeem property sold by kin or neighbors was a bigger
privilege than preemption, because the redemption right gave neighbors and kinsmen
the rights to aggregate property. The statutes from the Song to the Qing regulated
that the seller should first ask their close kin, then neighbors, and finally the original
buyer of redeemable sale, with an exception in the Southern Song dynasty that the
redeemer must be “both close kin and neighbor” at the same time.
211
Chinese
historian Li Jiaqi argues that the tightened regulations in the Southern Song reflected
the state’s recognition of land aggregation and commercialization.
212
Li Jiaqi
notices the high frequency of property transactions during the Southern Song period,
but he ignored that these transfers usually and first happened between kin or
neighbors. Strong branches in a lineage or rich neighbors had more power and
opportunity to redeem the conditionally sold property. As we have seen, the Yuan
government further required sellers to send an “inquiry announcement” to kin or
neighbors before offering the property to the public, although the Southern Song
judge Hu Shibi did not discuss the “method of kin or neighbors” in preemption cases
of “kin or neighbors.”
213
Both preemption and redemption rights reflect the
government’s preference that wealthy lineage members or stronger branches take
responsibility to actively prevent the lineage estate from dissipating and consolidate
the force of lineage trust by accumulating and retaining more land and wealth.
Chinese and Western scholars have shown that the strength of lineages and local

211
Li Jiaju, “Liang Song shiqi tudi suoyouquan de zhuanyi,” 25-34; Chen Gaohua , “Yuandai
tudi dianmai de guocheng han wenqi” , Zhongguo shi yanjiu 4 (1988), 35-48.
212
Li Jiaju, “Liang Song shiqi tudi,” 27.
213
Hansen, Negotiating the Daily Life, 118.

124
networks in the Fujian area began to grow and become established on the basis of
lineage estates from the Southern Song period, although Fujian lineages prospered
particularly after the mid-Ming period, and moral familism reached its climax in the
Qing era.
214
This legal development of giving lineage members preemption and
redeemable rights was in accord with the growth of the lineage system from the
Southern Song to Yuan periods.

B. The Late Ming Property Contract in 1631
Compared to the Yuan precedent, the widowed mother in the only Ming
property contract of the three collections did not take an authoritative role in this
transaction; she was a witness but not a joint executor. This final sale contract was
made by Chen Xifu and three other Chen family members in 1631:

Chen Xifu’s et al’s contract for irrevocable sale, the 4
th
year of the
Chongzhen reign (1631)

We, the joint executors of this contract for irrevocable sale Chen Xifu,
Chen Xiqi, Chen Eryi, and Chen Changsheng are living in the Guxiu
Precinct of Quanzhou city. We inherited from our ancestors (chengzu ) one parcel of mountainous property, which is located beyond the Shizhi
Township (xiang) of the 39
th
Sector (du), outside the North Gate of our
city. The land is seated in the east and facing the west; its boundaries
extend ahead to the root of the mountain, behind to the road of the Small
Leisure pavilion, left to the dividing line of the Xie family, right to the
edge of the water fall. The boundaries in all four directions are clearly
demarcated.
Now, owing to a lack of funds for public use, we consulted with each other
(gongtong xiangyi ) [italics added] and decided to rely on
middlemen to introduce this mountainous property, including all gardens,

214
Robert Hymes, Statesmen and Gentlemen: The Elite of Fu-chou, Chiang-hsi, in Northern and
Southern Sung (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1986), 117; Chen Zhiping , Fujian de
jiazu yu shehui, 20; Szonyi, “Local Cult, Lijia, and Lineage,” 93-125.

125
houses and trees, to the Chen family of Haidian for the sale price of
seventy taels in silver. On this day, in the presence of the middlemen, the
three parties see that the money has been received, and the mountainous
property as well as gardens, buildings, and tress have been given to the
buyer for him to manage as his property in perpetuity. From now on the
sale is final; [the sellers] dare not speak of redeeming the land,
supplemental payments, or engendering any disturbance. This property
was an inherited property from ancestors by Chen Xifu et al; other agnates
such as nephews, uncles and brothers, have no concerns with it. There are
no obstacles such as prior redeemable sales to another party or unclear
original ownership right. Should [the ownership rights] be unclear, it is the
sellers Xifu and others who will take the responsibility; the buyer need not
be concerned with it. Because we fear that oral agreement is unreliable,
we have drawn up a copy of this contract for irrevocable sale, which is
transferred [to the buyer] as a certificate.
In addition, the original contract has rotted with age, and it does not exist
any more. So we make this claim as a confirmation.

The 3
rd
month, the 4
th
year of the Chongzhen reign (1631)
Middlemen Li Changshou
Lin Zuren
Witness Mother Huang
Scribe Wang Qilao
Joint executors of the contract for the irrevocable sale Chen Eryi
Chen Xifu
Chen Xiqi
Chen Changsheng
215

The concept of “communal living, common property” (tongju gongcai ) discussed in Chapter One has always endowed a widowed mother a certain
degree of parental authority. It is not clear in this 1631 contract whether these four
Chen members were brothers or agnates of two generations in two conjugal units,
but it is obvious that this family property needed to be “publicly consulted with each
member who had a share in this corporate property” and witnessed (zhijian ) by

215
“Chen Xifu’s contract for irrevocable sale, 1631,” CHX, no serial number. This contract was
handwritten and stored by the department of History of Xiamen University, but this contract for final
sale was also recorded as the only Ming contract in the electronic file created by the College as
“precious material”. So I am citing it here as an example of a link between the Yuan and the Qing
periods.

126
the senior generation, i.e. the mother, to confirm its legal effectiveness. According
to the Ming laws and customs about household division, Madam Huang remained a
manager of the household economy and had her parental authority as a “placeholder
in the line of succession” so that her sons should look for her consent in disposing of
family property.
216
Bettine Birge’s study shows that women’s family status and legal
property rights experienced a fall during the Yuan period, but a widowed mother still
had her power in choosing an heir and giving consent to her sons selling land.
217

Compared to Mahemo’s 1336 contract, in which the mother served as a joint
executor, Madam Huang in this 1631 Quanzhou contract was only a witness to her
succeeding generation’s sale of her marital family property, neither did the four
sellers mark in the contract that they “followed the mother’s order.” Madam
Huang’s authority in this Ming contract does not seem as strong as Shilin in the
above Yuan counterpart. We do not know whether the majority of Ming widowed
mothers in Quanzhou had lost more authority than those in other regions. Yet
Jonathan Ocko has noted that:

Although the mother commanded filial respect as a parent, she was as a
female vulnerable to her son’s challenge to her authority. Significantly, it
was a vulnerability inversely proportional to a mother’s moral and legal
standing. The chaste biological mother was not nearly as likely to be
confronted, at least by her own sons, as were mothers who had remarried,
stepmothers, and adoptive mothers.
218

216
Birge, “Women and Confucianism,” 230.
217
Birge, “Women and Confucianism,” 217-30.
218
Jonathan K. Ocko, “Hierarchy and Harmony: Family Conflict as Seen in Ch’ing Legal Cases,” in
Orthodoxy in Late Imperial China, ed. Kwang-Ching Liu (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of
California Press, 1990), 216.

127
Unfortunately, this contract is the only extant Quanzhou one in the Ming dynasty. In
the next chapter, I will discuss the roles of women in Qing and Republican
Quanzhou contracts, and they show that married women, and widowed mothers in
particular, mostly served as witnesses rather than joint executors in Quanzhou
contracts.

III. Women’s Function and the Characteristics of Property Contracts in Qing
and Republican Quanzhou
Modern scholars David Faure and Anthony Pang have argued that the
contractual traditions from the Ming to today “have been of a purely private nature.”
The state played minimal roles in the transaction process by instituting stipulations.
Neither did it actively enforce the laws nor did it tolerate contracting parties to
modify the laws through negotiation practices.
219
The aforementioned Yuan and
Ming contracts have shown that although a widowed mother’s roles and function in
property transactions could vary widely, her participation was indispensable. In the
Qing the foreign policies that banned seafaring activities and female emigration, the
restoration of familism, and the incorporation of the Qing empire into the world
economy all contributed to these changes. Familism and ancestralism dominated
contract-making activities; people preferred to conduct conditional sales instead of
irrevocable sales in order to leave open the possibility of redemption and preserve
the wholeness of the family property. A growing number of Quanzhou widows and

219
David Faure and Anthony Pang, “The Power and Limit of the Private Contract in Ming-Qing
China and Today,” in South China: State, Culture and Social Change during the 20
th
Century, ed. Leo
Douw and Peter Post (North-Holland, Amsterdam, 1996), 57.

128
women left behind by their sojourning husbands took over the responsibilities for
economically supporting their marital families. The following two sections will
illustrate how women made use of important contractual traditions, such as close
kin’s preemption and supplemental payment, to better serve the family interest.

A. Close Kin and Neighbors’ Preemption to Purchase Property
The practice of inquiring of agnates if they had any intention of purchasing
property (qinlin youxian quan ) was preserved till the Republican period
but practiced differently from that in the Yuan. The state’s attitude toward
preemption was a key factor for the change. Yang Guozhen states that the Ming
government no longer required sellers to apply for an official receipt of land
inspection as they did during the Song and the Yuan, neither did the Ming ask for the
seller to issue a public notice about others’ intentions.
220
This Ming policy offered
common people a lot of convenience in the transaction process. Although lineages
grew stronger from the Ming dynasty onward, the Qing government, nonetheless,
ordered an end to the custom of providing preemption to the kin group in 1730, in
order to avoid either kinsmen or neighbors from extorting money, lowering the
purchase price, or aggregating their wealth.
221
Because the government could not
efficiently update the land registers, as discussed in the Introduction and this chapter,
most Quanzhou contract executors from the Ming to the Republican periods only
vaguely guaranteed ownership rights in their irrevocable or redeemable sales. The

220
Yang Guozhen, Tudi qiyue wenshu yanjiu, 31.
221
Guangxu huidian shili , juan 755, quoted in Fujian jingji qiyue wenshu xuanji, ed.
The Department of History of Fujian Normal University, 2.

129
most common sentences found in Quanzhou contracts during the Qing and
Republican periods are: “Should the original ownership rights be unclear, it is the
seller who is fully responsible” and that “The seller guarantees that this [property] is
inherited from ancestors [or, for example, ‘self-purchased by my father’], the agnates
have no further claim to it.”
I did not locate any Qing-dynasty Quanzhou property contracts or official
receipts on which “people who had no intention to buy” are listed, as in the case with
the 1336 inquiry announcement. The custom of listing the signatures of “relatives
who had no intention to buy” died out in either Ming or Qing societies as Yang
argued of the changes in state laws. Although the state forbade it, common people in
the Qing and Republican periods continued following age-old local customs and
provided agnates prior opportunities to purchase family property. Philip Huang
further notes that local people in the Yangzi River delta offered this preemption to
their agnates particularly in irrevocable sales.
222
The Report of an Investigation of
Civil Practices among the People (Mingshi xiguan diaocha baogao lu㞍抬 ) during the 1920s also reports that in Minqing County of Fujian province the
seller offered agnates the same preemption.
223
According to the contemporary
customary laws, five groups of persons could enjoy this priority: kinsmen (first close
agnates, then distant lineage members); neighbors whose land was contiguous to the

222
Philip Huang, The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350-1988
(Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1990), 107.
223
Ministry of Judicial Administration ed., Minshi xiguan diaocha baogao lu, vol. 1, 304.

130
land for sale; the original buyer of conditional sales; the former property-owners; and
the co-investors.
224

More examples spanning from the early 18
th
century to the Republican period
demonstrate the preservation of this preemption practice, and show that women
functioned as supervisors in them. In 1941, Yang Wencai and Yang Jinmu, the third
branch of the Yang family, “followed their mother’s order” (feng muming ) to
“(conditionally) sell” a house inherited from their grandfather; the mother Huang
Fajuan was the witness. The boundary of this house extended westward to (the wall
of) the kitchen of Yang Jidui, the fourth branch of the Yang family. Yang Jidui, who
was the younger brother or cousin of the Yang brothers, thus had priority to purchase
this house. The Yang brothers clarified in the contract that they would redeem this
house in ten years.
225

This 1941 contract was not an anomaly because the practice of offering the
priority to close kin was widespread in the 20
th
century. In another 1917 contract
dealing with irrevocable sale, Yang Yanguan sold a parcel of inherited family land
for use in a graveyard to the Cai family, with his mother as a witness and another
agnate as a middleman. The boundary of this property “extends in the front to Mei
garden, in the rear to Zong, westward to the buyer’s garden, and eastward to the
buyer’s garden [italic added].”
226
Similar offers to neighbors can been seen in the
1930s and 1940s. In 1935, seven branches of the Xie family sold a piece of land in
Quanzhou city to their “neighbor,” the Ye family, whose building was northeast of

224
Liang Zhiping, Qingdai xiguanfa, 61.
225
“Yang Wen Cai’s contract for sale, 1941,” CHX, serial number 2003042732A.
226
“Yang Yanguan’s contract for irrevocable sale, 1917,” CHX, no serial number.

131
this land; and in 1943, Liu Feifeng conducted a final sale and transferred a piece of
land to the Lu family whose building was west of this land.
227
From these cases, we
can reason that the Quanzhou people of the Qing and late Republican period still
adhered to this custom of giving preemption to kin or neighbors.
Participating in these contracts, widowed mothers could function as a fair
mediator supervising property transactions between her sons. In 1869 Wang Huize
“first consulted with his wife” and then conditionally sold his inherited house and
another hall inside a building to his younger brother Wang Huidian, whose inherited
share was contiguous with the main hall. Wang Huize stated that he retained clear
ownership rights to the hall and the building and that the redeemable period of this
contract was ten years. He wrote in the contract: “the seller guarantees that these
properties were inherited from my father’s estates; my agnates have no further claim
to them.” In other words, although Wang Huize and Wang Huidian were still living
in the same complex, this transaction was conducted after the father’s death and the
household division; their households were already separated from each other. Wang
Huize and his wife became a nuclear unit independent from the original stem or joint
family. This seems to be the reason why he “consulted with his wife” before the
transaction. What draws our attention is that Wang Huize’s mother was the witness
to this transaction between her two sons.
228
After the household division, her
parental authority and power in managing household finance could have been
damaged; she lost her right to give consent to her sons’ property transaction after the

227
“Xie Yuanmang’s group’s contract for irrevocable sale, 1935,” CHX, serial number 2003042725A;
“Liu Feifeng’s contract for irrevocable sale, 1942,” CHX, serial number 2003042713A.
228
There were another two agnates serving as the scribe and the middleman. “Wang Huize’c contract
for redeemable sale, 1869,” CHX, serial number 2003051109A.

132
division. Nevertheless, as a family elder, not only would she urge Wang Huize to
provide preemption to his brother, but also guarantee the ownership rights and
obligations between the sons as clearly as possible in order to create family harmony
and maintain legality. The engagement of Wang Huize’s mother was to preserve the
wholeness of the family property and prevent outsiders from purchasing their
property.
Married-out daughters could also take it as her obligation to keep her natal
family’s property intact by selling dowry property back to her natal family. In 1855
Madam Cai conducted an irrevocable sale of a house inherited from her natal family,
which would have been part of her dowry property. Part of the contract reads as
follows:

Wang Cai Baoniang’s contract for final sale and supplemental payment,
the 5
th
year of the Xianfeng reign (1855)

I, the executor of this contract for irrevocable sale and supplements Wang
Cai Baoniang, inherited a house from my maternal grandfather [italics
added]…. Now, owing to the fact that the price did not match its value, I
again rely on the original middleman to lead to Cai Meiguan for a
supplemental payment….

The 7
th
month, the 5
th
year of the Xianfeng reign
Witness: Nephew (waisheng) Qiao Guan
Jin Quanguan
Middlemen: Zhou Heguan
The elder Madam Zhuang
Scribe: Zhou Weicheng
Executor of contract: Wang Cai Baonian
229

229
“Wang Cai Baoniang’s contract for final sale and supplemental payment, 1855,” CHX, serial
number 2003053017A.

133
The buyer’s surname was Cai, suggesting that the final sale was in fact a
“return” of dowry property to the natal family and that the supplemental payment
was a form of financial aid from the natal family. Historiography on contracts and
the priority of kinsmen over the general public in purchasing lineage estates usually
focuses on the preservation of the wholeness of the patrilineal property of the marital
family.
230
Long before the 1931 Family Law redefined family and kinship
organization, this contract shows that this principle was also applicable to the natal
patriline in the Qing era, or that women in private did not see their natal families as
an “outer family” or “alien family” (waijia ). The members of the natal family
maintained the priority to purchase the dowries of their married-out relatives.
The Qing and Republican women in these contracts, as witnesses or sellers,
were not aware of or overlooked the 1730 regulation that forbade the application of
preemption to kin and neighbors. Instead, people followed local customs and offered
the priority of purchasing family property to agnates, natal family, and neighbors.
This practice reveals that immovable property such as land and house had been vital
to patrimony and patriline in both marital and natal families from the perspective of
women; the transaction of immovable property to non-kin or a different surname
group should be avoided. In the above cases, Wang Huize’s mother and Cai
Baoniang helped preserve the harmony and consistency among laws, local customs,
and Confucian family ethics.

230
Zelin, “A Critique of Rights of Property in Prewar China,”in Contract and Property in Early
Modern China, ed. Madeleine Zelin, Jonathan K. Ocko, and Robert Gardella (Stanford, CA: Stanford
Univeristy Press, 2004), 26.

134
B. Supplemental Payments
A widowed mother could use the sympathy given to her from the local
community to ask for extra payments in property transactions and to improve
household finances. The Chinese have traditionally identified widows as the weak in
a patriarchal society and family and have argued that caring for them was a path to
“Grand Commonality” (datong ) and an ideal society. In the chapter on the
“Evolution of Rites” (Liyun ) in the Record of the Rituals, it is recorded: “The
young were provided with an upbringing, and the widow and widower, the orphaned
and the sick, with proper care. Men had their tasks and women their hearths.”
231

Japanese historian Fuma Susumu discusses the development of Benevolent Societies
(shan hui ) and Benevolent Institutions (shan tang ) in China and notes the
establishments of various Nursing Homes (yangji yuan ), Childcare Halls
(yuying tang ), and Widow Homes (qingjie tang ) throughout the
history, as a supplement to other state philanthropy policies. Angela Leung follows
Fuma’s research and argues that Qing Confucian scholars and local gentrymen were
anxious to build Widow Homes and house widows and their children in order to
protect widows from abduction or local bullies.
232
In other words, many widows
might have suffered from lineage members’ encroachment on their limited family

231
“The Evolution of Rites,” in Sources of Chinese Tradition, ed. Wm. Theodore de Bary and Irene
Bloom, 2
nd
edition, 342-3.
232
Fuma Susumu , Zhongguo shanhui shantang shi yanjiu , trans. Wu
Yue , Yang Wenxin , and Zhang Xuefeng (Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 2005),
30-77, and 319-417; Angela Ki Che Leung, “To Chasten Society: The Development of Widow
Homes in the Qing, 1773-1911,” Late Imperial China 14.2 (1993), 1-32.

135
property as well as local threats to individual safety and chastity.
233
Yet once local
communities got involved in widows’ household matters, widows’ weak and
disadvantaged place in family and society could attract more compassion and be
transformed into an advantageous position from which to look for extra profit.
A supplemental payment was additional money usually, but not exclusively,
requested by a disadvantaged original owner of a conditional sale, before the
expiration of the redeemable period. This local custom crystallized under two
conditions: (1) the buyer wanted to purchase the property at a low price and avoid an
irrevocable sales tax burden and the trouble of registration in the local court; and (2)
the original owner wanted to request extra money to fill the difference between the
transaction price and the market value when one realized one’s inability to redeem
the property.
234
Therefore, the original owner would demand additional money years
after the property sale. Such requests in Quanzhou could number as many as three or
four in one transaction. For example, a seller in Hui’an County may respectively ask
for “mediated money” (xi ),
235
“making-up money” (zhao or zhaotie ), and
“cutting-off or final money” (jue 䳽 or jin ), which should be, but not always, the
last opportunity to demand any supplemental payment.
236
People usually combined
these Chinese characters as compounds like zhaotie ( ), xitie ( ), xijin ( )

233
Sommer, Sex, Law and Society, particularly chapter 5.
234
Yang Guozhen, Tudi qiyue wenshu yanjiu, 241.
235
Xi was a locally specific term used to refer to supplemental payments. In the Report of an
Investigation of Civil Practices among the People, only another Minqing 救 County in Eastern
Fujian also used xi to refer to supplemental payments. Other provinces and counties usually used tie
or zhao to refer to these extra payments. Nevertheless, xi referred to by the Quanzhou people
as supplemental payment could be a consequence of misuse because of its similar pronunciation in the
Southern Fujian dialect to two other words xuan or xie , both referring to negotiaion.
236
Ministry of Judicial Administration, Minshi xiguan diaocha, vol. 1, “Hui’an xian xiguan ,” “dianmai qiju ,” 307.

136
etc., and addressed the contracts as “contracts for supplemental payment and
irrevocable sale” (xitie jinjue maiqi 䳽 or maijin duangen bing xitie
zaojue qi䳽 ), when their request of supplemental payments
happened with the final sale and transfer of the property rights. In the process, the
greater the gap was between the price of conditional sale and the market value, the
faster the original owner was losing his or her ability to redeem it, because the seller
needed to prepare supplemental payments in addition to the original sale money for
his redemption of the property. Once the total payments—including both original
sale price and supplemental payments—reached the market value, the original
redeemable contract was transformed into an irrevocable contract.
In practice, the late imperial feature of endless “supplemental payment”
(zhaotie ) in contract-making activities required the presence of the original
witnesses and middlemen. These were usually close kin or acquaintances to
guarantee the effectiveness of these physically linked contracts or to mediate
possible disputes over the property or amount of money.
237
For example, the Zheng
brothers in Quanzhou demanded a supplemental payment from the original buyer in
1749 and then concluded a contract for “supplemental payment and final sale”
(zhaotie jin qi ). The Zheng brothers’ note below typifies how the original
owner demanded supplemental payments.

237
Disputes over supplemental payments could focus on the amount of the payments or on the
frequent requests for supplementary payments. Feng Shaoting notes a clear trend in his study of real
estate contracts in Shanghai that “the entire process of transacting in real estate was becoming shorter
and more simplified.” Of all the reasons he offers for this phenomenon, “the growing frequency of
land turnover and sustained rises in rents and land prices” are most noteworthy. See Feng Shaoting,
“Supplemental Payments in Urban Property Contracts in Mid to Late Qing Shanghai,” in Contract
and Property in Early Modern China, 213-21.

137

Now, because the sale price did not meet the real estate value, we uncles
and nephews consulted with each other and followed our (grandmother’s
and) mother’s order to decide to contact the Wu family via the original
middleman [italics added] for a supplemental payment of…. Since the
payment has reached the full amount of its deserved price, [the sellers] are
not to dare speak of supplemental payment or redeeming or generate more
complications as well as dissenting words and so on.
238

Quanzhou women, particularly widowed mothers, could interchangeably
transform their parental authority in the family and disadvantaged social status in
terms of gender hierarchy into an art of managing family affairs and thereby earn
sympathy from local communities. Widowed mothers could act through male
relatives, such as their sons, to exert their will over the management of their marital
family property or to ask for supplemental payments in a shorter transaction process.
They could also utilize the social moral pressures prevalent in society, which was
supposed to protect the weak such as women and the poor, to ask for illegal
supplemental payments. Madam Wang served as a witness in three contracts, one
redeemable sale and another two irrevocable sales, all officially concluded by her
son Li Zeqing and another three Li family members—Li Yuyuan, Li Yujing, and Li
Yuyan—in the 13
th
year of the Tongzhi reign (1874). Her “order” provided the
grounds to legally justify these three contracts. The first contract for redeemable sale
reads:

Li Zeqing et al.’s contract for redeemable sale, the 13
th
year of the Tongzhi
reign (1874)

238
“Zheng Qibao et al.’s Contract for Supplemental Payments and Final Sale, 1749,” CHX, no serial
number.

138

We, the joint executors of this contract for redeemable sale, Li Zeqing, Li
Yuyuan, Li Yujing, and Li Yuyan in Shengde Precinct, have inherited
from our father a three-courtyard and five-bay-wide house which was
purchased from the Su family …
Now, owing to lack of silver dollars for expenses, we follow the mother’s
order [italics added] to rely on middlemen for an introduction as the
sacrificial property of the ancestral shrine of the Cai family living in the
Twenty-fourth Sector and outside the South Gate. The price of this
redeemable sale is four hundred foreign silver dollars, converting into two
hundred seventy-two taels exactly. On the day the money has been
received in the presence of the middlemen, the house is up to the ancestral
shrine to manage as its sacrificial property. We dare not create trouble or
utter dissent. We guarantee that this house is the property inherited by us
from our father who has purchased it, and [the ownership right] has
nothing to do with my agnates; neither are there any obstacles of repeated
redemptions or unclear ownership rights. Should original ownership rights
be unclear, we are fully responsible; the buyer need not worry about it …

The 12
th
month, the 13
th
year of the Tongzhi reign
Witness Paternal uncle Bomou
Witness Mother Wang
Middlemen and guarantors (zhongbao ren ) Zhang Chaocong shi
Zhang Guilin shi
Xie Bo shi
Chen Yiwen
Zhang Chaoqiu shi
[italic
added]
Shi Wanglian
Joint executors of contract for redeemable sale Li Zeqing
Li Yuyuan
Li Yujing
Li Yuyan
239

As Shiga Shuzo has argued the historical continuity that the husband and
wife constituted a single unit (fuqi yiti ) in the traditional Chinese patrilineal
family system, Madam Wang’s presence as a witness and her “order” in contracts
illustrates how a Qing widowed mother took the place of her deceased husband to

239
“Li Zeqing et al’s contract for redeemable sale, 1874,” CHX, serial number 200342519 A.

139
give the order in disposing of household finance prerogatives. Shiga states that the
imperial government strictly required a widowed mother’s order, consent, and her
signature or finger print on any contract concluded by her sons living in cohabitation.
He shows a Southern Song verdict in the Collection of Decisions by Famous Judges
to Clarify and Enlighten, a literary record in the Southern Song gentryman Yuan
Cai’s Precepts for Social Life (Shifan ), and the investigation of customs in
Chinese villages during the early Republican period, to support and prove the
continuity of this customary law before the promulgation of the Republican Civil
Codes of 1929-1930.
240
Indeed, Madam Wang marked her signature on all three
contracts to demonstrate her will and consent to sell the house and “extract”
supplemental payments.
A widowed mother’s parental authority was actually more crucial in property
transactions than her agnates during late imperial times. Shiga Shuzo notes that a
widowed mother selling property needed the approval from both the government and
agnates if she had no sons or her sons did not reach maturity. Nevertheless, once her
son(s) reached adulthood, there was no more need of outside supervision over her
management of family property.
241
Jonathan Ocko suggests that once a household
division was made between branches, a widow or her sons had the right to sell their
share while her agnates might have difficulty in engaging in supervising the
transaction.
242
Bettine Birge additionally finds that the state tolerated impoverished

240
Shiga, Zhongguo jiazufa yuanli, 343-50.
241
Ibid, 346.
242
Ocko, “Family Conflict,” 227.

140
widows with young sons selling property.
243
In this case, the agnate’s permission or
supervision would lose its decisive power in a widowed mother’s or her adult son’s
sale of family property.
In Li Zeqing’s case, Madam Wang was the placeholder of Li Zeqing’s
deceased father, and her parental authority restricted her son from obtaining
individual property rights from the senior generation.
244
Yet the paternal uncle Li
Bomou also served as a witness in the contracts to give his consent and justify the
contract. As a male heir of the Li family, Li Bomou had the family duty to supervise
this property transaction of the Li family because Madam Wang was not the real
owner of the Li family property if Li Zeqing and other members were young. Since
Li Zeqing led the other three family members to be joint executors of this transaction
and Madam Wang did not sign as a joint executor, it is in all likelihood that Li
Zeqing had reached his maturity. Inviting Li Bomou was more a gesture of respect
to the Li family than a necessity in conducing transaction. Compared to Li Bomou,
Madam Wang enjoyed an exclusive and decisive power in conducting this
transaction and demanding supplemental payments although she was not a fomally
listed seller.
Widowhood and the generational order granted Madam Wang the authority
to operate through her succeeding generations to enforce her order and the moral
ground to successfully bypass the Qing laws when she and her son(s) asked for two
supplemental payments during a short period. In the second month of the first year
of the Guangxu reign (1875), Madam Wang and the Li family members demanded

243
Birge, “Women and Confucianism from Song to Ming,” 226.
244
Shiga, “Family Property,” 120.

141
supplemental payments and made an irrevocable sale (zhaotie jinjue qizi䳽 ). It seems that the Li family was under financial difficulty so that the mother
demanded two supplemental payments within just three months. In the first contract
for irrevocable sale and supplemental payment the Lis stated:

We, the joint executors of this contract for the redeemable sale, Li Zeqing,
Li Yuyuan, Li Yujing, and Li Yuyan in Shengde Precinct … think that the
price did not reach the [the market value], so we follow our mother’s order
and rely on middlemen again for demanding a supplemental payment of
five hundred foreign silver dollars, converting into three hundred sixty-two
taels exactly, from the ancestral shrine of the Cai family living in the
Twenty-fourth Sector and outside the South Gate. On the day when money
has been received in the presence of middlemen, the house is given to your
lineage shrine to manage and rebuild as your property in perpetuity.
Because the price has reached [the market value], we dare not speak of
supplemental payments, create disturbances, or utter dissent [italics
added].”
245

Madam Wang, however, led the Li family members to make their second request of
supplemental payment only five months after the first one (the seventh month, the
first year of the Guangxu reign, or 1875). Once again, they gathered the paternal
uncle and six middlemen to support the second demand, successfully concluding
another contract for irrevocable sale and a supplementary payment, and they
repeated the above statement that there would be no more request for supplemental
payments.
246

Local customs and social practices in fact contradicted state laws by
tolerating impoverished people ignoring state laws that forbade “extorting” or asking

245
“Li Zeqing et al.’s contract for supplemental payment and irrevocable sale, 1875,” CHX, serial
number 2003042521 A.
246
“Li Zeqing et al.’s contract for supplemental payment and irrevocable sale, 1875,” CHX, serial
number 2003042520 A.

142
for supplemental payments after conducting irrevocable sales. The 3
rd
and 7
th

substatutes of Statute 95 of the Great Qing Code read that property transactions
without proper notice as an irrevocable sale should be allowed to be redeemed by the
original owner; and punishment is instituted in these substatutes upon those persons
extorting from the buyer supplemental payments after conducting irrevocable
sales.
247
The early Republican jurists and the Nationalist lawmakers in 1915 and in
the late 1920s acknowledged the practice of conditional sales, but tried to protect
original owners and shorten the redemption period at the same time.
248
We may say
that conducting irrevocable sales was a demarcation line for both original owners
and the buyer. Before conducting an irrevocable sale, the buyer’s ownership right
was uncertain although he or she had all rights to use the property. Only after an
irrevocable sale was finalized could the buyer of a conditional sale avoid the request
of supplemental payments or redemption from the original owner and finally obtain
the ownership right. Yet the Lis violated the Qing code and successfully received
clear supplemental payments the second time without any punishment. Local
customs in fact considered human feelings and bypassed the aforementioned Statute
95 of the Great Qing Code.
Although there is no government report about Quanzhou customs that sellers
of an irrevocable sale could demand further supplemental payments, this custom
existed in other counties. According to The Report of an Investigation of Civil
Practices among the People, the original owner of an irrevocable sale in Gutian of

247
See Xue Yunsheng , Duli cunyi congkanben , punctuated and edited by
Huang Jngjia 湫 , Reprint (Taipei: Chinese Materials and Research Aids Service Center, 1970
[1905]), 281-3.
248
Philip Huang, Code, Custom, and Legal Practice, 85-94.

143
Minqing County (in Eastern Fujian) could ask for additional supplemental payments
if he or she was impoverished and unable to earn a living; in fact, such demands
could even be made repeatedly.
249
This local custom was similar to the Song records
noting that the state tolerated impoverished widows with young sons to sell property.
Witnesses and middlemen in contracts functioned as the third party protectors
of local customs and were expected by the contracting parties to ensure the fairness
and social justice of the transaction, particularly when the state laws could not
protect the weak from the threat of land aggregation or the economic trend of
commoditization. Chinese historian Liang Zhiping has stated that the functions of
middlemen in Chinese contract-making activities included: introducing different
parties to conduct their sale; negotiating the price; and supervising, witnessing and
guaranteeing the transaction. In principle, middlemen and guarantors had different
roles in the contract-making process; in practice, the two roles usually converged
into one.
250
Local customs in Hui’an County, which was adjacent to Quanzhou City,
required that all contracts of redeemable sale include “witnesses” from both
contracting parties in order to complete the process of the transfer of property and to
deal with any future disputes.
251
In the process of negotiation and supervision, the
third party’s first task was to ensure the fairness of the transaction, that is, to decide
the end price of conditional and irrevocable sales in accordance with the market
price. The responsibility of the third party would never be fulfilled if any contracting
party had dissenting words or disputes over the property of the contract or if the

249
Ministry of Judicial Administration, Minshi xiguan diaocha, 295, 304-5.
250
Liang Zhiping, Qingdai xiguanfa, 120-4.
251
Ministry of Judicial Administration, Minshi xiguan diaocha, vol. 1, “Hui’an xian xiguan ,” “dianmai qiju ,” 307.

144
original owners continued to demand supplemental payments. Middlemen and
witnesses thus needed to bear the second responsibility to settle any disputes and
maintain social justice.
The fact that Madam Wang and the Li family in the aforementioned contracts
looked for two supplemental payments and broke the irrevocable contract within a
few months not only shows their financial difficulty but also that social injustice
existed in conditional sales. Madam Wang and the Li brothers first conditionally
sold the house for four hundred Mexican pesos, and soon requested a supplemental
payment and the irrevocable sale for another five hundred Mexican pesos. Nine
hundred pesos in total represented the closest amount to the market value because
people used to make up the gap between the price of conditional and irrevocable
sales. Yet when we take a closer look, the original price of conditional sale was less
than forty-five percent of the end amount. It shows the universally disadvantaged
position of sellers in conditional sales.
252
Madam Wang, however, broke this
irrevocable contract and demanded the second supplemental payment. She obtained
another two hundred pesos and finalized the whole transaction process.
253
Since
Madam Wang and the Li family had been in urgent need of funds and in a

252
“Li Zeqing et al.’s contract for redeemable sale, 1874,” CHX, serial number 200342519 A; “Li
Zeqing et al.’s contract for supplemental payment and irrevocable sale, 1875,” CHX, serial number
2003042521 A. In contrast, the rates for a redeemable sale in North China was between sixty and
seventy percent of the irrevocable sale. See Philip Huang, The Peasant Economy and Social Change
in North China, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985), 176. Myron Cohen also notes that
the rates in the late Qing Taiwan ranged from seventy to ninety percent of the total amount for
outright purchase. See Myron L. Cohen, “Writs of Passage in Late Imperial China: The
Documentation of Practical Understandings in Minong, Taiwan,” in Contract and Property in Early
Modern China, ed. Madeleine Zelin, Jonathan K. Ocko, and Robert Gardella (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 2004), 48.
253
“Li Zeqing et al.’s contract for supplemental payment and irrevocable sale, 1875,” CHX, serial
number 2003042520 A.

145
disadvantaged position from the very beginning, the success in obtaining the second
supplemental payment must be attributed to the efforts of the third party, i.e. the
middlemen.
Historian Prasenjit Duara’s work has shown that middlemen, particularly
those of the local elite, were accustomed to fighting on behalf of the weak in order to
highlight their social status and “keep the face” (liu mianzi ) of all involved
parties.
254
“Face” (lian or mianzi ) in Chinese human relationships signifies
moral character, prestige, power, and perceived social position within a social
network.
255
Previous scholarship shows that having and saving the face, and doing
“face work” is a type of “impression management.”
256
It is within reason that some
of the six middlemen in Madam Wang and Li Zeqing’s contracts represented the
interests of the buyer or the Cai family, although we cannot identify them. Four out
of the six middlemen, nevertheless, signed their names with a suffix—shi ( ), a

254
Prasenjit Duara, Culture, Power, and the State: Rural North China, 1900-1942 (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1988), 181-93.
255
Hsien Chin Hu lists the uses and expressions about face and further distinguishes the meanings of
the two Chinese characters lian and mianzi from each other. According to Hsien Chin Hu,
lian stands for the good moral reputation and confidence of an individual within the community, and
mianzi represents prestige and reputation, which are accumulated by means of personal effort and
achieved through success. “Mianzi differs greatly from lian in that it can be borrowed, struggled for,
added to, padded.” See Hsien Chin Hu, “The Chinese Concepts of ‘Face’,” American Anthropologist,
46.1 (Jan-Mar 1944), 45-64, particularly 45. David Ho disagrees with Hsien Chin Hu and argues that
the two sets of criteria-- judgments of character and of the amoral aspects of social performance—
“cannot be anchored to a linguistic distinction.” “A man who turns from rich to poor due to some
misfortune will have less claim to mianzi, but he does not lose face in the process. Face may be lost
when conduct or performance falls below the minimum level considered acceptable or when certain
vital or essential requirements, which are functions of one’s social position, are not satisfactorily
met.” See David Yau-fai Ho, “On the Concept of Face,” The American Journal of Sociology 81.4
(Jan 1976), 867-884, particularly 87. Kwang-kuo Hwang does not distinguish lian from mianzi but
focuses on the function of face in general and how the concept of face is formed and intersected with
other concepts such as reciprocity (bao ), social relations (guanxi ), favors (en ), human
feelings (renqing ) in the relation-oriented Chinese society. See Kwang-kuo Hwang, “Face and
Favor: The Chinese Power Game,” The American Journal of Sociology, 92.4 (Jan 1987), 944-74.
256
Kwang-kuo Hwang, “Face and Favor,” 960.

146
phonetic mistake of she . They are Zhang Chaozong shi, Zhang Guilin shi, Zhang
Chaoqiu shi, and Xie Bo shi. In the southern Fujian dialect, the suffix she denotes
the higher social status of the name-holders, for they were either local gentry or
official households.
257
In the above negotiation and contract-breaking process, the
middlemen must have mediated and constituted a moral link between a poor family,
represented by a widowed mother, and a powerful and rich lineage—the ancestral
shrine of the Cai lineage. The social status and “face” of local elite was based on
whether these local elites were able to preserve social justice and consider “human
feelings” in disposing of community affairs. Protecting the weak and the poor, these
four members of local elite earned their social reputation and demonstrated their
leadership to the whole community. The buyer’s generosity of giving the extra two
hundred pesos as the second supplemental payment not only prevented them from
being criticized as the local bully but also earned them “face” because the Cai family
gave favor to the poorer Li family and Madam Wang after considering human
feelings. The Cai family thus improved its the social reputation. As for Madam
Wang, her “face” was respected because her widowhood and seniority were valued
by the local community as she strategically used the image of a weak widow to
illegally request an extra supplemental payment. The success in acquiring the
second supplemental payment also consolidated her parental authority over the

257
She ( ) originated from sheren ( ), which refers to “drafters or officials of low rank” from the
Northern-Southern Song to the Qing dynasties. Sheren also means housemen, to refer to unranked
kinsmen of officials. Southern Fujian dialect preserves the second meaning and uses shi or she as a
suffix attached to a name in addressing and in reference to local gentrymen. See Hong Qianyou , Minnanyu kaoshi 救 (Taipei: Wenshizhe chubanshe, 1992), 75-6; Hucker, A Dictionary
of Official Titles in Imperial China, 417. However, the two characters and were in practice
interchangeable and were used as a type of free variation in the southern Fujian dialect because of
their similar pronunciation in the Minnan dialect.

147
younger generations of her family. Nevertheless, the third party or the middlemen,
who represented the moral community in mediating the conflicts among different
parties and restoring the familial and social harmony in a self-regulating society,
created a “win-win” situation between any two of the three parties in this property
transaction and prevented any important actor from losing his or her face. As the
Chinese proverb says to “have a look at the Buddha’s face before turning the monk’s
plea down,” the social function of the third party in any contract was not to serve as
mere notaries “to verify that the parties to the agreement were indeed who they said
they were and sometimes to clarify intentions.”
258

Under the principle of maintaining familial and social harmony, the moral
community or local gentry granted the widowed mothers economic and moral
support to conduct redeemable sales or repeatedly request supplemental payments.
The practice of redeemable sales gave poor sellers or widows with young sons the
opportunity to obtain short-term capital for family expenditures without completely
severing the ownership rights. Many sellers justified selling as following their
(widowed) mother’s orders, and many more contracts were in reality concluded by
the widowed mothers. There were several Quanzhou contracts for redeemable sales
similar to that found in Li Zeqing’s case. In 1882, Wang Taoyan and his three
younger brothers followed the order of their mother, Madam Chen, to request
another moving payment (a supplemental payment) “by applying the Quanzhou
custom and conclude an irrevocable contract,” which finalized another sale five

258
Zelin, “A Critique of Rights in Late Imperial China,” 25.

148
years previously.
259
In 1926, another widowed mother, Madam Li, “consulted with
her daughter” and then made a contract for supplemental payment and irrevocable
sale.
260
The state laws regarding women’s property rights experienced a lot of
change during the transitional period from the Qing to 1949, but caring for the weak
and widows remained the core value of Confucian ethics in families and
communities. When women, and widowed mothers in particular, were involved,
their devotion to preserving family property and their weak image justified their (or
their sons’) request for supplemental payments and sale of family property.

IV. Confucian Family Ethics in Qing and Republican Quanzhou Contracts
Married women, and particularly widowed mothers, conformed to the late
imperial laws and customary practices to participate in contract-making because the
“husband and wife constituted a single unit.” First of all, the Qing laws, following
Tang, Song, and Ming precedents, granted widowed mothers the legal power to take
the place of their husbands and to give permission to their sons selling family
property before household division, in order to avoid the dissipation of patrimony
and to preserve the ideal of “communal living, common property.”
261
Second, the
family status and authority of married women were secured by the norm of
Confucian family ethics. Zhu Xi’s Family Rituals suggest that in the Chinese
patrilineal family a woman’s social identity and status were not firmly established
until she was presented to the shrine—“bowing to the ancestral spirits” of her marital

259
“Wang Taoyan’s moving contract, 1892,” CHX, serial number 200342507A.
260
“Chen Li Zijuan’s contract for irrevocable sale, 1926,” CHX, serial number 2003042008A.
261
Birge, “Women and Confucian,” 222,

149
family.
262
Whereas Confucian scholars kept revising the Family Rituals and some
Quanzhou people (mostly [returning] emigrants and their families) converted to
Christianity during both the Qing and Republican periods, it was very common for a
Quanzhou woman to bow to the ancestral tablets of her marital family on her
wedding day and worship them afterwards. As Victoria Cass argues, a religious awe
for the ancestors of the marital families occupied the minds of many women after
making their marriage vows and being presented in front of the ancestral spirits. The
behavior of a wife or a mother was overseen by the marital ancestors.
263
These
family property contracts reflect the efforts of Quanzhou women in upholding the
regime of patrimony.
The mother in the 1869 redeemable contract between Wang Huize and Wang
Huidian (discussed in the 3
rd
section) was an example to show how a Quanzhou
woman actually functioned as a mediator between two new (nuclear or stem)
families; the mother’s seniority and parental authority guaranteed an outcome of
legal effectiveness and family harmony even after the household division. In
contrast to the occasions of household division, when the third party (usually the
maternal uncle) was usually present to prove the fairness, Wang Huize’s mother
served as a witness to her sons’ transaction, supervising and ensuring its fairness.
She functioned as an outside middleman or witness but had more parental authority
to maintain family harmony and preserve the patrimony within the family lines of
her deceased husband.

262
Ebrey trans., Chu Hsi’s Family Rituals, 63-4.
263
Cass, Dangerous Women, 3-5.

150
The research of Ta Chen and Michael Szonyi shows that a new patriarchy
over women was formed in the Republican period because male emigration did not
liberate women from their subordinate roles but rather charged women with more
family obligations and put them under the supervision of other agnates. Ta Chen’s
sociological work presents a picture of the Republican family system. His research
was conducted around the same period that the New Life Movement was inaugurated
in 1934; at this time, Quanzhou was under the firm control of the Nationalist
government. He noticed that the family system was hardly altered even with the
growing acceptance of the so-called “dual family system” (shuangbian jiating ). Emigration of male laborers generated a lot of belated marriages and living
widows, and yet women just waited; the absent husband would marry a concubine in
Southeast Asia and his wife in the home village would usually raise no objection.
The household division at home was also in accordance with traditional custom
rather than laws.
264
Michael Szonyi’s research of transnational families of the same
period has further shown that male migration was a deliberate gendered division of
labor. Women were charged with the family responsibilities of maximizing the
family property and reputation by reinvestment in real estate with remittances and
fidelity to their absent husbands. New forms of patriarchy were thus forged. Many

264
Ta Chen, Emigrant Communities, 119-35. Michael Szonyi calls this “dual family” the “divided
family,” and Evelyn Nakano Glenn calls it “split household family,” and another Chinese anthologist
Zeng Shaocong uses the term “shuangbian jiating” . It refers to the family “in which
economic production is carried out by the absent migrant, while all other functions, including
reproduction, socialization, and most consumption, are done by the wife and relatives in the village.”
See Evelyn Nakano Glenn, “Split Household, Small Producer and Dual Wage-Earner: An Analysis of
Chinese-American Family Strategies,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 45 (1983), 39; quoted in
Szonyi, “Mothers, Sons, and Lovers,” 45; Zeng Shaocong , Dongyang hanglu yumin: Ming-
Qing haiyang yumin Taiwan yu Feilubin de bijiao yanjiu : (Jiangxi, China: Jiangxi gaoxiao chubanshe, 1998), 119-23.

151
women became surrogate family heads, but their household management and fidelity
to their husbands were often under the supervision of overseas Chinese men’s male
relatives at home.
265

Immovable property such as land and houses represented the force that
economically and emotionally bound the whole family together, and the frequent
turnover of ownership rights in Quanzhou was not based on a capitalistic urge but
rather a result of the power of traditional familism. As I mentioned in the
Introduction, Chinese believed in “Owning land, owning wealth.” The value of land
and houses to the Chinese was more than just money. Purchasing property served as
the optimal way not only to enrich the family but also to honor the ancestors. On the
other hand, selling property was an unfilial act and a symbol of the decline of a
family. Vernacular literature has well reflected this mindset of the Chinese people.
The story “Zhao Spring Helped the Tsao Household Thrive Again” , collected by Feng Menglong (1574-1646) in his Reasonable Words to Awaken
the World (Jingshi tongyan , ca. 1620-1627), tells the story of a prodigal
son, Tsao Kecheng, as he loses his family estate. This in turn depresses his father so
much that it leads to his death, but his wife Zhao Spring weaves and gradually saves
big money to rebuild the family property and help Tsao Kecheng find an official
position.
266
In general, family members in China were psychologically attached to
the idea of home, and immovable property was the embodiment of this emotional
bond. Land and houses (including the sacrificial estate and the ancestral shrine) thus

265
Szonyi, “Mothers, Sons and Lovers,” 43-64.
266
Feng Menglong , Jinshi Tongyan , Feng Menglong Chuanji , vol. 3
(Shanghai: Jiangshu Guji Chubanshe , 1993), 471-82.

152
represented physical symbols for the union of a family. It was true in Quanzhou that
land and buildings changed hands very often; however, ordinary people did not
invest in real estate and resell for profit but in the long-term interests of the family.
267

The inflow of returning emigrants’ earnings or remittances contributed to the
expansion of family property; however, it deeply changed the power structure of the
joint family and the nature of “common property.” Overseas migration, not only
created the “dual family system” as Ta Chen shows, but also separated the budget
and property of the nuclear family from the common property of the joint family.
Developing businesses in Southeast Asia required emigrants to have independent
property rights and almost full authority in fund collection and in investment.
Compared to the large amounts of overseas investment, a relatively small amount of
earnings for the joint family was to fulfill the basic obligation of supporting parents.
The traditional virtue of filiality signified the young absolute obedience and the
patriarchal power in managing household finance.
268
Yet in the late 19
th
and early
20
th
centuries Quanzhou overseas or returning emigrants demonstrated their filiality
mainly in the provisions of basic living support and ancestral sacrifices. Once the
old generation lost absolute economic control, the young returning emigrants, their
wives, and their nuclear families could not help but become more independent. As
the authority of the older generations eroded; the joint family was in decline and the
nuclear family was on the rise.

267
Szonyi, “Mothers, Sons and Lovers,” 45-53.
268
Sun Qian , Qingdai huaqiao yu minyue shehui bianqian 救䱝 (Xiamen:
Xiamen University chubanshe, 1999), 147-8 .

153
The fortunes of overseas emigrants not only changed the Quanzhou family
system during the transitional period from the Qing to 1949 but also gave women
more authority and individual freedom in relation to her own nuclear family and her
husband’s lineage. In 1924, three daughters-in-law—Wang Tangjuan, Qiu
Shoujuan, and Nien Zhujuan—and another two males in the Zhuang family
concluded a contract to clarify the responsibility and obligations for a redeemed
orchard of sixty-one bushes of longgan trees. According to this contract, another
daughter-in-law, Madam Xie, carried out her deceased husband’s (Zhuang Sancang)
will and redeemed the above orchard which had been conditionally sold by Zhuang
Sancang and the afrorementioned joint contract executors to the Song family in 1914
CE. Zhuang Shancang had intended to redeem it with his earnings from Southeast
Asia, but he suddenly became ill and passed away. Madam Xie (and her sons
Qingchi and Qingshui) therefore took the initiative to redeem the orchard for the
whole Zhuang family. Madam Xie, however, owned the complete rights to manage
the income of produce because she now was the real owner of this orchard. The
other branches of the Zhuang family could not have any disagreement in her disposal
of the orchard although they were the original sellers and co-owners and this orchard
once was common property.
269
In other words, the earnings brought back by Zhuang
Sancang became the exclusive property of Madam Xie’s nuclear family property
after he died. Overseas earnings were no more part of the common property and
gradually transformed the power structure of the original joint family to give Madam
Xie full ownership rights to the orchard although she redeemed it in the name of the

269
“Zhuang Nien Zhujuan el al.’s contract, 1924,” CHX, serial number 2003051210A.

154
agnatic interests of the Zhuang family and claimed this orchard as part of the
patrimony.
Not many widowed mothers or married women could be like Madam Xie and
have the same economic power to support themselves and prevent encroachment
from other branches of the family on the property of these women’s nuclear families.

It was not unusual that strong branches or lineages used all manner of excuses to
encroach on the property of weak ones during the Qing and Republican times. The
aforementioned practice of “putting up a platform” (datai ) in Fujian was also
criticized by officials as the result of agnates using the cult of chastity as an excuse
to deprive a widow’s claims to temporary protector of her deceased husband’s share
of the family property.
270
The local custom of offering prior opportunity of
purchasing the family property to other family members and agnates could be used
as an opportunity to intimidate weaker branches, particularly those without male
adult family heads. Disposal of family property was thus a common cause of
disputes between branches of a joint family. After discussing the general functions
that Quanzhou women played in property contracts, Chapter 3 will discuss the
various roles of women and their family members in order to illustrate the authority
of individual women in the nuclear family.

270
Taiwan yinhang, Shengli, vol. 8, “jinzhi xunlie ,” 1199.

155
Chapter 3:
The Roles of Women in Quanzhou Property Contracts

This chapter explores the various roles of individual Quanzhou women
involved in property contracts with their marital and natal families within the scope
of Confucian family ethics. I showed in Chapter Two how Quanzhou women in
general adhered to Confucian family ethics and used their legal rights to maximize
the family interest in contract-making activities. The Chinese family system is
exclusively centered on the patrilines; a young married woman remained an outsider
to the marital family, and her family status was not elevated or consolidated until she
bore a male heir for her marital family. The contracts in this chapter will show that a
woman’s economic power depended on whether or not she could reach beyond the
limitations of gender hierarchy, apply generational privileges, or obtain assistance
from her natal family to exemplify her wifely or motherly rights and to protect her
personal interests. Women in Quanzhou emigrant society consciously applied local
customs to reinterpret the concept of family within the system of Confucian family
ethics. These women also utilized the law to help continue the family line and to
highlight their indispensable leverage in their marital and natal families. Confucian
family ethics and the law therefore developed in accordance with local customs and
familal conditions.
This chapter is divided into four sections presents the intersecting roles of
Quanzhou women in their natal and marital families and in property contracts. The
first and second sections will discuss how individual women served as witnesses or
executors in property transactions and negotiated with their agnates as

156
demonstrations of the binding power of Confucian family ethics in both the Qing and
Republican periods. Some married women dominated property transactions and
became the only sellers on the contracts when their husbands were absent or
deceased. In many cases not even their sons marked or co-signed as sellers or
witnesses, even though they were the legal property inheritors. Yet more often
women remained subordinate owing to an entrenched gender hierarchy and did not
demonstrate their parental authority over the younger generation by signing on their
sons’ contracts even in the Republican period. The third section mainly explores
how Quanzhou women applied the support from the natal families in property sales
to relieve their own financial difficulties and to consolidate their wifely status in the
marital families. Their natal families, in return, received the property and thus
financially benefited from these transactions. Finally in the fourth section, I compare
a woman’s perspective of the conjugal family to the patrilineal one in order to
illustrate how Quanzhou women used the principle of patrilineality to enhance their
family status in the absence of their husbands.
These Quanzhou contracts span the Qing and Republican periods. Thus one
would think that changes to the law in the Republican period, particularly during the
early 1930s, would have drawn a sharp line in women’s economic activities and
encouraged more women to be contract executors after 1931. However, the actions
of Quanzhou women still lagged behind the ideal of the laws. Prior to 1931 when
Chinese women legally acquired individual property rights from the Republican
Civil Code (including the Family and Inheritance Laws), a married woman’s
participation in contractual activities generally was to guarantee her marital family’s

157
maximum interest. Similar to the wives of sojourning merchants in Huizhou,
Quanzhou women were required to practice frugality.
271
Yet unlike those wives who
managed and invested the remittances sent by their emigrant husbands,
272
many
Quanzhou genealogies record how women demonstrated their ability to stimulate the
family economy of the patriarchal family system even before receiving remittances.
For example, in the mid-19
th
century when her husband Wu Minzhai had been away
for many years in the Philippines to develop the family’s textile and tea businesses,
Madam Lin farmed in the field to support the family and then purchased land on
which Wu Minzhai built a house after he retired to Quanzhou in his old age.
According to the Wu family genealogy, the reason why Wu Minzhai had no worries
about his family equity was due to Madam Lin’s efforts; consequently, Madam Lin
was given the posthumous name “frugal” (weijian ).
273
After 1931 many senior
Quanzhou women appeared in Republican property contracts, but they still deferred
to the prevalent gender hierarchy and took a secondary role to the younger
generations in the transactions of their own dowry or self-purchased property. The
Family and Inheritance laws promulgated in 1931 gave a Chinese woman equal
inheritance rights with her brothers and sons in cases of household division, and
independence and freedom from the traditional “single unit of husband and wife”
(discussed in Chapter 1) to claim individual property rights and manage her dowry
and conjugal property. Yet most Quanzhou women were unaware of or ignored the

271
Qitao Guo, Ritual Opera and Mercantile Lineage: The Confucian Transformation of Popular
Culture in Late Imperial Huizhou (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2005), 172.
272
Szonyi, “Mothers, Sons, and Lovers,” 51-5.
273
The Wu Family Genealogy, Liujian, Jinjiang County, archived in the Quaznhou Municipal Library,
Quanzhou.

158
concept of individual property rights during the transitional period when the concept
of gender equality in the Republican Civil Code clashed with patriarchal and
patrilineal principles. Instead they retained the traditional view that the family
property belonged to all family members and then asked their sons or grandsons to
be the contract executors or witnesses in property contracts to justify any property
sale. The difference between the law codes and local economic practices in
women’s property rights claims that women often (willingly or unwillingly)
followed local custom to preserve the patrilineal principle of Confucian family ethics.
Furthermore, their efforts in the continuation of the patriline were to guarantee their
status in their marital families.
Previous scholarship regarding contracts has pointed out the prevalence of
this gendered practice in different locales. Anthropologists such as Myron Cohen,
and Chinese historians A Feng and Chen Yingxun all note that late imperial women
not only participated in concluding contracts but were also engaged in a broader
scope of economic activities. Cohen’s research on contract documents, collected
from the late-Qing in Taiwan, where state power showed its weakness in the
immigrant society, illustrates that women often appeared as witnesses or executors if
their husbands uxorilocally married in or when their sons’ property transactions
influenced their rights to enjoy old age support.
274
A Feng discusses women’s
property rights by making use of contracts, legal cases, and family genealogies in
Huizhou during the Ming and Qing periods. Huizhou merchants usually spent
years traveling and developing businesses in the Jiangnan area while leaving

274
Cohen, “Writs of Passage in Late Imperial China,” 65.

159
their wives behind to take care of the elders. Local tradition thus required Huizhou
women to become the surrogate family heads and manage the inheritance and
division of household property. They used parental authority in contractual activities
and signed as the “Mother Managing the Contracts” (zhumong mu ).
275
Using
statistics on Ming and Qing women’s involvement in contracts, Chen Yingxun
concludes that married women living in emigrant or trade-oriented communities
along the coast enjoyed more socio-economic freedom than their counterparts in the
hinterland.
276
These modern scholars suggest that women living in a coastal or
commercialized society were more active economically than those women in
agricultural societies.
Nevertheless, two aspects of these women’s participation in contracts have
not been well studied: (1) a closer examination of these women’s power relations
with their husbands’ agnatic kin and women’s various roles as the source of leverage
in intra-familial relations; and (2) women’s perspectives on the concept of family in
these contracts.
In the three collections of Quanzhou property contracts, I found women
serving as witnesses in 168 and as contract executors in 51 contracts out of a total of
260 property contracts (See Table 5). In the Collection of Southern Fujian Contracts
and Documents (MNC), women appeared as the main executors in 11 contracts, and
gave consent to the male executors or served as witnesses in another 18 contracts. In
the Selected Collection of Economic Contracts and Documents in Ming-Qing Fujian

275
A Feng, Ming-Qing jidai ni okeru fujyo no chii to kenri, 2006.
276
Chen Yingxun , Ming-Qing qiyue wenshu zhong de funu shehui jingji huodong (Taipei: Taiming wenhua shiye ltd., 2001).

160
(ECD), women appeared as witnesses in 6 and as main contract executors in 4 of the
11 contracts. In the uncatalogued collection of contracts held by the College of
Humanities in Xiamen University (CHX), women appeared as witnesses in 144
contracts and as contract executors in 36 contracts.
The uniqueness of these Quanzhou contracts lies in the fact that they
represent a lot of transactional practices that went against Confucian family ethics.
Furthermore, these practices have rarely been discussed in previous scholarship.
Some Quanzhou women gave in to the Confucian gender hierarchy and allowed their
sons or grandsons to conclude contracts on their own; some disregarded their agnates
or sons to dispose of property belonging to their marital family; some went back to
their natal families to conduct transactions; some sold dowry property or the marital
family’s patrimony to natal families. For instance, two married sisters replaced their
absent younger brother to conditionally sell the natal family’s house in 1857. These
women took over the authority of their absentee brother—the heir of the natal
family—to sell his legal property, and worship the ancestor tablets in their marital
altar.
277

277
“Madam Cai’s contract for sale, 1857 CE,” CHX, serial number 2003040815A.

161
Table 5: Women in Quanzhou (Jinjiang, Nan’an, and Hui’an Counties) Property
Contracts and Relevant Documents

The roles of women Number
in CHX*
The
earliest
case
Number
in
MNC**
The
earliest
case
Number
in
ECD***
The
earliest
case
Women were
mentioned but there
were no signatures.
18 1705,
following
mother’s
order;
1845,
consulting
with wife
2 1750,
following
mother’s
order
0 --
Women’s signatures
appeared, but their
roles (contract
executors or witnesses)
were unclear
11 1749 0 -- 0 --
Women as witnesses 146 1631
witness
/mother;
1747
witness /
wife;
16 1796
elder
sister-in-
law
6 1879
witness
/mother
Wives served
as witnesses
but were
owners in
practice
5 1845 2 1856 0 --
A woman sold
out a son on
behalf of her
husband and
herself served
as a witness
1 1917 0 -- 0 --
Women as contract
executors
36 1705
mother
11 1265 4 1757
A woman was
contract
executor and
sons served as
a witness, or a
joint executor
with sons
7 1 1750 0 --

162
Table 5, Continued:

A woman
made
contracts on
behalf of her
son and her
son’s name or
engagement
did not appear
1 1939 0 -- 0 --
A woman was
contract
executor and
sons served as
witnesses
1 1944 0 -- 3 1757
A woman
individually
sold properties
inherited from
her parents–
in–law and
husband
8 1878 11 1265 1 1757
A woman sold
or pledged
property
inherited from
the parents-in-
lawor husband
without the
presence of
any agnates
14 7 1663 1 1757
A woman
pledged a
deity statute
1 1922 0 -- 0 --
A woman sold
property
inherited from
natal families
4 1855 0 -- 0 --
Widows made
contracts with
males of the
same age or
younger as
executors,
such as:
grandsons,
nephews,
brothers-in-
laws
10 1781 2 1265,
with
grandson
0 --

163

Table 5, Continued:

Two or more
women were
the exclusive
sellers or
contract
executors,
including
mother-in-law
& sisters–in -
law; mother &
daughter; and
among sisters-
in-law
6 1857 0 -- 0 --
Women sold
the property
of natal
families
1 1857 0 -- 0 --
Women as middlemen 20 1839 2 1750 1 1901
Women as buyers 7 1834, sister
-in-law
0 -- 0 --

Sources:
* CHX, the Collection held by the College of Humanities, Xiamen University
** MNC, The Collection of Southern Fujian Contracts and Documents
*** ECD, The Selected Collection of Economic Contracts and Documents in Ming-
Qing Fujian

164
Table 6: Affines in Quanzhou (Jinjiang, Nan’an, and Hui’an Counties) Property
Contracts and Relevant Documents

Roles of members
from women’s
natal families
Number
in CHX*
The
earliest
case
Number
in
MNC**
The
earliest
case
Number
in ECD***
The
earliest
case
As a witness 16 1846
maternal
uncle
0 0 0 --

A maternal
uncle as a
witness
1 1846 0 -- 0 --

A nephew as
a witness
1 1855 0 -- 0 --
As a middleman 13 1779 3 1663, son-
in-law
0 --
As a buyer 1 1883 1 1780 0 --

A nephew as
a buyer
1 1883 ? ? 0 --
As a scribe 1 1908 1 1663 0 --
A maternal nephew
inherited his father’s
sister
2 1916 0 -- 0 --

Sources:
* CHX, the Collection held by the College of Humanities, Xiamen University
** MNC, The Collection of Southern Fujian Contracts and Documents
*** ECD, The Selected Collection of Economic Contracts and Documents in Ming-
Qing Fujian

165
There were 31 contracts with the women’s natal kin serving as witnesses,
middlemen, or buyers in contracts. I also found four late Qing contracts disposing of
dowry property while A Feng has noted that he did not find any Huizhou contract for
selling dowry property. Three of these four contracts were about the same property,
in which the husband or son sold the dowry on behalf of his wife or mother; and the
last one was concluded by the female owner herself. In addition, I found three
Quanzhou contracts in which the female buyers represented branches of their
deceased husbands’ families to purchase property within and beyond the marital
families. In contrast, A Feng found only one contract in which a woman was the
property buyer. The following exploration of married women’s participation in both
marital and natal family property transactions will reveal the mutual support and
conflicts of interest between agnatic and natal groups and changes in property
regimes during the Qing and Republican periods.

I. Women as Witnesses
The majority of extant Qing and Republican Quanzhou property contracts
affirms the historical continuity of women’s secondary status in the Chinese property
regime but reveals the features of women’s active participation in the Quanzhou
contractual tradition. Women appeared in 168 (64.61 percent) of these 260 property
contracts as witnesses. This suggests that most married women and widowed
mothers in Quanzhou were inclined to take a subordinate position in the contractual
activities of their marital families, although their contractual liability would not be

166
less than the main contract executors.
278
The earliest example in which a widowed
mother served as a witness appeared in 1631 (discussed in Chapter 2), while a wife
served as a witness in 1747, but it was not until 1845 when a husband consulted with
his wife and asked her to be a witness to sell her dowry.
279
In addition, a wife “was a
witness to her husband’s contract” to sell their son while her husband was actually
absent and she signed on his behalf in 1917.
280
In 1938 a grandmother allowed her
grandson to be the only contract executor in the sale of her property when she was
the witness.
281

Family roles and identities constituted the precondition for married women’s
participation in property transactions. Quanzhou contracts show us that family
members usually addressed themselves with familial titles, such as mother, wife,
uncle, and so on, to manifest their rights and obligations in the sales. As we have
seen in Chapters 1 and 2, the family head, widowed mother and agnates in the family
that owned the property for sale had the authority to sell the property and the
obligation to supervise the sale or to guarantee the clear ownership rights of other
contracting parties. Contracting parties needed either parental authority or
membership and ownership rights in the family in order to legally participate in
contract transactions. In Quanzhou a witness was called zhijian (literal

278
I take a broad definition of witness to refer to women’s participation in contracting-making
practices. The female “witnesses” discussed in this section include: (1) those really signing or
marking as witnesses; and (2) those being referred to as anonymous participants but not signing or
marking on contracts.
279
“Chen Xifu’s contract for irrevocable sale, 1631,” CHX, no serial number; “Wu Liangfa’s contract
for irrevocable sale, 1747,” CHX, serial number 2003060122A; and “Cai Ruiren’s contract for sale,”
CHX, serial number 2003040819A.
280
“Chen Bianliang’s contract for irrevocable sale of his birth son, 1917,” CHX, no serial number.
281
“Yang Tianshun’s contract for irrevocable sale and supplemental payment, 1938,” CHX, serial
number 2003042711A.

167
translation: “to know and to see”), jianyin (literal translation: “to see the
silver”), and zhiqi (literal translation: “to know the contract”). Sometimes the
term zhongjian (literal translation: “to be in the middle and to see”) appears in
contracts and also refers to witnesses, but it obviously carries the meaning of being
the middleman. While I found no case of a woman serving as zhongjin, there are
many examples of “the witness: the mother” (zhijian mu ) or “the witness: the
wife” (zhijian qi ). After acquiring family roles, these mothers and wives
acquired their implicit property rights by witnessing and agreeing to property
transactions in which they had a direct interest.
The ways in which women served as witnesses reflected the weight of the
generational order, as well as the the fact that gender hierarchies were in a constant
state of flux in the minds of the contracting parties. They further suggest a trend
where the property rights of the conjugal unit were highlighted vis-a-vis those of
other branches of the joint family. There were two ways for Quanzhou women to
witness transactions: (1) Women did not sign as witnesses but had been consulted by
the contract executors. The executors, usually the sons, grandsons, and nephews in a
joint family, stated in the body of the contract that they had followed the senior
women’s orders or that they consulted with each other. Expressions such as “we
follow the order of our mother or grandmother” or “we mother and sons consulted
with each other” (muzi xiangyi ) show that the young males obtained
consent and legitimacy from senior women to dispose of property. When the
husbands stated that “we husband and wife consulted with each other” (fuqi xiangyi

168
), the husband-wife relationship was emphasized in relation to the “single
unit of the father-son;” (2) Women signed in the end of the contract as formal
witnesses; this practice often, but not necessarily, coincided with another two
conditions: (a) A woman’s parental authority over the younger generations that
compelled the latter to consult with her and follow her orders. And (b) a woman
who was the real owner or co-owner of the property, but conceded to be a witness
when the sale was regarding her dowry or self-purchased property.

A. Anonymous and Silent Witnesses
Many women did not sign or mark property contracts in Qing and early
Republican Quanzhou, but anonymously participated in the contract-making process.
Chapter 2 showed that both laws and local customs granted a lot of flexibility to
women to act on behalf of or in default of her deceased husband, male kin, and
young children in executing property contracts. The imperial laws and local customs
both stipulated that neither a widowed mother nor her son could dispose of family
property alone.
282
The expression in these contracts—“following my mother’s (or
grandmother’s) order” (feng muming or feng mamuming )—attests
to Shiga’s observation that a woman’s male descendants had to ask for her consent
before finishing a contract. Yet the legal effectiveness of her son’s contract would
remain legally uncertain if there was neither her signature nor finger print on the
contract. I showed in Chapter 2 that a contract in the Song dynasty lacked legal
effectiveness if it was concluded by a son without his mother’s consent or signature.

282
Shiga Shuzo, Zhongguo jiazufa yuanli, 343-7.

169
Yet these Quanzhou contracts present a phenomenon where a widowed mother’s
signature or mark could be replaced by the above expressions. These are usually the
cases where sons could make fraudulent contracts and where it is hard for us to
detect women’s roles in the contract-making process.
The fact that there are only 9 out of 168 contracts where the widowed
mothers did not sign the contracts as witnesses suggests the abnormality or illegality
in women’s anonymous participation in contractual activities. Overall, six of these
nine contracts were concluded in the 18
th
century, one in 1806, one in 1908, and one
in 1922.
283
For example, in a property contract concluded by Lu Junjing in 1728, the
mother had no signature or mark on it, but Lu Junjing emphasized that he had
followed his mother’s order to sell the three-courtyard house, which was first
purchased by Lu Junjing’s father and the Lu family had lived in it from then on. Lu
Junjing became the family head and represented his family after his father died. Yet
in order to sell this house, he not only asked his agnate Lu Ermin to be the witness
and his paternal uncle Lu Erdu the scribe, but also obtained his mother’s consent in
advance.
284
Similarly, in another contract Zuo Enci and Zuo Jisheng “followed the
mother’s order in person” (qin feng muming ) in 1766 to conditionally sell
their father’s inherited field when their father was “out of town” (waichu ,
usually referring to emigrating or sojourning in other areas). The mother of Zuo

283
In addition to the aforementioned 1728 and 1766 contracts, these seven contracts are “Wang
Zanshi’s contract for a field, 1750” MNC, 9; “Wang Zanzhi’s contract for supplemental
payments,1750,” MNC, 10; “Shiqian’s contract for irrevocable sale, 1774,” CHX, serial number
2003041104A; “Dijiao and Disheng’s contract for sale, 1780,” CHX, serial number 2003042512A;
“Chunxiao and Chunshui’s’ contract for redeemable sale, 1806,” CHX, serial number 2003041108A;
“Li Huoliang’s contract for irrevocable sale, 1908,” CHX, serial number 2003042209A; “Chen
Gaodai’s contract for pledging a house, 1922,” CHX, no serial number.
284
“Lu Junjing’s contract for sale, 1728,” CHX, serial number 2003032424A.

170
Enci and Zuo Jisheng did not sign the contract either; another member from the Zuo
family, Zuo Dilao, replaced her as the witness.
285
There are another seven contracts
in which senior females were consulted but did not serve as witnesses in the Qing
and Republican periods.
Yet the fact that agnates displaced the widowed mothers in seven out of the
above nine property contracts as witnesses (with the exception of the property
contracts concluded in 1806 and 1922) also illustrates the existence of a supervisory
mechanism over widowed mothers in the marital family.
286

In his study of Republican emigrant families, Michael Szonyi has argued that
the male relatives of overseas Chinese were charged with the responsibility of
supervising investments funded by their remittances.”
287
Szonyi’s finding suggests
that there was a tension in marital families between wives and their agnatic kin in
competing for the management rights of the family property. It nevertheless reflects
the Confucian continuity from the Yuan dynasty onward, which asked agnates to
keep the patrimony from dissipation unless the widows encountered financial
difficulties.
288
Although this supervisory mechanism was not an obstacle for a
widowed mother to become the placeholder of her deceased or absent husband, in
the two contracts above neither the mother of the Lu nor the Zuo family signed the
contracts as executors or witnesses. It seems that the supervision mechanism urged

285
“Zuo Enci and Zuo Jisheng’s contract for redeemable sale, 1766,” CHX, serial number
2003032303A.
286
These two exceptional property contracts concluded in 1806 and 1922 do not have any agnates
involved. Because the transaction was within the lineage, the first one reads that “We [the seller and
buyer] are relatives so we don’t need middlemen;” the second one was concluded in the Republican
period. See “Chunxiao and Chunshui’s’ contract for redeemable sale, 1806,” CHX, serial number
2003041108A; “Chen Gaodai’s contract for pledging a house, 1922,” CHX, no serial number.
287
Szonyi, “Mothers, Sons and Lovers,” 52.
288
Birge, “Women and Confucianism from Song to Ming,” 225-6.

171
widowed mothers to take a secondary and even anonymous position on public
occasions. In addition, the presence of agnates like Lu Ermin and Zuo Dilao
represented the lineage authority to legitimize the transaction, because widowed
mothers were seen as outsiders to the marital families and these widows’ decisions
could not be completely trusted to fulfill the marital family’s interest. The
appearance of agnates could thus clarify the ownership rights of the property because
the property was once deemed part of the collective patrimony which was held by all
family or lineage members before household division and beyond the control of any
single nuclear family formed by a widowed mother and her sons. The tension or
conflict of interests between agnates and widowed mothers, therefore, could push
widowed mothers away from the center of contract-making activities. Giving no
signature or finger prints, widowed mothers could easily jepordise their exclusive
legal rights in managing household finances or giving consent to the sons’
transactions when the agnates were present.
The phenomenon of widowed mothers not signing property contracts when
their agnates were present or co-signing with their agnates in contracts seems to
suggest the widows’ lower family status in relation to their agnates. Nevertheless,
the actual dynamics of family relations might be contrary to what the property
documents reveal. Walter Slote has found the psychocultural continuity in the power
relations between members of a Confucian family throughout the East Asian history.
Since mother and son constituted the primary affective tie, some mothers were
conscious of using a strategy of “martyrdom” to “portray themselves as weak,
helpless, bereft of resources, and at the mercy of others.” The aim of these mothers

172
was to gain power, domination, and centrality.
289
As a placeholder of her absent or
deceased husband, a widow was the primary pillar in supporting her nuclear or stem
family as a whole. Her parental authority was not only granted by the Confucian
principles of “a single unit of father and son” and “a single unit of husband and wife”
when she replaced her husband, but also empowered by her emotional bond with her
sons. In general, a son’s relationship to his paternal relatives could not compete with
this emotional tie with his mother and his mother’s parental domination.
With or without the presence of agnates in property contracts, the economic
interests of a widowed mother and her son were nevertheless in direct conflict.
Jonathan Ocko’s study of family disputes in late imperial China depicts the tensions
when a widowed mother exerted her parental authority over her sons to ask for his
filial behavior. According to Ocko, the tensions in the mother-son relationship
resulted from the fact that both the mother and son weighed gender hierarchy and the
parental authority.
290
Ocko focuses only on the psychological and ethical
dimensions of the mother-son tensions. Property, however, was the major source of
family disharmony between the widowed mother and her son. The son was the
property owner, but the mother was the senior manager. On the one hand, the
widowed mother had the absolute right to nullify the legal effectiveness of her son’s
property contract if the transaction was against her will. On the other hand, it is
likely that the son monopolized the power to conduct the transactions so that his
widowed mother’s signature or mark did not appear in contracts. When a son

289
Walter H. Slote, “Psychocultural Dynamics within the Confucian Family,” in Confucianism and
the Family, ed. Walter Slote and George A. De Vos (Albany: State University of New York, 1998),
42-4.
290
Jonathan K. Ocko, “Hierarchy and Harmony,” 216-7.

173
obtained such monopoly on the family property, his behavior was one step away
from providing no living expenses for his mother.
A woman’s authority, especially an aged widow’s, cannot be overlooked
because of the disappearance of her signature in contracts, for the law had codes to
protect her parental authority. The widowed mother’s vulnerable stance in relation
to her son could be protected by the laws. A legal case in the Conspectus of Penal
Cases (Xing’an huilan ) applied precedents to rule that a minor disabled son
Tan Yaping be punished with 100 strokes and exiled to a distance of 3000 li because he failed to supply his step-mother with adequate nourishment and caused
her to commit suicide.
291
This behavior was counted as the fourth Wrong—“Gross
Unfilialness”—of the “Ten Great Wrongs,” which were recorded as Article 2 of the
Great Qing Code.
292
This legal case reflects precisely the tension between a
widowed mother and her son, and also shows the law was a woman’s last resort to
protect her authority and interests. In addition, the Qing government followed the
preceding dynasties in meting out punishments for “inferior or younger family
members making use of family property without authorization” (beiyou sishan
yongcai ): Without a widowed mother’s permission or before her
death, her children were forbidden to conduct any household division.
293
The
relevant codes to such “rights owned by the elder generation” also include “cursing

291
Zhu Qingqi , Bao Shuyun , Pan Wenfang , He Weikai ed., Xing’an
huilan sanbian , Vol. 3, juan 48, reprint (Beijing: Guji chubanshe, 2004), 1840.
292
Jones trans., The Great Qing Code, 34-5.
293
Da Qing lu , Hulu ㇞ , juan 4, “bieji yicai ,” and “beiyou sishan yongcai ;” also see The Great Qing Code, trans. William Jones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 112;
Shiga Shuzo, Zhongguo jiazhufa yuanli (Beijing: The Law Press, 2003), 345-6.

174
and striking [a] superior or older relative” as well as “children or son’s children
violating orders” and so on.
294
The expression of “following the mother’s order” in
contracts thus conforms to the Qing code, and was the least legal requirement for the
son’s management of the family property.

B. Witnesses as Supervisors
Widowed Mothers as Witnesses
Over 60 % of the Quanzhou contracts with women participating follow the
pattern that a woman formally signed as a witness. I have discussed in Chapter Two
the 1631 property contract, in which the mother, Madam Huang as a witness (zhijian
) gave her consent to her sons to sell a complex of buildings and gardens.
295

Widowed mothers serving as witnesses became the norm in the Qing period. For
instance, in another 1849 contract Chen Huoguan concluded a sale when his father
“went out” and his mother ordered him to sell a parcel of land. He claimed in the
contract that he “inherited from his grandfather” a parcel of land and wanted to sell it
to the Huang family to be a graveyard. His mother Madam Cai was the witness with
two other middlemen—one was another senior female member from the Chen family
(Aunt Chen Ri), and the other was surnamed Huang who represented the buyer.
296

The exertion of a widowed mother’s parental authority often intersected with
the couple’s original property rights when she represented her husband to allow the
son to dispose of property, but the source of her authority originated from family

294
Jones trans., The Great Qing Code, 301-2, 324-5.
295
“Chen Xifu’s contract for irrevocable sale, 1631,” CHX, no serial number.
296
“Chen Huoguan’s contract for sale, 1849,” MNC, 42.

175
ethics instead of the property. According to Shiga Shuzo’s argument of the “single
unit of husband and wife,” the mother obtained the power in default of Chen
Huaguan’s father and acted on behalf of him to sell the family property or to
supervise the transaction. It is possible that Chen Huoguan did inherit the property
from his grandfather given that local customs allowed the eldest grandson to enjoy
an equal share with sons in the household division, as Arthur Wolf notes.
297

Nevertheless, Chen Huoguan’s filial obligation and obedience to his parents’
authority should remain the same even if his parents never had the ownership rights
to this property.
Senior concubines, who had never been presented to family ancestors in their
wedding rituals and were usually excluded from the “single unit of husband and
wife,” could also enjoy the same privilege to give their consent to the younger
generation for selling family property. As shown in the following contract
concluded in 1749, the secondary mothers (shumu , or senior widowed
concubines) seemed to have the same motherly authority over the younger
generation:

Zheng Qibao et al.’s contract for supplemental payments and final sale,
1749

The joint executors of this contract for supplemental payments and final
sale, Zheng Qigbao, Zheng Liangming, Zheng Qiyu, Zheng Junhuai,
Zheng Junpei, Zheng Junyuan, and Zheng Shu, inherited from our father a
five-bay, two-courtyard house, which includes two halls separately on the
eastern and western sides….

297
Arthur Wolf, “Chinese Kinship and Mourning Dress,” in Family and Kinship in Chinese Society,
ed. Maurice Freedman (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1970), 195-6.

176
Now, because the sale price did not meet the market value, we uncles and
nephews consulted with each other and followed our (grandmother’s and)
mothers’ order, to decide to contact the Wu family through the original
middleman for a supplemental payment of three hundred and twenty taels
of the new foreign-style silver dollars,….

The ninth month, the fourteenth year of the Qianlong reign
Secondary grandmother Madam Guo
Secondary mother [italics added] Madam Ou
Scribe: [Zheng] Junbao
Joint executors of contract for the supplemental payments and final sale:
Zheng Junpei
Junzhao
Junbao
Junming
Junyu
Junhuai
Junyuan
Zheng Shu
298

Madam Guo’s and Madam Ou’s signatures highlighted their authority in this family
although they were not the first wives to their deceased husbands. They were also
the witnesses in reality because no one else signed as witnesses and there was no
clear reference to their roles in this transaction. According to the signatures and
content, there were at least three generations involved in this sale. For the first
character of the same generation’s given names in an organized lineage was usually
the same and followed the word sequence of a poem in the lineage genealogy to
define generational order. Therefore, Zheng Qibao and Zheng Qiyu were the same
generation and could be brothers or cousins, while Zheng Junhuai, Zheng Junzhao,
Zheng Junpei, and Zheng Junyuan belonged to another generation. Zheng

298
“Zheng Qibao’s et al.’s contract for supplemental payments and final sale, 1749,” CHX, no serial
number. Three similar contracts in which the secondary mothers or grandmothers are witnesses to the
contract-making are included in MNC and two of them are physically linked. See “Chen Shashi’s et
al.’s contract for final sale, 1863,” MNC, 24; “Chen Congshi’s et al.’s contract for redeemable sale,
1854,” and “Chen Congshi et al.’s contract for final sale and supplemental payment, 1854” MNC, 43.

177
Liangmin’s and Zheng Shu’s identities were not clear. All of these eight male
contract executors constituted the uncle-nephew relationship in a joint family. It is
likely that Zheng Qibao and Zheng Qiyu (and perhaps Zheng Liangmin) were the
“uncles” and the others were nephews if we consider the order of names listed in the
body of the contract. Madam Guo was of the eldest generation—the secondary
grandmother, and Madam Ou was of the secondary wife in the second generation as
well as the mother to the third generation, Zheng Junhuai, Zheng Junzhao, et al. The
statement that “we uncles and nephews consulted with each other and followed our
(grandmother’s and) mothers’ order” actually refers to the discussion among
different branches of a joint family.
It is difficult and impractical to generalize to what extent secondary widowed
mothers or senior widowed concubines could enjoy parental authority as first wives,
particularly when we cannot tell from the contracts whether these two senior
concubines had bore any heirs for the Zheng family. In the orthodox Zhu Xi’s
Family Rituals, concubines were deemed to be the same as maids and had a low-
ranking marital status.
299
Local customs and practices throughout history, however,
sometimes allowed concubines to manage the household economy when the wives
were incompetent, and enjoy parental authority or claim inheritance rights,
particularly when they had bore heirs for their husbands or nurtured the sons of other
concubines.
300
Nie Zeng Jifen , the daughter of the famous late Qing
official Zeng Guofan , discussed many powerful concubines in their families

299
Ebrey, Chu Hsi’s Family Rituals, 33-34, 76, 91.
300
Ebrey, The Inner Quarters, 227-32;

178
in her autobiography. For example, her fourth sister Guo Zeng Jichun could not get along with the concubine of her father-in-law, as a result she did not
receive enough monthly expenses or food after she became widowed. A concubine
of a Governor General paid Nie Zeng Jifen a social and formal visit among elite
women when the latter was traveling.
301
Yet this 1749 Quanzhou contract is
representative of many other Quanzhou contracts, in which the respect for the senior
generation in terms of family ethics put senior widowed concubines like Madam Guo
and Madam Ou in a decisive position, in that their presence and signature
highlighted their authority and support for the transaction.
The old custom that a son consulted with the widowed mother or
grandmother and followed her orders to conduct or cancel property transactions was
preserved even three decades after the establishment of the Republic. In a public
notice that appeared in a newspaper—The Quanzhou Daily (Quanzhou ribao )—of May 21, 1945, Cai Xiuji published an announcement that he “followed his
mother’s order” to cancel a property transaction of redeemable sale and to return the
deposit of five thousand yuan to the original middleman.
302
This public
announcement was the only case I have found in which the seller canceled the
transaction. The importance of this example lies in the fact that the widowed
mother’s order really was decisive in transactions of family property and that the

301
Thomas L. Kennedy and Micki Kennedy eds, Testimony of a Confucian Woman: The
Authobiography of Mrs. Nie Zeng Jifen, 1852-1942, translated and annotated by Thomas Kennedy
(Athens and London: The University of Georgia Press, 1993), 19, 50.
302
“An emergent announcement by Cai Xiuji who follows the mother’s order,” The Quanzhou Daily,
May 21, 1945, page 1.

179
expression of “following my mother’s order” were not merely empty words.
Parental authority received similar emphasis in Republican Quanzhou society.
Nevertheless, the 1938 contract concluded by Yang Tianshun shows that
revering senior women’s parental authority was not identical to women recognizing
their own individual property rights. In this contract the grandmother Maoniang
served as a witness in the transaction conducted by her grandson to sell her property.
Yang Tianshun stated that he “inherited” from his grandmother Maoniang a parcel of
an orchard and decided to sell it after consulting with her. Yang Tianshun
emphasized that Maoniang single-handedly reclaimed this orchard and that other
agnates had no rights to claim the ownership. Therefore, not only was there no
presence of other agnates of the Yang family, but also the grandmother and her
grandson would take the joint obligation to clarify the ownership rights if the buyer
had any doubt.
303
Because Yang Tianshun had to consult with Maoniang in advance
and both shared the joint liability to guarantee the clear ownership rights of this
orchard, we can infer that Maoniang could be the orchard owner in reality but she
remained subordinate wthin the gender hierarchy and did not sign her grandson’s
contract as an executor to highlight her individual property rights.
In sum, a widowed woman’s parental authority protected by the law could
not ensure a clear role for women to participate in the contract-making process,
although the state endeavored to maintain the generational order and highlight the
virtue of filiality. The Great Qing Code and patrilineal principles did not institute
any formal and active roles for a widowed mother to be a contract executor in such a

303
“Yang Tianshun’s contract for irrevocable sale and supplement payment, 1938,” CHX, serial
number 2003042711A.

180
public occasion that involved other community members and lineage property. In
addition, the cult of widow chastity demanded that women avoid contact with any
non-family males. One alternative interpretation about a widowed mother serving as
a witness or disappearing in her son’s contract could be that she subordinated her
parental authority to the principles of gender separation and the demand of chastity
so that she withdrew from disposing of family property on public occasions. Her
authority depended on the dynamics of family relations. Over all, the young
“followed” and revered parental authority in order to conform to Confucian family
ethics and local customs. The law, however, never constituted the final word with
regard to a widowed mother’s role in contracts involving family property.

Wives as Witnesses
Clouded by the presence and male authority of their husbands, Quanzhou
women certainly did not enjoy similar privilege or authority as their widowed
mothers-in-law did. In Quanzhou, the expression “we husband and wife consulted
with each other” did not appear until 1845 when the husband Cai Ruiren sold a house
which was his wife’s dowry. Cai Ruiren concluded two contracts within a month—
the first one for conditional sale and the second one for supplemental payment as
well as the final sale. In addition to the fact that Cai Ruiren “and his wife consulted
with each other” (tong qi xiangyi ), his wife Madam Yang was the witness
(zhijian ) in both contracts for the sale of her dowry. There was no presence of
other Cai Ruiren’s agnatic kin because Cai Ruiren stated that this property was his

181
wife’s dowry and all agnatic kin had no control over it.
304
Neo-Confucian scholars
from the Southern Song dynasty onward, such as Huang Gan湫 , have advocated
that a wife’s dowry should belong to her marital family; that her husband have the
right to manage it; and that she not take the dowry with her into a remarriage after
her husband died. In practice, a wife’s property mostly belonged to the conjugal unit
and her property was excluded from household division in the Ming-Qing codes.
305

In Cai Ruiren’s contracts, he appeared to be the manager of his wife’s dowry and
excluded his agnatic kin from involvement in this transaction, which again
conformed to the concept of the “single unit of husband and wife” in the Chinese
family system.
The direct intervention of the natal family in the disposal of the dowry
property of its married-out daughter was manifest in the appearance of Yang
Fengguan, who was a middleman/witness (zhongjian ) in this contract of
Madam Yang’s dowry property where she was a witness but not the seller. Cai
Ruiren could have represented Madam Yang to sell her dowry, but he still needed to
look for the consent of his affine, as Shiga Shuzo concludes from the Northern
Chinese customs during the Republican period.
306
If Yang Fengguan was Madam
Yang’s father, he was the original owner. If Yang Fengguan was Madam Yang’s
brother or nephew, he still represented the natal family in protecting Madam Yang’s
interest; in this case, he was to protect the natal property from being wasted by her

304
“Cai Ruiren’s contract for sale, 1845,” CHX, serial number 2003040819A; “Cai Ruiren’s contract
for supplemental payments and irrevocable sale, 1845,” CHX, serial number 2003040820A.
305
Birge, Women, Property, and Confucian Reaction, 151-61, 278.
306
Shiga Shuzo, Zhongguo jiazufa yuanli, 420-1.

182
husband.
307
In fact, some local customs reveal that the father of a married-out
daughter would not register the transfer of the dowry land until his married-out
daughter bore a son for the marital family.
308
According to Quanzhou customs, the
natal family used to provide a lot of dowry property for their married-out daughter if
the family could afford this. The late Qing scholar Wu Zeng argued that such large
amounts of property had corrupted many Quanzhou males and that they had
succumbed to lavish lifestyles and to obeying the orders of rich wives.
309
In other
words, unless the married-out daughter bore a son and consolidated her marital
status, her natal family would retain the property rights or supervise the transfer of
the dowry in order to guarantee their daughter’s welfare and her status in the marital
family.
The wife’s role in a contract could face competition from her husband’s
agnatic kin if the sold property was not her dowry. The wife’s disadvantaged or
lower rank in the marital family was particularly obvious when she faced the parental
authority of the senior generation. I have discussed Wang Huize’s 1869 redeemable
sale of his deceased father’s property in Chapter Two and focused on his mother’s
role as a mediator in supervising the transaction between her two sons, Wang Huize

307
Emily Ahern argues that the role of a married woman’s natal family members, such as her brother,
was to protect her welfare and the rituals in her conjugal family if she was involved. These affines
were usually respected by the husband’s family in all rituals. See Emily Ahern, “Affines and the
Rituals of Kinship,” in Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society, ed. Arthur P. Wolf (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1974), 279-307. In Chongwu Township and many other areas of
Quanzhou, the affines had to be informed and arrive before their married-out daughter was put into
the coffin if she died, in order to ensure that she did not suffer an unnatural death. See Chen
Guoqiang and Shi Yilong ed., Chongwu Dazuo cun diaocha ⱆ㞍 (Fuzhou:
Fujian jiaoyu chubanshe, 1990), 220. I will come back to this subject in the third section of this
chapter.
308
Ministry of Judicial Administration, Minshi xiguan diaocha, Chap 8, Sec 9: “Songjiang xian
xiguan” —“The gift-giving of dowry land” , 343.
309
Wu Zeng, Quansu jici pian, “The large dowry property.”

183
and Wang Huidian. From the perspective of Wang Huize’s wife, she has been
consulted by her husband before this transaction, suggesting that they had become a
stronger conjugal unit, independent from the original joint family which was
composed of her in-laws. Yet this growing conjugal unit was not strong enough to
make her the principal witness to this transaction. Her mother-in-law, Madam Cai,
waved her parental authority as an ethical banner and took over the role of witness in
order to devote herself to preserving the property within her own family of two
sons.
310
The strength of a conjugal unit, and accordingly a married woman’s power
within it, seemed to be weaker in the presence of the living senior generation.
Whether or not the executors’ wives declined to be witnesses in the presence
of their mothers-in-law, it was a trend that the conjugal unit became stronger after
the mid-19
th
century, and particularly in the 1930’s after the Republican Civil Code
was implemented. By the end of the 19
th
century and particularly during the
Republican period, it became the norm that a wife usually appeared as the witness of
the contract if she had been consulted by her husband before proceeding to the
transaction, with two exceptions that happened in 1928 and in 1946.
311
After 1869
there are 17 contracts in which wives were the witnesses, and the expression “we
husband and wife consulted with each other” appeared 13 times; 8 of these 13
contracts were concluded after 1930. Not only was the expression “we husband and
wife consulted with each other” more prevalent than before the mid-19
th
century, but

310
“Wang Huizi’s contract for redeemable sale, 1869,” CHX, serial number 2003051109A.
311
These two exceptional contracts are “Yang Jisui’s contract for conditional sale, 1928,” CHX, serial
number 2003042729A; and “Chen Qichang’s contract for irrevocable sale, 1946,” CHX, no serial
number. There are two other contracts in which wives served as witness without being mentioned in
the contracts that they had first been consulted by their husbands; one happened in 1747 and the other
in 1933. See “Wu Liangfa’s contract for final sale, 1747,” CHX, serial number, 2003060122A; “Ni
Decheng’s contract for irrevocable sale, 1933,” CHX, serial number 2003042803A.

184
also wives gradually replaced their mothers-in-law to participate in contract-making
activities. The statement “consultation with the wife” suggests the increasing
significance and independence of a conjugal unit from the stem and joint family
system in which the patriarchal principle often overshadowed the closeness of the
husband-wife relationship and a mother-in-law could easily marginalize her
daughter-in-law.
Even though wives gradually displaced mothers-in-law to participate in
contractual activities of their family property during the late 19
th
and early 20
th

centuries, they were still subject to the male authority of their husbands. Just as the
grandmother Maoniang who gave her grandson the power to be the contract executor
and sell her orchard, some Quanzhou women recorded in the contracts that their
absent husbands were the contract executors. For example, Madam Wang sold her
son in order to repay her absentee husband’s debt in 1917, but the voice in this
contract was her husband’s.

Chen Bianliang’s contract for irrevocable sale of his birth son:
“Continuously bringing in precious brothers” (lian zhao gui di )

The contract executor for an irrevocable sale of my birth son Chen
Bianliang is living at Xitang Township (xiang), Shuanglin Precinct (pu) of
the 19
th
Sector (du), outside the South gate of Hui’an County. My wife
Wang and [I] have a son ranked the second [in the family] and called
Tongzi, who is about to be 6 sui.
Now, owing to the fact that I had a lot of loans and my debtors pressed me
but I had nothing to repay them with, I consulted with the Third Aunt and
am willing to rely on matchmakers to sell this second son to Zhuang
Shucheng, who is living in Puxi Township, the Thirty-fifth Sector outside
the Tu Gate of Quanzhou City. On the day I received the “milk silver”
[payment] in total amount in the presence of the matchmakers, the son is
immediately sent to [the buyer’s] residence in the matchmakers’ company.

185
It is up to [the buyer] to change his name and raise him to continue the line
of the Zhuang family. If he may honor the ancestors and descent line, it is
the blessing for the Zhuang family; neither of us [husband and wife] has
any concern with it. We dare not regret or look for excuses to ask for
redemption or supplemental payment to generate troubles.
We guarantee that this son is our birth son. This transaction is because I
am out of town and the debtors forced me to repay money but I have
[financial] difficulties; my kinsmen have nothing to do with it. There are
no obstacles such as prior acceptance of money or adopting [this son out]
to another person. Should his identity be in question, I [Wang] will be
fully responsible and the buyer has no need to worry about it….

The second month, the sixth year of the Republic
Matchmakers: Liu Juanniang
Wei Yeniang
Cai Buniang
Chen Kangniang
Witness: the wife Wang
The executor: Chen Bianliang
Because the husband is absent, Wang signed on his behalf [italics added]
Scribe: Jingfutang
312

Madam Wang played a seemingly secondary role to her husband in this
contract, but she actually acted on behalf of her absent husband as a surrogate family
head. Although Madam Wang’s absentee husband’s voice dominated most of the
contract, her subjectivity manifests itself and the contractual voice changes to hers in
the parts of the contract concerning liability and signature. On the other hand, the
prevailing male-centered ethics are obvious in expressions like “bringing in more
precious younger brothers” (lian zhao gui di) also found in this contract. The
Zhuang family did not have any male heirs so that Zhuang Shucheng followed the
Quanzhou customs of “adopting” (or illegally buying) a “son with a different
surname” (minglingzi ) in the wish for begetting more sons in the future.

312
“Chen Bianliang’s contract for irrevocable sale of his birth son, 1917,” CHX, no serial number.

186
Serving as witnesses did not bring widowed mothers and wives out of the
confines of the house or grant them different social identities other than their familial
ones; the rights and authority of most women in these property contracts were still
built on the basis of their family roles. These women did not serve as witnesses
because they happened to be present on the occasion or signed for the sake of the
convenience. Madam Wang and Li Zeqing’s three contracts in 1874 (discussed in
Chapter 2) have shown that women, when acting as witnesses for their family
members, not only functioned as supervisors and guarantors but also used their
“face”—widowhood or wifely virtue—to maximize their profit. Madam Wang did
not honor the first irrevocable contract and asked for more supplemental payments,
but her vulnerable widowhood earned her sympathy from the local society and
consequently more payments from the buyer.
313
In these contracts, widowed
mothers gave their consent to the younger generation to sell property, and wives
served as witnesses to share the contractual liability. Both groups of women devoted
themselves to their conjugal or stem families by taking liability or acting as the
practical representative of the whole family.
In sum, women who served as witnesses showed their respect to Confucian
family ethics; they upheld the patriarchal principle as well as the suppositions of the
gender hierarchy that men were superior to women in ritual and in property rights.
Many Quanzhou women were the real property owners or contract executors, such as
Maoniang in her grandson’s contract and Madam Wang who sold her son to the

313
“Li Zeqing et al.’s contract for redeemable sale, 1874,” CHX, serial number 200342519 A; “Li
Zeqing et al.’s contract for supplemental payment and irrevocable sale, 1875,” CHX, serial number
2003042521 A; and “Li Zeqing et al.’s contract for supplemental payment and irrevocable sale,
1875,” CHX, serial number 2003042520 A.

187
Zhuang family, but they took the role of witnesses in these transactions conducted by
the younger generations or husbands.
314
The principle of generational order was
often ignored by Quanzhou women, except when the mother- and daughter-in-law
were both present and the daughter-in-law deferred to her parental authority. This
reflects the continuity of the traditional principles of patriarchy from Qing to
Republican Quanzhou.

II. Women as Main Contract Executors
This section explores how some Quanzhou women could change a Chinese
property regime embedded in patriarchy without disrupting the continuation of the
family line or hurting their marital status. In the eyes of Confucian scholars a
(widowed) woman was deemed the conduit through which family property would be
passed down to her son, the real owner. Yet some women expanded their role as
placeholders for their husbands to act as surrogate family heads. In the process,
women forged a new family dynamic with their agnates as I will discuss in the first
sub-section. In the second sub-section, I will show how the relations among
different branches and conjugal units under the joint family system gradually drifted
from the ideal of “communal living, common property” and formed a contractual
ideal instead.

314
“Yang Tianshun’s contract for irrevocable sale and supplement payment, 1938,” CHX, serial
number 2003042711A; “Chen Bianliang’s contract for irrevocable sale of his birth son, 1917,” CHX,
no serial number.

188
A. Women as Contract Executors
The 51 cases where women served as main contract executors are categorized
into two types. First, a woman co-signed at the end of the contract as a joint
executor, but the contract was in the voice of the male family members (usually the
younger generation). For instance, Liao Junhou’s contract for redeemable sale in
1705 is the earliest contract in the collections of Quanzhou property contracts, where
a mother served as a joint executor. Liao Junhou “inherited a store house from his
father by drawing lots” and “followed his mother’s (Madam Yang’s) order” to sell it
to the Chen family. There was no other witness to this contract. Madam Yang’s
name appeared right under the title “executor of contract for sale,” demonstrating her
authority in the management of the family property by becoming a formal contract
executor.
315
In the second type of contracts, these Quanzhou widows in the contracts
were the only executors whether or not men were present. For example, Madam Xu
of the Dai family sold her “sustenance land for old age” (shanlao tian )
without the presence of any agnate.
316

The presence of a widowed mother as a joint executor of the contract and a
paternal kin as a middleman suggests that the transactions and the sellers were
supported by the family, although the widowed mother’s name might not be stated in
the body of the contract. Ideally speaking, the parental authority of a step-mother
should be no different from that of a birth mother and either could sign as contract
executors in contracts related to their marital family. This is different from the

315
“Liao Junhou’s contract for redeemable sale, 1705,”CHX, serial number 2003060117A.
316
“Madam Xu’s contract for supplemental payment, 1890,” CHX, serial number 2003060125A.

189
marital status and power of senior concubines who were dependent on their
husbands’ favors and tacit allowance in terms of family dynamics (discussed in the
previous section). In the 1839 contract Tang Chaoguan and his three brothers
followed the order of their step-mother, Madam Zhang, to conduct an irrevocable
sale of a house which had been purchased by their deceased father. In 1840, the four
brothers again followed the step-mother’s order to ask for supplemental payment and
renew the irrevocable sale. Madam Zhang was the joint contract executor in both
contracts with the brothers.
317
As I have discussed in the contracts concluded by
Madam Wang and Li Zeqing et al. in Chapter 2, a widowed mother’s real power in
giving her son an order to proceed with transactions and her relations with her
agnates depended on whether her sons had reached maturity.
318
Madam Zhang
would be the only and actual decision-maker if the Tang brothers were too young.
There is no hint in Tang Chaoguan’s contracts that Madam Zhang had any birth son
or that her authority was downplayed because she was a step-mother; Madam Zhang
was the joint contract executor and her order was followed. According to Confucian
family ethics, the Tang brothers should continue honoring their step-mother’s
parental authority, which she inherited from her husband, and ask her to sign as her
permission to sell the family property. To compare these two sets of contracts,
Madam Wang was a witness in her sons’ contracts, while Madam Zhang was a joint
executor. Although the roles of these two mothers were different in their contracts,

317
“Tang Chaoguan et al.’s contract for irrevocable sale, 1839,” and “Tang Chaoguan et al.’s contract
for irrevocable sale and supplemental payment, 1840,” CHX, serial number 2003041517A and
2003041424A.
318
“Li Zeqing et al.’s contract for redeemable sale, 1874,” CHX, serial number 200342519 A; “Li
Zeqing et al.’s contract for supplemental payment and irrevocable sale, 1875,” CHX, serial number
2003042521 A; and “Li Zeqing et al.’s contract for supplemental payment and irrevocable sale,
1875,” CHX, serial number 2003042520 A.

190
being the mothers of the younger generation gave them the full authority to decide
on or supervise the disposal of the family property. Both also used their widowhood
as the cultural capital to renegotiate the first irrevocable contracts and ask for more
supplemental payments by appealing to the human feelings (renqing ) of the
middlemen.
Regarding the function of the middlemen and the interaction between agnates
and the widowed mothers, there is nevertheless a subtle difference between these two
sets of contracts, one concluded by the Li brothers and their birth mother Madam
Wang, and the other by the Tang brothers and their step-mother Madam Wang. In
Madam Wang and Li Zeqing’s 1874 contracts, inviting the uncle of the Li brothers to
be a witness could be a gesture of courtesy if the Li brothers had reached maturity
(discussed in Chapter 2). Yet the four middlemen in the two contracts, which were
concluded by the Tang brothers and Madam Zhang, included two local gentrymen—
Gong Tianqingshe, and Tang Ziguan who was a Tang family member.
319
As I
showed in Chapter 2, the gentrymen/middlemen represented the local moral
community to guarantee a fair and smooth transaction by applying their social status
and reputation to improve the face of all contracting parties. Because Madam Zhang

319
The suffix guan ( , ) in southern Fujian dialect, similar to shi/she ( / ), identifies these
persons as the local gentry. (The other two middlemen include another woman Chen Peiniang and
Yang Chunsi, however, we are unable to determine their relationship to either contracting party.) The
use of guan comes from the term guanren used from the Zhou to Tang dynasties to refer to
officials; guanren also referred to local gentrymen from the Song dynasty on and was used by
commoners or servants. According to Shi Hongbao, a Qing scholar serving as a staff in Fuzhou, the
use of guan originated from the Ming households ranking system; guan ranked second and next to
xiu . Southern Fujian dialect preserves this connotation and often uses guan as a suffix attached to
names in addressing and in reference to rich people. However, the two characters and were
interchangeably used as a type of free variation in the southern Fujian dialect. See Hong Qianyou,
Minnanyu kaoshi, 74-5; Shi Hongbao, “Min zaji,” 96. In addition, I have found in daily use and in
many contracts that guan is applied to local gentrywomen as well.

191
was a step-mother, the appearance of the middleman Tang Ziguan in Tang
Chaoguan’s 1839 and 1840 contracts could have been a representative of the Tang
family to supervise Madam Zhang and protect the Tang brothers no matter what the
age of the four Tang brothers was. Shiga Shuzo has expressed his suspicion about a
step-mother’s authority in managing family property. He argues that her agnates
would actively intervene in the disposal of family property and push for a household
division if there was the likelihood that the step-mother would favor her own birth
children.
320
Even though the Tang brothers showed the same respect to Madam
Zhang as they would or should to their birth mother, the existence of an agnatic
supervisor in Tang Ziguan was completely in accordance with Confucian family
ethics.
A husband’s absence or death meant that Quanzhou women needed to be
breadwinners or support themselves. Selling the family property became a source of
relieving financial difficulties. The massive male emigration to Southeast Asia and
Taiwan from the 18
th
century onward damaged the husband-wife relationship back in
Quanzhou and threatened the household economy in the period before emigrants
succeeded and sent remittances back to hometowns. It was not unusual that
emigrants died overseas and their families knew nothing about their whereabouts or
their remains for decades; another possibility is that an emigrant established another
family overseas and gradually severed contact with the family left behind in
Quanzhou. According to the Yang family genealogy of Fengshan village in
Hui’an County, for example, Yang Peixin (b. 1815) went to Taiwan and lost contact

320
Shiga Shuzo, Zhongguo jiazufa yuanli, 347.

192
with his family in Quanzhou from then on. The family genealogy records that even
his burial place was unknown. So, his wife Madam Huang supported her mother-in-
law all by herself and remained chaste for more than three decades.
321
The Yang
family genealogy did not record how Madam Huang supported the whole family.
Yet in a 1757 contract Madam Chen conducted an irrevocable sale of two parcels of
land inherited from her marital family with the presence of her younger brother-in-
law Lin Yugong as a middleman and her son Lin Liangzuo as a witness. She
explained the reasons for selling this land: “Because my husband has gone to
Taiwan, I have difficulty in sustaining my daily meals.” She addressed the buyer
Yuanyong as Uncle, suggesting that he was her husband’s agnatic kin.
322
The
transaction within the Yang family thus meant that either Madam Chen tried to keep
the Lin family property intact by actively selling it to another member of the Lin
family, or this buyer used his preemption to purchase the land. The presence of her
younger brother-in-law and son further strengthens the likelihood of one of these two
alternatives and that this transaction was kept within the family. Although selling
family property was usually criticized by Chinese as “ruining the family” (baijia ), selling property to a family or lineage member was the optimal option in any
destitute situation if there was no encroachment or bullying between the stronger and
weaker branches.
A widow’s economic difficulty was not an acceptable enough reason for her
to sell the property of her marital family. No presence of her marital family would

321
The Yang Family Genealogy of Fengshan Village, Hui’an County, archived in Quanzhou
Municipal Library, Quanzhou.
322
“The contract of Madam Chen of the Lin family for irrevocable sale and supplemental payment,
1757,” ECD, serial number 04637, 243.

193
usually elicit disputes over the ownership rights of the sold property. In contrast to
the above contract in which Madam Chen obtained the understanding and support of
her marital family members to sell the family property, in another 1890 contract
Madam Xu of the Dai family asked for supplemental payment after she had sold the
“sustenance land for old age” (shanlao tian ), over which her agnates had no
control or rights to intervene in her transaction as she had claimed. Madam Xu had
sold the land years ago to pay for the expenses of her husband’s medication and
funeral. None of her agnates were present to be the witness or middleman, but a
middleman who was also the guarantor and scribe (zhong bao daishu ren ), Wu Tingliao, was present.
323
According to the local custom in Hui’an County,
both contracting parties should have their representatives to serve as witnesses and
middlemen and thereby guarantee their interests.
324
Because Wu Tingliao, the
middleman / guarantor /scribe, shared with the buyer Wu Yanguan the same surname
Wu, he must have been a member of the Wu family and therefore likely protected
the interests of the buyer. In contrast, it is likely that Madam Xu had neither a
representative in this contract nor an heir to support her or inherit this land because
there was no member of the Dai family present. Even so, the “sustenance land for
old age” was always part of the family property according to the law, Confucian
family ethics, and local customs. Shiga Shuzo has illuminated the nature of
“sustenance land for old age” by using a legal suit in the Collection of Decisions by

323
“Madam Xu’s contract for supplemental payment, 1890,” CHX, serial number 2003060125A.
324
According to this entry recording the Hui’an contractual customs, it was not unusual to see
disputes after concluding contracts if both contracting parties did not have representatives appearing
as witnesses. See Ministry of Judicial Administration ed., Minshi xiguan diaocha, vol. 1, 307.

194
Famous Judges to Clarify and Enlighten (Minggong shupan qingming ji ) of the Southern Song and through an investigation of the Republican era
customs in North China. According to Shiga, a widowed mother could not freely
dispose of land. If she had any financial difficulty, she had to ask for the permission
of the family head or the lineage head in order to sell the land; and then she must ask
her son to “follow her order” to sell it although she should be listed as the contract
executor because the property sale was to meet her needs at that time. In other
words, although a widowed mother like Madam Xu did not need the permission of
her son to sell the “sustenance land for old age,” she definitely had no exclusive right
to independently dispose of it because it was not her personal property.
325

A sonless “living widow” (huo guafu ), whose husband had emigrated
to a foreign country, in particular needed to consolidate her family status to
guarantee her future inheritance rights in the family of her husband through adoption.
If she did this, she would have an heir and have a share in household division,
support her in old age, and ensure that she was worshipped as an ancestress after her
death. In another 1757 contract a Nan’an woman, Madam Hong of the Chen family,
tried to raise the funds for adoption when her husband was gone. She conditionally
sold to one Hong Baoguan the tenancy rights of a parcel of mountainous orchard,
which had been purchased by her husband from another relative. She explained the
reasons for this transaction in the following terms: “My husband has gone to Siam
for a long time and did not return home, and I wish to establish an heir but have no

325
In addition, she could not bring the land with her into a remarriage. See Shiga Shuzo, Zhongguo
jiazufa yuanli, 347-9.

195
funds.” She thus asked Uncle Zhou, the orchard owner and a relative of the Chen
family, to be the middleman and scribe in order to sell the tenancy rights.
326
I have
showed in Chapters 1 and 2 that many property transactions happened among
relatives, particularly when relatives had the preemption right to purchase the
property. Because the buyer Hong Baoguan had the same surname as Madam Hong,
it is very likely that Hong Baoguan was a member of her natal family and provided
financial assistance to their married daughter through a property transaction.
Furthermore, it suggests that Madam Hong deemed the establishment of an heir as
more important than the obligation of keeping the property of the marital family
from dissipating. In the next section I will come back to the subject of how the natal
families were engaged in their married-out daughters’ contracts.
Compared to patrimony, the continuation of the family line and maintenance
of ancestral worship were always seen as the more important core practices in
Confucian family ethics. Jonathan Ocko has shown that the Qing laws and
government valued patrilineal succession more than property inheritance.
327
Most
scholars and lineage heads in the early Qing asserted that there should be no
adoptions from outside their surname groups or a listing of widowed mothers in
family genealogies if they entered into remarriages. Yet it is not uncommon to find
in the “instruction” (puxun ) or the “precedents” (puli ) of Quanzhou family
genealogies of the mid-Qing and late Qing era the presence of “an adopted son with
a different surname” (minglingzi ) and permission for widows to remarry

326
“Madam Hong’s contract for irrevocable sale, 1757,” ECD, serial number 04706, 384-5.
327
Ocko, “Hierarchy and Harmony,” 224.

196
because they did not want to risk breaking family lines. The Li genealogy of Songde
Trust in Dongying notes in its “established precedents and regulations”
(dingli guize ) that adopted sons should be listed in the genealogy ni the
same way as birth sons to constitute a whole family and in order to clarify blood
lines and avoid incest.
328

Regarding the maintenance of ancestral worship, another woman
demonstrated her authority when she sold the marital family’s sacrificial property to
her natal family in a contract from 1780. Madam Zheng “inherited” from her
deceased husband the sacrificial land of the Liu family, which was dedicated to two
ancestresses, Madam Zhou and Madam Su, and she also shared the rent rice with her
younger brother-in-law Xingge. Because she needed funds for unknown reasons, she
asked her son to be a witness, and brothers-in-law Xingsheng to be the scribe and
Xingge the middleman (zhongjian ). The second witness Zheng Shengshu, must
have come from her natal family, and was also present in this transaction. She asked
the buyer of the Zheng family to pay the rent rice to the Liu family for the use of
ancestral sacrifice, and claimed the right to redeem the land whenever the rent could
not be paid.
329
According to Article 93 of the Qing Code—“The theft and sale of
fields and houses” in 1756, descendents were to be punished by being exiled if they
stealthily sold sacrificial property.
330
The presence of Madam Zheng’s brothers-in-
law as a middleman and a scribe nevertheless confirmed that this was not a stealthy

328
The Li genealogy of SongdeTrust in Dongying, archived in the Museum of the Overseas
Transportation History, Quanzhou.
329
“The contract of Madam Zheng of the Liu family for redeemable sale, 1780,” ECD, serial number
04636, 87.
330
Xue Yunsheng, Duli cunyi chongkanben, juan 10, 277

197
transaction, although Madam Zhang’s power was still manifested in the fact that she
was able to sell to her natal family the marital family’s sacrificial property which
should have been kept intact and within the marital family.
Michael Szonyi has pointed out that male emigration engendered a new
gendered division of labor “wherein the waged and unwaged work of women at
home was what made male migration possible.”
331
The Quanzhou women I have
presented so far in this section were guardians of their marital families, not only
supporting these families but also actively continuing the family lines with help from
their marital and natal families.
Previous scholarship has mainly discussed the male emigration in
Southeastern Fujian “after the Opium War” as the result of the Western countries’
demand for cheap labor in Southeast Asia. These studies have focused on the
floating population’s impact on family relations and the modernization process in
their hometowns.
332
The above contracts, however, remind us that this migrant
tradition and its impact on the family system had started at least one century before
the Opium War in these emigrant communities. Many individual women became the
placeholders of their husbands and the only executors in contracts particularly after

331
Szonyi, “Mothers, Sons and Lovers,” 60.
332
Yifeng Dai and Guotu Zhuang respectively discuss these issues. See Yifeng Dai, “Overseas
Migration and the Economic Modernization of Xiamen City During the Twentieth Century,” in South
China: State, Culture and Social Change during the 20
th
Century, ed. Leo Douw and Peter Post
(Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1996), 159-168; and Guotu Zhuang, “The Social Impact on Their Home
Town of Jinjiang Emigrants’ Activities During the 1930s,” in South China: State, Culture and Social
Change during the 20
th
Century, ed. Leo Douw and Peter Post (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1996),
169-81. James Cook further completes one picture of the development of urban infrastructure and
education with the contributions of returning overseas Chinese. See James Alexander Cook, “Bridges
to Modernity: Xiamen, Overseas Chinese and Southeast Coastal Modernization, 1843-1937” (Ph.D.
diss., University of California, San Diego, 1998); and idem, “Currents of Education and Identity,” 1-
31. Michael Szonyi’s two articles also focus on early Republican area. Please see Szonyi, “The
Graveyard of Huang Xiulang,” 81-98; idem, “Mothers, Sons and Lovers,” 43-64.

198
the mid-18
th
century when the Qing government lifted the ban on emigration and
their husbands went on sojourns to Southeast Asia.

B. Family Ties and Women’s Economic Activities
Complex family relationships often complicated the relations of the
contracting parties and vice versa. Madam Lin of the Wang family in the following
1877 lease gave us a detailed picture of women appealing to human feelings to rent
rooms and make a living in the lower echelon of society. It reads:

The executors of this lease, Wang Lin Jianiang and her elder daughter-in-
law Yueniang, have been living in Xingchun Precinct (pu) of the city. We
have bought a house from Lin Lianghuguan of the same Precinct, which is
located around the court of Xinchun pu on conditional terms. The house is
seated in the west and faced the east, includes five rooms and two wings
(zhitou ) in a row, one outer room (xiazhao ) in the south, and one
courtyard in the north. We have been living here for years.
In the second year of the Guangxu reign, Lianghu redeemed his house in
accordance with the contract, and I received the money. Yet because my
second daughter-in-law Yan Qingniang and her uxorilocal son-in-law Tu
Xi did not allow Liangchu to redeem the house, Lianghu went to the
county court and filed a suit against us. The county magistrate ordered
runners to gather and gave his order that we allow Lianghu’s redemption
when Lianghu gave us subsidy for the newly added cesspools (fenku♛ )
in the house. We were also ordered to completely move out by the first
month of the third year of the Guangxu reign, in order to return this house
to Lianghu’s management as it was in the old days. The two parties thus
signed the statement of the case.
[Now] my second daughter-in -law Qingniang and Tu Xi have moved out
and live separately [from us], but my eldest daughter-in-law Yueniang and
I have not found any residence. Besides, I am old and have bad vision so
that I am afraid of walking around in unfamiliar neighborhoods. So, we
cannot help but rely on a middleman to seek Lianghu’s graces, imploring
him to assign one big room in the southern part, one wing as well as one
cesspool in the northern part of the house for my eldest daughter-in-law
Yueniang and me to reside in temporarily and to store manure.

199
Liangchu and we agree that the gate is shared by both parties and
(Lianghu) will assign a big room in the south to Jiaoning for the rent of
about seventy copper coins (wen ), and another big room in the north as
well as one cesspool to Yueniang for the rent of one hundred and thirty
copper coins. The rent will be two hundred copper coins in total every
month without delay or shortchange. Lianghu considered my old age and
eye problems and has thus been forced to agree with us. We will not dare
to fail in paying the rent or to hand over this house because of the matter of
the antecedent conditional sale. Should this happen, we are willing to be
sent to the court and judged. Regarding this rented house, if Lianghu is to
use it or to rent it to other families, we should move out as soon as possible
and allow him to terminate this lease; we are not to dare to find excuses,
delay, or cause any complications. Now, in order to have proof, we have
drawn up one copy of the lease for original rental and giving it to Lianghu
as certification.

The second month, the third year of the Guangxu reign
Executors of written lease of imploring the original rental:
Wang Lin Jiaoniang
The first daughter-in-law Yueniang
Witness and middleman: Wang Ganguan
Scribe: Wu Benguan
333

The erosion of an elder woman’s parental authority in her family, the loss of
her financial resources, and the dissolution of the family appeared to be correlated in
this lease. This lease offered us a glimpse into local customs and the life of ordinary
people, such as the legal disputes over a property of conditional sale, a uxorilocal
marriage in which a widow invited in a second husband or a “heel-following
husband” (jiejiao fu儛 ), the discord over property, and the dissolution of the
family. According to the Song laws, an uxorilocal son-in-law could manage the
assets of his wife’s first marital family but was not allowed to register them in his
name. Yet there was no universal rule among different regions to regulate the
property rights of an uxorilocal son-in-law during the late imperial and Republican

333
“Wang Lin Jiaonian’s lease, 1877,” CHX, serial number 2003051023A.

200
periods.
334
To take the local customs of several counties in Fujian as examples, in
Longxi the uxorilocal son-in-law could become the family head of his wife’s
first marital family; in Jinjiang he could even register the family assets in his
name.
335
Yet in Jianyang and Changle he could neither register the family
assets in his name nor freely manage them. His disposal of the family property
would be supervised by the agnates of his wife’s first husband. These agnates had
the right to expel him from the family, if he had any discord with his wife or his
behavior damaged the wife’s interests.
336

Back to my discussion of Wang Lin Jiaoniang’s contract, the complex family
relationships and nonexistence of other male agnates in the Wang family put the
widowed mother, her daughters-in-law, and the Wang family property in a
disadvantageous position. It is obvious that Tu Xi not only successfully allied with
the younger daughter-in-law to object to this return of the house but also improperly
behaved as the head of the Wang family. According to Wang Lin Jiaoniang’s
description, there was no male heir in this household, so we may infer that Wang Lin
Jiaoniang became the family head and had Tu Xi uxorilocally married into this Wang
family to Jiaoniang’s younger daughter-in-law. Nevertheless, Tu Xi’s wife was not
the widowed Wang Lin Jiaoniang who was the real family head but the younger
daughter-in-law of the Wang family, so Tu Xi had no justifiable reason to obtain
patriarchal power from his young wife even though he would follow the above

334
Shiga Shuzo, Zhongguo jiazufa yuanli, 496-501; Birge, Women, Property and Confucian Reaction,
127; idem, “Women and Confucianism from Song to Ming,” 223-4.
335
Ministry of Judicial Administration ed., Minshi xiguan diaocha, vol. 2, 922, 929.
336
Ibid, 931-2.

201
Jinjiang and Longxi customs. His defiance of the parental authority of Wang Lin
Jiaoniang in stating his objection to this redemption brought the whole family into
legal trouble. In addition, the failure of the suit might have caused the loss of the
wealth of the Wang family and brought it to dissolution. The young couple moved
out and left the two widowed women alone, although the contract did not mention
whether or not Tu Xizhi and his wife were expelled by the county magistrate or
Wang Lin Jiaoniang.
The fact that Wang Lin Jiaoniang narrated the process of the whole dispute
and Liangchu’s compromise in detail is noteworthy and could allow for two
alternative interpretations: (1) it was a widowed woman’s strategy to force the other
contracting party to recognize her vulnerability in words by playing the weak party;
(2) it was a response to the assistance and favor of the local gentry and the leaser in
order to present her appreciation and give “face” to all parties in this contract. Wang
Lin Jiaoniang and her elder daughter-in-law thus asked the local gentry, Wang
Ganguan and Wu Benguan,
337
as the middleman and scribe to ask for Lin Lianghu’s
understanding and grace in order not to have to move out and make a living by
selling manure. Similar to many other contracts, Wang Lin Jiaoniang’s vulnerability
and difficult situation constituted the moral reasons for the local gentry to put
pressure on the leaser Lin Lianghu, to force him to be compassionate, consider the
social norms and be lenient with Wang.
338

337
Regarding the meaning of guan as a suffix, see footnote 318.
338
According to Kwang-kuo Hwang, “human feelings” (renqing ) has three meanings in Chinese
culture. Human feelings “indicates the emotional responses of an individual confronting the various
situations of daily life;…[is] a resource that an individual can present to another person as a gift in the
course of social exchange; and connotes a set of social norms by which one has to abide in order to

202
The Quanzhou property contracts show that many traditional women could
only buy property from relatives because they were restricted from traveling and
appearing in public. So, the best way for them to maximize and preserve family
property was to make use of their family roles and position to purchase the property
within the lineage. Women’s authority and ability was more noteworthy when they
were the buyers in contracts rather than being the sellers. For instance, Madam Chen
co-purchased two houses with her brother-in-law Liu Han from another Liu lineage
member in 1834.
339
In 1873 Madam Nian and her son Wang Tiansong purchased a
house from another branch of the Wang family—Madam Ruan and her son Wang
Jingshi. In this transaction the relatives of both Madam Nian’s and Madam Ruan’s
natal families were present to be the middlemen and protect the interest of both the
female seller and buyer.
340
Similarly, Zuben and his two brothers sold their house to
their aunt and cousins of the fifth branch in 1873.
341
All three buyers purchased the
property from their lineage or family members. This fact illustrates how important it
was for women to enjoy the right of preemption from kinsmen in order to aggregate
family property.
In sum, most Qing and early Republican female sellers who have been
discussed in this section concluded contracts in the presence of either their agnates or
local gentry. They co-signed with their sons or asked for the presence of agnates
while selling the property of their marital family. Yet the liability and obligations of

get along well with other people in Chinese society.” See Kwang-kuo Hwang, “Face and Favor,” 953-
4.
339
“Madam Chen et al.’s contracts for redeemable sale, 1849,” CHX, serial number 2003042605A.
340
“Wang Jingshi’s contract for sale, 1873,” CHX, serial number 2003042615A.
341
“Zuben et al.’s contract for redeemable sale, 1903,” CHX, no serial number; “Zuben et al.’s
contract for irrevocable sale, 1903,” CHX, no serial number.

203
all parties in these contracts usually lay upon the women and were clearly stated.
Most widows or women sold the marital families’ property to maintain their
livelihood, but the “living widow” whose husband was absent in the above 1757
contract stated her purpose was her desire to establish an heir. These women were
de facto family heads and tried to consolidate their family status by continuing the
family line.
Nevertheless, the above property contracts represent three phenomena that
occurred in Quanzhou families, which all together pose a question about whether or
not the presence of agnates in women’s contracts represented the authority of the
joint family over these women. (1) Both marital and natal families appeared as
witnesses, middlemen, scribes, or buyers to support these women and to relieve their
financial or succession crises. (2) The presence of their agnates, additionally but
ironically, reveals that these women’s marital family could not provide enough
financial support to these women’s nuclear unit but only gave them permission to
sell the marital family property. The nature of “communal living, common property”
started to change in emigrant communities at least as early as the mid-18
th
century.
(3) Both men and women in stronger branches or conjugal units made use of
preemption to maximize the wealth of their own nuclear families. Under the joint
family structure, the transactions within lineages seemed to successfully preserve the
lineage property from dissipation. Yet all statements to clarify contract liability
between families or branches show us that the ideal of “common property” in a joint
family was difficult to maintain in practice. Although women behaved as de facto
family heads in only 51 contracts out of the total 260 contracts, the strength of the

204
family and the lineage system in the Southern Fujian area faced underground
challenges from the rise of conjugal units and stem families.
Kathryn Bernhardt points out that the change of the Chinese property regime
happened after the enforcement of the Republican Code of 1929-1930, in which the
new laws redefined the kinship relations and separated patrilineal succession and
property inheritance.
342
The lawmakers additionally defined the components of a
Republican family as “relatives by blood” (xieqin ), and separated the husband-
wife relationship from the patrilineal kinship as spouses (pei’ou ). Although
there are only 51 out of the 260 Quanzhou contracts in which women act as the main
contract executors, the trend of more women independently concluding contracts
after 1930 than ever before was obvious. Eleven women appeared to be the main
contract executors from 1931 to 1949.
In short, the reduction of family size in an emigrant society like Quanzhou
had started after the mid-18
th
century, when a lot of spare male laborers flowed out to
Taiwan and Southeast Asia. These contracts prove that the family structure had been
going through a great deal of change long before the changes brought about by the
Republican Civil Code. Although many agnates would give women financial
support by buying lineage property from weaker branches or serving as witnesses,
middlemen or scribes, the fact that women participated in contracts was an indicator
of change in the family system itself.

342
Bernhardt, Women and Property in China, 960-1949, 101-16.

205
III. Anomalies or Customary Practices? Natal Families in Property Contracts
This section focuses on intrafamilial transactions and relations to reveal
women’s crucial roles in preserving the patrilineal system of their marital and natal
families. Some contracts in the previous discussion have shown the participation of
married women’s natal kin as well as the involvement of women in intrafamilial
transactions. Previous scholarship in women’s studies has looked beyond the
traditional marital family system and detected mutual efforts between the marital and
natal families in strengthening their social relations and participating in each other’s
economic activities. Beverly Bossler finds that “[affinal] relationships frequently
became a crucial site for women to influence family strategies or shape their own
experience within the family.”
343
Janet Theiss illustrates how natal families “provide
a kind of safety valve for distraught wives, offering some degree of emotional
support and temporary breathing space away from their husbands and in-laws.”
344

The Quanzhou property contracts also center on two phenomena of intrafamilial
transaction and interaction. The first and most common mode of engagement was
that a woman’s male relative from her natal family serving as a witness or buyer in a
property transaction that she conducted on behalf of her sons or her absent/deceased
husband. The second mode was when a married woman emphasized her identity as a
daughter and returned to her natal family to dispose of property on behalf of an
absent brother or move her natal ancestral tablets to her marital family’s altar for
daily worship.

343
Bossler, “A Daughter is a Daughter All Her Life,” 79.
344
Theiss, “Dealing with Disgrace,” 87.

206
A. Intersection of Sibling Bonds and Economic Concerns
Cai Ruiren’s two contracts in 1845 are typical examples of the involvement
of a natal family member in transactions by his married-out female relatives. As I
discussed in the first section of this chapter, when Cai Ruiren sold the dowry
property of his wife, one of the four middlemen (zhongjian ), Yang Fengguan,
could represent the natal family of Cai Ruiren’s wife and protect her interests. An
excerpt from the first contract for conditional sale reads as follows.

The executor of contract for sale, Cai Ruiren, obtained a house from my
wife, the daughter-in-law of the Chen family—Yang….
Now because of lack of funds, [me] and my wife consulted with each other
[italics added]…and relied one middlemen for an introduction to the Chen
family for this sale…
[I] Ren [referring to Cai Ruiren] guarantees that this estate was the
property of my wife Madame Yang. The close agnates such as my uncles,
brothers, or nephews had no concerns with it. Neither is there any prior
guarantee or redeemable sale to another party. Should [the original
ownership rights] be unclear, this is not something that the buyer need be
concerned with; it is [me] Ren and my wife Yang who take full
responsibility….

Witness Yang
Middlemen and Witness (zhongjian ) Bu Bingguan
Li Hushi
Yang Fengguan
Lin Shiguan
Scribe Lin Shiguan
Executor of contract for conditional sale Cai Ruiren
The sixth month, the twenty-fifth year of the Daoguang reign
345

There is some confusion part in this contract about the family relations between Cai
Ruiren and the Chen family. Madam Yang was Cai Ruiren’s wife according to both

345
See “Cai Ruiren’s contract for sale, 1845” CHX, serial number 2003040819A; and “Cai Ruiren’s
contract for supplemental payments and irrevocable sale, 1845,” CHX, serial number 2003040820A.

207
contracts, but she was also the daughter-in-law of the Chen family instead of the Cai
family. I examined the original texts and found no mistyping. A likely explanation
is that Cai Ruiren had been adopted by the Chen family but retained his old surname
Cai. In Quanzhou this kind of adoption was not uncommon. There are two
scenarios. The first is the “affinal adoption” (waisheng jiantiao 䤏 ) scenario,
where a sonless woman adopted a nephew from her natal family but this nephew
inherited both lines from the perspective of the adopting parents. The second
scenario, the Chen and Cai famlies had no affinal relations, but Cai Ruiren was
adopted into the Chen family. In both scenarios Cai Ruiren could have just one wife
and give the surname Cai to one son and the other surname Chen to another in order
to carry on the two family lines. Cai Ruiren could also have two “wives,” each
taking the reproductive function for one family. Whatever the alternative
interpretation could be, this contract shows a possibility that Cai Ruiren sold this
house to the patrilineal kin of his adoptive family while asking for the presence of all
four middlemen, Yang Fengguan in particular, to ensure the legal effect.
The object of the following redeemable sale was one of two houses jointly
bought by Liu Han and his sister-in-law Madam Chen. Its antecedent contract was
concluded in 1834 and clearly recorded the distribution of two houses between two
buyers. Madam Chen represented her (deceased or absent) husband’s branch to co-
purchase the two houses with her younger brother-in-law Liu Han and was then
given one house. As a buyer and manager of her household, a woman had no need to
emphasize the presence or supervision of her agnates or succeeding generations over
the transaction. Yet when she tried to sell the house fifteen years after the purchase,

208
“the mother and sons consulted with each other,” in addition her sons and grandsons
served as joint contract executors, and her natal kin the middlemen.

The joint executors of this contract for redeemable sale are elder sister-in-
law Chen, nephews Guanghua, Guangyue, Guangbao, and grandnephew
Wenbao. Uncle Han of the fourth branch bought from the Liu family’s
irrevocable-sale two stores,…. In the third month of this year he distributed
the second store to me [Madam Chen], and I have been managing it as my
own property.
Owing to the lack of funds for buying another property, we mother and
sons consulted with each other about this matter and decided to rely on
middlemen for an introduction to conditionally sell this second store to my
husband’s younger brother, Uncle Han, for a redeemable sale …. The
redeemable sale ends in the winter of the Daoguang’s thirty-fourth year;
the [redemption right of] the property will be left up to me after I prepare
the money and contract for repair. We sellers guarantee that this store was
the property jointly purchased by Madam Chen and Uncle Han and then
distributed to Madam Chen, and the other branches have no control over
it….
Also (we) have turned in our respectively controlled seals on four copies of
the redeemable contract, and we include the antecedent contract as
certification.

The fourth month, the twenty-ninth year of the Daoguang reign
Middlemen and witnesses: Yang Heguan
Chen Zhenxing
Tao Yunzhong
Chen Guiguan
Shang Yanguan
Scribe: nephew Liu Guangyue
Joint executors of contract for redeemable sale: Elder sister-in-law Chen
Nephews Liu Guanghua
Guangyue
Guangbao
Grandnephew [Liu] Wenbao
346

346
This contract was addressed to the buyer, Uncle Han; therefore, Madam Chen’s sons and
grandsons signed as nephews and grandnephew in relation to Uncle Han to elaborate the uncle-
nephew relationship. “Madam Chen et al.’s contracts for redeemable sale, 1849,” CHX, serial
number 2003042605A.

209
In this case, Madam Chen’s younger brother-in-law, Liu Han, was the first candidate
for purchasing this house, particularly because he was the original joint buyer. Liu
Guangyue, the scribe and obviously another Liu family member, also played a role
as a “witness” to the transfer of lineage property. Both conformed to the requirement
of Qing law and local custom about “communal living, common property,” which
requires that the agnates get the right of preemption and that they be present in a
transaction of lineage property.
347

Although this sale contract was concluded among branches within Madam
Chen’s marital family and pertained to her own property, the presence of Madam
Chen’s natal kin, Chen Zhenxing and Chen Guiguan, was to protect both Madam
Chen and her children’s economic interest. A Qing woman’s economic ties with her
natal family were officially severed once she married out and took her dowry
property away, but local custom gave her brother(s) the right to serve as a
witness/arbitrator overseeing most familial rituals of her marital family whenever her
interest was at stake.
348
On the occasion of household division, traditional Chinese
believed that a matrilateral uncle would be fair to every son in the allocation of
household property because he was an outsider to his sister’s marital family and,
unlike the parents, lacked bias for or against any of his nephews.
349
In addition, the
brother in a woman’s natal family should be the final arbiter over the cause of her

347
Da Qing lu, Hulu, juan 4, “Bieji yicai,” and “Bayou sishan yongcai;” also see The Great Qing
Code, trans. William Jones (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 112; Shiga Shuzo, Zhongguo jiazhufa
yuanli, 345-7. In addition, the Republican customs, such as in Minqing County 救 in Fujian also
addressed the same moral requirement regarding a widow selling property, and the priority of agnates
in the purchase of property. See Ministry of Judicial Administration ed., Mingshi xiguan diaocha,
304.
348
Ahern, “Affines and the Rituals of Kinship,” 288-99.
349
Fei Hsiao-tung , “Shengyu zhidu ,” in Xiangtu Zhongguo/Shengyu zhidu 悱 / (Beijing: Beijing daxue chubanshe, 2003), 197.

210
death. The sister’s marital family could not bury her before he came to the house of
his affines and examined the body of his dead sister.
350

The custom that a woman’s marital family invited her brother or natal
agnates to “witness” a contract or rituals was believed to be the demonstration of
avunculate. Avunculate denotes “a special relationship between a male and his
mother’s brother which allows the nephew to take certain liberties with the maternal
uncle and/or grants him privileged access to the uncle’s property or resources.”
351

The Functionalists and Structuralists in anthropology argue that the existence of
avunculate in a patrilineal society was an extension of the sibling bond and that is
mainly constituted by the one-way responsibility of a mother’s brother for her son (a
maternal uncle for his nephew). The Functionalists debate over many things, but
converge on Radcliffe-Brown’s “Extensionist” theory. This theory postulates that a
society with a great emphasis on the classical elementary or nuclear family and the
“authoritative” sentiments on the male line are always balanced by “affectionate”
sentiments on the female line. All the affection felt by the natal family for her would
be transferred to her children. The Structuralists like Levi-Strauss propose that the
incest taboo and the brother-sister tie are the two sides of a coin, so that the maternal
nephew is a kind of direct creation of his mother’s brother
.352
The Chinese
anthropologist Emily Ahern’s study on affines and the rituals of kinship also points
out that the members of a woman’s natal family always behaved like a “transformer”

350
Ahern, “Affines and the Rituals of Kinship,” 297.
351
Robert Parkin and Linda Stone eds., Kinship and Family: An Anthropological Reader (Blackwell,
2004), 456.
352
Robin Fox, Reproduction and Succession: Studies in Anthropology, Law, and Society (New
Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1993), 198-213.

211
witnessing the ritual processes in her conjugal family, if she or her conjugal unit
members participated and if their family status and interest would be affected.
353
In
this way the wife-giving affines continued to “protect the welfare of the woman they
gave away and her husband.”
354

In our contracts, it is no surprise to see a married-out woman’s “brother”
(jiu ) appearing as a witness in the collections of Quanzhou contracts.
355
For
example, a maternal “uncle” from the Lin family appeared in the 1846 contract to
protect his sister’s interest and clarify the property rights.
356
This contract is the last
one of a series of six contracts for sale and supplemental payments between the Cai
and the Huang families. The economic transactions between these two families
started in 1763 and included transfers of three different properties. The first two
houses were the lineage estates inherited and sold by the male descendants of the Cai
family, but the last house was claimed by Madam Lin as her own self-purchased
property. Madam Lin asked her maternal brother Lin Zaoshe to be a witness.
357
The
above anthropological theories and Chinese patrilineal ideology would sought that

353
Ahern argues that the mother’s brother represented his family in the rituals in his sister’s marital
family, but his role was as a “transformer” rather than a “mediator.” There are two reasons for this.
First, the wife-giving family gave out a daughter to continue the patriline of the wife-takers; and
second, the mother’s brother would oversee the household division and ensure that all nephews
enjoyed a “successful transformation into separate property holders.” His power thus initiated the
growth and change of his sister’s marital family. See Ahern, “Affines and the Rituals of Kinship,”
303-4.
354
Ibid, 296.
355
Jiu means “uncle” in Chinese; but people speaking southern Fujian dialect use it to address their
affines by elevating him one generation to show respect to wife-givers on public occasions. This
particularly happened in the conjugal unit so that both the husband and wife refer to their affines with
this respect on public occasions. Regarding the details of the skewing strategy, please see Robert
Weller, “Affines, Ambiguity, and Meaning in Hokkien Kin Terms,” Ethnology 20.1 (Jan 1981), 15-29.
This reference name is commonly used by the wife’s husband and other members of the same
generation in her marital family.
356
Owing to the fact that the contract was concluded by Madam Lin herself without her husband,
there remains a possibility that Lin Zhaoshe was her husband’s maternal uncle.
357
“The sale contract of Madam Lin of the Cai family, 1846,” CHX, serial number 2003032414A.

212
the presence of Lin Zaoshe was to protect his sister’s interest. But he also needed to
prove that this house was not part of her dowry nor originally owned by her natal
family in order to clarify the origin of the property.
358

In addition to the sibling bond between sisters and brothers that could serve
as the psychological reason to explain her maternal uncle’s appearance in this
contract, the economic concern might have urged Madam Lin to ask her natal kin to
be present and to prove to the buyer that it was not a dowry property, as in Cai
Ruiren’s contract (discussed in the first section). Both imperial law and local
practices prior to 1949 affirmed that a daughter was entitled to the (customary) right
of receiving her dowry from her natal family as the property of the conjugal unit
independent of the common property of the joint family.
359
In some areas such as
Songjiang County of Jiangsu province, a woman’s father would even
conclude a gift-giving contract and directly give it to her husband to justify the
transfer of the dowry.
360
I do not find any Quanzhou contract in which it mentions
that the dowry-property was directly transferred from the natal family to the husband
or the marital family, although the aforementioned Cai Ruiren’s contract suggests
that the transfer of the dowry was managed by the husband and that the wife had no
real power to dispose of the dowry. Similarly, Lin Zhaoshe’s presence in this 1846

358
In contrast, the scribe was Madam Lin’s nephew Cai Taoshe in her marital family. A scribe was
often the close kin of the contract executor, but whether or not he played any important function in a
contract-concluding process remains uncertain and depended on family dynamics. In this contract,
the fact that no senior marital kin was present suggests that Cai Taoshe may not have only been a
scribe but may have also represented the local gentry and Madam Lin’s marital family as a witness to
this transaction. Because I have discussed the participation of agnates and their functions to supervise
the transactions in the previous sections, I will not repeat the arguments in the text.
359
Shiga Shuzo, Zhongguo jiazhufa yuanli, 409-30.
360
Ministry of Judicial Administration ed., Mingshi xiguan diaocha baogao lu, 343.

213
contract thus represented Madam Lin’s natal family and clarified that this house was
never a dowry.
The intersection of affective bonds and economic ties also appeared in some
contracts because the economic tie between a married woman and her natal family
was not easily severed in popular practices as our investigation of the Chinese
kinship system has suggested. For instance, Zhang Qingjiang sold a house in 1916,
which was an inherited house from Wang Weixiong, the deceased husband of his
paternal aunt; he also shouldered the responsibility of carrying out ancestral
sacrifices and becoming the heir of the Wang family.
361
Affinal adoption was
against the patrilineal ideology of the Chinese patrilineal kinship system, but it was
widely practiced in Quanzhou. Given the fact that his “(birth) father” Zhang
Wenzhang was present as a witness to this redeemable sale, we can infer that Zhang
Qingjiang actually succeeded two family patrilines (jiantiao䤏 )—the Zhang
family and the Wang family. Therefore, Zhang Qingjiang stated that he had
consulted with his birth father Zhang Wenzhang and asked the latter to witness the
transaction. After having given a daughter to the Wangs, the Zhangs offered the
wife-taking Wang family another heir and secured the property of the Wangs from
being encroached on by other distant Wang lineage members. Here we see how the
natal family served as a last resort to help preserve the patrilineal succession and the
household inheritance of a married-out daughter, that is, Zhang Wenzhang’s sister
and Wang Weixiong’s wife. It is unclear why Zhang Qingjiang’s paternal aunt did

361
“Zhang Qingjiang’s contract for redeemable sale, 1916,” CHX, no serial number.

214
not appear in the contract or whether she was even consulted. Perhaps she was
deceased too.
In addition to brothers from the natal families, the appearance of matrilateral
nephews in these women’s contracts was not uncommon either. In 1883 Mrs. Wang
née Yang sold a house that had been purchased by her deceased husband to her
matrilateral nephew (waisheng ) from her natal family. This contract is similar
to the above contract concluded in 1916 by Zhang Qingjiang selling a house that he
had inherited from the deceased husband of his paternal aunt. Mrs. Wang née Yang
explained in the contract that:

… I have [neither] descendants to carry on the lineage branches, nor
agnates to rely on to renovate it. Now, owing to a lack of funds to support
my life, I rely on middlemen for an introduction of the first and inner
compounds to my matrilateral nephew (waisheng) Guo Weide [italic
added] for a price of seventy silver yuan…. I guarantee that this house was
my husband’s property when he was alive and that no agnates have rights
to this property….

The eleventh month, the ninth year of the Guangxu reign
Middlemen: Chen Ruoteng
Cai Fengguan
Scribe: Huang Wenchengguan
Executor: Wang Yang
362

Madam Yang’s sale of her husband’s house and the absence of any agnates
points to the impractical nature of the ideal of “communal living, common property.”
Although this house was purchased by Madam Yang’s husband instead of being
inherited from a household division, it was still family property according to the

362
“Madam Yang’s contract for irrevocable sale and for exchange of redeemable sale, 1883,” CHX,
serial number 2003061631A.

215
patriarchal principle of “communal living, common property.” Under this principle,
there should be no individual private property except the wife’s dowry which
belonged to the conjugal unit; and all family members should mutually support each
other. Madam Yang clearly stated that there were no descendants in her marital
family to carry on the branch or to care for her. Yet the fact that Madam Yang had
no agnates to renovate the house does not necessarily mean that she had no living
agnates, and if there was one, he did not fulfill his obligation to support Madam
Yang. She thus followed the custom of preemption and found a buyer—her
matrilateral nephew Guo Weide. Therefore, Guo Weide’s purchase of this collapsed
house, in fact, supported Madam Yang and displaced other agnates of the Wang
family who should have taken up this obligation.
Even when a married woman was in financial difficulty, she could still
strengthen the natal patriline by protecting its patrimony. In 1855, Wang Cai
Baoniang conducted the irrevocable sale of her dowry—an inherited house from her
birth father—to Cai Meiguan. Her matrilateral nephew, Qiao Guan, served as a
witness when no agnates from her marital family were present.
363
We cannot tell
from this contract whether Qiao Guan’s mother was Madame Cai’s sister or her
husband’s sister, because Madam Cai and her husband constituted a conjugal unit;
affines to two different families—the husband’s and the wife’s—could be confused
by the address and reference names. If Qiao Guan’s mother was the sister of Wang
Cai Baoniang’s husband, Qiao Guan could represent the agnatic group of the Wangs,
as an obligation to his maternal uncle (Mr. Wang, who was Wang Cai Baoniang’s

363
“Wang Cai Baoniang’s contract for final sale and supplemental payment, 1855,” CHX, serial
number 2003053017A.

216
husband) to ensure that the original ownership rights of this house were not in the
hands of the Wang family. Nevertheless, his credit would be easily declined by the
buyer of this contract because the house for sale was a property inherited from Wang
Cai Baoniang’s maternal grandfather. Instead, being the son of Wang Cai
Baoniang’s sister, whose inheritance right was an extension of his mother’s, Qiao
Guan would have a stronger reason to serve as a witness to a transaction involving
the property that once belonged to his mother’s natal family. If Qiao Guan was the
son of Madam Chen’s sister, his economic interest was at stake too.
As I have briefly discussed in Chapter Two, this contract is about preserving
the integrity of the patrilineal property of the natal family. The buyer’s surname was
Cai, which suggests that the final sale was in fact a “return” of dowry property to the
natal family and that its supplemental payment was financial aid from the natal
family. Previous scholarship on contracts and preemption in the purchase lineage
estates usually focuses on the preservation of the wholeness of patrilineal
property.
364
Wang Cai Baoniang’s transaction proves that this principle was also
applicable to the natal patriline, as the natal families had priority in purchasing the
dowries of their married-out relatives. This picture of economic interactions
between a married-out daughter and her natal family in the practices of the kinship
system extends beyond the frame of the anthropological concept of avunculate which
centers on the “brother-sister” bond and one-way “uncle-nephew” responsibility.

364
Madeleine Zelin, “A Critique of Rights of Property in Prewar China,” 26.

217
B. Married-Out Daughters as the Surrogate Family Heads
In the second type of intrafamilial interaction which appears in the Quanzhou
contracts, both loyalty to the birth family and economic interactions were called
upon to be the pillars of the long-term intra-familial relationships. In 1857 two
sisters who had married into the same Chen family acted on behalf of their absent
brother in the natal family to sell his house and move the ancestral tablets of the natal
family to their marital family altar for daily worship.

The joint executors of this contract for sale, Chen Cai (X) and Chen Cai
(Y), are consanguineous sisters. Our consanguineous younger brother, Cai
Baoguan, is making his living in the place of ZZZ and the family has no
other property but one rear house located inside the Chen’s house in Puyue
Precinct, Shitou Street.
Because the house caught fire during the Xianfeng reign, we found no
place to settle the ancestral tablets; neither were we able to worship them
in any yearly ritual or anniversaries of the ancestors’ death. Therefore, we
sisters have consulted with each other about this matter and decided to rely
on a middleman for an introduction to sell the rear house and courtyard to
Chen Huaguan for the agreed price of twenty silver yuan,…. Each of us
will receive five yuan for practicing [ancestral] sacrifices in the future.
Right now, the natal family’s ancestral tablets are temporarily placed in
and worshipped at the Chen family’s upper hall [italics added]; the
ancestral tablets will be escorted out and worshipped in other places
afterwards…. The buyer’s family should follow the contract and prepare
another ten silver yuan for our younger brother to receive [when he
returns], in order to match the number of the whole price of twenty silver
yuan…..

The second month, the seventh year of the Xianfeng reign
Middleman and witness: Zhang Heguan
Joint executors of this contract for sale: Chen Cai (X)
Chen Cai (Y)
Scribe: licentiate (shengyuan ) Huang Weide
365

365
“Madam Cai’s contract for sale, 1857,” CHX, serial number 2003040815A.

218
Married daughters like these two Cai sisters did not turn their back on the
principle of patrilineality and tried to continue ancestral worship and preserve the
property of the natal family. The property transaction from the natal family to the
marital family created a scenario whereby it would be easier for any of Madam Cai’s
sons (a member of the Chens) to buy the property back from his agnates than from
any other strangers: According to Quanzhou customs, one son of these two Cai
sisters could succeed the family line of the Cai family and could easily carry on
ancestral worship if their brother did not return to town, because the ancestral tablets
had been moved to the Chen family. In addition, the buyer of this house was Chen
Huaguan, obviously a member of the marital family. In this case, the economic
interests and patrilines of the natal family were preserved by these two Cai sisters’
reinstating their roles as daughters and mediating this intra-familial transaction.
Beverly Bossler has shown that late imperial women did return to their natal
families to care for aged parents and to manage household finances and that such a
practice was not unusual as recorded in Ming-Qing literary works.
366
Married-out
daughters taking over the obligation of worshiping ancestors of the natal family,
however, was against the principle of patrilineality. As Shiga Shuzo and Arthur P.
Wolf both conclude, a woman in the Confucian family system generally did not have
any right to worship the ancestors of her natal family because she was considered to
belong to solely “single unit,” the husband-wife relationship in her marital family
rather than to any relationship with her father or mother. She was not the
continuation of her father’s breath and so she was not qualified to sacrifice to him

366
Bossler, “A Daughter is a Daughter All Her Life,” 77-106.

219
and his ancestors.
367
Yet in emigrant societies like Quanzhou, it was very common
to see several sets of ancestral tablets with different surnames in the same ancestral
halls, which was a consequence of either combined succession (or affinal adoption)
or uxorilocal marriage. In addition to this contract in which the two Cai sisters
behaved like surrogate heirs in their family and continued ancestral worship, another
1899 contract shows that the executor Zeng Chamouguan inherited from his maternal
grandfather (the Wang family) a parcel of land and was about to sell it. So he
“consulted with his mother (Madam Wang)” (muzi xiangyi ) and decided to
move the ancestral tablets of the Wang family to the Zeng family to worship. In this
contract, there was no member from the Zeng family to serve as the witness,
middleman or scribe. Just as Zeng Chamouguan purposely stated, “this property was
inherited from my maternal grandfather; all other agnates with different surnames
(waixing fangqin boshu xongdizhiἬ ) have no claims to
ownership rights.”
368
The agnates with different surnames obviously referred to
those of the Zeng family. Although Madam Wang was not the main executor but
rather a witness and she could not retain her natal family’s property, it was beyond
doubt that she supported her son’s decision and was at least successful in continuing
to offer the incense of ancestral worship for the Wang family.
Arthur Wolf’s anthropological research shows that if a woman was forced to
bring the ancestral tablets of her natal family to her marital family and to assume her
responsibility as a daughter because of the absence of her brothers, the place for

367
Shiga Shuzo, “Family Property,” 119-21, 127; Arthur P. Wolf, “Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors,” in
Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society, ed. Arthur P. Wolf (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
1974), 153.
368
“Zeng Chamouguan’s contract for irrevocable sale, 1899,” CHX, serial number 2003042203A.

220
these guest tablets was usually in some corner of her husband’s home or else they
were relegated to a subsidiary altar. In addition, they were granted a place in her
marital family only if the wife’s responsibilities entitled her to inherit a share of her
father’s estate.
369
The two Quanzhou contracts cited above support Wolf’s
argument.
Should we see these transactions between affines as anomalies in relation to
other transactions? A Feng’s research of Ming-Qing contracts and other documents
in Huizhou has shown two linked contracts in which the buyer was the brother
or maternal uncle of the sellers (a widowed mother and her son).
370
In Quanzhou the
appearance of affines in property contracts first appeared in 1663, Madam Zhuang of
the Li family sold a graveyard of her marital family, to Wang Ya, who would bury
his maternal grandfather Mr. Guo in this site. Madam Zhuang asked her brother’s
son Zhuang Jingren to be the scribe and her son-in-law Zhuang Yuanhe to be the
middleman. No member of the Li family was present.
371
This is a special contract
not only because her nephew Zhuang Jingren was the scribe, but also because
Madame Zhuang’s son-in-law, who was the middleman, also had the surname
Zhuang. The latter suggests the likelihood that she married her daughter back to her
natal family, conducting a marriage among cousins to strengthen the marriage ties
between the Li and Zhuang families. This would provide an explanation for the
presence of two Zhuang family members and the absence of any members from the

369
Arthur Wolf, “Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors,” 153.
370
A Feng, “Ming-Qing shidai huizhou funu diwei chutan: yi Huizhou wenshu wei zhongxin,”
dissertation (The Research Institute of History, Chinese Academy of Social Science, 2003), 33. These
contracts were concluded in 1406 and 1410. Both are printed in Zhongguo lidai qiyue huibian kaoshi,
Vol. 2, 723-4, 730-1.
371
“Madam Zhuang’s contract for sale, 1663,” MNC, 55.

221
Li family in this contract. In addition, the fact that the buyer Wang Ya bought this
graveyard to bury his maternal grandfather also illuminates the close ties between
natal and marital families in popular practice. In another 1907 contract, Madam Li
of the Tian family asked four Li family members to be the witness, middlemen and
scribe of a contract in which she sold a house that once belonged to her deceased
husband.
372
Similar cases in Quanzhou were also found in 1779, 1780, 1798, 1847,
1933, and 1940.
373
All these contracts spanning from the 18
th
to the 20
th
centuries
prove that the mutual engagement between natal and marital family members was a
common phenomenon.
Out of affective bonds and economic ties, the purpose of intrafamilial
participation in these Quanzhou property contracts was two-fold: (1) first, to
continue the patrilines and ancestral worship, and second to protect the economic
interests of the contracting parties; and (2) to guarantee that neither the marital nor
natal family would illegally claim ownership rights or dispose of the property which
originally belonged to the other family.
In sum, the first three sections show that: (1) Quanzhou did not completely
transform into an emigrant society until the mid-18
th
century, when the Qing
government lifted the ban on emigration. From then on, more women who were left
behind by their emigrant husbands entered their long-term widowhood, and while
some enjoyed remittances others faced financial difficulties. In either situation, they

372
“Madam Li’s contract for irrevocable sale and supplemental payment, 1907,” CHX, serial number
2003051034A.
373
“Wong Liguan et al.’s contract for redeemable sale, 1779,” CHX, serial number 2003051020A;
“Madam Zheng’s contract, 1780,” MNC, 51-2; “Huang Jiguan’s contract for sale, 1798,” MNC, 18-9;
“Madam Wu’s contract, 1847,” MNC, 41; “Ni Decheng’s contract for irrevocable sake, 1933,”CHX,
serial number 2003042804 A; and “Zeng Zhuang Kunjuan’s contract for sub-dian, 1940” CHX, no
serial number.

222
negotiated with Confucian family ethics to concentrate their power and elevate their
family status, in the process many women served as surrogate family heads and had
the authority to conclude contracts; (2) The Opium War and 1912 Nationalist
Revolution were not turning points for the periodization of Quanzhou in terms of
economic practices and kinship relations. Warfare and the establishment of a new
government signaled no sharp break in practice and institutions at the local level.
There were still more women making concession to be witnesses rather than sellers.
And the concerns about patrilineal succession also overshadowed conjugal unity; (3)
The legal changes at the turn of the 1930s, which saw the founding of the Nationalist
government and the promulgation of the Republican Civil Code, did not lead to
drastic changes in Quanzhou contractual practices. The Nationalist lawmakers tried
to endow women with property rights independent from their husbands, but local
practices did not change to immediately conform to the new laws. Instead, we see a
gulf in Quanzhou contractual practice between the new regulations of the Republican
laws and local customs in which women willingly retreated to the role of witnesses
in property transactions conducted by the younger generation.

IV. Negotiation with Family Ethics and Intrafamilial Relations
The ways in which Quanzhou women participated in property contracts
shows that the male-centered family hierarchy gradually loosened and that their
conjugal units were gradually separated from the patriarchal control of the joint
family. According to Janet Theiss, the chastity cult which was promoted by the Qing
government showed that the bond between husband and wife had become stronger

223
than other familial bonds. Therefore, conjugal patriarchy was at odds with the
patrilineal patriarchy.
374
The aforementioned Quanzhou contracts reveal a similar
development. The rise of the importance of a woman’s conjugal unit or uterine
family in relation to the joint family gave her more freedom and power, although a
widowed mother took the secondary role of witness in these contracts, or the
economic personality of a wife was still veiled by her husband’s authority and son’s
personality and representation of the family line.

A. Negotiation with Family Ethics
“Family” was the overarching ethical realm in which Quanzhou women used
their family roles to specify their legal status and rights in property contracts. Male
emigration during the Qing and Republican periods transformed Quanzhou into an
emigrant society, where married women either used the opportunity of male absence
to accumulate their power under the supervision of their agnates or retained close
economic and emotional ties with their natal families to consolidate their status in
their marital families. As Myron Cohen points out, “in the commodified and
contract-oriented world of late imperial China, the major social and economic unit
was the family and not the individual.”
375
In the eyes of other contracting parties, a
woman’s family roles as a mother or a wife were her basic social identity (social
capital) and she would switch to another set of social roles—contract executor,
witness, middleman as she accumulated her power in the family. Her social roles
could not exist independently of these family roles.

374
Theiss, Disgraceful Matters, 104-107.
375
Cohen, “Writs of Passage in Late Imperial China,” 65.

224
These Quanzhou women placed themselves and were placed in the arena of
the family and related systems to supervise and govern the interests of their families.
Ta Chen’s investigation reveals that the women managing family affairs in the
emigrant villages were not always aged mothers. This was true across class
divisions. Only occasionally, when the wife was not sufficiently experienced, some
other older woman may have acted as the family head and took charge of all family
matters. A wife made important decisions and judgments about family matters in the
immediate family circle, which included business, education, marriage, and religious
observances.
376

Within this family dynamic, women negotiated with reference to and in the
context of the patrilineal hierarchy, the law, and local custom regarding Confucian
family ethics. It was not uncommon for a woman prior to 1931 to become the de
facto seller in default of any agnatic male and for a woman to be a witness to her
property transaction conducted by her descendants after 1931. Ordinary people
usually weighed the significance of gender hierarchy and generational order and tried
to retain a balance between them. The contracts discussed in this chapter show that
the imbalance or tension between generational order and gender hierarchy resulted in
an elevation or diminution of family status. When widowed mothers took the
initiative to dispose of family affairs and, in particular, became the only contract
executors in selling marital property, while ignoring their sons’ property rights and
agency, they subtly transformed their respected family role into major social roles
with the aid of state laws and local customs. Nevertheless, even if they were

376
Ta Chen, Emigrant Communities in South China, 119-23.

225
subordinate to the patrilineal hierarchy as well as customs and therefore willing to
serve as mere witnesses to their sons’ transactions, their family status could still
carried the implicit power to obtain social recognition from local moral communities
in order to bring more profit, privilege, and respect for the contracting parties.
In general, women’s family status grew in the gradually independent conjugal
units during the late Qing and Republican periods. Either they concluded contracts
as the main executors, or their husbands expressed a respect for their conjugal units
by consulting with wives and asking wives to be witnesses. There are two
alternative interpretations for the existence of woman-dominant families. First of all,
the emigration and seemingly endless warfare damaged the family systems, and the
size of the family was reduced in real terms. Second, these women were mainly
from peasant families or cut-off families. They had no other option but to take over
the role of the family head due to impoverishment. Anthropologists have argued that
the average family size remained relatively constant at about 5.2 in imperial Chinese
history, or ranged from 4.9 to 7.6 in Fujian.
377
In other words, most families were
nuclear or stem families, which would receive less influence or support from the
lineages, and women would encounter less resistance to becoming the surrogate
family heads from agnates when their husbands were absent. A study of Quanzhou
property contracts bears this out. In these contracts we see that the conjugal and
stem families became the center of the new family system, as the increasing

377
Nancy Jervis, “The Meaning of Jia: An Introduction,” in House, Home, Family: Living and Being
Chinese, ed. Ronald G. Knapp and Kai-yin Lo (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2005), 223;
Maurice Freedman, Lineage Organization in Southeastern China (The Athlone Press, University of
London, 1958), 19.

226
frequency of the expression “we husband and wife consulted with each other” shows
in these Quanzhou contracts from the late 19
th
to the early 20
th
century.

B. Intrafamilial Relations
In the process of negotiating with Confucian family ethics and conducting
property transactions, Quanzhou women were inclined to build a hierarchy of
various principles of family ethics and then conform to them in order. Compared to
gender hierarchy and respect to patriarchal authority, continuing the lines of their
nuclear or stem families and preserving the wholeness of patrimony were no doubt
listed in the beginning of this order, because family lines and patrimony were closely
correlated to women’s family status. Quanzhou women showed no intention to
challenge the core values of Confucian ethics—patrilineality and filial piety.
Perpetuating and protecting both marital and natal patrilines would not only
guarantee their property rights and parental authority in the marital family, but also
allow a safety valve for them to receive the future support of their natal families. In
other words, they made use of their positions as a leverage point between their
marital and natal families and to benefit both patrilines if they could.
The agnates’ presence and support in the first and second sections of this
chapter imply that for married women their conjugal or stem families became
gradually independent of the joint family and were also severed economiclly from
the common property. The Quanzhou property contracts show that the rise of each
branch or conjugal unit in fact created contractual relations with other branches or
conjugal units in terms of the property regime. Even if all branches or conjugal units

227
were still under the structure of the joint family, the nature of “communal living,
common property” was gradually overshadowed when the males were absent and
could not invest in the common property or strengthen the links in the patrilineal
family system. The Quanzhou tradition of “chain migration,” as described by Guotu
Zhuang and Michael Szonyi, means that overseas Chinese encouraged more young
family members to emigrate in order to expand the overseas family businesses.
378

Before the young males were able to infuse their labor or income in the common
property, their wives had to support themselves and their children with their own
dowry or labor and divided property from the marital families.
379
Since emigrant
families usually lacked the males to be the pillars of the patrilines, the connections
between their wives and the marital families weakened, as a result the household
division of the marital families could have happened sooner than usual. The practice
of “communal living, common property” in the families of male emigrants thus
encountered challenges from discontinued family lines or absent heirs and individual
women’s economic independence from the joint family.
To further consider the intrafamilial relations between the marital and natal
families, as I have discussed in the third section, we need to reconsider the
application of the concept of family in the Chinese kinship system after analyzing
both the economic relationships and sibling bonds between a married woman and her
natal family. After Margery Wolf, the concept of the “uterine family” has been
applied in explaining the construction of women’s power and autonomy within the

378
Guotu Zhuang. “The Social Impact on Their Home Town,” 172; Michael Szonyi, “Mothers, Sons
and Lovers,” 43-64.
379
Shiga Shuzo, Zhongguo jiazufa yuanli, 409-22.

228
patriarchal family organization as well as in structuring new social groups that are
model on this uterine family.
380
Anthropologists Ellen Judd, Gina Lai and Odalia
Ming-hung Wong, and historian Beverly Bossler also studied married women’s roles
in and interaction with their natal families and their research spans from the Song
dynasty to modern China. Ellen Judd conducted her research in three villages in
Shangdong province in the late 1980s and discusses in her article both affective-
moral ties and financial/labor support voluntarily offered by daughters to their natal
families.
381
Gina Lai and Odalia Ming-hung Wong analyze different age groups in
their study of married women’s status and postmarital connections with their natal
families in 1990s Hong Kong.
382
Beverly Bossler makes use of literary works,
women’s memoirs in particular, to illustrate how women created affinal connections
to better their own lives.
383
Despite great regional and temporal variety, these works
show a surprising continuity of the concept of niangjia surviving behind the
simplified model of Chinese kinship relations that focus on patriarchal lineage
organization. Niangjia in colloquial Chinese means “mother’s family;” but the
uterine family neither dissolved nor lost its centripetal force soon after the mother’s
or both parents’ death.
By strengthening the mutual support of emotional bonds and blood ties with
members of her natal family, the power and autonomy of women in both families
increased and subsequently became embodied in various types of financial aid via

380
Lu Hwei-syin, “Women’s Self-Growth Groups and Empowerment of the ‘Uterine Family’ in
Taiwan,” Bulletin of the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, No. 71 (Spring 1991), 29-62
381
Ellen Judd, “Niangjia: Chinese Women and Their Natal Families,” The Journal of Asian Studies,
48.3 (Aug 1989), 525-44.
382
Gina Lai, and Odalia Ming-hung Wong. “Exploring the Changing Status of Chinese Married
Daughters in Their Natal Families,” Hong Kong Journal of Sociology 2 (2001), 123-52.
383
Bossler, “A Daughter is a Daughter All Her Life,” 77-10.

229
sales contracts and the practices of patrilineal and matrilineal succession. On the one
hand, besides emotional bonds, a woman’s economic ties with her natal family
remained because of common interests and concerns for the natal family’s descent
line and property, including dowries. On the other hand, the uterine family was as
much a “self-help” and “economic” community as a “flesh and emotional” unit
among the mother and her children, for mother’s and children’s property rights had
always been interest-related.
Laws, local customs, and human feelings converge in these Quanzhou
property contracts to form a set of norms in family ethics, that women applied in
negotiations to maximize the interest of their families. Nevertheless, property
contracts mainly show us the result of the negotiation between women and their
family members. In Chapter 4, another type of source—public notices in
newspapers—will further provide an example of women’s voices and their
negotiation style with families and communities during the Republican period.

230
Chapter 4:
Women and Family Disputes in Republican China

This chapter explores how individual Quanzhou women used familial ethics
and the new reading public as social resources to reconcile or resolve disputes in
which theyexpressed the wish to enter and reproduce their ideal family system.
Quanzhou property contracts (discussed in Chapter 2 and 3) showed the result of
women’s negotiation with Confucian family ethics and their interaction with both
natal and marital families to dispose of property. In this chapter I will further discuss
the negotiation process between women and their families and communities, a
process which was revealed in their own voices in the first person in Republican
public notices (gonggao , or qishi ┇ ) that were included in the advertisement
section of local Chinese newspapers. Most family and some small-scale community
disputes were caused by overseas emigration and male absence, which left their
wives to face socioeconomic conflicts within and beyond their families during the
1930s and 1940s. The world-wide economic decline in the 1930s and the incessant
warfare and inflation in the 1940s contributed to the context of these disputes. Many
women were active in representing their families or themselves in public notices
against other parties in disputes. Yet different generations of women show different
expectations about family. I ask what kind of goals could be achieved by publicizing
disputes in newspapers and how women redefined their responsibilities and
obligation in families during the Republican period. This chapter aims not only to
analyze the causes and content of public notices in Quanzhou newspapers but also to

231
present the contradictory expectations from and concepts of family among individual
Republican women.
The organization of this chapter includes five sections. The first section
discusses the properties of public notices in local communities and how people made
use of the section as a public sphere to negotiate with other disputing parties. In the
second section I discuss the functions of Republican women’s frequent appearance
and activeness in publishing public announcements. I argue that women taking the
initiative to publish public announcements could appeal to the emotional response
from the reading public and improve their own moral standing in disputes. The third
section discusses the content of family disputes and women’s confrontations with
their husbands and senior family members. The shortage of financial support and the
related absence of husbands were the most common reasons for women to have
disputes with in-laws in the 1930s and 1940s. The fourth section moves forward to
discuss the differing concepts of family and attitudes toward the resolution of
disputes between the women and their senior in-laws or agnates. The fifth section
concludes the chapter and discusses Quanzhou women’s conservative attitude toward
living under the protection of the family system while trying to increase their social
sources within it.
After reviewing the early twentieth-century Quanzhou newspapers preserved
in the Fujian Provincial Library and the Quanzhou Municipal Archive, I collected
and analyzed 768 public notices published by women, or notices published by others
where the women were actively engaged in the disputes.
384
The majority of these

384
I read the newspapers which are well preserved and mostly published in the 1930s and 1940s, and

232
public notices from The Quanzhou Daily (Quanzhou ribao ) and The Fujian
Daily (Fujian ribao ) were published in the 1930s and 1940s, when all of
Quanzhou society was engulfed by the Pacific War and the civil war. Others include
about 30 notices from The Xiamen Daily (Xiamen ribao ) which were
published in the 1900s

and another 31 notices in the 1930s in The Quanzhou
Daily.
385
The Quanzhou Daily was the biggest and longest newspaper in
Quanzhou.
386
It was established by the Jinjiang branch of the Nationalist Party in

then I purposely select those announcements with two or more parties involved and responding to
each other in newspapers in order to obtain the details of the disputes. Owing to warfare, insufficient
investment in technology, and decades of bad socioeconomic conditions, the quality of these
newspapers is not good. Some, but not all, have been microfilmed in the Fujian Provincial Library,
but many are mistakenly categorized under the titled dates. Others in the Quanzhou Municipal
Archive are preserved in the original format but also extremely unorganized, although librarians
categorize them according to the dates. The damage to the newspapers becomes a great obstacle in
having a more organized and bigger quantity of analysis. In addition, a lot of public announcements
are repeated ones because Republican Quanzhou people used to publish the same announcements for
days. Most public notices were published at least three days in a row, to accord with the newspaper
policy on advertisements, with a few exceptions of at the least two days and at the most ten days. In
general, there were at least two pages of public notices in the bottom of The Quanzhou Daily
(Quanzhou ribao )every day, and another 1 page in the Fujian Daily. On each page there
were usually 6 to 10 public notices. Even excluding repeated notices, the number of public notices
and the disputes behind is amazingly big and would be a good source for detailed analysis of the daily
life of ordinary people.
385
The Xiamen Daily (Xiamen ribao ) was published in Xiamen during the last few years of
the Qing dynasty but included many news of Quanzhou area.
386
Yet its sale ranked second to The Jiangsheng News (Jiangsheng bao ) in Xiamen in terms of
the scope of the whole Fujian province. See Chen Yunluo , “Reprint: The Newspapers in the
Southeastern Fujian, 1935” 救 , Quanzhou wenshi ziliao 16
(1998), 121. Besides, the first Quanzhou newspaper was The New People’s Weekly (Xinmin zhoubao
), published in 1916 by a journalist Chen Yunluo , who was a member of the United
League (Tongmeng hui ) and worked for several newspapers in China and Southeast Asia.
There was another short-lived newspaper—The Fujian’s Voice Daily (Mingsheng ribao )
published in 1924, to fill in the void between the New People’s Weekly and the Quanzhou Daily.
Both the New People’ Weekly and the Fujian’s Voice Daily only survived about one year. Meanwhile,
there were The Twin River Daily (Shuangjiang ribao , stopped in 1932), The Citizen Daily
(Guoming ribao , published in 1934), The Fujian Daily (Fujian ribao , established in
1939 by the Quanzhou Commercial Association), The Mass Power News (Qunli bao ), The
Public News (Dazhong bao䛦 ), The Youth News (Qingnian zaobao ), The Evening
Times (Shidai wanbao 㘂 ), The Dawn News (Chenxi bao ), The Hui’an People’s News
(Hui’an minbao ), The Nan’an Daily (Nan’an ribao ) and so on. See Huang Meiyu
湫 and Zeng Tianshui , “Jiefang qian Quanzhou baoye gaimao” ,

233
1930, and was the only Quanzhou newspaper surviving 19 years from 1930 to
1949.
387
As for The Fujian Daily, it operated from 1939 to 1949. These two biggest
newspapers recorded the damaged socioeconomy in Quanzhou during the periods of
the Japanese occupation as well as the civil war, insofar as the warfare caused
economic decline and the separation of many emigrant husbands and wives.
Historical studies of Chinese newspapers in the late 19
th
and early 20
th

centuries usually focus on how the elite represented the voice of the society and how
newspapers became the realm and the medium for various political regimes,
intellectuals, and foreign forces to negotiate and maximize their own interest in the
name of legitimacy. Rudolf Wagner argues that Shenbao in Shanghai
established a public sphere which is relatively independent of any government but
merged China into a globalized context.
388
Joan Judge’s research of Shibao (The Eastern Times) discusses the formation of the public sphere and citizenry as the
confrontation between popular and official power.
389
Barbara Mittler presents how

Quanzhou wenshi ziliao 16 (1998), 123-5. In addition, the publication of the Fujian
Daily was seen as a counterforce to The Quanzhou Daily in the eyes by the local businessmen,
because the Quanzhou Daily criticized smuggling and hoarding. See Huang Meiyu 湫 , “Jiefang
qian de Quanzhou baojie, san, Fujian Ribao” ( )— , Quanzhou wenshi
ziliao 18 (2000), 146-8.
387
The Quanzhou press were mainly dominated by the Nationalist Party in the 1930s and 1940s. The
North Expedition led by Chiang Kai-shek from 1926 to 1928 integrated Fujian under the
control of the Nationalist Party. But local forces and bandits, respectively attached to the Nationalist
and Communist Parties, still survived under the nominal rule of the Nanjing government. The
provincial and local branches of this ruling party operated many newspapers in China on the one hand
and enforced the Publication Law at the turn of the 1930s and enforced prepublication news
censorship in most of the 1930s and 1940s on each other.
388
Rudolf Wagner. “The Early Chinese Newspapers and the Chinese Public Sphere,” European
Journal of East Asian Studies 1.1 (2001), 1-33.
389
Joan Judge, Print and Politics: “Shibao” and the Culture of Reform in Late Qing China (Stanford,
CA: Stanford University Press, 1996).

234
the news media constructed readers and their identities and images of a new age.
390

Madeleine Yue Dong analyzes “what constitutes the public.”
391
And Bryna
Goodman presents a literary public realm which lacked rational political debate
through her examination of contemporary incidents of women’s suicide and the
ensuing responses from readers.
392
Scholars agree that newspapers served the public
sphere for all social forces to negotiate with each other and presented the ideals,
arguments and compromises of these forces.

I. The Properties of Public Notices in Local Communities
The content of these Chinese public notices includes claims to property,
declaration of marriages or divorces, and the dynamics of family relations and
disputes. During these years Quanzhou people were accustomed to voicing their
melancholy and justifying their behavior in disputes through public notices.
Although the Chinese proverb says “disgraceful family matters should never be
raised to outsiders (jiachou buke waiyang ),” these public notices
expose dynamics in family division, adultery, and abuse.
Family and community disputes, as revealed in most public notices,
represented the gap between Confucian ethics and the traditional family-lineage
system on the one hand and the Republican Civil Code of the 1929-1931 on the other.

390
Barbara Mittler, A Newspaper for China? Power, Identity, and Change in Shanghai’s News Media,
1872-1912 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004).
391
Madeleine Yue Dong, “Unofficial History and Gender Boundary Crossing in the Early Chinese
Republic: Shen Peizhen and Xiaofengxian,” in Gender in Motion: Divisions of Labor and Cultural
Change in Late Imperial and Modern China, ed. Bryna Goodman and Wendy Larson (New York:
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002), 169-88.
392
Bryna Goodman, “Appealing to the Public: Newspaper Presentation and Adjudication of
Emotion,” Twentieth-Century China 31.2 (April 2006), 32-69.

235
The new concept of the family under the Republican Civil Code in the early 1930s
was based on blood ties.
393
In addition, the family authority over inheritance rights
switched hands from the family head of a stem or joint family to the hands of
individuals or each conjugal unit of the nuclear family, for any family member
reaching adulthood (20 years old; or, though a youngster, having been married) had
the right to request to be separated from the original family according to Article 1127.
Traditional family values such as parental authority and “communal living, common
property” thus clashed with the Republican Civil Code.
Easy access to the print media combined with acknowledgement of the
media’s impact on public opinion (gonglun ) allowed the diverse notice-makers
of local communities to present their true voice in the public notices. Many illiterate
people—and women in particular—relied on friends, editors, or workers in the print
departments of newspapers to write and publish these announcements. A basic or
organized format and similar titles regarding disputes thus appeared in newspaper
notices. Public notices usually start with an introduction to the notice-makers’
miserable situation and grievance; then the body of the notice centered on the
specifics of the accusation or denigration; and finally the notice ended with an appeal
to the sympathy of the readership to side with the notice-maker’s viewpoint. The
accusation would fully express their arguments and concerns.
The public notices were mainly addressed to the reading public rather than
the opposing party, and they appealed to public sympathy regardless of whether the
disputes happened within families or in the communities. Many accusations were

393
Bernhardt, Women and Property in China, 106-10.

236
emotional and slanderous, but they still might combine the forces of different social
groups and government departments to forge a strong public opinion and attack the
existing power structure. Public notices also served as evidence in lawsuits if the
parties in dispute could not reach a private mediation. As Susan Glosser points out,
middle-class and upper-class urbanities were inclined to avoid the humiliation of
taking disputes to court and instead settle their family problems in private before
publishing notices to inform the public. But if necessary, putting notices in
newspapers was a standard prerequisite for evidence in a lawsuit.
394
Chinese
historian Philip Huang argues in his studies of Qing lawsuits and kin/community
mediation that “lawsuits were resolved by informal mediation before they reached
formal court adjudication, usually under the influence of some preliminary
indications of the court’s opinion.” The community mediation was guided by “the
triad of principles—law, common-sense right and wrong, and peacemaking
compromise.”
395
Previous scholarship affirms that local communities played the
mediator role to maintain social morality and family harmony, and public notices
provided this medium in public.
Most of the notice-makers brought the disputes into the clear light of day in
order to create public opinion and “local moral communities” to regulate the
behavior of the other party in dispute, but some of them even used these
announcements as evidence in the lawsuits or tried to pressure the court with public
opinion. Both Beijing and Nanjing governments adopted the new court system and

394
Glosser, Chinese Visions of Family and State, 115-7, 126-8.
395
Philip Huang, Civil Justice in China: Representation and Practice in the Qing (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1996), 7-13.

237
separated the judicial branch from the administration to ensure the “check and
balance” among the three main branches—administration, justice, and legislature.
There was no jury in this system modeled after Japanese and German continental
laws. Hence the judge had absolute power to declare the verdict solely based on his
understanding and interpretation of the laws. In addition, the local court in
Quanzhou, such as Jinjiang County, was not instituted until 1929.
396
The newly
established judicial system in the 1930s was thus vulnerable to administrative
interference, as Philip Huang points out.
397
Judicial authority was not free from the
sociomoral pressures fueled by the attention of the community and the publications
of these notices, particularly when officials, local gentry, and the masses were all
engaged in the disputes. Thus, the so-called rational judgment could be the
consequence of the negotiation and compromise among all the interested parties in
this emotional blame-game.
For instance, Ruan Tiandan responded with a notice in August 1941 to argue
against the blame notice published by Mrs. Hong (Madam Ke), whose son was
allegedly involved in an opium-trafficking crime. Madam Ke claimed that her son
was being falsely incriminated as a revenge tactic by Ruan Tiandan and his wife.
According to Mrs. Hong, Ruan Taindan and his wife pretended to be low-rank
government workers but were corrupted and consequently her son Hong Jincai had
informed the authorities of Ruan Tiandan’s criminal behavior. Ruan Tiandan thus

396
Chen Miao , and Zhuang Weikun , Jinjiang shizhi (Shanghai, China: Sanlian
shudian, 1994), 328.
397
Philip Huang, Code, Custom, and Legal Practice, 43.

238
issued his notice, addressed it to Mrs. Hong, and refuted all accusations as if they
were involved in a court debate by listing the false accusations in detail.
… If we husband and wife had any practices of corruption or malfeasance
while we were serving in the hygiene station, the station and local officials
should have investigated us. Why should it have bothered your son to
inform the authority? … You said your son suffered from the investigation
of the local hygiene station because I used a pseudonym and pretended to
be a worker to inform and falsely incriminate him in front of Liu Xian in
an unbridled way. Then, what was the worker’s name that I had pretended
to be? In which department did the worker serve? ….
You pointed your finger at me and questioned why I testified that your son
Jincai was involved in kidnapping and drug-trafficking. This is ridiculous.
You questioned me where my substantial evidence is regarding these
crimes. The policemen of the first district found in your home the tools
for opium-smoking and drug-addicts on June 4 of this year. Whether or
notyer; I do not know the laws. Why did you question me?
You also claimed my wife and me Tiandan are scoundrels. I have been a
man of integrity and never received any legal punishment. All local people
should have been able to realize the fact. There is no need for me to
defend myself. I am only an ordinary person and commit no blunders to
any person. How come I received this thundering shock from nowhere and
unfair accusations of a grievance-filing notice? I should have ignored your
notice, but it matters to my wife’s and my reputation [italics added], so we
wish to refute your points one by one in order to correct the information.
398

Although this notice seems to address and respond to Mrs. Hong; in fact, it
was an announcement to invite the reading public to be the witnesses in order for
him to clarify the facts, restore his reputation and save his face. Since Ruan Tiandan
was neither the defendant nor the plaintiff in the lawsuit with Mrs. Hong’s son, Mrs.
Hong’s accusation mattered only because it might have severely damaged the
couple’s social status and their qualifications to serve in the government. To attack
the reputation or integrity of the opponent is usually the best strategy to elevate that
of the attacker. In other words, both Mrs. Hong and Ruan Tiandan similarly

398
“Ruan Tiandan’s announcement for refuting Mrs. Hong née Ke’s grievance notice,” The Quanzhou
Daily, August, 26, 1941, page 2.

239
presumed the existence of an imagined public, whose components and scope were
beyond their knowledge but might have included powerful officials and the local
elite. Both parties expected that by filing the announcements they would be creating
a “local moral community” in the reading public to maintain an impact on Hong
Jincai’s lawsuit and that they could benefit from the public’s reaction.

II. Active Victims: Women in Family and Local Moral Communities
Late Republican women consciously understood how to make a favorable
impression in public notices because newspaper readers were the representatives of
the public, and their comments constituted public opinion. Southeastern Fujian
people enjoyed reading the local news, the entertainment, literary supplements
(fukan ), and latest national news through correspondents. During the time of
the Pacific War and the following civil war, because the political and military news
were strictly controlled by the Nationalist Party, readers mostly looked for emotional
relief by consuming tales of violence, scandals, and love affairs in the local
papers.
399
Many stores subscribed to one copy of a newspaper and shared it with the
neighboring stores and families as well as the customers. The real number of readers
of Quanzhou newspapers was thus many times the number of copies sold, as the
papers were privately circulated, and the influence of these papers extended beyond
the urban area and reached all counties under the Quanzhou administrative unit.
400

399
Lee-hsia Hsu Ting, Government Control of the Press in Modern China, 1900-1949 (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1974), 119-23.
400
Chen Yunluo, “Reprint: The Newspapers in the Southeastern Fujian,” 114-22. According to
Huang Meiyu, the daily circulation of The Quanzhou Daily approached ten thousand copies in its
climax. See Huang Meiyu, “Jiefang qian de Quanzhou baojie, er—Quanzhou ribao”

240
Therefore, how to create a moral impression in the minds of the public, or “doing the
face work” in Hwang Kwang-kuo’s words,
401
was the first concern for female notice-
makers involved in disputes.

A. Women’s Activeness in Public Notices
The purpose of filing these public notices was to create the local moral
community, as Janet Theiss has called it, among the new imagined public and
involving the public in family disputes or community conflicts. For instance, Mrs.
Wang (Madam Hong) filed an announcement in 1932 to claim her intention to
redeem a house from the Kang family, who had repaired it and had been residing
there since 1912. Mrs. Wang claimed that any other arrangement without her
consent would be illegal.
402
The Kang family issued a refutation notice, adjacent to
Mrs. Wang’s announcement, to inform the public of the details of the previous and
final sales respectively in 1912 and 1925. According to this refutation, Mrs. Wang
had no rights to this house because she had conducted an irrevocable sale in 1925.
The Kang family provided the names of all middlemen in both sales, including
members of both the Hong and Kang families, to legitimize its argument.
403
The
purpose of the Kang family was clear and obvious: the public could check with these
middlemen to verify the inaccuracy of Mrs. Wang’s public notice, and, if they
wanted, to contact the Kang family and buy the house. Both parties in this property

( )— , Quanzhou wenshi ziliao (December 1999), 108.
401
Hwang Kwang-kuo, “Face and Favor,” 960-1.
402
“A notice for property-buyer,” The Quanzhou Daily, October 20, 1932, page 2.
403
“An urgent announcement,” The Quanzhou Daily, October 20, 1932, page 2.

241
ownership dispute announced to the reading public and the potential buyers their
intentions and property rights.

B. The Vulnerable Image of the Female Victim in Public Notices
“To air a grievance” (ming yuan ) and “to submit unfairness” (su yuan ) are very common terms used by the notice-makers in either community or family
disputes. In addition, notice-makers often ended their announcements with the
sentence that “I ‘humbly ask for’ (fuqi ) ‘all walks of life’ (gejie ) to
‘examine the facts with justice’ (junjian ).” For example, a woman Ye Chen
Xuniang filed a public notice in The Quanzhou Daily to detail the process of how her
husband Ye Yai was robbed and hurt by a group of gangsters in the neighboring
village. She identified the leaders of these gangsters and requested that the police
and the military officials take their responsibility for arresting them. She ended the
public notice with an emotional appeal to both the government and the community at
large to pay attention and urge the government to arrest the gangsters.

… If our military and administrative officials cannot seriously investigate
this case and punish the criminals, how can you admonish the scoundrels
and pacify the good. Therefore, I humbly ask for all walks of life to
examine the fact with justice.
404

404
“An announcement for being robbed and hurt by scoundrels,” The Quanzhou Daily, December 1,
1932, page 1. Yet the notice was first written on November 26.

242
Because of their vulnerable image in the eyes of the male-centered society,
405

women who used public notices as warnings could gain additional advantageous
offers through mediation before a lawsuit was filed. For instance, Zheng Xiulian
filed two notices on the same day in 1941 to “defend her reputation.” In the first
“Zheng Xiulian’s Urgent Notice” she claimed that she followed the Wifely Way
(fudao ) by helping her husband Zhuang Qihua operate his business in Burma
and she then collected capital from Quanzhou to infuse it. According to her, she did
not obtain any assistance from Zhuang Heshang, another member of the Zhuang
family. Instead, Zhuang Heshang stopped her from visiting her husband and accused
her of adultery and stole her jewelry and clothing. Zheng Xiulian chose to “publicize
the truth in newspapers in the hope of the clear examination from all walks of life”
before she formally (legally) reported this family dispute to the court.
406
In another
public notice of “warning,” Zheng Xiulian severely denounced her deceased sister’s
husband, Gu Yiqian, for his repetitive demands for loan and denigration of her
chastity. She held her own ground and sued him in court on the one hand; on the
other hand, she stressed that as a returning overseas emigrant who was now living
alone in her home town, she had to rely on justice and the local elite to exemplify the
“public principles” (gongli ) for her.
407

Public notices provided “vulnerable” women a realm in which to demonstrate
their moral characters, which could function as a form of unperceived but legitimized
power, or cultural capital, to win the recognition and support from the local

405
Ocko, “Hierarchy and Harmony,” 216.
406
“Zheng Xiulian’s urgent announcement,” The Quanzhou Daily, Dec 13, 1941, page 2.
407
“Zheng Xiulian’s warning the scoundrel Gu Yiqian in the Fourth District,” The Quanzhou Daily,
December 13, 1941, page 2.

243
community.
408
Zheng Xiulian told the public the details of how she protected her
interest in both marital and natal family disputes in her lawsuits. Yet Gu Yiqian filed
a notice a half month after he lost the lawsuit to Zheng Xiulian in order to save his
face and he wanted the notice to serve as evidence for the future lawsuit in the
superior court. Gu Qiqian explained that he was neither a jobless scoundrel nor a
sexual harasser by allegedly having requested loans from Zheng Xiulian. The notice
was blackmail from the “rich” Zheng Xiulian, who had a net financial worth of about
125,000 yuan. Although he lost the suit in local court, he would appeal to a superior
court for justice within a matter of days.
409
The fact that Gu Yiqian lost the lawsuit
but accused Zheng Xiulian of using her wealth to bully the poor further suggests
Zheng Xiulian’s strategic utilization of her gender, moral character, and wealth to
draw the attention and support from the local community. She simultaneously made
use of her image as a weak, helpless woman, as well as a tough, independent
individual who adhered to the Womanly Way, to fight against two “scoundrels” at
the same time.
The following example of a series of public notices filed by five various
parties—the female plaintiff, the Security Group, the administrative authority, and
the local gentry—will illustrate how Quanzhou women used the gender roles, family
and social relations to accrue the support from the community in order not only to
challenge authority but also to receive protection under the umbrella of public
opinion at the same time.

408
Swartz, Culture and Power, 90-3.
409
“Gu Yiqian’s announcement of refuting ‘the announcement and denunciation and warning by
Zheng Xiulian and Shen Yuying,” The Quanzhou Daily, December 26, 1941, page 1.

244
In August 29, 1945, Wu Zhuang Xian in the Fashi Township filed the first
public notice to appeal to the “public examination” (gongjian ) by “all officials
and people in various organizations and departments of all walks of life.” She stated
in the beginning that she was only a wife of an itinerant merchant but has been well
known in her neighborhood from her effort in all kinds of local charitable works.
She faced a raid and robbery from the township policemen who did not wear any
uniform or present any warrants during their raid. Although neighbors and the
Security Group Head (baozhang ) Li Yingting came to rescue her and caught
one of the policemen, the chief of the Township (xiangzhang悱 ) Chen Zhongying
arrested Li Yingting and released the suspected policeman Li Yingting had captured.
Chen Zhongying further beat Li Yingting and continued the raids and arrests during
the following days. Wu Zhuang Xian emphasized that she could not have committed
any crimes because she was only an aged woman and her husband and sons were all
out of town. Yet after being bullied by local villains, she could not help but publicly
vent this injustice in hopes of obtaining effective assistance from people from all
walks of life in order not to “fall victim to the strong again.”
410
Her statement was
echoed by another public notice issued by the Security Group head Li Yingting.
411

410
“An grievance announcement for being illegally robbed and hurt by Chen Zhongying, the chief of
the Fashi Township, and his policemen,” The Quanzhou Daily, August 29, 1945, page 2.
411
In addition to repeating the details of the raids, Li Yingting stated how Chen Zongyin tortured,
threatened, and accused him of holding opium, in order to prevent him from being allowed bail or to
sue him in the court. Li said that his own life was on the verge, but he must present to the public the
truth that Chen Zhongying “despised the laws and trampled the human rights” and argued that his
prints on the confession paper should be nullified because they were not made by his free will. “The
chief of Zhongyun bao Li Yingting’s urgent announcement for illegal beating, custody, threat and
indictment by Chen Zhongying,” The Quanzhou Daily, September 5, 1945, page 1.

245
In order to save face, Chen Zhongying, the chief of the Township, published
a public notice to express his worry that “all people in the society do not understand
the truth” and to argue against Wu Zhuang Xian and Li Yuting, although he claimed
that he would wait for the verdict of the court and not respond any further to slanders.
Chen Zhongying argued that he was slandered by two local bullies—Wu Zuang Xian
and Li Yingting—because he was loyal to his official duties and was devoted to
ridding his township of gambling and drugs. According to him, Wu Zhuang Xian
was a notorious gambler; the undercover policemen not only found all kinds of
equipment for gambling but also arrested ten gamblers during the first raid. He
stated that he could not present the gambling equipment as evidence to the court
because Li Yingting used his gangs to take them away from by force the policemen.
Chen Zhongying insisted that his policemen did bring a warrant with them and asked
the company of Wu Jiaxiang, the Security Group captain to accompany them on the
raids. He further stated that all the following raids, threats, and imprisonment as
described by Wu Zhuang Xian and Li Yingting were exaggerated truths used to
cover their crimes and protests.
412

Wu Zhuang Xian, presenting herself as a weak and worthy woman, showed
her perseverance in fighting against the government official Chen Zhongying. Her
second notice appeared next to Chen Zhongying’s notice of September 7, 1945. She
again stressed in this notice her husband’s effort in local philanthropy and then
argued that the so-called gambling was just entertainment after the festival feast,

412
This statement was published next to Li Yingting’s notice on the same day, September 5, 1945.
See “An announcement to bitterly reprehend the ridicule in the female gambler Wu Zhuang Xian’s
‘grievance announcement’ and the local scoundrel Li Yingting’s ‘announcement,’” The Quanzhou
Daily, September 5, 1945, page 1.

246
which was a custom that had been recognized by the local people as normal. The
policemen sent by Chen Zhongyin all carried their guns so it was a ridiculous
accusation, she argued, that Li Yingting and other people could have taken away the
gambling equipment by force from the hands of armed policemen. Wu Zhuang Xian
thus wished that “the worthies and the well-informed persons from all walks of life
could make their fair judgment and that their reputations won’t be damaged by such
confusion of rights and wrongs.”
413

Although the disputes had been reported to the court and were accepted as
lawsuits, all parties in dispute published additional notices in hopes that the
community would take his or her side. The juxtaposition of all notices in
newspapers presented to the reading public stirred a debate like the counter
arguments heard in the court. Their confrontation drew the attention and
intervention of the local community. Thirty-six local people claimed to be
representatives of the Fashi community and issued another announcement on
September 18, 1945.
414
They stated:

413
“The announcement for reprimanding the ridiculous announcement by the people’s pest Chen
Zhongying,” The Quanzhou Daily, September 7, 1945, page 2. On the same day, Wu Jiaxiang, the
deputy captain of Zhongyun Security Group also made an announcement to clarify his involvement in
this raid. He first argued against Chen Zhongying’s statement by saying that he neither knew the raid
had occurred nor participated in it. His duty as a deputy-captain (duafu ) of the local Security
Group (bao ) was to enroll military and militia but not to fight against other lawlessness. The
township department kept sending policemen to investigate his house and tried to arrest him for the
following disputes. He stated that “I cannot surmise the reasons why they tried to arrest me;” but he
expressed his disagreement with the township department by making this specific claim in order to
clarify his innocence. He suggested that Chen Zhongying not only made a wrong statement in his
announcement but also intended to set him up by arresting and silencing him. See “The urgent
announcement by Wu Jiaxiang, the deputy captain of Zhongyun contestable, Fashi Township,” The
Quanzhou Daily, September 7, 1945, page 2.
414
Three of them were surnamed Wu and another two were surnamed Zhuang; they might be the
close relatives of Wu Zhuang Xian.

247
We recently heard of rumors made by a group of unruly people to smear
the efforts from all walks of life in assisting Li Yingting, the Security
Group head,… It is necessary to know that deep in their heart Fashi people
do not wish their community to be trampled on or devastated by people.
Now we see certain persons utilizing the laws and committing crimes but
showing no fear. We worry that they would not be caught so we arise to
“voice our moral support” (shengyuan ). We wish that this barely
understood reason could be clearly examined by all walks of life….
415

All officials, local gentry, and common people in this dispute learned the
power of the print media and made every effort to justify their behaviors and win the
moral support from a broader segment of the public. The last public notice issued by
the so-called representatives of the Fashi people demonstrates that there were two
opposing local forces, respectively led by the two main parties in this incident, both
claiming the law on their side and fighting against each other. Although on the
surface all parties expressed an understanding and respect that they could not
formally engage in the legal process, they knew that they could manipulate public
opinion and use it to their benefit.
The nature and function of these public notices show that the section of
public notices in newspapers provided local people with a realm in which to use their
moral character and legal statutes in order to engage in social dynamics. Different
from the Qing community mediation discussed by Philip Huang and Janet Theiss, the
Republican judges did not instruct the lineage elders or local gentry to engage in the
mediation with their opinion, but Republican people, particularly women,
consciously tried to appeal to local community in order to mobilize the public to
influence the government and the verdicts in court. The public notices appealed to

415
“An urgent announcement by the representatives of the local people in the Fashi Township,” The
Quanzhou Daily, September 18, 1945.

248
the sympathy of the reading public, an imagined public without a clear boundary or
homogeneity, and urged the readers to discuss the impact on issues of public security,
legal judgment, and “morality restoration” (daode chongzheng ). Even
though many community people voyeuristically viewed these notices as scandals,
416

notice-makers consciously utilized them to continue the fights and to influence the
legal judgment. In the end, a small scale dispute might be expanded into a
community-wide one if the reading public started to take sides.
Female notice-makers adopted the image of the weak and disadvantaged
victims by appealing to the public with emotional statements in order to gain the
moral support of readers and even to smear their rival parties. Rational debates took
a backseat to sentimentalism. Always the notice-makers’ first intent was how to
emotionally manipulate public opinion. Women, like Wu Zhuang Xian, who
emphasized their vulnerable image and familial contribution to the local community,
could create the image of a moral figure in contrast to the seemingly corrupted and
illegal image of government officials like Chen Zhongying. While the judicial
branch was independent from the administrative one in the Republican period, the
public notices of these Fashi disputes present how women’s power accumulated on
the basis of their gender role and family status and how they could mobilize the
community and fight against government officials.

416
Bryna Goodman, “The Vocational Woman and the Elusiveness of “Personhood’ in Early
Republican China,” in Gender in Motion: Divisions of Labor and Cultural Change in Late Imperial
and Modern China, ed. Bryna Goodman and Wendy Larson (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.,
2005), 274.

249
III. Female Power and Social Relations in Family Disputes
This section explores how female notice-makers, literate or not, used public
notices to create local moral communities and bring in community-wide moral
pressure as ammunition in their family fights against each other. Since married
women were the outsiders to their marital families, their marital status could not be
consolidated until they bore heirs or became senior. In order to improve this
marginalized and disadvantaged position in the marital family when they were in
fights with their husbands or agnates, they needed to find more moral support from
the neighborhoods or society in addition to their natal families. Narrating the details
of their family disputes was the most common way for these women to justify their
stance and to point fingers at the other party. In the public notices Republican
women revealed the causes of family disputes and the ever-changing concept of
family from their perspective, particularly during the 1930s and 1940s.
While women were primarily concerned about economic security, and while
men and the in-laws worried about the fidelity of their wives, the characteristics of
Quanzhou as an emigrant society were particularly obvious in public notices.
According to the arguments in these public notices, financial difficulties and
conflicts over family division, such as lack of living support from an in-law due to
the absence or emigration of their husbands, were the most common issues in family
disputes. In addition, adultery as well as immoral sexual behaviors, domestic
violence, and forced remarriage also led to disputes and divorce. Meanwhile, natal
families could exacerbate the disputes.

250
A. Marriage and Female Anxiety about Economic Security
Male emigration forced married women to support the family financially, be
left in economic difficulties, or directly confront their in-laws without the husbands
as the buffers. Particularly during the Pacific War when emigrant families could not
receive their usual remittances, some women started to sell their jewelry, furniture,
and even children for living expenses, whereas others entered prostitution, went to
factories to be workers, or resorted to peddling in neighboring townships.
417
The
break of overseas remittance deliveries and the divided family system that came into
play when husbands married native women and formed another family in Southeast
Asia often created family disputes between young married women and their in-laws
regarding living supplies and marital status.
This friction between married women and their in-laws often pushed married
women to be confrontational with their in-laws and eventually to seek a divorce.
Quanzhou women consciously learned their legal rights and published public notices
to charge their husbands or in-laws with disappearance or with malicious (eyi )
desertion. Kathryn Bernhardt has noted that after divorcing, a Republican couple
living in big cities might publish brief public notices in newspapers to ensure that
they would no longer take responsibility for each other’s behavior and finance.
418

Quanzhou women, however, published notices in the newspapers to emphasize that
their single status was well known in local society. For example, Lin Geniang

417
Zhou Haiyu , “Gun po minfan? qiaojuan qingyuan” ? , Jinjiang wenshi
ziliao 1(November 1981), 31-41; Goodman, “The Vocational Woman,” 270-4.
418
Kathryn Bernhardt, “Women and the Law: Divorce in the Republican Period,” in Civil Law in
Qing and Republican China, eds. Kathryn Bernhardt and Philip C.C. Huang (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1994), 192.

251
published a notice in 1943 to announce her severing of conjugal and family relations
(tuoli fuqi jiating guanxi qishi 僓 ┇ ). Lin Geniang relayed in this
announcement that she was arranged to marry Hong Sha in 1923, but soon after
wedding Hong Sha left her behind and went to Southeast Asia. He remarried a
“barbarian wife” (fanfu ) and had three children. Lin Genian received neither
remittances nor letters from her husband during his absent years. In addition, her
mother-in-law, Li Xie, outrageous by nature, cut off living supplies to Lin Geniang
and forced her to leave the marital family. Lin Geniang pleaded several times to ask
her mother-in-law to accept her return to the marital family but was repetitively
rejected. Because her natal family could not support her due to wartme inflation, Lin
Geniang announced that she had to sever all marital relations with the Hong family
in perpetuity, however unwillingly, in order to have marital freedom for each party:
“it is up to each party’s (referring to her husband and herself) freedom to marry”
(nanhen nujia geting ziyou ).
419

Similarly, another woman Wu Xinniang published an informal notice to
refute the accusations of theft and marital absconding by her mother-in-law, Mrs.
Yang née Chen, about her having stolen from and then escaped from the marital
family. Wu Xinniang explained that her marital family had had a household division
and that she relied on farming to support her daughter and herself after her husband
went to Burma to earn a living. She realized that the correspondences with and
remittances from Southeast Asia were all but cut off because of the Pacific War. Yet

419
“The announcement of severing husband-wife and familial relations,” The Quanzhou Daily, March
15, 1943, page 2.

252
her situation was different because her husband had disappeared long before the
breakout of the war. Her mother-in-law thus forced her to remarry and intended to
redistribute her distributed family property to the second daughter-in-law of the
Yang family. Wu Xinniang emphasized that she did not escape to other places but
stayed in her natal family because all the harvested grain and clothing had been
stolen. Wu Xinniang thus asked for the severance of the husband-wife relationship
to avoid forced remarriage and to preserve the land.
420

In another set of several 1945 public notices, Zhuang Mainiang similarly
claimed her separation from her marital family and denied her father-in-law’s
accusation that she had stolen family property. Zhuan Mainiang first filed an
announcement that her emigrant husband died in a car accident many years ago in
Southeast Asia and that her marital family could not support her. She was forced to
sell her own jewelry and clothing for daily expenses and relied on her natal family.
But because her natal family also relied on remittances as their main income, and the
cessation of remittances during the Pacific War had damaged the household
economy, she could not receive more financial assistance from her natal family. She
therefore decided to claim her separation from the marital family. She said, “no one
may intervene in my future behavior and freedom from now on” (sihou, shi geren
xingdong ziyou renhe ren bude ganyu , ).
421

A few days later, Zhuang Mainiang’s father-in-law, Chen Youtou, published another
notice to deny Zhuang Mainiang’s accusation. He explained that he not only had

420
“Wu Xinniang’s announcement to refute the accusation of Madam Chen of the Yang family,” The
Quanzhou Daily, January 12, 1944, page 2.
421
“Zhuang Mainiang’s announcement of separation from in-laws and family relations,” The
Quanzhou Daily, April 12, 1945, page 1.

253
supported Zhuang Mainiang but also helped her adopt a son to continue the family
line after her husband died. Chen Youtou said, “With the existence of such behavior,
where was the Heavenly Principle (tianli )? If there was any lawless person
having contacts with her in private, I would appeal to the laws for solution all
together once I find them. I would never allow them any freedom beyond the
laws.”
422
In return, Zhuang Mainiang replied that Chen Youtou’s notice was nothing
short of slanderous blackmail. Chen Youtou had abused her and provided her no
economic support after 1941. She was forced to return to her natal family with her
adopted son because the Chen family had ignored her when she was sick. When her
birth father fell into financial destitution, she asked people to plead with Chen
Youtou to allow her to return to the Chen family, but Chen Youtou ignored her as
usual. “How could a weak woman like me steal and escape from Chen Youtou’s
strict supervision and abuse? [Chen Youtou’s accusation] was blatant blackmail, and
it is not difficult to examine and clarify it. With such abuse, where is the Humanly
Way (rendao )? I humbly beg for the examination of benevolent people from all
four directions.”
423

Unlike those women who had stayed in unhappy or incomplete marriages, or
who looked for living supplies and then divorced from the marital family, unmarried
young women looked forward to avoiding the difficulties outlined above and to
having the freedom to express their will to enter into marriage. In 1948, Chen A’lan
made an announcement to refute a news report, which states that Chen A’lan was a

422
“Chen Youtou’s announcement of denying his daughter-in-law’s, Zhuang Mainiang, severance
from in-law and family relations,” The Quanzhou Daily, April 17, 1945, page 2.
423
“Zhaung Mainiang’s announcement about being blackmailed as thief by her father-in-law,” The
Quanzhou Daily, April 22, 1945, page 1.

254
little daughter-in-law (tongyangxi⩛ ) of the Xie family, but that she stole
jewelry and escaped back to her natal family. According to Chen A’lan, she and her
elder brother had been raised by her aunt, Shi Xiuxia, since their orphaned childhood.
When the war cut off her uncle’s remittances from the Philippines, Chen A’lan
volunteered to be a servant in the Xie household to relieve her aunt’s burden and
support herself. Her relation with the Xie family was that of an employee rather than
one of a minor marriage. After the Pacific War her uncle started to send remittances
again so that Chen A’lan resigned from the Xie family and returned home. As she
stressed, since it has been three years after her resignation, the accusation of the Xie
family was late and unreasonable. She would sue the Xie family for their wrong
accusation because she was an adult female and who could attain total legal
protection from the government.
424

All of the public notices mentioned above suggest that when women received
no support from their emigrant husbands or were abused by the in-laws, they usually
had two convenient methods to escape destitution. They could either claim their
separation from the family and marriage and look for another marriage which would
support them, or they could search for jobs to support themselves. Ta Chen, Michael
Szonyi, and James Cook’s research into emigrant communities all show many
success stories of emigrants sending remittances back to hometowns that promoted
the modernization and commoditization of those areas.
425
In contrast, these public
notices demonstrate that a declining war-time economy and the cessation of

424
“An announcement of correcting the news report on the Fujian Voice Daily,” The Quanzhou Daily,
Sep 17, 1948, page 1.
425
Ta Chan, Emigrant Communities in South China; Szonyi, “Mothers, Sons and Lovers;” Cook,
“Bridges to Modernity.”

255
remittances drove many women to sever their marital ties in order to look for
livelihoods beyond the restraints of their binding obligations to original marital
families. They nonetheless suggested in their announcements that they freely
entered into other marriages to guarantee their financial future.
One of the leading writers, Lu Xun, stated in 1923 that “a woman in Chinese
society had only two options—dependence on a husband or prostitution.” His
statement attests to Quanzhou women’s wishes of entering the family system in the
1930s and 1940s.
426
A new marriage was always a convenient way for women to
escape from the familial difficulty in the first marriage. For example, in a 1942 case,
Shi Zhi filed an announcement of “becoming a decent woman” in July, saying that
she had entered prostitution because she was left alone without support from any
relatives after her first husband Lin Jiuli had been imprisoned in January for his
unlawful business. Fortunately, she was rescued out of the “Bitter Sea” (kuhai ,
i.e. prostitution) by Dai Youxian. She would leave the “Flowery World” (huajie , life of prostitution), sever the husband-wife relationship with Lin Jiuli, and marry
Xie Junying.
427
Another woman, Chen Auniang, claimed in 1941 that her husband
Cai Changbiao in Southeast Asia could not send her remittances to cover her living
expenses but mailed her a letter agreeing to “severe the husband-wife relationship”
(tuoli fuqi 僓 ). She remarked that she thus “could not help but” (budeyi ) remarry to another man after receiving the “bodily price” (shenjia , the bride
price) of three hundred and thirty yuan. She stressed in the end of her notice that

426
Lu Xun, “What Happens After Nora Leaves Home,” in Silent China: Selected Writings of Lu Xun,
trans. Gladys Yang (London: Oxford University Press, 1973), 149-54.
427
“An announcement of becoming a decent woman,” The Quanzhou Daily, July 3, 1942.

256
“this [breakup] was entered into willingly by both parties. Cai Changbiao’s elder
relatives should not cause any complication with any excuses.”
428
Another woman
Yan Baozhi became a household servant after her wandering uxorilocal husband
Zeng Yu stealthily sold all her property and left her alone. Yan Baozhi therefore
published two announcements respectively in 1944 and 1949 to sever her relations
with the marital family and to break up with her husband. Her repeated
announcement was to inform the public of her plans for “lifelong happiness,”
implying that she would enter into another marriage, and use these announcements to
reaffirm her single status.
429

Chinese historian Guo Songyi points out that many ordinary men were unable
to get married in their early youth and this caused an increase in the difference of
marriage ages between the husband and the wife. He cited a Fujian example where a
woman waited for the return of her fiancée after he had traveled for thirteen years
before marriage.
430
In 1946, another unmarried woman Ding Yezhi published a
similar announcement to realy the breakup of her engagement with Yang Weizhe.
According to Ding Yezhi, Yang Weizhe and she were arranged by parents to enter
into an engagement in 1936, but Yang had gone to Southeast Asia for nine years and
postponed the wedding without giving any response to the repeated requests from the
Ding family. Because Ding Yezhi’s parents were also poor and could support her
no more, Ding “considered her lifelong future (marriage)” (wei zhongshen qiantu ji

428
“Chen Auniang’s severing husband-wife relationship with Cai Changbiao,” The Quanzhou Daily,
November 16, 1941, page 1.
429
“Yan Baozhi’s announcement of severing the husband-wife relation from Zeng Yu,” The
Quanzhou Daily, August 27, 1949, page 2.
430
Guo Songyi , Lunli yu shenghuo—Qingdai de hunyin guanxi — (Beijing: Shangwu yinshuguan, 2000), 230-1, 242-50.

257
) and published this notice in order to cancel the engagement and her
original intention of betrothal to the Yang family. From the day the notice was
published, “man and woman each should have freedom to remarry (nanhun nujia
geting ziyou ). For the fear that all walks of life cannot know the
complete fact, I particularly publicize it here.”
431

As we have seen in Chapters 2 and 3, it always depended on local customs
and family dynamics whether widowed women could exercise full parental authority
or needed to defer to lineage elders in managing the family rituals and budget such as
marriage and property transfer. While property contracts showed us the results of
the interaction and negotiation between widowed women and their marital families,
public notices reveal the process of how widowed women argued against the
intervention from lineage members in matters related to family property. For
instance, Zhang Huang Henjuan published a notice in March 1944 to refute an earlier
accusation by Zhang Pingxing, a member of the Zhang lineage, who announced in
February that any transaction of the property belonged to his deceased elder brother
Zhang Luxing (the deceased father-in-law of Zhang Huang Henjuan) would be
illegal. Zhang Pingxing requested that the lineage members put Zhang Zuzhong’s
inherited property under the custody of another of the four members of the Zhang
family because Zhang Luxing had only one grandson, Zhang Zuzhong, who had yet
to reach adulthood.
432
However, according to Zhang Huang Henjuan, her father-in-
law had adopted a little granddaughter-in-law Lai Zaoniang when he was still alive.

431
“Yezhi’s urgent announcement of severing engagement, Gouwei cun, Caijiang bao, the exemplary
Qingyang xiang,” The Quanzhou Daily, March 4, 1946, page 1.
432
“An announcement for preserving the inheritance from my deceased elder brother Zhang Luxing,”
The Quanzhou Daily, February 24, 1944, page 2.

258
Due to the fears over not having an heir, Zhang Luxing had also consulted with
Zhang Huang Henjuan’s father to call in another man, Mr. Liu, and was ready to
arrange an uxorilocal marriage for Lai Zaoniang. Although this marriage was not
fnialized before Zhang Luxing’s death, it was conducted afterwards in accordance
with the contract agreed to and signed by Zhang Pingxing and the Zhang lineage
head. Mr. Liu and Lai Zaoniang thus not only inherited all the family property but
also redeemed some property sold many years ago. Zhang Huang Henjuan further
accused Zhang Pingxing of having fabricated the existence of the so-called heir,
Zhang Zuzhong. All the buyers and lineage members can testify to her accusation
against Zhang Pingxing.
433

Instead of asking the young couple to speak up for themselves, Zhang Huang
Henjuan served as the elder and surrogate family head, and she used her parental
authority to argue against Zhang Pingxing, earn more credit, and prove to the public
both the legitimacy of this uxorilocal marriage and that the property rights belonged
to her family. Zhang Huang Henjuan further tried to validate in her announcement
Lai Zaoniang and Mr. Liu’s contributions to the Zhang family. The young couple
not only would continue the family line according to the agreement and local
customs but also helped to preserve the patrimony. Having concerns about economic
security and being eager to protect her family property, Zhang Huang Henjuan not
only demonstrated that all social relations, including lineage and natal family, were
her resources to refute the lineage member, but she also exposed this conflict in
public in order to invite public opinion and solidify the weight of her arguments.

433
“An announcement to refute Zhang Pingxing’s announcement for preserving the inheritance from
my deceased elder brother Zhang Luxing,” The Quanzhou Daily, March 19, 1944, page 1.

259
B. Divorce and Male Anxiety about Womanly Virtue
The 1931 Family Law granted Republican husbands and wives the power to
have “mutually consensual divorces” (xieyi lihun ) as well as new legal
grounds like desertion or adultery in which they could obtain judicial divorce.
According to Article 1050 of the 1931 Family Law, the legal requirements of a
divorce of mutual consent had to include the signatures of at least two witnesses and
divorce registration at the Household Registration Bureau. There are another ten
conditions listed in Article 1052 for either the husband or the wife to file a divorce
suit and obtain the decree of judicial divorce. These ten conditions, which can be
employed by one party to accuse the other, include: bigamy, adultery, domestic
abuse by the other party or the elder lineal relatives as to render it intolerable to live
together, ongoing desertion, intention of murder, serious and incurable physical or
mental disease, disappearance for three years, and being sentenced to no fewer than
three years of prison or committing a disreputable crime. The late Republican youth
was thus encouraged by new thought of pursuing a happy and companionate
marriage based on “the principle of individual freedom” (nannu ziyou yuanze , or the principle of the freedom for man and woman). It was also a justified
argument for them to rid themselves of the shame of a failed marriage and to be
willing to divorce in order to enter another marriage.
While the legal grounds for court divorce during the Republican period
centered on the non-fulfillment of conjugal responsibilities to each other instead of
the patrilineal hierarchy, imperial husbands could resort to and develop the “seven

260
conditions” (qichu ) to divorce their wives but not vice versa. The imperial
ethical conditions were comprised of a wife bearing no son, adultery, being unfilial
toward parents-in-law, loquacity, theft, jealousy, incurable disease—all of which
signify women’s failure in fulfilling their reproductive function and womanly
virtue—in addtin to women smearing the family’s reputation. Nevertheless, imperial
husbands were restrained from divorcing their wives by another three ethical
concerns or “three limitations” (san buqu ). These three limitations were: if
the wives had observed the three-year mourning period for her parents-in-law, if the
husbands had been poor when they first married but became rich afterwards, and if
wives had no natal kin to return to.
434
While the last limitation was a consideration
of human feelings, the first two embodied the sublime Confucian virtue of filiality.
In other words, both conditions and limitations of imperial divorce acted in
accordance with the principles of patrilineality and patriarchy.
The differences in legal grounds of divorce between the imperial and late
Republic periods were reflected in the confrontational arguments between older and
younger generations in Quanzhou. While the older generation adhered to the
concept of patrilineal hierarchy and wanted to exercise their authority to arrange
marriages and divide the family property, Quanzhou women in the 1930s and 1940s
vaguely recognized their legal rights in marital families and started to claim freedom
of deciding when and with whom they would enter into (re)marriages.
For example, Wu Hong Naniang published a notice in 1941 to sever her
family relations with the Wu family because of domestic abuse. Her elder brother-

434
Bernhardt, “Women and the Law,” 189-90.

261
in-law, Wu Shi, had encroached on her deceased husband’s land, and her father-in-
law, Wu Han, neither supported her livelihood nor took care of her when she was
sick. After she had survived her illness with financial assistance from her natal
family, her father-in-law had further tried to marry her away to obtain the bride price.
At this time when she received no maintenance from the marital family and inflation
had swept through Quanzhou society, she decided to announce in the newspaper her
separation from the marital family according to “the principle of individual
freedom.”
435

Publicizing family disputes and urging in-laws to negotiate with them,
Quanzhou women used the public notices to create a moral atmosphere regarding
their individual cases in order to return to the original marital family or to enter into
another marriage after the divorce. In November 1941, Zhuang Yueniang published
a notice to urge her husband to negotiate with her within three days for her return to
the marital family; otherwise, she would remarry another person of her own free will.
She claimed that she had been abused by her in-laws after marriage and that her
husband tried to use a weapon to kill her in July. Fortunately, the Security Group
headman witnessed the incident, stopped it, and brought all parties back to the
Township Department for mediation. Her in-laws and husband, however, repeatedly
refused to accept her return to the marital family, and she was forced to stay in her
natal family from then on. Zhuang Yueniang emphasized that it was not a “good
strategy” (daji ) to stay in her natal family and she would like to “look for
another decent man [for marriage] to complete her life” (miliang ziquan
435
“An announcement of severing family relations,” The Quanzhou Daily, November 5, 1941, page 2.

262
).
436
At first glance, this notice was addressed to her in-laws and husband, asking
them to negotiate with her. Yet the statement about her being rejected to return and
the three-day period for negotiation reveals that Zhuang Yueniang was publicizing
her intention to enter another marriage. This notice appealed to the readership’s
understanding and moral judgment to legitimize her behavior. Similarly, in 1945
another woman Ni Biniang announced her resolve to break up with her husband, Wu
Gua, who was addicted to gambling and who had an extra-marital affair. Ni Biniang
tried to admonish him, but he bitterly beat her. The domestic violence was mediated
by the Wu lineage head, and the couple agreed to live separately for a short time in
hopes of a future reunion. Yet Wu Gua stole all her jewelry and clothing and left her
on the brink of starvation. Desperate, Ni Biniang had no choice but to announce this
separation to acquire her freedom for future marriage.
437

Although Quanzhou women accused their in-laws of domestic violence and
(attempted) incest, which forced them to ask for separation or divorce in public, they
showed little intention in these public notices that they would resort to court divorce
or look for help from the state laws. In October 1943, Huang Qianniang published a
notice to sever her marital tie from her husband Fu He. She claimed that she and her
husband used to live as a happy couple, but her father-in-law Du Gui tried to rape her
twice in May and June. When she called for help in his second attempt, Du Gui beat
her and expelled her from of the Du family. Du Gui further arranged another
marriage for his son in August. As Huang Qianniang claimed, she received no

436
“An announcement by Zhuang Yueniang to sever the husband-wife relation with Zhang
Hongliang,” The Quanzhou Daily, November 17, 1941, page 1.
437
“An announcement of severing the husband-wife relationship,” The Quanzhou Daily, November 1,
1945, 2.

263
maintenance money from the Du family and had been living on the verge of
starvation. Considering her lifelong plan, she needed to announce the divorce in the
newspaper in order to enter the next marriage freely.
438
Kathryn Bernhardt explains
that settling disputes in private not only saved the divorcing couple court costs but
also the humiliation of exposing the details of one’s private life before the reading
public.
439
In other words, it attests to the Chinese saying that “disgraceful family
matters should never be raised before outsiders.” Although public notices also
exposed one’s private life in public and would generate humiliation, notice-makers
still possessed the absolute power to manage the words and their image in them to
play the weak or the victims. Yet filing lawsuits would make disputing parties lose
this power to journalists.
From these Quanzhou public notices we find that the divorce announcement
in the newspapers did not serve as the prerequisite or necessary announcement to the
public after the lawsuit to rid one party’s responsibility of the other’s actions. It is
not uncommon to see a husband or wife claim divorce in the newspaper without the
other’s consent or filing suit to the court, someothing that shows that Republican
Quanzhou people might not have understood the procedure and legal grounds of
divorce in the 1931 Family Law. According to a 1948 notice published by Zhang
Qianzen, he was married to Chen Shuangqin in 1935, but Chen Shuangqin published
a notice in the newspaper to sever their relationship in order to remarry another Mr.
Su as his concubine in 1946 when Zhang was in the Philippines. Zhang decried that

438
“Huang Qianniang severing the husband-wife relation from Du He,” The Quanzhou Daily, October
29, 1943, page 1.
439
Bernhardt, “Divorce in the Republican Period,” 193.

264
his wife did not follow any womanly virtue, became debauched, and frequented
improper places. Since she was a woman of poor reputation and had constantly
stained their “familial reputation” (jiafeng ), he would sever the husband-wife
relationship with her from the day the notice appeared in newspapers. From then on,
Chen Shuangqin had no rights to object to his future marriage.
440
Filing public
notices was a convenient way to inform the public of the divorce but not a legally
effective way. Besides, Zhang Qianze’s announcement shows how Quanzhou
people, such as his wife, consciously used the public notices to avoid the trouble of
going to the court and the possible denial of their request in the lawsuit. On the other
hand, his notice shows that family disputes and the ensuing negotiation process
would last for years.
What really concerned these notice-makers was the public opinion, the moral
impression they left in the local communities, and then their individual reputations so
that filing a lawsuit for divorce was usually less appealing than issuing public notices
to generate the sense of morality in the local community. In addition, the 1931
Family Law shows an inconsistency in its regulations of marriage and divorce. A
marriage would become immediately effective with only one open wedding
ceremony and two witnesses present, but a divorce could only become effective after

440
“An announcement of severing the husband-wife relationship,” The Fujian Daily, November 25,
1948, page 1. There are more similar notices. For example, In 1940 an emigrant husband, Liu
Zhangpan, narrated in his notice that he always sent abundant remittances form the Philippines to his
family, and his parents managed the household very well. Yet after he heard some gossip about the
adultery of his wife (Cai Qinzhi), he came back to investigate and found the accusations to be true.
He only scolded his wife, but she soon stole jewelry as well as clothing and escaped to her natal
family. Liu emphasized, the purpose of his publishing this notice of severing the husband-wife
relationship was to “break any hope for his regret [or taking her back],” “each one has his or her
freedom of behavior” (gezi ziyou xingdong ) from then on. See “An announcement of
severing the husband-wife relationship,” The Fujian Daily, May 29, 1940, page 2.

265
reporting it to the Household Registration Bureau. An unregistered couple thus
would need to first register their marriage in the Bureau in order to proceed to their
divorce. Yet such a complicated legal procedure was usually ignored or fell beyond
the knowledge of ordinary people. Going to court would further increase the
uncertainty of reaching the desired result of the plaintiff. Considering all these
factors, there is little doubt that publishing notices was an easier and more successful
way for notice-makers to control the negotiation and manipulate the public opinion.
In contrast to Quanzhou women who presented their self image as vulnerable
females facing economic difficulties in the notices, Quanzhou males, though hardly
able to claim being the victim in family disputes, emphasized that their wives lacked
the Wifely Way and engaged in acts such as adultery or were unable to manage the
household chores in order to justify their intention of having a divorce and to “save
their face.” Michael Szonyi’s research of the emigrant communities lists several
examples of how the separation of husbands and wives forced women into
prostitution into forming relations with other men. Madam Huang and Madam Chen
became prostitutes when their husbands were away in Southeast Asia and the United
States. Their husbands decided to have a fresh start with the first wives, but both of
their new family lives and overseas businesses failed because the gossip or shame
followed and upset them even after they had left the hometowns.
441
In Quanzhou,
the lack of moral qualities and fidelity were the first two reasons for husbands to
divorce their wives. For instance, Guo Zhou claimed in 1942 his inability to control
the habitual behavior of his wife, Huang Chun, who was a prostitute before marriage

441
Szonyi, “Mothers, Sons and Lovers,” 58-9.

266
and who did not abide by female virtue after marriage, particularly when he left
home town to earn a living.
442
Another husband Shen Yinbin accused his “licentious
wife” (yinfu ) Tang Panniang of flirting in markets, stealing his family property,
and even selling their birth daughter to others without his consent during his stay in
Southeast Asia. He finally divorced her with a contract agreeing that their girls
would go with her and their boys would stay in his family and be raised by Shen
Yinbin’s father.
443
In 1946, Qiu Yu announced his separation from his wife, Zhang
Ye, because Zhang Ye was a prostitute before marriage and did not abide by
womanly virtue after marriage
444
In another 1946 notice, the husband Zhuang
Zhihua announced that his wife, Xu Songgu, went back to her natal family two
months after the wedding, while her almost three-year stay in the natal family and
ignoring his requests for her return caused his mother to take over the household
chores. Moreover, Madam Xu became a prostitute. Therefore, Zhuang Zhihua filed
a divorce announcement in the newspaper.
445

According to Articles 1101 and 1052 of the Family Law, both husband and
wife bear the mutual obligation of communal living; if one party does not conform to
this obligation, by purposely deserting the other or disappeared, the other party can
sue in court for a divorce. In 1941, Wu He announced in the newspaper that he
would break up with his wife Shi Niniang from the day onwards when he published

442
“Guo Zhou and Huang Chun’s announcement of severing the husband-wife relationship,” The
Quanzhou Daily, March 21, 1942, page 1.
443
“Shen Yinbin and Tang Panniang’s announcement of severing the husband-wife relationship,” The
Quanzhou Daily, June 29, 1942.
444
“Qiu Yu’s announcement of severing relations with Zhang Ye,” The Quanzhou Daily, October 10,
1944, page 1.
445
“An announcement of divorce,” The Quanzhou Daily, April 14, 1946, page 1.

267
the notice. According to Wu He, Shi Niniang often returned to her natal family and
left behind household chores, thereby making no harmonious relationship.
446
In
1944 Zhang Shuigui in Chongwu Township of Hui’an County also published a
notice claiming his breakup with his wife, Li Tao. Zhang Shuigui stated that Li Tao
“lasciviously wandered in all four directions” (sifang langyou ) but never
came to the marital family to manage the house chores during the six years after their
wedding. Since she was pregnant, Zhang Shuigui concluded that Li Tao’s behavior
had to be adulterous and aberrant from the expectations of the Wifely Virtue, so he
“willingly” severed the marriage ties so that their future marriages chould be entered
by each based on individual freedom.
447
The two husbands in these notices took the
concept of cohabitation in the Family law as grounds divorce, but in neither notice
did they show whether the divorce was mutual agreed upon with their wives or of it
was a judicial divorce.
Most Republican males, according to Susan Glosser, still wanted wives with
traditional moral qualities such as having a quiet demeanor and being able to fulfill
the primary responsibilities of child care and household management, which were
not only the wifely duties in Confucian family ethics but also closely linked to
family success and reputation.
448
Many Quanzhou husbands chose to publicize the
disputes or disgrace at the cost of temporary shame but in hopes of ultimately
upholding their own reputations. Michael Szonyi has pointed out that “newspaper
accounts of incest among divided families are representations, not social facts, so

446
“Wu He’s announcement of severing husband-wife relationship from Shi Niniang,” The Quanzhou
Daily, June 14, 1941.
447
“An announcement of severing the husband-wife relationship,” The Quanzhou Daily, May 1, 1944.
448
Glosser, Chinese Visions of Family and State, 66-78.

268
what they reveal to us is not necessarily a sexually licentious society but rather a
heightened concern about sexual transgression when male emigrants are absent from
the home.”
449
The request for and criticisms of the the Wifely Way in these public
notices therefore demonstrated that Confucian family ethics were still important
during the 1930s and 1940s, and Quanzhou people took an active role in
manipulating public opinion in order to save their own face.
Family disputes thus usually transpired when both husband and wife ignored
their family duties—husbands were absent, in-laws abused or provided no
maintenance for the wives on the one hand; and women returned to their natal
families on the other. The incomplete husband-wife relationship from long-term
separation caused not only women’s economic difficulties but also much suspicion
regarding female adultery in the eyes of the husband and his family. Many disputes
thus ended up in divorce whereby the marital family rid itself of the obligation of
supervising the married women because of the absent males, thereby allowing the
divorced women to enter another marriage for their livelihood.

C. Intrafamilial Tension between the Marital and Natal Families
The close ties between a married-out woman and her natal family, as seen in
Chapter Three and from the above cases in which women received support from their
natal families, ironically created tensions between the marital families and natal
families. For example, Zhang Shuigui’s notice further challenges local customs
which allowed married women extended stays in their natal families. In the

449
Szonyi, “Mothers, Sons and Lovers,” 57.

269
surrounding neighborhoods of Chongwu —the hometown of Zhang Shuigui—
women practiced “extended natal residence marriage” (changzhu niangjia ).
Previous scholarship provides many interpretations of this custom which was similar
to the practice of “delayed transfer marriage” (bu luo fujia ) and marriage
resistance in the Pearl River Delta region of Guangdong province.
450
It was not
unusual or widely recognized in Eastern Hui’an area that married women should stay
in their natal families and help the household economy by being peddlers, farmers, or
workers on construction sites. These Hui’an women only visited their marital
families a few times a year to offer their labor in the fields during the harvest or
festival times, and tried to avoid consummation with their husbands. They would not
move in with their marital families unless they became pregnant, which might
happen anytime from a year to as long as one or two decades after the wedding.
While women’s natal families often provided financial support and helped
continue the family line of the marital family (as discussed in Chapters 2 and 3),
natal families were criticized in these public notices for indulging their married-out
daughters by ignoring their wifely duties or even compelling them to steal from the
marital family. Two more family disputes in 1942 show the confrontations and
accusations that could arise between the marital and natal families. First, a married
woman He Shuzhu explained in 1942 that she had a premarital agreement with her

450
Important scholars and researches are as follows: Wu Chunming ⏛ , “Shilun Huidong funu
‘changzhu niangjia hunsu de qiyin” , Minzu yanjiu 2 (1999), 24-30; Sara Friedman, Intimate Politics, 2006; Chen Guoqiang, Ye Wencheng ,
and Wang Feng , “Changzu niangjia hunsu” , in Mintai huidong ren 救
(Xiamen: Xiamen daxue chubanshe, 1994), 132-55; Rubie S.Watson, “Girls’ Houses and Working
Women,” 25-44; Stockard, Daughters of the Canton Delta; Topley, “Marriage Resistance in Rural
Kwangtung,” 67-88.

270
husband, Yingqi, to provide support for her father till his death. Yet Yingqi not only
sold all of her dowry but also stopped the daily meals to her father and repeatedly
beat him. “Without my father, how could I stand on the ground (to be alive now)?”
questioned He Shuzhu. She thus could not help but express her unwilling decision to
sever the husband-wife relationship.
451
Two days later, her husband Yingqi
responded to He Shuzhu and contested her story by arguing that the problems had
begun because he had objected to He Shuzhu’s mother allowing He Shuzhu to
continue her career as an actress. Furthermore, he asserted that the mother had
forced his wife to steal jewelry as well as other property from the marital family and
then escape from them. Yingqi claimed that he had brought a lot of his earnings and
savings from overseas to get married and it was not possible for him to also support
his father-in-law. He stressed at the end of the public notice that he would forgive
his wife if she returned the stolen property as soon as possible; otherwise, he
promised to sue them in court.
452

The second notice is that Chen Hun denied his wife Liu Shang’s
announcement of divorce on June 29, 1943. He wrote that he was an orphan raised
by his younger uncle. There were indeed some trifling affairs between his wife and
uncle, but his wife went back and listened to her natal family’s suggestions and
threatened him that either they “separated stoves” (fenzao䀞 , meaning the
formation of a new and independent family) from the household of his uncle or she
would never return to her husband. As Chen Hun stressed, he had asked the

451
“An announcement of severing the husband-wife relationship,” The Fujian Daily, January 26, 1942,
page 1.
452
“An announcement to refute He Shuzhu’s ridiculous announcement of severing the husband-wife
relationship,” The Fujian Daily, Jan 28, 1942, page 1.

271
Township Department to intervene with the natal family and to persuade Liu Shang
to come home, but his requests were rejected by Liu Shang and her mother. Chen
Hun aired his grievance, saying that “in a situation like this, my wife Shang has been
paralyzed by her natal family and lost her clear mind. How could a woman return to
her natal family but singly-mindedly publish a notice of her divorce with me, Hun? I,
Hun, firmly deny this divorce.”
453

From either the male or female perspective, many of the public notices
mentioned above appear to paint a seemingly traditional picture of Quanzhou
women’s subordinate lives. However, a closer examination of these notices actually
reveals that in fact the women did not restrain themselves within the marital family
but strove to publish these public notices in order to manifest their moral qualities
and justify their reasons for fighting against the patriarchy. As the next section will
show, the confrontation between in-laws and married women as well as between the
elder and younger generations further highlights the negotiation process in the
transitional period of 1930s and 1940s between two sets of family ethics—Confucian
family ethics and the evolving Republican family discourse.

IV. The Persistence of Patrilineal Hierarchy
This section centers on the specific roles and representations of the elder
generation in public notices and analyzes the confrontation between the older and
younger generations to explore the changing concept of family in the late Republican
period. Michael Szonyi notes that emigrants’ agnates usually formed a mechanism

453
“An announcement to deny Liu Shang’s announcement of severing the husband-wife relationship,”
TheQuanzhou Daily, June 29, 1942, page 1.

272
to supervise the behavior of emigrants’ wives, not only affirming the century-old
confrontation between elder and younger generations or between in-laws and
married women but also serving as the evidence for the generational conflicts over
the concept of family. Parents-in–law or agnates refuted daughters-in-law’s
announcements of divorce on behalf of their absent male relatives and accused these
women of adultery or the lack of female virtue. In contrast, women’s natal parents
or cognate relatives represented separated or divorced women and spoke on their
behalf. Nevertheless, while many young couples straightforwardly claimed divorce
or separation in newspapers, most of the elder generation who represented the young
expressed their wish that the couple would remain in the original marriage rather
than proceed to divorce and look for new spouse.

A. Patrilineal Hierarchy and Womanly Virtue
Republican parents or family heads’ attempts to actively engage in the
marriage relations of their adult children never stopped, and many in-laws wished for
their daughters-in-law to come back to the marital families regardless of what had
happened. Therefore, not only did the voice of the youth occasionally disappear, but
also ethical concerns constituted the main content of these public notices. For
instance, the parents of a young couple criticized each other’s sons and daughters as
licentious or as negligent in the family duties by publishing public notices in
newspapers. In May 1940, Wu Chen Yingniang first expressed her tolerance for her
daughter-in-law Chen Wuge, because she had allowed her son Wu Laiyi to marry
Chen Wuge to prevent the possible humiliation that might stem from canceling the

273
engagement as Chen Wuge had been unchaste before the marriage. Wu Chen
Yingniang further accused Chen Wuge of repeatedly returning to her natal family,
stealing jewelry and clothing, and finally refusing to return to the marital family.
Chen Wuge’s natal family, moreover, asked a middleman, Chouniang, to relay the
message that Chen Wuge would publish a notice in newspapers to break up with her
husband Wu Laiyi. Wu Chen Yingniang claimed that such behavior was
unreasonable and warned against Chen Wuge’s remarrying. Otherwise, she
threatened that she would resort to the laws in order to stop the remarriage. She also
urged the Chen family to order Chen Wuge to return to her marital family as soon as
possible.
454
In return, Chen Wuge’s father, Chen Bao, represented his daughter in
order to shed light on the “lies” in Wu Chen Yingniang’s notice. Chen Bao stressed
that his son-in-law, Wu Laiyi, not only was a notorious prodigal but also had an
incestuous relationship with his elder sister-in-law. Chen Wuge found out about the
indecent affair, but was abused by the licentious “couple” and forced to return to her
natal family. Chen Bao explained that Chen Wuge’s “improper wandering outdoors
in the evening” was actually Chen Wuge’s selling vegetables to earn a living. In an
atypical move, Chen Bao applied the existing Republican laws and pointed out that it
was the age when men and women had equal rights: “it should be up to the couple to
file a divorce suit and be decided by the laws if there is any condition of divorce. I
would never get involved in it. So, why would I ask Chouniang claiming my attempt
to publish a notice of severing the husband-wife relationship?”
455

454
“An announcement regarding the daughter-in-law Chen Wuge’s licentious nature, theft and return
to the natal family,” The Fujian Daily, May 25, 1940, page 2.
455
“Chen Bao’s refuting Mrs. Wu née Chen’s ridiculous announcement,” The Fujian Daily, May 28,

274
Both parents in the above two notices accused the other party’s son or
daughter of licentious behavior and suggested that such behavior was a result of the
indulgence of their parents, but neither of the parents wanted the young couple to
divorce. Both parents also acknowledged that the young couple’s marriage was
prearranged at their childhood and thus they were forced to complete it for the sake
of the families’ reputation. Therefore, in lieu of the young couple, the parents
published notices and stood in as guardians to the young to ensure their proper
behavior in married life and to maintain the family’s reputation, while neither the
husband nor the wife expressed their own opinions.
The local moral pressure on the two families and their reputation would lead
the family heads to engage in intrafamilial disputes and strive to reach a solution, as
demonstrated in this dispute between the Wu and Chen families. Janet Theiss’
research of the 18
th
-century Chinese legal cases about women’s chastity and family
duties shows that descent group leaders, the local literati elite, and the magistrate
constituted a “local moral community” or “patriarchal authority,” other than the two
families, to deal with family disputes although none carried the absolute authority to
dictate a resolution.
456
Even in these Republican notices, we see that the two family
heads tried to expand the moral support for their arguments by inviting in more
social authority.
Public opinion, which was generated among the public and dsiputes’
mediators, usually offered a moral reminder and added pressure to urge parties in

1940, page 1.
456
Theiss, “Dealing with Disgrace,” particularly 45-58; idem, Disgraceful Matters, particularly 10-11
and chapter 4.

275
disputes to reach a compromise or solution. The role of Chouniang in this dispute
was ambiguous yet intriguing, since neither of the two families clarified her behavior
and function in their intrafamilial dispute. Yet we have learned from the public
notices in the second section that it is not unusual to have mediators from the local
gentry and/or use local officials to smooth family disputes. The intent of publishing
notices itself was precisely to ask the broader public to be mediators, although airing
family disputes out in public could be humiliating and as harmful to both families.
Public opinion would nevertheless transform into the communal power of
sociomoral persuasion to make up or “save the face” of one party while urging the
other party to acknowledge their wrongs.
457

Unlike the Qing counterpart who had had absolute legal authority, the
function of a Republican family head in family disputes was to facilitate the
resolution process rather than to displace the parties in disputes to reach any
unwanted decisions. The parental authority of a family head was also legally
undermined by the principles of individual rights promoted by the Republican Civil
Code. Chen Bao accepted the Republican family discourse that the family head
should not rob adult children or married couples of their personhood and legal rights.
In addition to asking for help from mediators and appealing to public opinion, Chen
Bao further embraced the egalitarian principle and the authority of the Republican
justice system to downplay Wu Chen Yingniang’s parental authority in representing
her family and hiding the facts of this dispute. Chen Bao’s statement implied that his

457
Hwang, “Face and Favor,” 947, 963.

276
daughter would not want a divorce; yet he would side with her and receive the
adjudication if any member of the young couple filed a suit.
Because the parental authority of parents-in-law in the Republican period
over the widowed daughters-in-law was denied under the new Family Law, more
moral appeals weighed in during these public notices to inform the public of the
unfilial or unchaste behavior of their daughter-in-law. This type of public notices
surely had no legal effect on the other party in disputes, but they could generate
gossip and moral pressure. For example, a widowed mother-in-law, Wu Wang
Chang’er, aired her grievance in 1949 that her daughter-in-law Xu Shuqing’s
extravagant nature and endless fights directly led to her adopted son’s suicide, and
Xu Shuqng went back to her natal family and intended to remarry. Wu Wang
Chang’er wished that Xu Shuqing could preserve chastity as she herself had
practiced for decades. Wu Wang Chang’er stated that she had no power or ability to
argue with Xu Shuqing; she could only vent her grievance and sue Xu in the
underworld. Yet she wished that no one would be tempted by Xu and follow in her
son’s path to death.
458

Similarly, another ex-mother-in-law tried to exercise her parental authority
over her daughter-in-law to force her to return to her deceased husband’s family.
Chen Jie published a notice announcing her separation from her marital family on
May 23, 1949. Her mother-in-law Cai Yao Qianjuan responded to it on May 26 and
presented another story. According to Cai Yao Qianjuan, Chen Jie once bore a baby
girl for her husband Cai Chang but she drowned the baby and adopted another baby

458
“An announcement to refute Xu Shuqing’s severing the affinal relations,” The Quanzhou Daily,
August 5, 1949, page 1.

277
boy. Soon after Cai Chang died, Chen Jie succumbed to others’ whim and
temptation, as she began stealing jewelry as well as clothing and finally abandoned
her five-year-old adopted son behind as she returned to her natal family. The heir
was struck by an epidemic disease in early 1949, but Chen Jie neglected to care for
him and then claimed the child was finally murdered by the Cai family. “Where was
her conscience with such behavior?” decried the mother-in-law. Nevertheless, Cai
Yao Qianjuan insisted at the end of the notice that no one should conduct a marriage
with Chen Jie and that Chen Jie should return to her marital family within one week
after reading the notice.
459
Chen Jie’s reply to her ex-mother-in-law repeated her
early statement about her being abused and being forced by her in-laws to return to
her natal family for four years. Chen Jie explained that she needed to plan her
future because she had no children or (marital) relatives to rely on. Therefore, she
insisted that the Cai family should never obstruct to her freedom in selecting her
future spouse.
460

A wife’s family relations with her in-laws ended either after the divorce, after
her husband’s death, or especially after moving out of her marital family. This is not
to mention that she was never one of the inheritors to the property of her parents-in-
law (Article 1138). Legally speaking, Cai Yao Qianjuan had no grounds to ask for
the return of her widowed daughter-in-law or to demand that her widowed daughter-
in-law not remarry. Articles 1114-1116 of the Family Law stipulate that both the
family head and his or her family members have the obligation to support each other

459
“An announcement to refute Fuchun po’s Chen Jie’s announcement of severing family relations,”
The Quanzhou Daily, May 26 1949, page 1.
460
“An Announcement to refute Yao Qian’s ridiculous announcement of refutation,” The Quanzhou
Daily, June 30, 1949, page 2.

278
in the case of communal living. On the other hand, a widow has her full right to
leave the marital family, although it would be at the risk that she would receive no
more living support from her marital family according to Article 1149. According to
Article 1144 of the 1931 Family Law, once Chen Jie’s husband died and Chen Jie
left her marital family, her marital ties with the Cai agnates were severed. A widow
and her in-laws were actually independent of each other if there was no evidence of
their cohabitation. Because Cai Yao Qianjuan did not mention any intention to file a
lawsuit in court and instead published the announcement on her own, it is possible
that she knew that she had no grounds to legally request for Chen Jie’s return. Chen
Jie owned her freedom to remarry, and accordingly bore no more obligations to
support the elder generation because she had left the marital family. The only
ammunition Cai Yao Qianjuan had was the moral pressure from local communities
that could be generated by the spread of the print media and the public opinion that
followed.
The women’s community in rural Taiwan, as described by Margery Wolf,
may offer an analogous case to explain how these sentimental public notices
generated moral pressure on other family or community members. According to
Wolf, although there were particularly young Taiwanese daughters-in-law who had
neither the decisive power to dispose of family matters nor the marital status to defy
parental authority in the marital family, their complaints to older female friends
would become public, and someone would check the facts of the individual’s story.
This village forum would serve as a collective and “powerful protective force” for

279
the defenseless members and cause the other party to lose face in dispute.
461

Similarly, Quanzhou’s elder generation made use of the realm of public notices and
the imagined public to create their collective and moral protective force in order to
request the younger generation to conform to traditional Confucian family ethics.
Their loss of parental authority over widowed daughters-in-law according to the
1931 Family Law could be compensated for and strengthened by community
intervention through the formation of public opinion.
In order to maintain familial and social harmony, family elders and local
gentry often sided together and cooperated to preserve the marriage of young couples,
just as the Chinese proverb says: “Encourage Reconcilation, not divorce” (quan he
bu quan li ). According to Janet Theiss, the Qing local moral community
or patriarchal authority was composed of fathers, husbands, lineage leaders,
community leaders, and even local magistrates, all of whom together promoted and
defended gender orthodoxy.
462
In Republican Quanzhou, widowed mothers-in-law
and other local gentry or elders could take over the male roles in Qing family
disputes to vindicate patriarchy. For instance, Mrs. Su née Huang announced the
reunion of her son and daughter-in-law in a 1947 public notice after her son Su He
had issued a divorce notice. Mrs. Su claimed that she supported the stance of her
daughter-in-law in wanting to maintain the marriage because fights were inevitable
in a family. Her statement implies that her son’s divorce announcement was a
unilateral decision without the consent of or even under the opposition from his wife.

461
Margery Wolf, Women and the Family in Rural Taiwan, 39-40.
462
Theiss, Disgraceful Matters, 10.

280
Although the divorce notice had been publicized to the readers, she and two
mediators (Li Chongfa and Zeng Laishui) intervened and successfully resuscitated
the marriage. Therefore, Mrs. Su issued this notice to inform the public in order to
avoid any misunderstanding.
463

Susan Glosser invokes a Republican survey that had been conducted and
finds that thirty to forthy percent of Republican Chinese advocated “wholesale
independence from the joint family,” but “most accepted or even welcomed their
parent’s assistance.”
464
Both Glosser’s argument and Mrs. Su’s public notice prove
that parental authority remained with a certain degree of stability even though the
government gave the youth more individual freedom and rights in choosing their
spouse as well as the right to divorce.

B. Family Reputation and Family Ethics
In addition to parents-in-law, the hometown proxy of Southeast Asian
emigrants also took over the job of supervising and had similar debates with
Quanzhou women surrounding the issue of the Wifely Way. For example, a younger
brother-in-law Dai Gou submitted a notice to negate the divorce announcement of
his elder sister-in-law (Huang Yan) and accused her of lacking the Wifely Way
because she unilaterally announced a divorce. As Dai Gou stressed, it was a
prevalent phenomenon that the correspondence and remittances had stopped after the
Pacific War broke out, and every wife should consider the affection between
husband and wife to remain in her marital family. Yet Huang Yan conspired with

463
“An announcement,” The Quanzhou Daily, December 7, 1947, page 2.
464
Glosser, Chinese Visions of Family and State, 63, 78.

281
scoundrels to abandon her family. Dai Gou did not specify what he wished Huang
Yan would do to make up for her presumed mistakes; he only expressed the opinion
that the public should not accept Huang Yan’s divorce announcement as the truth.
465

In other words, he did not have the position to ask his sister-in-law to modify her
behavior, but it is enough with this notice to inform the public that his sister-in-law
was still married. The local moral community or the pressure exercised by the
patriarchal authority would then generate then sociomoral persuasion needed in order
either to force her to return to her marital family or to damage her reputation.
Family reputation in terms of Confucian family ethics denotes the aggregate
of moral qualities of all family members, their social connections and social status,
their family property, and their educational and vocational success. Therefore,
family reputation could take higher priority than concerns like familial harmony and
even the patriline. It is not uncommon to see that a parent or a lineage elder
published public notices to inform the public that he or she would sever the familial
ties with the young if the youth committed adultery or engaged in illegal matters that
badly damaged the family reputation and further drained the family property. In
1942, Guo Liang consulted with his daughter-in-law Tu Suniang and then also
represented her to sever all family ties—including the father-son and husband-wife
relations—with his son. Guo Liang informed the public that he was only a farmer
who was content with his life and social status, but his son Guo Qinglai was a
scoundrel who stole from the neighborhood all the time. He and his daughter-in-law
thus could not bear the loss of their family reputation (or face) and refused to be

465
“An announcement of denying the divorce,” The Quanzhou Daily, January 12, 1944, page 2.

282
responsible for his illegal behaviors anymore.
466
In another lineage dispute over
property, Li Yulin, the head of the Xiashu branch (fangzhang ) of the Li lineage,
and another member Li Zongban decided to eject a widow Huang Nienjuan from his
branch. When Huang Nienjuan’s husband Li Chengwai was alive, the couple had
managed lineage property. Although Li Chengwai died in 1940, the lineage still
gave Huang Nienjuang the rights to manage the property as support for a widow.
Yet Huang’s intention to sell the lineage property had annoyed these lineage
members to the extent that they decided to deprive her of her family status and rights
to property management. All family property would be transferred to Li Chengwai’s
eldest brother when he returned from Southeast Asia or to Li Chengwai’s son.
467

The above public notices reveal that most parents or family members tried to
adhere to the established gender orthodoxy and that they promoted the ethical value
of filiality by asking the younger generation to preserve chastity and to be subject to
patrilineal hierarchy as well as parental authority. They emphasized sets of
sociomoral norms like the Wifely Way and the Heavenly Principle, in the hope of
pressuring youth with public opinion swayed by a reading public. Compared to the
verdict of a legal trial, the ripple effect of gossip or public opinion from public
notices in a rural society or emigrant community like Quanzhou, which was social-
relation-oriented, could create more damage for both individual and familial
reputations. In other words, when the Quanzhou elder generation issued the notices
to blame the youth, they realized that Confucian family ethics and traditional social

466
“An announcement to severing the father-son and husband-wife relationships,” The Quanzhou
Daily, March 21, 1942, page 4.
467
“An announcement to preserve the ancestor Youngchuan and ancestress Buci’s inheritance and to
exclude Huang Nienjuang from the lineage,” The Quanzhou Daily, February 8, 1944, page 2.

283
relations were their social capital. Embracing them would help accrue their moral
qualities and regain their social status from the disputes.

C. Changing Concept of Parent-Children Relation
Nevertheless, some women of the older generation adapted themselves to the
Republican laws and the new marriage regime. In Quanzhou, Chen Huang Xianjuan
published a notice to sever her parent-children ties from her adopted little daughter-
in-law, Huang Su’er. Chen Huang claimed that she followed local customs in the
early Republican era to adopt a baby girl as a little daughter-in-law for her third son
Chen Zhen’an. Yet Chen Zhen’an first went with his father to Southeast Asia and
then joined the army after returning to China. Since her son had been absent for
more than ten years and “a marriage should be freely decided [by the couple] as
recorded in ‘state laws’ (lifa ),” Chen Huang Xianjuan consulted with Huang
Su’er and decided to provide Huang Su’er with the freedom to enter into another
marriage. Chen Huang Xianjuan stressed that Huang Su’er had no more family ties
with the Chen family and that she could move out immediately. In addition, she
would give Huang Su’er some “alimony” (shanyangfei ). This whole
arrangement was witnessed by a lawyer Wu Denglong, and Huang Su’er signed to
express her consent as well.
468

Margery Wolf’s research of rural Taiwan indicates that many adoptive
parents developed close emotional bonds with their little daughters-in-law and that

468
“Chen Huang Xianjuan’s urgent announcement, Liantang, Nan’an,” The Quanzhou Daily, May 19,
1949, page 1.

284
they married out the latter to other families.
469
Chen Huang Xianjuan’s cautious
behavior, including asking for the presence of a lawyer and claiming this notice as an
“urgent announcement,” nevertheless suggests that another marriage arrangement
might be under the way, which could be the real reason for the severance of family
ties. In Chen Huang Xianjuan’s case, the so-called “alimony” could be a dowry-like
gift if the real purpose of this notice was for the sake of Huang Su’er’s new marriage.
Margery Wolf’s research also suggests the vagueness of the legal meaning attached
to and effectiveness of these minor marriages. The new relations between adoptive
family and the little daughter-in-law usually first appeared as adoption. Adoptive
families rarely registered the marriage in the Household Registration Bureau before
the young couple’s consummation. Neither was it rare to register or change the
registration records from sibling ties to marriage ties many years after the
consummation.
470
In all likelihood, people of wartime Quanzhou would regularly
manipulate the fine lines among household service, adoption, and a minor marriage
to defend themselves in disputes while the state or the court was not able to intervene
or maintain strong jurisdiction.

D. The Protest and Free Will of the Youth in Marriage Decisions
On the other hand, one often sees that young women were inevitably expelled
from the birth or the marital family when they tried to exercise their free will and
agency in deciding their own marriages and confronted their parents or parents-in-
law with that freedom of choice. For example, Wu Meizhu was forced by her

469
Margery Wolf, Women and the Family in Rural Taiwan, 177-80.
470
Ibid, 171-93.

285
mother to be engaged for four months, but she firmly objected to this engagement
and denied the engagement in the newspaper. She said, “this concerned my lifelong
happiness; it surely cannot be forced upon me to agree with it. Therefore, I
particularly announce my will in the newspapers to deny the engagement.”
471

Another woman, Xu Die, had been previously adopted by Zhuang Rongyuan as a
little daughter-in-law and “driven out” to her natal family in 1942, because she
objected to an uxorilocal marriage and had called in another jobless husband to
continue the family line, yet he could not be responsible for his family. In addition,
she would sever her ties with the birth family and earn a living for herself in order to
relieve the birth family’s economic burden.
472
Xu Die might have severed the ties
with her birth family as she claimed that they could not afford her. Yet could it be
that her behavior instead reveals that she was afraid of further disputes between her
natal and adoptive families? As the above cases regarding the intrafamilial tension
and conflicts show, this likelihood did exist.
The younger generation further learned to hire lawyers, who played a new
role in local moral communities during the Republican era, as they witnessed and
were engaged in family disputes by citing legal grounds as the final protection. The
Union of Lawyers in Jinjiang County had been established in 1924, and an individual
lawyer could open his or her law firm from then on.
473
In 1942, Wang Yuxiu hired a
lawyer Shi Dexin to refute her ex-mother-in-law Zhao Die’s announcement about her
divorce from Chen Gaosheng and to file a lawsuit in the court to rectify her

471
“An announcement of denying the engagement,” The Quanzhou Daily, March 31, 1943, page 3.
472
“An announcement of severing family relations,” The Quanzhou Daily, December 30, 1944, page 1.
473
Chen Miao and Zhuang Weikun, Jinjiang shizhi, juan 25, 328.

286
reputation, as well as to inform the public of the truth. According to Wang Yuxiu,
the divorce document was written in person by Chen Gaosheng in 1941 after he
returned from Southeast Asia; it also had Chen Gaosheng’s seal on it. Meanwhile,
Chen Gaosheng and Wang Yuxiu co-published a public notice to inform the public
of their divorce. Wang Yuxiu’s ex-mother-in-law thus had no grounds to accuse her
of robbing the family wealth and of secretly escaping to the natal family.
474
While
Zhao Die’s intention was to retain traditional Confucian family ethics and morally
press for her ex-daughter-in-law to return to the marital family, Wang Yuxiu
demonstrated a strong will to solve this conceptual difference by seeing her ex-
mother-in-law in court.
In sum, with the concept of patrilineal hierarchy in mind, the elder generation
was eager to consolidate parental authority by inviting in public opinion and other
social forces to come into play in these family disputes. Public notices show that
although the elder generation still retained parental authority, they were losing it due
to both the absence of their emigrant sons as well as the change in the composition
and nature of the family as indicated in the 1931 Family Law. Even though Southern
Fujian families always looked for adoption to continue the family lines, the patrilines
of many families were still in danger because male migration from Quanzhou to
Southeast Asia caused delayed marriages or long-term separation between husbands
and wives. The family tension between generations was often fierce, and young
daughters-in-law either escaped or were unwillingly excluded from their marital
families. All patrilineal, patriarchal and patrilocal principles were thus shaken as

474
“An announcement made by the lawyer Shi Dexin to represent Ms. Wang Yuxiu and refuting Zhao
Die’s announcement,” The Quanzhou Daily, January 15, 1942, page 2.

287
well. Furthermore, the Republican Civil Code of 1929-31 gave both male and
female citizens the same individual freedom to enter into marriages, to decide the
residence, and to inherit family property. These new rights were in conflict with
traditional parental authority in arranging marriages, distributing property, and
“educating and punishing” the younger generations as they thought fit.
The young couple’s free will and decisions about their marriages in these
cases nevertheless show that most Quanzhou people, and ordinary women in
particular, continued to be willing to enter marriages. Many widows or living
widows of the emigrants chose to leave their marital families, go back to their natal
family, and then search for jobs and new marriages to support themselves. During
the two decades of the 1930s and 1940s, which were replete with warfare, women
could have obtained more financial protection though marriage and within the family
system rather than by working independently. The traditional practice of
“established adoption” (liji ) was still conducted by families and women from
time to time. Yet unlike their imperial counterparts, Republican women did not need
to remain chaste, reject remarriage, and stay in their marital families in order to
manage the property on behalf of their sons to avoid poverty. The urgent
announcements of women severing marital ties with their (absent) husbands or in-
laws often state or imply their urgent need to enter the next marriage for financial
security and protection.

288
V. The Republican Familism in Quanzhou
To reexamine the first four sections, several phenomena appeared in these
notices throughout the 1930s and the 1940s. First, most notices reveal the
preservation of traditional family practices, such as minor marriages and established
adoption of a different surname son on the one hand, and the ignorance of the new
Republican Civil Code on the other hand. Second, the disputes over economic
support and family property division were also linked to the severance of kinship
relations. Third, many announcements made by women regarding the breakup of the
husband-wife relationship were made years after they had left their marital families
or moved into natal families. Fourth, male emigration constituted a major reason of
these breakups. Yet the family members of the male emigrants, particularly parents,
acted on behalf of their absent relatives to refute or debate with these women
regarding the breakups and family disputes. And fifth, some returning husbands
from Southeast Asia sided with their families and denied their wives’ divorce
announcements.
All these phenomena illustrate women’s negotiation with Confucian family
ethics and Republican discourse on family reform. Traditional moral terms, such as
the Heavenly Principle, the Humanly Way, the Wifely Way, and conscience, were
often cited in public notices and reflect that Quanzhou society was still very
morality-oriented and adhered to principles of Confucian family ethics, such as
filiality and chastity. On the other hand, Susan Glosser notes that in the late Qing
and Republican periods the ideal of the conjugal family was promoted to strengthen
the family and the nation. In addition, the new Family Law and discourse of family

289
reform aimed to downplay the authority of the family head in the joint family but
would never challenge the structure of a conjugal family which was the building
block of nation-building. The government and the new Family Law gave women a
certain degree of freedom to enter into marriage freely only if it would not challenge
the stability of the conjugal family structure.
475
Through these public notices,
especially those linked in debate, we can detect the ever-changing concept of family
during the 1930s and 1940s, when the new Family and Inheritance Laws were put
into practice and the Quanzhou economy experienced ups and downs in accord with
the domestic and international socioeconomic environment.
The section of public notices in newspapers, hence, was the realm where
notice-makers, including local representatives of the state, the gentry, and illiterate
commoners, appealed to the reading public to start the mechanism of supervising the
behavior of a community people in order to reach the equilibrium among the laws,
family ethics, local customs, and human feelings. In Chapter 2, I had discussed the
function of local gentry in mediating possible disputes over contracts and protecting
the weak and the poor. Janet Theiss has defined the local moral communities as
“the communities of people who participated in interpreting moral norms and dealing
with perceived transgressions;” however, she also points out that these Qing moral
communities were not static. They “varied enormously from case to case,” and
emerged “contingently within the context of a particular crisis in a particular locality
at a particular time.”
476
During the Republican period, the semi-official “mediation
councils” (tiaojie weiyuan hui ), which were usually composed of the

475
Glosser, Chinese Visions of Family and State, 81-133.
476
Theiss, “Dealing with Disgrace,” 57-8.

290
chief leaders of Townships, local elders and gentry, and another “Mediation
Department in the Civil Court” (minshiting tiaojiechu ) both served to
smooth away local disputes.
477
Nevertheless, other unofficial moral communities
hidden behind the reading public were more unidentifiable than the Qing ones. The
public notices prove that here also, there existed moral mechanisms among
community members, through reading the newspapers, and spreading as well as
forging public opinion to mediate disputes and redirect peoples’ perceived immoral
behaviors. The readers avidly consumed these public notices, spread their opinions
about them, and forged a community forum and created moral pressure on officials
and all parties of these disputes, although the contents of these Quanzhou notices
were very sentimental and full of blackmail. Neither rural people nor women in
Quanzhou excluded themselves from this modern print media. Instead, notice-
makers were very concerned with their representations in these announcements and
did not hesitate to expose to the public family disputes, and managed their victim’s
image with emotional finger-pointing and citations of blames, in order to restore
their reputation or to reach a solution that was beneficial to them. It is precisely in
this emotional blame-game that we find a record of the negotiation and mediation
processes, which brought women under the public’s voyeuristic public examination
on the one hand and in front of the local moral communities on the other. Most of
their appeals and solutions thus conformed to the basic principle of Confucian family
ethics—the return to the patrilineal family.

477
Chen Miao and Zhuang Weikun, Jinjiang shizhi, juan 25, 335.

291
Nevertheless, the Republican ideal of “companion marriage” or “conjugal
marriage,” as described by Susan Glosser,
478
did not show any great influence in the
public notices published in emigrant societies like Quanzhou. Quanzhou women
attest to Susan Glosser’s argument that in the late 1930s and 1940s the petitioners for
divorce were mostly women.
479
While married women were eager to gain
independence from their conjugal family or from the joint family and to leave behind
the supervision of their agnates, the ideal of the conjugal marriage was hardly
practiced on a large scale because of male emigration. Siumi Maria Tam’s
interviews with Quanzhou “living widows” reveal that Republican Quanzhou women
bore responsibility as the breadwinner and played the dual role of mother and father
in order to obtain domestic and public recognition in a chauvinistic culture.
480

The gap between state laws, Confucian family ethics, and family practices
embedded in rural society ironically appeared in paid public notices of newspapers.
The notices published in the name of women reveal that many female notice-makers
did not own any decent jobs as female teachers and subsequently won any respect
from the society; they were wives, household servants, factory workers, and
prostitutes. As Bryna Goodman suggests, they were not qualified to be modern
women with the new virtue of “personhood” (renge ) and under the critiques of
voyeurs.
481
Yet once they were engaged in the debate via public notices, they were
supervised by local moral communities. Some of them interchangeably utilized new
legal concepts and traditional family values to fight for their freedom and interests.

478
Glosser, Chinese Visions of Family and State, 1915-1953, 33
479
Ibid, xii.
480
Tam, “Engendering Minnan Mobility,” 145-6.
481
Goodman, “The Vocational Woman and the Elusiveness of ‘Personhood’,” 265-86.

292
Women’s effort in creating a moral impression in the minds of the public actually
granted them another type of moral personhood during the Republican period and
self-esteem. Having learned the power of the print media in the 1930s and 1940s
and turned it into the optimal tool that could be utilized in family disputes to win the
support of moralized public opinions, most Quanzhou women nevertheless chose to
stay in the Chinese family system in order to acquire economic support, no matter
how much they had attacked their marital family.

293
Chapter 5:
Imagined Families:
Sisterhood in and beyond the Living World

This chapter explores how Quanzhou women, represented by female deities,
created fictive women-centered family relations, and then empowered themselves
with broader social networks and fame in the late Qing and Republican periods.
Women’s loyalty to the patrilines was usually embodied in filiality and chastity, the
two aspects of cultural capital that I have discussed in Chapters 2, 3 and 4.
Contemporary Quanzhou society also generated moral communities to uphold these
womanly virtues and consolidate the fictive family system which helped transmit the
virtues to succeeding generations.
In Quanzhou, religious belief and assistance from existing female networks
provided women not only with spiritual guidance and material support but also social
identity. The previous chapters have shown that the joint family gradually lost its
tight control over conjugal units and women. The absence of husbands caused many
married women either to be neglected by the husbands’ agnatic kin or to be their
husbands’ placeholders and consequently enjoy more financial and parental authority
than ever. Quanzhou women’s filiality and chastity were not exclusively directed to
their husbands’ families, but also included their natal families and incorporated the
meanings of religious piety and personal purity. Quanzhou women further created
sworn sisterhoods and/or imagined family relations between different female deities
and living women. For Quanzhou males, these relations modified and recreated the
patrilineal and patriarchal principles.

294
I argue that the formation of these fictive and religious “family relations”
suggests that women sought to go beyond their families in the mundane world and
thereby devised a better strategy of negotiating for authority within the family
system rather than escaping from it. Many Quanzhou women looked for an enabling
force in fictive and women-centered family relations built on their basis of suicidal
martyrs, disorderly female deities, and followers of local popular religions. They
were thus able to expand their family roles and honor their patriarchal families, even
though they defied the patrilineal and patrilocal marriage regime. When I attempt to
establish a correlation between the female deities and empowered women, there
always exists within the argument a risk of “simplistic theories of role models and
uni-gender projection,” as modern scholars Alf Hiltebeitel and Kathleen M. Erndl
have pointed out.
482
Nevertheless, what Quanzhou female deities symbolized was
not defiance against patriarchy but womanly virtues such as reproductive capability
and chastity which were valued by Quanzhou patriarchal society. Thus Quanzhou
women had little motivation or spiritual guidance to specifically challenge the
patriarchal family system, particularly when they could utilize their womanly virtue
to assert a higher family status and social identity within Quanzhou society.
This chapter includes four sections which explore the interaction between the
female deities and their female worshippers. The first three sections are concerned
with female deities the Mother Ladies (furenma ), Lady Su, and Quanzhou
vegetarian nuns respectively. From the late imperial time onward religious practices

482
Alf Hiltebeitel and Kathleen M. Erndl, “Introduction: Writing Goddesses, Goddesses Writing, and
Other Scholarly Concerns,” in Is the Goddess a Feminist? The Politics of South Asian Goddesses, ed.
Alf Hiltebeitel and Kathleen M. Erndl (Washington Square, NY: New York University Press, 2000),
16-7.

295
were mainly established on the basis of family identities, and were concerned with
family affairs.
“Mother Ladies” (furenma ) were a group of deities worshipped in
their bedrooms exclusively by married women of the three counties—Jinjiang ,
Nan’an , and Hui’an —in the coastal Quanzhou area during the Republican
and modern periods.
483
In the Republican period, these deities were mainly the
ghosts of deceased women from traditional families and in women’s sworn
sisterhood networks. The term “Mother Ladies” thus precisely indicates the
feminine, domestic, and yin nature of the deceased women in the Republican period.
While the worship of the Mother Ladies was domestically specific, the
worship of some localized female deities developed into community cults in
Republican Quanzhou. For example, Bodhisattva Guanyin was addressed by
Quanzhou people as the “Mother Guanyin” (Guanyin ma ) or Buddha
Guanyin (Guanyin fozu ) to highlight her supreme motherly compassion.

483
“Mother Lady” (furenma ) is the general term used by Hui’an people to refer to both male
and female deities. Yet anthropologist Shi Yilong of Xiamen University finds that this worship
spreads along the coastal Quanzhou area and includes both genders in modern times, so he coins the
term—“Private Deities” (siren fozai ). Shi explains that fo in the Southeastern Fujian
dialect refers to all deities in Buddhism, Daoism, and popular religions rather than Buddha or
bodhisattva; zai as a suffix refers either to the lower status of the addressed person in relation to the
speaker, or to the intimacy between the speaker and the addressed person. Modern Hui’an people
grant each deity a certain age, marriage status and official rank, and organize them into an imagined
family system closely related to the conjugal units. Modern “Mother Ladies” or “Private Deities”
include the deceased sisters or sworn sisters of the living wives, the imagined husbands or sons of the
female worshippers in their previous lifetime, and the imagined husbands or sons of the deceased
sisters and friends. In a few exceptions the deities are the deceased brothers of the husband. Overall,
these “Private Deities” truly “build” a domestic but spiritual family in each worshipper’s conjugal unit.
See Shi Yilong , “Jinmen yu Dalu ‘siren fuzai’ yu ‘zamou fo’ de bijiao yanjiu 㞍 ,” in Minnan wenhua yanjiu 救 , 2 (April 2002): 34-44; idem,
“Baiqi huimin de ‘sijia shen’ chongbai ,” in Hui’an Minxu , ed.
Chen Guoqiang (Xiamen: Xiamen daxue chubanshe, 1997), 244-51.

296
Other female deities include the Empress of Heaven (Mazu ), Lady Linshui
(Linshui furen ), Lady Su (Su Furengu ), and Lady Wan (Wan
Xiangu ).
484
To use the cult of Lady Su as the main example, I will illustrate
in the second section how religious followers recreated the sisterhood among many
of these female deities, who worked together or had the same goal to assist
Quanzhou women in conception and obstetric difficulties and protect men from the
natural disasters of seafaring activities. In addition, female worshippers
unconsciously absorbed from the local legends of these female deities the correct
practices of female virtue, or orthoprax values (discussed in Chapter 1) to support the
Chinese family system but simultaneously expressed their opposition to the existing
marriage regime.
Most vegetarian nuns of the Republican period discussed in the third section
were secularized Buddhist nuns living in tutelary temples or community convents to
worship the “Mother Guanyin” (Guanyinma ). Similar to orthodox Buddhist
nuns, they kept a vegetarian diet, practiced sutra-recitation and “chanting” (nianfo ), lived an ascetic life, and established religious lineages from instructors to
disciples. Yet different from Buddhist nuns, Quanzhou vegetarian nuns retained
close ties with their natal families as they rejected tonsure and invited more family
members into their convents to continue the religious lines. For instance, The
Xiamen Daily (Xiamen ribao ) recorded in 1909 that a family established a

484
Quanzhou shi Licheng qu difangzi bianzhuan weiyuanhui, and Quanzhou shiqu daojiao wenhua
yanjiuhui ed, Quanzhou jiucheng pujing jilu; Chen Pengpeng , Quanzhou wenwu shouce (Quanzhou: Quanzhou shi wenwu guanli weiyuanhui, 2000); Quanzhou shiqu daojiao
wenhua yanjiuhui ed., Quanzhou shiqu simiao lu.

297
vegetarian hall within the household and attracted tens of widows and chaste
virtuous daughters. Local people respected these women as deities and called them
Grand Instructors (shizu ).
485
Another news report recorded that an old
vegetarian nun (zainu ) was able to tell fortunes for people. Quanzhou people
went to worship her and seek her opinions.
486

The last section brings all the above sections together in a developing process
of cultural interaction between the deities and different groups of worshippers. A
deceased woman was apotheosized as a goddess with womanly virtue. She was then
incorporated into a sisterly or mother-daughter bond with other deities, and in return,
manifested the same womanly virtue as cultural capital to help Quanzhou women
empower themselves in patriarchal society.

I. The Worship of Mother Ladies
Most Mother Ladies in the Republican period were the worshippers’
deceased sisters or sworn sisters who had suffered premature or violent deaths.
Although the worship of “Mother Ladies” (furenma ) in Hui’an County is not
recorded in any local gazetteers or documents, anthropological research shows that
such practices of worship had existed from the Republican period onward and its cult
territory was not limited to Hui’an County.
487
Prior to 1949 each worshipper’s
conjugal unit contained only two or three colorful wooden or earthen figurines,

485
The Xiamen Daily, September 30, 1909, page 2.
486
The Xiamen Daily, March 3, 1090, page 2.
487
Shi Yilong, “siren fuzai yu zamou fo de bijiao yanjiu,” 34-44.

298
unless the family had encountered a lot of unfortunate deaths.
488
Similar worship
systems are found in modern times along the coastal areas of imperial Quanzhou
prefecture, such as Jinjiang County, Jinmen Island (under the rule of Taiwan
now), Tong’an County , and Jinjing Township .
489
Even in a Muslim
community—Baiqi —which is south of Hui’an County, there were many Mother
Ladies who died as children or committed suicide to resist marriages in the
Republican period.
490

A. Who are the Mother Ladies?
The literal translation of furenma—Mother Ladies—implies that the worship
of Mother Ladies had a strong gender and kin-oriented aspect. These deities, like
mothers, respond to the worshippers’ requests with their protective power. The
feminine nature of this worship was manifest in the fact that these Mother Ladies
were the spirits of friends or sisters of the female worshippers, and that this worship
was exclusively practiced by married Quanzhou women in the bedrooms of their
conjugal units. It is common to find that a mother-in-law had her own set of
figurines or red papers on which the names of the deceased were recorded, but her

488
Chen Guoqiang, Ye Wencheng, and Wang Feng, Mintai huidong ren, 217. Because modern
worshippers additionally create imaginary family members for these Mother Ladies, it is not unusual
to find tens of figurines on an altar, table or wardrobe now.
489
Shi Yilong, “siren fuzai yu zamou fo de bijiao yanjiu,” 34-44. I also found the worship of a
Maiden (guniang ) of premature death in a Zhang family in Tuku, Yulin County of Taiwan in
1990. This deceased Maiden was traced back a few generations ago and she became the protective
spirit of the local Zhang lineage. Yet the local lineage welcomed people of different surnames to
worship this Maiden.
490
Shi Yilong, “sijia shen’ chongbai,” 246-8.

299
daughter-in-law had a different set.
491
In some cases the mothers-in-law would pass
down their deities to the younger generations, but the latter refused to continue with
the worship.
492
This refusal shows that such worship was very personalized and
established through the individual women’s networks. In addition, Mother Ladies
were usually addressed by their worshippers as the “Maiden” (guniang ), the
“Auntie” (guzai ), the “Aunt Lady” (furengu ), the “Mother Lady”
(furenmu ), the “Empress” (niangniang ), and the “Mother Caring for the
Family” (gujiama ).
493
The worship of Mother Ladies established kinship
family relations between the spiritual and mundane worlds, and accordingly revealed
the desire of each female worshipper to look for protective ancestresses.
The worship of Mother Ladies attests to the survival of shamanism in Fujian
and particularly the greater Quanzhou area. The Qing novel—The Informal Records
of the Capital of Min (Mingdu bieji 救 ) records many local legends
concerning the sociopolitical factors to impact the reclamation and rise of Fujian and
the greater Quanzhou area during the Tang-Song transitional period. The legends of
Lady Linshui (or Chen Jing’gu ) and her shamanistic practices,
which I will discuss in the next section, constitute a main theme and spiritual
explanation to interpret the transfers in local political regimes and reflect the

491
Chen Guoqiang, Hui’an minsu (Xiamen: Xiamen daxue chubanshe, 1997), 96; Shi
Yilong, “‘siren fuzai’ yu ‘zamou fo’”: 37.
492
Chen Guoqiang, Ye Wencheng, and Wang Feng, Mintai huidong ren, 214-25.
493
In modern China, the imaginary spouses or male kin of the female spirits in the present or previous
lives are granted official titles such as the Excellency (daren ), the General (jiangjun ), and
the Prince (taizi ). See Shi Yilong, “Baiqi huimin,” 244.

300
religious awe in supernatural power prevalent in rural Fujian.
494
In addition, in the
book The Collection of Criticism against Quanzhou Customs 抬 (published
in 1908), the local scholar Wu Zheng ⏛ severely criticized Quanzhou shamanism
and sarcastically called the shamans “Divine Sisters” (shenjie ). According to
Wu Zheng, the Quanzhou shamans claimed to have the ability to summon and
communicate with ghosts and they used this skill to extort money from rural
women.
495

Hui’an County, located in the very east of the Quanzhou area, is the very
place where this shamanistic worship of “Mother Ladies” was first noticed and
studied. Sources regarding these worship practices are mainly oral testaments,
participant observations, and interviews. Modern anthropologists such as Chen
Guoqiang, Zhuang Yingzhang, Zhong Youlan, Shi Yilong, and Sara Friedman have
noticed the shamanistic origins of this worship.
496
The figurines and the rituals of
worship were arranged by local people in accordance with the orders of local
shamans (shangshenzhe ).
497
When any person was sick and went to a

494
Lirenheqiu [pseudo.], Mindu bieji 救 , 3 vols., 3rd ed. (Fuzhou: Fujian renmin
chubanse, 1997 [1987).
495
Wu Zheng, Quansu jici pian.
496
Chen Guoqiang , Chongwu renleixue diaocha㞍 (Fuzhou: Fujian jiaoyu
chubanshe, 1990), 84, 162; Chen Guoqiang and Shi Yilong, Chongwu Dazuocun diaocha ⱆ㞍 (Fuzhou: Fujian jiaoyu chubanshe, 1990), 227-8; Zhong Youlan , “Guanao chamoufo de
chubu yanjiu㞍㬍 ,” in Jinmen shuqi renleixue tianye gongzuo jiaoshi lunwenji , ed. Yu Guanghong , Wei Jiezi (Taiwan:
Minzuxue yanjiusuo, Academia Sinica, 1994), 129-62; Shi Yilong, “sijia shen’ chongbai,” 244-51;
Shi Yilong, “‘siren fuzai’ yu ‘zamou fo’”: 34-44; Friedman, Intimate Politics, 148-52.
497
Other names referring to shamans include wuxi 女 , and chamou fozai 㞍 as Shi Yilong
uses. See Shi Yilong, “‘siren fuzai yu zamou fo." Most shamans in modern Hui’an, particularly in the
eastern Hui’an area, are female as well. There are two or three male shamans at present, but they
speak softly and act with a feminine nature and their names are prefixed by local people with
“woman” (chamou 㞍 ) or “matron” (mu ) to emphasize their transgendered status and their

301
shaman for physical relief and psychological answers, the latter instructed the sick to
prepare a figurine or a piece of red paper with the name of one spirit who was a
family member or deceased friend and to worship it as a domestic protective deity in
the bedroom every day. The shamanistic nature of the worship of Mother Ladies
remained the same from Republican to modern times.
Steven Sangren’s schemata, which I discussed in Chapter 1 assumed the
correspondence between the yin-yang nature and the family status of a deceased
family member. The unnaturally or prematurally deceased family members could
not fulfill their family obligations to continue their family lines. Also, forgotten
ghosts did not receive offerings of incense. Both groups thus belonged to the yin
world. Furthermore, as Shiga Shuzo stated decades ago and scholars all agree, an
unmarried daughter in the Chinese patrilineal kin group was not qualified to receive
sacrifices because her family status and sacrifice were supposed to be united through
marriage with her husband.
498
If the deceased was an unmarried daughter, there was
absolutely no place for her on the altar of her natal family because she was always an
outsider, “a person of alien surname” (waixing ren ), or “the (low-rank) deity
of a stranger family” (waijia shezai ) to her natal family.
499
Arthur Wolf
has further shown that children who suffered premature deaths were deemed unfilial

socialized gender, for only women should be shamans. See Chen Yijun , “Xing, quanli,
jingshenbing: shi cong Huidong linghun fushen xianxiang tantao funu de xinli” : (Master thesis, Xiamen: Xiamen University, 1998), 15-6.
498
Shiga Shuzo, “Family Property,” 127.
499
I would like to thank Sumei Ho for pointing out the usage of “the (low-rank) deity of a stranger
family” in the southern Fujian dialect. According to her, this expression is used by natal parents when
referring to their daughters. This usage, first, demonstrates a daughter’s marginal and unrecognized
status in her natal family, and second, depicts how ordinary people think about their ancestors—the
ancestors are deities to the living within a family.

302
and evil spirits so that they would not be worshipped or even remembered by
families because the spirits of these family members had failed in fulfilling the
reproductive role.
500

In Sanxia, Taiwan, local people were inclined to settle the souls of unmarried
daughters in “maiden’s temples” (guniang miao ). Some others arranged
“ghost marriages” (minghun ) by marrying the ghosts to living men, in order to
rid natal families of responsibility and find for the deceased women their places in
ancestral shrines and genealogies of marital families.
501
There are frequent entries in
the recording of family genealogies which state that a male family member was
married to a woman suffering premature death. For example, Jiang Huoyan, the
nineteenth generation of the Jiang family and living at the turn of the 20
th
century,
was married to his deceased fiancée Lady Xu by carrying her tablet to his family at
his real wedding with his “second” wife, Lady Huang.
502

The uniqueness of the worship of Mother Ladies nevertheless lies in the fact
that Quanzhou people worshipped these wandering souls or forgotten kin in their
most private domains—women’s bedrooms or houses. Contrary to Shiga’s argument
and Wolf’s observation, many deceased daughters in Quanzhou were neither
neglected souls nor malicious ghosts. Instead, they were tamed by being brought
into the families to worship. Some were worshipped by their mothers or grand
mothers; some by siblings; and some by sworn sisters of different surnames who

500
Wolf cites Mrs. J. G. Cormack’s observation in Beijing to prove that a child of early death is seen
as an evil spirit, which prevents the dead child from being buried in the family graveyard. Arthur
Wolf, “Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors,” 148-52.
501
Ibid.
502
The Genealogy of the Jiang Lineage in Fuquan, archived in the Historical Museum of Overseas
Transportation, Quanzhou.

303
were further patrilocally married into the families of strangers that had no family
relations with the worshipped Mother Ladies.
Nevertheless, the “ultimate wish” of Mother Ladies was to receive worship
from a broader religious circle rather than strictly the private domains. For instance,
the main deity Zhang Kun , who was said to be a Tang general and received
worship in the most famous local Hui’an temple, the Green Mountain Temple
(Qingshan gong ), has two spiritual “wives” who receive the same worship
from Quanzhou people. His second wife, Consort Qing’an (Qing’an fei ) was
originally a Mother Lady in the Li family. When the current temple was about to be
rebuilt and local people sought the donation of the land owned by the Li family in
the late 14
th
century, the Li family asked that one unmarried daughter who had
suffered from premature deaths must be worshipped in this new temple.
503
In other
words, worshipping deceased and unmarried daughters could have been a common
religious practice during the Ming period. In modern Hui’an there are also examples
of Mother Ladies that spoke though shamans and asked to be worshipped by the
broader community. For example, one Mother Lady instructed the shaman and
asked for the donation of a certain piece of land where the villagers should build a
temple to worship her and other deities to keep her in company. The village and
local political organizations have conformed to the request and are ready to build the

503
This information was based on my interview with an anthropologist Guo Zhichao , a
professor in Xiamen University in China. His argument is based on the Su family genealogy. The Su
family has been leading the temple committee for a long time. Guo Zhichao, interview by the author,
July 16, 2004; idem, “Fujian Hui’an ‘chongjian Qingshan miao qingong ji’ bei yu Qingshan gong
shijian niandai kao” “ ” , in Dongnan kaogu
yanjiu vol. 1, ed. Wu Mianji ⏛ and Wu Chunming ⏛ (Xiamen, China: Xiada
chubanshe, 1996), 183-5.

304
temple. The shaman explained to the villages that this would benefit the whole
community, and so it was not merely her family affair.
504

B. The Nature of the Mother Ladies
Mother Ladies were mostly placed in bedrooms or on another separate altar
from that of the gods, goddesses, and ancestors in the main hall. They were usually
not worshipped on the same altar with the other deities or ancestors, unless the
worshippers claimed that the worshipped had become deities too. In Jinmen Island
the figurines of the Mother Ladies were placed on a separate altar from the ancestors,
but they could be placed on the same altar with Guanyin.
505
In Jinjiang County,
anthropologist Shi Yilong found two cases—one male who died a premature death
and who was honored as the Prince (taizi ), and one suicidal daughter-in-law
who was granted the title of “First-Rank Lady” (yiping ma ) by her marital
family. They were both placed on the side of the ancestral tablets.
506
In Xiamen and Tong’an, Shi Yilong found two other examples where the worshipped
deities—prematurally deceased children—were believed to have been transformed
into deities, and the figurines were placed right next to the well-known deities
(zhengshen or widely recognized deities), such as Guanyin, the Earth God, and
the Stove God (zaojun䀞 ), who were usually worshipped together.
507

504
Chen Yijun, “Xing, quanli, jingshenbing: shi cong Huidong linghun fushen xianxiang tantao funu
de xinli”, 20.
505
Shi Yilong, “‘siren fuzai’ yu ‘zamou fo’," 35.
506
Ibid, 38.
507
Ibid, 39-0. The figurine of the Maiden worship that I observed in Tuku, Taiwan in 1990 was placed
on the same altar with ancestral tablets but occupied the God’s place, that is, the deification process

305
In order to understand the yin-yang nature of Mother Ladies, it is necessary
to understand the floor plan of Chinese houses which generally follows the yin-yang
order representing Confucian family ethics. The common living space—the main
hall—should be located at the innermost part of the house, as well as on the axis of
the house, flanked by the rooms of the family elders. Facing the main gate, the main
hall should be bright and able to absorb more of the yang essence through the
flowing air or life energy (qi ). Therefore, the main hall was the center of a
family’s religious activities and the most respected place in the house. Yet all
bedrooms were supposed to be dark and yin to conform to this yin-yang order, and
they were dark in reality because of the lack of windows. The space inside the
bedrooms is private, thus it was considered to be the appropriate location for couples
to perform their reproductive functions for family and society.
508

The position and arrangement of the spiritual entities in a house thus reflected
people’s ever-changing views about the place of the spirits in the yin-yang
cosmological order. Unlike orthodox Confucians and rich families, ordinary people
did not always follow the strict rules of Zhu Xi’s Family Rituals to arrange different
rooms for worshipping ancestors and other deities. When there was no separate altar
for ancestral tablets in a house, the ancestral tablets were placed on the “right-hand
side” of Buddhist figures and gods in the main hall because the Chinese have always
valued the left over the right sides and because gods and goddesses were yang but

was completed.
508
Bray, Technology and Gender: Fabrics of Power in Late Imperial China (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: Univeristy of California, 1997), 60, 71, 96-107.

306
ancestors were relatively yin.
509
Any supernatural entities worshipped in the
bedroom (either on the top of the wardrobe, the table, or another set of altars) were
seen as more yin than those worshipped in the main hall. They were also more
exclusively concerned with women’s interests than those being worshipped in the
main hall. These spirits were mainly female, who protected women in childbirth and
childrearing. The most obvious example of these deities is the Bed Mother
(chuangmu ), who was exclusively worshipped by women for her protective
power over children. Other deities worshipped in women’s bedrooms included
Mother Ladies and Guanyin, whose yin/yang nature was in constant flow and was
constantly redefined by different worshippers.
The ambiguous spiritual status and different places where Guanyin and the
Mother Ladies were worshipped illuminate the difficulty Quanzhou people had in
placing the female deities into the three categories—gods, ancestors, or ghosts.
Nevertheless, Quanzhou people have had no doubts about their protective efficacy
over the worshipping families. Mother Ladies were seen as “deities who are
originally yin” (yin zhuan shen ), that is, they have been elevated from the yin
world to Heaven, after being worshipped as deities or with other ancestors.
510

Because Mother Ladies were mainly the spirits of unnaturally or prematurely
deceased daughters, sworn sisters, and children, they must experience a
transformation process: The nature of the Mother Ladies started to move from the

509
These orthodox Buddhist figures and other gods and goddesses of popular belief include Guanyin,
the Jade Emperor (Yudi or Tiangong ), the Earth God (Tudigong ), the Third Prince
(San taizi ), the God of War (Guandi ), and so on.
510
Shi Yilong, “‘siren fuzai’ yu ‘zamou fo’," 41-2.

307
yin to the yang side of the yin-yang continuum after their souls received incense-
offerings. Therefore, while most Mother Ladies were worshipped by married
women in their bedrooms as yin ghosts or low-rank deities, some were worshipped
in the main hall as ancestors or higher-rank deities although their figurines were
smaller than the gods and ancestral tablets, showing their lower rank in spiritual
status.
511

In contrast, Guanyin is an orthodox Buddhist figure or the Goddess of Mercy
who should be positioned and worshipped in the main hall. Yet she is also a Fertility
Goddess, who is closely connected with the reproductive function of women.
512

After undergoing a transformation from male to female, which started in the Song
dynasty and was completed by the end of the Ming period, Guanyin gradually
symbolized feminine power and reproductive ability but still held an ambiguous
place in the ethical system of the Confucian family. This flexibility in “her” places
of worship highlights the fact that Guanyin’s “feminine” and yin nature would
demote her from the rank of the orthodox deities to that of the private deities
empowering women in their bedrooms.
Worshippers arbitrarily interpreted the nature and spiritual status of Mother
Ladies and Guanyin as yin or yang, which were highlighted and represented by their
positioning of altars and in accordance with worshippers’ individual needs. Mother
Ladies, who were originally outsiders to the family, were thus reinterpreted as
anything from yin ghosts to yang deities to allow the female worshippers to have

511
Ibid.
512
Chun-fang Yü, Kuan-yin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokitesvara (New York: Columbia
University, 2001), 21, 127-30, 250-62.

308
legitimate reasons to worship them in the family and rely on their blessings over the
worshippers’ families. Guanyin, on the other hand, was usually reinterpreted as a
lower-rank fertility goddess exclusively caring for women. Steven Sangren’s
schemata classify “supernatural entities” (ling ) by the criteria of remembered/
forgotten, male gods/female goddesses, and kin/non-kin. The remembered belong to
the yang world while the forgotten belong to the yin one; the male gods are yang
while the female goddesses are yin; the kin is yang in contrast to the non-kin as
yin.
513
By using Sangren’s schemata, Mother Ladies can be seen as relatively yin,
compared to the well-recognized deities, no matter what worshippers claimed. Yet
Mother Ladies are relatively yang when compared to unworshipped kin or ancestors.
Guanyin was yang in relation to ancestors and Mother Ladies, but she was yin in
relation to male gods. The deliberate positioning of these supernatural entities in the
yin-yang cosmological order signifies the gender hierarchy between female deities
and other supernatural entities, and between different genders of worshippers at the
same time. Even though married women revised the patrilineal principle and gender
hierarchy within Confucian family ethics and claimed that the nature of Mother
Ladies and Guanyin was yang, many men still considered Mother Ladies and
Guanyin as “women’s deities” and thus having a yin nature.
Regarding the relationship between the deities and the worshippers, the
worship of the Mother Ladies rarely went beyond the confines of a family, which not

513
Steven Sangren illustrates how these “remembered ghosts” emerge from the following process:
They suffer from a premature death, or die by violence or before marriage so that their souls wander
around in the yang world and are denied incorporation into the family system. Thus, they seek any
opportunity to haunt the living in order to acquire family recognition and to restore the yin-yang order
by being worshipped as a deity and then guarding the welfare of the family or the lineage. See
Sangren, History and Magical Power, 141-50.

309
only stresses its private and yin nature but also shows that the principles of
Confucian family ethics was a restraining force over worship practices. The
protective power of the Mother Ladies was also usually limited to the family
members or the conjugal units, unless, as on a few occasions, when non-family
members came to pray for help and Mother Ladies positively responded with their
blessings. The worship of the Mother Ladies thus had shared characteristics with
ancestral worship to a certain degree.
In the two aforementioned examples in Jinjiang County, the “deities”—the
Prince and the First-Rank Lady—were placed on the altars in the main halls, which
were generally reserved exclusively for ancestral tablets. As Shi Yilong has revealed
through his investigations, these two deities were a male descent heir and a daughter-
in-law, who had suffered premature death and suicide, respectively. A possible
explanation of this unusual arrangement in terms of place of worship is that their
family status had been well established while they were alive, so that they were
claimed as deities but worshipped like ancestors. An heir and a wife, who had been
recognized as the ancestors in ancestral worship and accepted as members of the
family, should not be rejected from the group of ancestors as other babies or
unmarried daughters generally forgotten by the family. The identities of Mother
Ladies were thus determined by the worshipping families.
The representation of the Mother Ladies is that of an intermediate spiritual
entity positioned within the ghost-ancestor-god continuum of the spiritual world.
Deceased unmarried daughters should not be worshipped in their natal families and
ancestors of different surnames should not be brought into the married women’s

310
marital families, just as Arthur Wolf has noted: “One man’s ancestor is another
man’s ghost.”
514
Nevertheless, the unruly supernatural powers of the Mother Ladies
gave reasons for Quanzhou people to revise the patrilineal principle and incorporate
Mother Ladies into the pantheon of deities and ancestors in each worshipping family.
Married women looked forward to transforming the Mother Ladies’ supernatural
power into a positive force to better care for their families and gave these neglected
kin or friends both a family and spiritual role, lest these spirits wander around and
even generate malicious revenge over the worldly women’s families. Once Mother
Ladies were remembered and worshipped, Chinese people were inclined to see their
deceased family members as deities, and these “deities” started to have obligations
towards the family. Such heteroprax practice of worshippign Mother Ladies also
gradually transformed into adopted or correct proacted, when Mother Ladies
protected the worshipping families just as their ancestors had done.

C. Family Relations Represented by the Mother Ladies
Sworn sisterhood was the basis of the fictive family relations established
between the Mother Ladies and female worshippers. Outside their marital families,
many Quanzhou women forged another identity based on the emotional bonds of
their sibling ties or sworn sisterhood created in their natal residence. The Quanzhou
case was not exceptional. Studies of women’s sisterhood in the practices of
extended natal residences in Shunde of Guangdong province from the
Republican to modern periods prove that when the sisters or friends were still alive,

514
Arthur Wolf, “Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors,”146.

311
they often offered emotional and financial support to each other.
515
Similarly, such
sisterly feelings also existed among Qing courtesans and Republican cotton-mill
workers.
516
The relationship between the Mother Ladies and the female worshippers,
however, was an extension of sisterhood beyond the mundane world.
The emotional bonds and supernatural efficacy (ling ) which were
developed in the sisterhood between Mother Ladies and female worshippers could
endow married women with the agency to gain authority in their marital families in
areas such as property rights and the management of household finance. First of all,
anthropologist Sara Friedman’s contemporary fieldwork and interviews illustrate
how married women before and after 1949 incorporated their sisterly feelings into
patrilineal kinship and community. Before entering into marriages, ordinanry Hui’an
women farmed in the field, paddled on the street, and worked in construction sites.
The sworn sisterhoods thus formed among different groups of unmarried women.
These women’s networks constituted and were recognized by local society. After
entering int marriage, Hui’an women kept going to residences of sworn sister to help
with household chores and offer financial support. In other words, the living women
built a new, non-kin and female community beyond any single boundaries of
patilineal kin groups, natal ties, and even villages. This kind of female communities
thus granted each female participant a new membership and identity. Yet they also
showed its departure from the patrilineality as well as the tolerance of the latter.

515
Sankar; “Spinster Sisterhoods;” Stockard, Daughters of the Canton Delta; Topley, “Marriage
Resistance;” Rubie Watson, “Girls’ Houses.”
516
Mann, Precious Records, 139-40; Emily Honig, “Burning Incense, Pledging Sisterhood:
Communities of Women Workers in the Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919-1949,” Signs: Journal of
Women in Culture and Society 10.4 (1985): 700-14.

312
When one sworn sister died, it was not unusual for one or several sworn sisters to
worship the deceased and continue relying on her support by claiming that the
spirit’s supernatural efficacy had crossed the boundaries of the surnames as well as
of the living and the dead to care for the nuclear families of the living sisters.
517
In
other words, married women believed that worshipping the spirits of their deceased
(sworn) sisters or Mother Ladies would strengthen their reproductive capability in
child bearing, highlight their ultimate fidelity to the marital family, and thereby
reaffirm their family status.
Second, the supernatural efficacy of the Mother Ladies could give married
women bargaining power and a higher family status in marital families just as a
property contract (as shown in Chapter 3) that allowed rich married women to bring
the ancestral tablets of their natal ancestors into their marital families to worship.
This could occur because “property makes unwelcome visitors honored guests.”
518

A female worshipper could communicate better with the Mother Ladies and thus
obtain more protection over her nuclear family than other family members could.
One modern anthropologist observes that although Hui’an women were usually hard-
working and diligent in doing all kinds of household chores and even construction
work, a female shaman obtained higher family status because of her income received
through answering questions and prayers to other villagers. In addition, her mother-
in-law took over the cooking chores whenever she was resting. When she was
possessed by a Mother Lady, her parents-in-law even kneeled down in front of

517
Friedman, Intimate Politics, 136-67, and particularly 152-65.
518
Arthur Wolf, “Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors,” 153.

313
her.
519
Because the emotional bonds between the living and the dead were perceived
to be so strong and because Quanzhou people were in awe of the power of the
Mother Ladies, they basically believed that only women could be the worshippers
and shamans who communicated with the Mother Ladies.
Third, Quanzhou women had more power to manage household finances and
direct community affairs in the name of the Mother Ladies and shamans. Late Qing
scholar Wu Zheng criticized the pervasive devotion to similar shamanistic beliefs
and argued that it would drain away the family property.
520
His words nevertheless
manifest a correlation between married women’s dedication to shamanistic beliefs
and financial authority. Modern anthropological research, as I have shown earlier,
also proved that religious awe among Quanzhou people could not only reverse the
dynamics and generational order within a family but also command the whole village
or community to execute the will of the Mother Ladies.
In sum, the worship of Mother Ladies has been a women-centered domestic
worship from the Republican period onward, which was based on the married
women’s family and friendship circles. At first glance, such worship practices seem
to be an aberration and subversion of the patrilineal principles of the Confucian
family ethical system and the yin-yang cosmological order because the worshipped
spirits were deceased women who had suffered unnatural or premature deaths and
had no place in the ancestral groups of any family. In reality, incorporating the
Mother Ladies into the domestic worship did not challenge the core value of this
orthodoxy because worshippers redirected the original yin nature of the Mother

519
Chen Yijun, “Xing, quanli, jingshenbing,” 19.
520
Wu Zheng, Quansu jici pian.

314
Ladies as potentially malicious ghosts to positive forces to protect women and
children, that is, to continue family lines. Furthermore, the Mother Ladies were
usually relegated to worship in bedrooms and only by women, thus reflecting their
feminine and yin nature. Yet female worshippers, the worldly representatives of
Mother Ladies, were content with this secondary place and worship arrangement.
Lastly, although Quanzhou worshippers claimed the Mother Ladies as deities, they
were not seen as real goddesses unless their efficacy and fame had spread beyond the
individual family, thereby resulting in the formation of intrafamilial and intra-village
rituals, and obtaining public recognition. Such examples are not rare and will be best
demonstrated in the following section—the cult of Lady Su.

II. The Worship of Female Deities (furen ): the Case of Lady Su
The cult of Lady Su was originally a lineage-based worship which
was similar to the worship of the Mother Ladies, but it received imperial recognition
and gradually extended beyond kinship boundaries to expand to a larger and viable
cult community. Lady Su, named Su Liuniang and addressed by the local
people as the Maiden Aunt (furen gu ) or Aunt (a-gu ), is one of the two
significant local female deities in Quanzhou from imperial times who still enjoys a
lot of incense offerings even today.
521
This cult was recognized in The Qianlong

521
The Temple of Lady Su is listed in the section of “Buddhist and Daoist Temples” of The Qianlong
Edition of the Quanzhou Prefecture Gazetteer. A detailed anecdote regarding Lady Su is recorded in
the section “Buddhists and Daoists.” The Daoguang Edition of the Jinjiang County Gazetteer also
has records of Lady Su and this temple, but they are both verbatim copies of the Gazetteer of
Quanzhou Prefecture. See QQFZ, juan 16, 17: a, and juan 65:46b, 47a, b. The other one is the cult
of Lady Wan (Wan xiangu ) of the Tang dynasty, and the temple to worship her was the

315
Edition of Quanzhou Prefecture Gazetteer (QQFZ) and she was revered under the
official title of the “Lady Who Protects the State and the Living” (Huguo weisheng
furen ) or the “Lady Who Spreads Sagehood and Exalts Bliss”
(Yansheng chongfu furen ).
522
The Mother Temple was named the
Temple of the Lady (Su) of Mt. Dui (Duishan furen miao ), and was
located in Changchun Village in the Thirty-third Sector (du ) of Jinjiang
County of the imperial Quanzhou Prefecture (around 7 miles southwest of modern
Quanzhou City). This temple, according to the temple inscription and the local
gazetteers, experienced several periods of decay and renovation. It was originally a
small shrine erected by the village people in front of Lady Su’s tomb, and then
expanded to become a temple of the Ming government and was then renovated by
the local people several times during the Qing and the 20
th
century.
523
When the
Quanzhou people started their massive emigration to Southeast Asia after the mid-
18
th
century, particularly in the late 19
th
and early 20
th
centuries, this local cult was
accordingly spread to overseas countries, such as the Philippines. Today, the number
of the branch temples is over fifty. From time to time, the cult communities of the
branch temples have organized pilgrimages to the Mother Temple on Lady Su’s

Temple of the Immortal Consort Wan (Wan Xianfei miao ) or the Temple of the Mother
Wan (Wanshima gong ), a tutelary one right outside the city wall (now tore down) of the
imperial Quanzhou city. The records of the temple and her anecdotes are preserved in the two
sections of the Gazetteer of Quanzhou Prefecture of Qianlong edition—“Buddhist and Daoist
Temples” (tan miao si guan ) and “Buddhists and Daoists” (fangwai ). See QQFZ, juan
16:13b, and juan 65:46a.
522
QQFZ juan 16, 17: a, and juan 65: 46b, 47a, b.
523
The modern Quanzhou government recognized this temple as a city-level cultural heritage site in
1998, and put it under the protection of the municipal government as well as listing the temple in the
2000 Manual of Quanzhou Cultural Artifacts (Quanzhou wenwu shouce ).

316
birthday, the first day of the twelfth month, to receive the endowment of efficacy
(ling ).
The cult of Lady Su can be seen as a further development of the worship of
the Mother Ladies because both cults worship deceased daughters who suffered
premature deaths and because both were developed in the form of an ancestral
worship. For instance, the Su lineage in Qianpo village of Jinjiang County had
housed the statue of Su Liuniang in the ancestral shrine from imperial times onward
and not until 1992 did the lineage construct for this female deity an independent
temple, the Temple of Protecting the State (Huguo gong ). Local worshippers,
including the Su lineage and all other surnames, hence often felt confused and
deemed the Su ancestral shrine as a tutelary temple.
524
The Su lineage always
dominated the temple committees of the Mother temple and branches, and their
members have been the main donors to the temple fund.
525
This enshrinement
arrangement highlights the nature of this worship as ancestral worship and Lady Su
as a “remembered ghost” in Steven Sangren’s words.
526

The local legend of Lady Su was based on anecdotes in local gazetteers from
the late imperial period in particular promoted Lady Su, noting her contributions to
her lineage. The section on “Female Immortals” (nuxian ) in the section
“Monographs of People” (renwu zhi ) in The Qianlong Edition of the

524
Su Hu et al. ed. Duishan Su Furengugu Chuanqi (Quanzhou, 1995), 11,
186.
525
According to the temple inscription erected in 1941 (which is still extant in the Temple of the Lady
Su of Mt. Dui), only 12 donors, out of all 80 donors for the temple renovation, are not surnamed Su.
See Kenneth Dean and Zheng Zhenman ed., Fujian zongjiao beiming huibian: Quanzhoufu
fence : , vol.2 (Fuzhou: Fujian renming chubanshe, 2003), 565-6.
526
Sangren, History and Magical Power, 141-6.

317
Quanzhou Prefecture Gazetteer (published in 1763 CE, or the 28
th
year of the
Qianlong reign) is the earliest local record of Lady Su’s life story and the
establishment of the temple. The modern Su lineage have also assigned lineage
members to edit several brochures and a book in the 1990s, combining the records in
the Qing local gazetteers and the oral tradition to impart to worshippers Lady Su’s
divine power for universal salvation and thus further spread the practice of
worshipping her. The 1995 book—The Legend of Lady Su of Mt. Dui (Duishan Su
Furengu Chuanqi )—was published by the Qianpo branch temple
as a collection of Lady Su’s legendary stories.
527
Two brochures were also published
in 1998 by the committee of the Mother temple in memory of the completion of the
temple’s renovation.
Steven Sangren has pointed out that “myth is a ‘collective representation,’
evolving over time.” Readers and audiences participate in the social process of
producing representations so that any myth is based on “a common ground of
experience and assumption in Chinese audiences.”
528
Applying Sangren’s argument,
the purpose of my use of the Legends of the Lady Su of Mt. Dui and other modern
sources is to search for a historical but developing ground of religious experience
and cultural assumption in order to present the religious “representations of power”
exerted by and upon the worshippers of Lady Su. I will look at the representations in
local historical records and anecdotes in the oral tradition in the following first two

527
According to the book, the temple committee of the Qianpo branch temple organized a 24-person
task force to collect Lady Su’s legends and edit this book, and 23 of them are surnamed Su. See Su
Hu et al. ed. Duishan Su Furengugu Chuanqi, 10.
528
Sangren, “Myths, Gods, and Family Relations,” in Unruly Gods: Divinity and Society in China, ed.
Meir Shahar and Robert P. Weller (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1996),151-5.

318
subsections in order to present in the third subsection an account of how Quanzhou
people during the Republican period reinterpreted Neo-Confucian family ethics to
highlight certain moral values regarding women, such as chastity and filiality on the
one hand, while giving women legitimate reasons to negotiate their roles and
reproductive functions within their marital families, on the other hand.

A. Local History
The local history regarding Lady Su presents her as anti-marriage but chaste.
Like the Mother Ladies she possesses supernatural powers. Lady Su or Su Liuniang
is believed to have been born during the first year of the Hongxi reign (1425 CE) of
the Ming dynasty, according to the local gazetteers.
529
A decent and filial daughter
of Su Qineng, Su Liuniang possessed magical power that apparently enabled her to
foretell fortunes precisely. After she reached the age of 16 sui, she “refused to enter
into marriage” (buzi ). When someone tried again to dissuade her from this
decision, she replied, “Mt. Dui may be moved away, [but] my resolution cannot be
moved (Duishan keyi, wozhi buyi , ).” She then predicted her
own death, and bowed to her parents to bid farewell. Although she had never
learned how to read and write, she wrote a poem before her death to foretell that she
would be worshipped for tens of thousands of years in Mt. Zimau (or Mt. Zi
, Mt. Dui ). The poem reads:

529
The following anecdote is based on the entry in The Qianlong Edition of the Quanzhou Prefecture
Gazetteer. See QQFZ, juan 65: 46b, 47a, b.

319
While the moonlight is immersed in the clear autumn aura,
Riding on a crane I swiftly fly here for a daily visit;
If you ask where the spiritual light will go to,
The hill of Mt. Zi will house the incense for tens of thousands of years.”
530

The local gazetteer does not record the details of how she died but presents a
peaceful atmosphere before and about her death.
Yet Su Liuniang’s magical ability did not really appear until her death.
According to the records in local gazetteers, when the funerary procession passed the
foot of Mt. Zimou, the ropes on the coffin were suddenly broken and a thunder storm
came; the procession thus was forced to stop and leave the coffin at the foot of Mt.
Zimou. When the mourners tried to resume the procession the next day, they found
her coffin already covered by earth with the help of ants (yini ) and the tomb was
subsequently constructed. From then on a divine light repeatedly appeared above the
tomb so that local elders installed her statue and established a shrine in front of her
tomb to house the statue. In the thirteenth year of the Zhengtong reign (1448 CE),
Deng Maoqi started a peasant uprising against the Ming government in North
Fujian and soon conquered most of the Fujian area. When he invaded Quanzhou in
1449 CE, the Quanzhou prefect Xiong Shangchu died in the battle. The spirit
of Su Liuniang thus sent her divine soldiers from the sky to land on the battlefield
with banners that proclaimed “Su Liuniang of Mt. Dui” (Duishan Su Liuniang ); such power frustrated Deng’s bandits and they fled. Afterwards, the Ming
army unfurled similar banners written with Su Liuniang’s name on them and finally

530
Ibid, juan 65: 46b.

320
quelled Deng’s uprising. The central government heard of this anecdote and decreed
that Lady Su was the “Lady Who Protects the State and the Living” and granted her
the posthumous title “Chaste and Meritorious” (zhenlie ) in 1470 CE.
531
During
the Wanli reign period, the Quanzhou prefect Qiu Zhe renovated the tomb and
temple and sent memorials to ask for another title “Spread Sagehood and Exalt
Bliss.” The worship of Lady Su was therefore officially instituted.
The records in the local gazetteers present Su Liuniang with contradictory
images: She was filial, decent, and illiterate, seemingly conforming to the Ming
saying that “an ignorant woman is a good woman” (nuzi wucai bian shi de ).
532
Nevertheless, she defied the imperial woman’s destiny by rejecting
marriage, which was followed by a premature death. In modern eyes, the death of
Lady Su appears suspicious and looks like a suicide to protest against the repeated

531
According to the Method of Choosing Posthumous Names by the Duke of Zhou (Zhougong zhifa ), Su Liuniang was an unmarried daughter, so her rejecting marriage earned her the character
zhen ( ), denoting her preserving “cleanness and purity” (qingbai shoujie ). Yet it could be
controversial to interpret the character lie ( ) as martyr like as these were mostly chaste women
committing suicide to preserve chastity for their marital families. Lie, as explained in the same book
and used in official posthumous names, means “upholding virtue and honoring occupations, having
merits and keeping people in peace” (bingde zunye, yougong anmin , ). Although
Su Liuniang’s death could be a euphemism of suicide in reality and qualify her to be called a martyr,
it is more appropriate to interpret lie as “meritorious” with regard to her official title and merits
accumulated by protecting Quanzhou in local history. The Method of Choosing Posthumous Names
by the Duke of Zhou was found in the Orthodox Interpretation of the Records of the Historian (Shiji
zhengyi ). According to the legend, the tradition of giving posthumous names to the
deceased can be traced back to the early Zhou dynasty, when the Duke of Zhou selected posthumous
names to highlight the achievements of King “Wen” (meaning civilization) and King “Wu” (military
affairs). Yet in history, it was not until the Tang dynasty that the method of giving posthumous names
was truly instituted by the government. See Zhang Buma , Shifa ji deshi ren biao , reprint (Taipei: Taiwan Shangwu yinshuguan, 1997), 11-59, particularly 25 and 27.
532
Susan Mann argues that this saying was no more a truth by the 18
th
century. See Mann, “‘Fuxue’
(Women’s Learning) by Zhang Xuecheng,” 54. Considering the fact that the record of Lady Su first
appeared in 1763 in The Qianlong edition of the Quanzhou Prefecture Gazetteer, it is in all likelihood
that this depiction was not to discourage women’s education but rather to emphasize Lady commoner
background and create a contrast to her supernatural power.

321
persuasion into marriage. If her death was really a suicide, her acts of resisting
marriage and committing suicide would both be against the core of Confucian family
ethics—filiality. The local gazetteers, however, did not specify the reason of her
resistance to marriage but rather recorded her poem, her magical powers, and
suggested a divine origin to rationalize her aberrant behavior: She was an immortal
visiting the mundane world for a short period, but it was time for her spirit to return
to her domain—Mt. Zi or Mt. Dui, located behind her hometown Changchun, as a
local goddess.
Steven Sangren in discussing his studies of the princess Miaoshan and the
prince Nazha’s legends has argued that the escape from an undesired family and
social roles is inconceivable for people in the Chinese kinship system unless they
become gods.
533
Su Liuniang’s anecdote seems to be yet another confirmation of
this argument. According to the legends, the princess Miaoshan is the third daughter
of King Miaozhuang. She keeps a vegetarian diet and devotes herself to sutra-
recitation and meditation in order to achieve perfect wisdom and thus repay her
parent’s love, so she rejects marriage. After the king finally executes her for not
following his orders and marriage arrangements, her soul recovers her true identity
as Bodhisattva Guanyin and returns to the world to save her father from sickness by
offering her hands and eyes. Her goodness touches the royal family and they all
convert to Buddhism.
534
Similarly, the prince Nazha is a rebellious son challenging
his father’s authority. He kills the son of the dragon-king, and then commits suicide
to save his father from punishment by the Jade Emperor. His spirit asks his mother

533
Steven Sangren, “Myths, Gods, and Family Relations,” 167-8.
534
Glen Dubridge, The Legend of Miaoshan (Revised Version: Oxford University Press, 2004), 25-34.

322
to erect a temple to him in order to have an incense-offering for the resurrection, but
his father destroys the temple and thwarts his request. Consequently, Nazha starts
his patricidal vengeance. The power struggle between father and son ended up with
the prince Nazha’s becoming a god, being restrained by the celestial bureaucracy,
and devoting himself into a campaign against an evil emperor.
535
Su Liuniang’s anti-
marriage behavior and suspicious death were absolutely a threat and challenge to
paternal authority, filiality, and patrilineal principle within Confucian family ethics,
but she transformed herself into a female deity and protected Quanzhou from being
attacked by bandits. Being a female deity, her protective power over her community
thus made up for her defiance.
To be precise, it is not because Su Liuniang became a female deity but rather
the “fact” of her protecting Quanzhou from invading bandits that makes her initial
resistance to marriage a minor offense, and thus her premature death was
remembered by her natal lineage. What qualifies Su Liuniang to be recognized by
the imperial government as a local goddess with official titles and being listed in the
local gazetteers were her filiality to her natal parents and the expansion of this
familial virtue to her bestowal of protective care upon the whole community. Taking
a closer look at the entry in The Qianlong Edition of the Quanzhou Prefecture
Gazetteer, half of the text is about her merits to Quanzhou, and the first title she
received from the Ming government was “the Lady Who Protects the State and the
Living.” The construction and existence of her temple, according to another section
of the Buddhist and Daoist Temples in the same local gazetteer, was because of her

535
Sangren, “Myths, Gods, and Family Relations,” 156-9.

323
defeat of the Deng bandits. In other words, Su Liuniang’s “true” identity as a
goddess was not enough to justify her resistance to marriage and to list her in the
local gazetteer. Su Liuniang’s case helps revise Sangren’s argument. Becoming
gods can not justify the escape from undesired family and social roles in the Chinese
kinship system. Ultimately it is the virtue and contributions to the family and
community that remove the taint of rebellion cast on these unruly gods and
goddesses.

B. The Oral Tradition
Quanzhou people further expanded Su Liuniang’s life story in prefecture
gazetteers to local legends, not only highlighting the old themes of her maritial and
chaste nature in the local gazetteers but also creating anecdotes which presented a
new image of a female deity, who was not only a chaste girl and a warrior, but also a
“virgin mother” caring for her worshippers like a mother figure.
536
In the Legends of
the Lady Su of Mt. Dui, there are forty-one such anecdotes combining local history
and oral tradition.
537
Even though this book was compiled in 1995, local practices

536
Steven Sangren uses the term “virgin mother” to describe the “mother-children” relation between
female deities and worshippers. According to Sangren, both Guanyin and Mazu legends highlight
virginal purity, filial values, and transition to a status very similar to the “Virgin Mother” of Christian
tradition. “The status of the virgin mother in China is not explicitly rationalized and elaborated to the
degree that it is in Christian tradition, but worshippers unquestionably stand in the relation of children
to Guanyin, Mazu and the Eternal Mother; all three are addressed as ma. Indeed, the divinity of
Guanyin and Mazu rest partly on their standing as mothers who have never borne a child.” Female
deities were usually addressed as “Mother” (ma ) in Southern Fujian dialects and whose legends
stress virginal purity, filial values, and transition to a mother-like role to show the worshippers
generosity and compassion. In Chinese popular belief, female deities as “virgin mothers” also
constitute the counterparts of male gods who are seen the paternal and powerful figures. See Sangren,
“Female Gender in Religious Symbols: Kuan Yin, Ma Tsu, and the Eternal Mother,” Signs 9.1 (1983),
13-4; idem, “Myths, Gods, and Family Relations,” 161.
537
The anecdotes are roughly arranged in the order of the dates from the imperial to modern times. In
terms of the dates, thirteen anecdotes are clearly recorded as happening in the Republican period,

324
such as “minor marriage”

and plague termination rituals had been widely practiced in
late imperial and Republican periods, and in the worship of other gods and goddess
such as Lady Linshui, a goddess known to protect women and childbirth.
538
As for
the content, while there are two stories referring to her anti-marriage stance and one
about her learning Daoist skills, all others refer to her shaman-like ability both
during her lifetime and after death to be able to foretell the future, heal people, pray
for rain, protect her worshippers from plague and warfare, and even baby-sit the
children of the village/lineage people. In addition, three anecdotes depict her as a
sworn sister of the Goddess Guanyin to explain why there is always a statue of
Guanyin in any temple enshrining Su Liuniang. Su Liuniang’s universal motherhood
and her image as a close kin to the Su lineage—Maiden Aunt (furen gu ) or
Aunt (a-gu )—appear especially in sixteen anecdotes, in which the Su lineage
members were sheltered by her divine power and care.
The anecdotes regarding her resistance to marriage narrate that her poor
family adopts her out to a Meng family as a little daughter-in-law (tongyangxi ⩛ ). Owing to filiality, Su Liuniang agrees with this arrangement of a minor

seven in the post-1976 era, and others mostly in the imperial period with a few having unclear dates.
538
The practice of “minor marriage” is an alternative marriage form of the “major marriage.” First,
the norm of “major marriage” refers to the traditional practice that “mature” women marry into their
husband’s family, immediately transfers the residence from natal families to marital families after the
wedding, and renew their relationship to their parents as guests/outsiders. In contrast, the norm of
“minor marriage” happens to infant brides, who marry out at very young age and take virilocal
residence, but they are both daughters and married women to their foster parent/parents-in-law. The
change of their identity from daughters to daughters-in-law could be paused for more than ten years
until they reach the time after puberty. See Arthur P. Wolf, and Chieh-shan Huang, Marriage and
Adoption in China, 1845-1945 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1980), 70-93. About the Lady
Linshui, Brigitte Baptandier and Vivienne Lo have a very detailed textual analysis of the nature of this
cult. See Brigitte Baptandier, “The Lady Linshui: How a Woman became a Goddess,” in Unruly Gods:
Divinity and Society in China, ed. Meir Shahar and Robert P. Weller (Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 1996), 105-149; Vivienne Lo, “The Legend of the Lady of Linshui,” Journal of Chinese
Religion 21 (1993): 69-96.

325
marriage in the future to relieve her parents’ worry and dowry burden and work for
the Meng family, but she firmly refuses to spend even one night in her adoptive
family. Even though her foster mother tries to find more chores for her to do in
order to keep her during the nights, her divine power enables her to always call upon
ants and magpies to help her with the chores and thus relieves her from difficulties
and stress. In the end, she repeats to her eldest brother, who was a representative of
patriarchy and her natal family, her determination to resist marriage—“Even if Mt.
Dui is moved away, my resolution cannot be moved”—on the same day she prepares
to “leave the world” or to die.
539

The anecdote about Lady Su being a little daughter-in-law, once again
reveals a stereotyped distaste and various concerns about minor marriage among
Quanzhou women. Being a little daughter-in-law was usually assumed by the
Chinese to be the beginning of a sorrowful married life; she would have a family role
lower than a real daughter or as low as a servant in the new family because she was
being “bought” into the foster family. A little daughter-in-law generally needed to
shoulder a lot of fieldwork and house chores. Her place in the foster family was
ambiguous and her future uncertain. Margery Wolf’s research on minor marriage in
rural Taiwan of the early 20
th
century shows us the complexity of feeling of these
little daughters-in-law where both emotional attachment and grievance toward their
adoptive families were mixed. As for the foster family, adopting a little daughter-in-
law was an economical way of finding a daughter-in-law as it saved a lot on the
bride price while adding an extra human laborer to the household. This arrangement

539
Su Hu, Chuanqi, 40-4, 55-7.

326
also had the advantage of having a dutiful daughter-in-law because a long duration of
“adoption” would reduce the emotional strain between mothers- and daughters-in-
law. The ties between a little daughter-in-law and her natal family, however, were
commonly severed because she moved into the adoptive family as a permanent
resident at a very young age. The transfer of residence easily imprinted on a young
girl’s mind the feeling of being abandoned by natal parents.
540
One woman in
Wolf’s research described her situation in this way: “My foster mother beat me and
beat me, but if I didn’t see her for even a few hours I would cry and run around
looking everywhere for her.”
541
Little daughters-in-law were commonly haunted by
the complex and intertwined feelings of love and fear toward both marital and natal
families. Yet overall, minor marriage left a stain in the name of both marital and
natal family, when people believed that the adoptive mothers would torture the
young daughters-in-law.
Similarly in Quanzhou, where the practice of adopting a little daughter-in-law
was prevalent during the late imperial and Republican periods, the difficulties for a
young daughter-in-law in gaining a family membership in her adoptive family and in
doing the burdensome chores were well known among women and would easily
attract sympathy. Therefore, in the anecdotes about her, the young Su Liuniang
refuses to cut off the ties with her natal family or transfer her residence to her
“adoptive/marital family;” her strong tie with her natal family justifies her resistance
to marriage.

540
Margery Wolf, Women and the Family in Rural Taiwan, 171-90.
541
Ibid, 177.

327
The anecdotes about Lady Su’s “adoption/marriage experience” not only
reflect the tension between a mother-in-law and daughter-in-law or between a foster
mother and a little daughter-in-law, but in fact echo the practice of “extended natal
residence marriage” in Hui’an County, where women delayed their transfer from
natal to marital families for years. First observed by anthropologist Lin Guoxiang as
a Republican practice in 1951 but practiced until the 1980s, Hui’an women returned
to natal families and worked for them only three days after their weddings. In the
following years these reluctant brides had to avoid spending any nights in the marital
families or having any sexual contact with their husbands even if they went to the
marital families to help with the field work. Only after a woman was (forced to
become) pregnant could she move in with her marital family. Local people gave
these reluctant brides the name of “those who owe no debt” (bu qianzai de )
but called the others living in marital families as “those who owe debt” (qianzai de ), both terms suggesting that daughters needed to repay the parental love before
taking a patrilocal residence.
Hui’an women also banded with other women to build a collective identity in
a sisterhood founded on the common predestination of suffering from marriage.
They organized a mutual surveillance mechanism to prevent any member from
physical interaction with her husband. The sworn sisterhood and surveillance system
offered psychological support to members but also created a system whereby they
oppressed themselves at the same time. If one had sexual contact with her husband,
she would be called the “stinky person” (chouren ) and immediately isolated and

328
unaided by the others. The results were that some women remained living at natal
families for more than ten years and could not recognize their husbands on the streets.

542
These Hui’an women thus had no certain family status because they were always
“persons with alien names” to both natal and marital families and had no “stable
female subject position,” in Steven Sangren’s words, because they were outsiders in
both families.
543
Therefore, some committed suicide in groups to flee from the hard
work in both the marital and natal families as well as having unconsummated
marriages. These suicidal women became a main source of many of the Mother
Ladies.
While the entry of Lady Su in the local history narrates her resisting marriage
in general, the oral tradition delicately switches the focus by explaining her marriage
resistance as an emotional attachment to her natal family and a criticism of the minor
marriage which usually deprives a woman of a proper family status and agency as a
wife and a mother. In other words, local legends highlight the injustice of an
atypical marriage based upon young adopted daughters but never intend to question
the necessity of marriage in the course of a woman’s life.
The significance of family and marriage allowed for very little challenge to
familial expectations from women and even female deities in the Chinese kinship
system. The legend of Lady Linshui, another protective warrior-goddess of women
and children in Fujian and other areas of South China, provide a counterpart in
explicating the different concepts of family and marriage implied in the Lady Su

542
Lin Huixiang , Lin Huixiang renleixue lunzhu (Fuzhou: Fujian renmin
chubanshe, 1981), 254-87.
543
Sangren, “Myths, Gods, and Family Relations,” 166-9.

329
legend. Vivienne Lo and Brigitte Baptandier have used Lady Linshui’s legends to
show how religion offered an alternative path for women to replace obligatory
marriages as a given in their lives and to feel comforted. According to the legends,
Lady Linshui is from a good family and receives training in Confucian principles,
other religious classics, and womanly works. Yet she tries to avoid marriage and the
role of motherhood in order to dedicate herself to shamanistic skills and Daoist
rituals, which would invest her with a man-like agency and freedom. She fails in her
attempt to escape these obligations because she is destined to marry a commoner as a
gesture of apology of her divine soul, the Goddess Guanyin. Although Lady Linshui
demonstrates her filiality to her parents by cutting off her flesh to save her parents,
her rejection of marriage is the ultimate and intentional challenge to Confucian
family ethics which relies on married women’s loyalty and effort in continuing the
patrilines. In addition, she dies of a miscarriage partly as a result of her having
refused to learn the midwifery as other lower-status midwifes would have.
544
Her
miscarriage further proves the failure of her reproductive ability. As Vivienne Lo
argues, Lady Linshui’s divine spirit has to learn the arts of midwifery and becomes a
protective goddess to aid women from obstetric problems in order to compensate for
her crime in attempting to subvert the gender arrangement prescribed for her during
her life time.
545

In contrast to Lady Linshui’s legends, Lady Su’s legends do not feature her
as a rebellious personality who challenges the concepts of family and marriage but
rather stress the loyalty she has for her natal family and universal motherhood, both

544
Baptandier, “The Lady Linshui,” 105-49; Vivienne Lo, “The Lady of Linshui,” 69-96.
545
Lo, “The Lady of Linshui,” 83-8.

330
of which help continue the patrilines. In order to search for shamanistic skills, Lady
Su also rejects marriage. She never leaves her birth family and moves into her
adoptive family. She stays with her parents until her death, and solves difficulties
encountered by her siblings and lineage/village members before and after her death.
Her filiality to her parents and the emotional attachment to the natal family provide
her with the precondition to remain lineally connected to the Su lineage.
As I mentioned earlier, sixteen anecdotes in the Legends of the Lady Su in Mt.
Dui are about her protective power sheltering the Su lineage members; she was
generally worshipped in the families and ancestral shrines of the Su lineage at
different localities such as Dongshi and Qianpo; and the majority of the
contemporary temple committee members were surnamed Su.
546
In the 26
th
anecdote,
those who head the Su lineage are also the leading shamans in praying for rain and
communicating with Lady Su to look for her instructions.
547
The local practice in
Dongshi Township, as recorded in the 36
th
anecdote, shows that every year one Su
household can escort the statue of Lady Su back to the house and worship her for a
year after the statue has finished her annual visit to the Mother temple and received
the three-day offering of incense in the ancestral shrine.
548

For worshippers, Lady Su’s motherhood and omnipotent protection of the Su
lineage members were the preconditions for receiving deification as she is depicted
in anecdotes with a special image of a virgin mother in her natal patriline. Valerie

546
These anecdotes which are involved with Lady Su’s special care for the Su lineage members
appear in no. 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 24, 26, 30, 32, 33, 35, 36, 38, 41. See Su Hu, Chuanqi, 88-93,
97-107, 112-8, 122-3, 125-9, 140-3, 149-60, 167-70, 173-6, and 185-8.
547
Ibid, 125-9.
548
Ibid, 167.

331
Hansen has shown how deceased commoners were apotheosized into local deities in
medieval China and these local cults spread and ultimately became regional ones
through commercialization in the Song.
549
Several centuries later, this deification
process was still ongoing in local societies as the cult of Lady Su demonstrats. Local
people deified Lady Su particularly for her divine power and motherhood. Lady
Su’s spirit manifests itself as a teenage baby-sitter in anecdote no. 19, caring for the
children of the Su lineage and her village while the mothers are busy in the paddy
fields and have to leave their children in the Mother Temple or the Great Ancestral
Shrine in Qianpo.
550
In the 38
th
anecdote, Lady Su appears in front of a lineage
member of the Su and comforts him by saying “don’t be scared, my “lineal nephew”
(yisun ). I am Su Liuniang of Mt. Dui and I have come here particularly to
relieve your fatal calamity.”
551
As revealed in the anecdote in which Lady Su
becomes the baby-sitter of the Su lineage, “the Aunt’s virtue, love, and compassion
are really far beyond motherly love.”
552
In the minds of the Su lineage members,
Lady Su not only protects them from natural disaster as well as warfare while also
answering their prayers, but also cares for them in person as a great Aunt, or a virgin
mother.

549
Valerie Hansen, Changing Gods in Medieval China, 1127-1276 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1990).
550
Ibid, 103-7.
551
Ibid, 175.
552
Ibid, 106. The same story is recorded in another brochure published by the Committee of the
Lady’s Temple in Mt. Dui. See Quanhou Duishan Su furengu miao dongshihui ed., Zishan shubei liuyin (Quanzhou, 1998), 58-60.

332
C. From Ancestral Worship to Community Cult
The above legends illustrate the evolution of worship through the cult of
Lady Su as the social process of transformation from ancestral worship, to a
community cult, and then finally to a regional cult. The origin of the worship was
lineage-based and then spread to immigrant communities where the Su members
were around. During the Pacific War, the Japanese army carried out large scale
bombing in Quanzhou and in Southeast Asia. A Chinese returning from overseas
worshipped Lady Su but found one day that the ash in these incense burner was
burning (falu ) as a divine warning. After drawing divination lots to ask for
Lady Su’s instruction, all the family members, employees and neighbors were
evacuated from the area and escaped the bombing that evening. This story about
rescuing overseas Chinese was spread to Southeast Asia, and pilgrimages from the
Philippines, Indonesia, and Singapore to the Mother Temple continue to this day.
553

Many emigrant donors invested in the renovation of the Mother Temple.
554

Perceiving patrilineal as well as patrilocal ideology as “legitimate,” women
could find in the cult of Lady Su alternatives to the expectations of female
contribution to the lineage (and even local communities) to reinterpret the practice of
marriage resistance as chastity. The fact that the cult of Lady Su was transformed
from family-based shamanistic worship to a local cult but conforming to the
patrilineal ideology produces a field of power in which women could negotiate with
the marriage system and the natal patriline with their cultural capital—chastity.

553
Ibid, 92-3.
554
Quanzhou shi Duishan Su furengu miao dongshihui ed., Quanzhou
Duishan furenmiao jinqi jianshe xiangmu luocheng dianli
(Quanzhou, 1998); Quanzhou shi Duishan Su furengu miao dongshihui ed., Zishan (Quanzhou, 1998).

333
While the divine spirit of Lady Su showed her efficacy to the late imperial and
Republican Quanzhou people, her legends represented a protest by women who
showed a common worry over, and criticism of the practice of minor marriage, rather
than the denial of the marriage system in general.
In the name of chastity, the cult of Lady Su and the worship of the Mother
Ladies who were spirits of the deceased daughters of premature death, illustrate that
a daughter, who was supposed to be an outsider and belonged to her marital family,
could find her place in the ancestral shrine and/or family genealogy if she played the
role of a virgin mother in the natal family and community. The chastity cult in the
Ming and Qing dynasties was officially and ideologically redirected to show the
widow’s fidelity to their husbands and their marital families and analogized by
scholars as loyalty to the government.
Even so, contradiction existed between the local practices and state policies
in terms of women’s suicide. Tien Ju-k’ang has illustrated that Confucian scholars’
anxiety encouraged the rise of the chastity cult and the notorious vogue of public
platform suicides (datai ) in Quanzhou throughout the late Ming and Qing
periods.
555
The genealogy of the Cai Lineage in Qinyang also records an Ancestress
Aunt (zugu ) committing suicide to defy an insult by neighbors in the Ming
dynasty. Her soul always responded to the lineage members’ prayers for recovering
from illness and defending against violence so that she was soon (during the Ming
period) worshipped in a temple called the Temple of the Righteousness Martyr

555
T’ien, Male Anxiety and Female Chastity, 48-52.

334
established by her lineage members.
556
Suicidal martyrs were nevertheless
discouraged and even criticized in imperial edicts by Emperor Yongzheng (r. 1723-
1735), although the womanly virtue of filiality in the Qing period was to the marital
family and subsumed into the discourse of “purity” (jie ), as Fangqin Du and Susan
Mann have pointed out.
557
Whereas both the imperial government and the locality
recognized the family as the cornerstone of the polity, local communities saw
chastity not just as an important womanly virtue to continue family lines but rather
as a culturally privileged symbol in the Chinese family system. The chastity referred
to in the local cults focused its meaning on eulogized personal purity and served as a
justifiable reason to give places to the spirits of unmarried daughters in natal families
to receive incense-offerings.
In addition to chastity, Lady Su’s image as a universal virgin mother provides
another strong reason for incorporating an unmarried daughter into her natal patriline
and then becoming transformed into a tutelary goddess recognized by the imperial
government. The motherhood of a virgin mother is an extended virtue of her filiality
and loyalty to her lineage. In the short entry of The Qianlong Edition of the
Quanzhou Prefecture Gazetteer there is no record of her conflict with either her natal
family or the potential marital family. Yet we find in local legends clearer depictions
of how she extended her familial filiality as universal love and compassion for the
community. Her power, responsibility and duty toward the family, the community
and the state are defined and conditioned by her position in this family-state

556
The Genealogy of the Cai Lineage in Qingyang, archived in the Provincial Library of Fuzhou.
557
Du and Mann, “Competing Claims on Womanly Virtue,” 220, 236.

335
continuum. In the Chinese mind, the continuum of family-state is also the
continuum of obligations and power: the more virtue one has, the more power one
has; the higher one’s status is, the more obligations one owes to the family or to the
community around them.
Lady Su, and more importantly the women she represents, have developed
the “dispositions of loyalty to Confucian family ethics”—chastity and filiality—to
obtain their subjectivity and agency by caring for the well-being of their families and
communities. There is a gap between the narratives of local history and oral
tradition about the representations of an unmarried daughter’s power and place in
Confucian family ethics. Lady Su is presented more as a warrior goddess of the
community than a “chaste” daughter in the Quanzhou gazetteers and her merits
accordingly overshadow marriage resistance.
Local legends about Lady Su do mention marriage resistance but avoid
questioning the purpose and the core principles of the Chinese marriage system—
patrilinealty and patriarchy, although they foreground the great fear and worry of
women regarding low status in marriages and transfer of residence. Like Lady
Linshui and Mother Ladies, Lady Su’s life story in local legends represents women
as longing for freedom and agency to escape from the family system. But women
were also rational and perceived the impossibility of a total departure from tradition.
Lady Su transformed herself into the protective goddess of her lineage/village
in order to exchange the incense offering by her natal lineage. Women in the
mundane world also recognized the difficulties of escaping from marriages and
families, and learned to compromise with patrilineal and patriarchal ideology. No

336
women in the anecdotes of Lady Su practiced marriage resistance; they were all
diligent wives, mothers, and daughters-in-law and their fulfilling of their family
duties won them support and respect in the community. Nevertheless, the
compromises I have been describing so far, should not be perceived as absolute
subordination to the symbolic violence of patriarchal ideology. Chapters 2, 3, and 4
have shown that the attempts of women to compromise with Confucian family ethics
also provided the symbolic capital for the exertion of their free will because they
tried to prove their membership in the patrilineal family. In some cases, women
could avoid marriage but still be loyal to their families and earn more support from
the families and communities, as is the case with the vegetarian nuns which the next
section will illustrate.

III. Vegetarian Nuns in and beyond the Chinese Family System
Vegetarian nuns (zaigu or caigu ) and the establishment of
vegetarian houses or convents (zaitang or caitang ) represented the effort of
ordinary women to bridge the gap between Confucian family ethics as well as
Buddhist precepts on the one hand, and their hope for escaping from marriage and
family restraints on the other hand. Widely appearing from the late 19
th
-century in
Quanzhou, but not recognized by Quanzhou society as Buddhists until the 1930s,
vegetarian nuns received this name because they left their families, took vegetarian
meals, and lived in convents under a vow of celibacy, yet they did not receive
tonsure as required by the monastic rules in Buddhist Scripture (Vinaya Pitaka in

337
Sanskrit, ).
558
Preserving their hair was a gesture of filiality and symbolized their
emotional attachment to families because they prevented their bodies, a sacred gift
from their parents, from any damage. Many vegetarian nuns practiced the Five
Precepts (pancasila, in Sanskrit) or the Bodhisattva Precepts
(Bodhisattva-samvara, in Sanskrit) after the orthodox Buddhists in Quanzhou tried to
incorporate them into the religious community, especially in the 1940s.
The Buddhist characteristic of vegetarian convents gradually appeared in
Quanzhou religious society from around the 1930s. Orthodox Buddhist society was
engaged in this interactive social process of incorporating vegetarian nuns into
orthodox Buddhism and encouraging them to identify with ordained nuns in other
regions. In response to the decline of Ming-Qing Buddhism and the conscription of
temple property by the late Qing government, many monks, such as Huiquan
(1874-1942), Taixu 嘃 (1889-1947), Zhuanfeng (1879-1952) and Yuanying
(1878-1953), encouraged the establishment of Buddhist associations and
charitable works, supported Buddhist education, and revised the regulations of
Buddhist institutions.
559
In 1928 Monk Hongyi (1880-1942) noticed the piety
of Quanzhou vegetarian nuns to Bodhisattva or Goddess Guanyin, their self-
sufficient lifestyles, engagement in agriculture and handicrafts, and their valuation of
chastity. He thus recognized vegetarian nuns as the practitioners of Chinese Chan
Buddhism and renamed them “the lay women who practice Buddhist doctrines”

558
In addition to Quanzhou, vegetarian nuns appear mainly in Quanzhou, Xiamen, and Zhangzhou of
Fujian province, as well as in their overseas immigrant societies such as Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia
and the Philippines. See Chen Zhenzhen, “Fanxing qingxin nu,” 63.
559
Wang Rongguo , Fujian fojiao shi (Xiamen: Xiamen daxue chubanshe, 1997),
340-406.

338
(fanxin qingxin nu ), that is, Brahmacarya upsikas in Sanskrit.
560
Then,
in 1948 Monk Xingyuan (1889-1962) held an ordination ceremony to transmit
the Bodhisattva Precepts (for lay women, or upasika ) to vegetarian nuns,
thereby endowing them with more religious legitimacy.
561
By incorporating lay
Buddhists and followers of vegetarian cults into the Buddhist society, the orthodox
Buddhists obtained more support from Quanzhou society, which was first devoted to
vegetarian nuns, and encouraged Quanzhou people to shift their emphasis from the
chastity of vegetarian nuns to their religious piety.
Yet there were still many vegetarian nuns at both Republican and modern
times subjectively identifying themselves as orthodox Buddhists while receiving no
ordination, living in convents but retaining close connections to their families and
neighborhoods by transforming their convents to local religious centers like tutelary
temples to respond to lay people’s wishes and difficulties. Whereas religious
lineages of vegetarian nuns did exist, the relationships between vegetarian nuns were
based on or developed into sibling and mother-daughter bonds. In other words,
vegetarian nuns represented the attempt of women crossing the boundary of family
and entering bigger communities, both religious and social, to accumulate more
religious merit (gongde ) for themselves, their natal families, and their
neighborhoods, which won them freedom and agency.

560
Faqing, “Minnan caigu,” 98.
561
Chen Zhenzhen, “Fanxing qingxin nu,” 63. Of hundreds of laypeople receiving ordination in this
ceremony, almost half of them were vegetarian nuns.

339
A. The Appearance of Vegetarian Nuns
The resolution of vegetarian nuns to enter local monastic orders but retain
their family and community connections had both imperial and religious origins.
First of all, local gazetteers and temple records offer the evidence of Buddhism’s
prevalence in Quanzhou and Southern Fujian, suggesting that there was fertile soil
for the appearance of vegetarian nuns. According to historian Jiang Canteng’s
research of vegetarian cults in Taiwan, vegetarian nuns were either lay Buddhists or
worshippers of vegetarian cults who converted to Buddhism.
562
Another Xiamen
Buddhist nun Faqing uses her interviews with living Quanzhou vegetarian nuns and
develops similar views upon the origins of this practice.
563
In Quanzhou some
wealthy families during late imperial and Republican periods reserved rooms or built
small houses called “refined residences” (jingshe ) for senior mothers, widows,
or unmarried daughters, who were to “keep a vegetarian diet and chant the name of

562
See Jiang Canteng , “Cong zaigu dao biqiuni: Taiwan fojiao nuxing chujia de bainian
cangsang : ,” Lishi yuekan 㬟 105 (1996):
23-32. The discussion of religious lineages of vegetarian cults is beyond the scope of this dissertation.
For further research regarding vegetarian cults or sectarian (Buddhist) cults, Chikusa Masaaki’s study
on Song vegetarian cults argues that sectarian cults could have spread to Quanzhou via sea routes and
through the influence of Manichaeism. See Chikusa Masaaki , “Guanyu ‘chicai shimo’ ,” in Series of Riben xuezhe yanjiu zhongguoshi lunzhu xuanyi , vol. 7, ed. Liu Junwen (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1982), 361-85. Ma Xisha and Han
Bingfang’s, and Tan Songlin’s edited works on Chinese secret societies separately discuss the
lineages and the spread of sectarian cults and point out women’s active participation and leadership in
the cults. See Ma Xisha , and Han Bingfang , Zhongguo minjian congjiao shi (Shanghai: Shanghai renming chubanshe, 1992); Tan Songlin ed., Zhongguo mimi
shehui (Fuzhou: Fujian renming chubanshe, 2002). Jiang Canteng thus builds a bridge
between studies on vegetarian cults and the origins of vegetarian nuns by exploring the development
of Taiwanese vegetarian cults and their three main sects in Fujian and Taiwan—Longhua ,
Jinchuang and Xiantian sects—in order to discuss the involvement of the state in
incorporating vegetarian nuns into Buddhism during the period under Japanese rule. See Jiang
Canteng, “Cong zaigu dao biqiuni,” 23-32; Jiang Canteng and Wang Jianchuan eds., Taiwan
zhaijiao de lishi guancha yu zhanwang: shoujie Taiwan zhaijiao xueshu yantao hui lunwenji㬟 : (Taipei: Xinwenfeng chuban gongsi, 1994).
563
Faqing, “Minnan caigu,” 92-8.

340
Buddha” (chizhai nianfo ). Unmarried daughters demonstrated their
chastity and then honored their families through such religious gestures, which were
called “chaste cultivation” (zhenxiu ). The elders and widows passed down
chores and family duties to their daughters-in-law or other family members and
prayed for their well-being through “clean cultivation” (qingxiu ).
564
It is not
unusual that the owner of such a refined residence eventually transformed the refined
residence into a convent (of either orthodox Buddhism or other sectarian Buddhist
cults) or a large nunnery while inviting in more vegetarian nuns as companions. At
odds with Susan Mann’s describtion of “getting to a nunnery” as an inappropriate
choice for elite women, Sakya Nunnery (Shijia si ), for example, was
originally built by a Ming official, Li Wenjie , in the sixteenth century for his
daughter who vowed to remain chaste for her deceased fiancée.
565
Historical
sources show that women’s entering monastic orders in Quanzhou was a popular
practice as early as the Song and supported by families even if they were not
vegetarian nuns but rather ordained Buddhist nuns.
566
Several entries in The

564
Ibid, 96.
565
Regarding elite women’s religious practices, see Mann, Precious Records, 10, 54. As for the
origin of Sakya Nunnery, it is based on its temple record. Shijia si , Quanzhou Shijia si
gaikuang (Quanzhou, China: n.d.): 1, 38.
566
More entries in The Daoguang Edition of the Jinjiang County Gazetteer and temple records show
that many Republican and modern convents or nunneries were originally established by certain
families or neighborhoods. For example, Chongfu Monastery is recorded as one established
by the Song warlord Chen Hongjin for his daughter who vowed to be a Buddhist nun; Baoqin
Chongshou Monastery was donated by a Lady Zhao in the Song dynasty because her
husband and parents-in-law had been deceased. Zhou Xiuzeng, DJCZ, juan 69, 1654 and 1656. The
latter could be an example of the so-called Gongde Temple , dedicated to worshipping
ancestors but the sources from the gazetteer is not clear. Regarding the transformation of gongde
temple and ancestral hall and the conflict among powerful lineages, the temple, and the state, see
Xiaojun Zhang, “Ancestral Hall and Buddhist Gongde Temple: A Study of Fenglin Ancestral Hall and
Kaiyuan Temple in Fujian Province,” Chinese Sociology and Anthropology 34.3 (2002), pp. 28-48.

341
Daoguang Edition of the Jinjiang County Gazetteer (DJCZ) attest to the prevalence
of Buddhism in Quanzhou and lay Buddhists’ piety. While appreciating the filiality
of a Ming woman, Lady Chen, the entry in the section of “Biographies of Women”
in the gazetteer records that “according to the custom in Quanzhou, after women are
aged, they mostly dispatch the family matters (to others), revere Buddha, and keep a
vegetarian diet.”
567

Second, family genealogies offer first-hand evidence of the existence of
vegetarian nuns and affirm the aforementioned custom about “clean cultivation” in
Quanzhou. In the genealogy of the Jiang family in Fuquan that I mentioned in the
first section of this chapter, the same family member, Jiang Huoyan’s second wife,
Lady Huang (1903-1927), kept a vegetarian diet before her death. As a result the
Jiang family asked for a convent—Shenzhai Convent —to take charge of her
funeral. She obtained a posthumous name—A Lay Woman of Obedience and
Quietness (Shunji shan nuren ). Another three daughters-in-law of the
Jiang family, Lady Zeng Chunshe, Lady Xu Xijuan, and Lady Liu Bijuan all
followed this vegetarian practice. Lady Zeng had kept a vegetarian diet and received
ordination in the Sakya Monastery and honored another vegetarian nun, Zhuang Lin
Gangu崽 , as her religious instructor. She also received a Dharma name of
Yanqin (literarily meaning “serious and diligent”). Both Lady Xu and Lady Liu
received their ordination in Fangyuan Convent and honored the vegetarian

567
DJCZ, juan 67, 1618.

342
nun Zheng Binggu as their religious instructor.
568
In addition, Lady Zheng of the
Xiao family, has kept a vegetarian diet for a long time and converted to Buddhism
before her death, also honoring Zhuang Lin Gangu, the then abbess in Sakya
Nunnery, as her religious teacher.
569
Practice of the vegetarian cult was widespread
inside the Jiang family for generations. Sakya Nunnery was one of the obvious
centers of this vegetarian cult so that Zhuang Lin Gangu was the religious instructor
of elite women from different families. The examples of the vegetarian nuns and the
implied family-religious connections show that late imperial or early Republican
families not only supported women entering the monastic orders but also became the
basis for expanding the monastic orders and human relationships among women.
According to the modern Quanzhou Buddhist leaders Wu Songbo ⏛ and
Chen Zhenzhen , prior to 1949 vegetarian nuns were mainly supported by
natal families and many renovated or new convents were funded by families as
well.
570
Local gentry of the late Qing and early Republican periods also invited

568
See The Genealogy of the Jiang Lineage in Fuquan. The literal translation of shan nuren is a good
woman; but in Buddhist literature, it usually refers to laywomen.
569
The Genealogy of the Xiao Family (Zibing) in Quanzhou , archived in the City
Library of Quanzhou.
570
My interviews with Quanzhou Buddhist leaders and observations provide supporting evidence to
the historical records about vegetarian nuns’ close ties with families and communities. Nevertheless,
I would like to point out that these interviews and observation actually offer representation of the
subjectivity and power of modern Quanzhou Buddhists in defining vegetarian nuns. In addition to
vegetarian nuns, I interviewed Wu Songbo ⏛ , the deputy secretary of the Quanzhou Buddhist
Association, and Chen Zhenzhen , a female Quanzhou Buddhist leader who established and
reestablished in Quanzhou the first and only Buddhist Academy exclusively for vegetarian nuns in
1948 and 1987. Wu Songbo, interview by the author, July 21, July 24, July 30, in 2004, and January
15, May 7, in 2005, Chen Zhenzhen, interview by the author, January 28, April 17, April 26, in 2005.
Chen Zhenzhen in her 80s now, is not a vegetarian nun. She defines herself as a lay Buddhist because
she did not leave her elite family (she lives at her brother’s) owing to their opposition. Yet she takes a
vegetarian diet, observes rigorous Buddhist practice, and retains the celibate lifestyle of a vegetarian
nun. Given that her life is devoted to preserving this tradition, I consider Chen Zhenzhen a
representative of vegetarian nuns in Quanzhou and take her words as a reflection of vegetarian nuns’
subjectivity.

343
vegetarian nuns to move into tutelary temples and tend the incense. These
vegetarian nuns supported themselves with donations, but their chastity and religious
piety were sources of community honor. They were also responsible for temple
maintenance. These tutelary temples became vegetarian convents with tutelary gods
or goddesses worshipped inside.
571
Convents and local communities thus built a
mutually reliant relation in terms of religious practice. Chen Zhenzhen further
stressed that vegetarian nuns, especially in Hui’an, enjoyed the cultural privilege of
“adopting” one niece from their brothers’ family to continue the religious lines.
These were rarely legal adoptions; most nieces still registered in their natal
households. In other cases some daughters followed in their mothers’ footsteps and
entered the vegetarian convents, for it was believed that one family member who
becomes a vegetarian nun will grow “seeds,” that is, may accumulate merits for
family members’ good fortune in their present lives as well as in future
reincarnations.
572

571
Wu Songbo, interview, January 15, 2005.
572
Chen Zhenzhen, interview, April 18, 2005; also see Chen Zhenzhen, “‘Fanxing qingxin nu’” There
are also many examples in my own observation and interviews with modern vegetarian nuns that the
younger generations under the influence of their mothers or aunts went into the monastic order. Luo
Baoping, now 32 years old, became a vegetarian nun at 11 in Gaoshanyan Convent of Hui’an
County. Her mother had been a vegetarian nun before the Cultural Revolution, was forced to leave,
and finally came back with Luo Baoping ten years afterwards. Zongren carried on her aunt’s (father’s
sister) line and became the abbess of Huiren Nunnery , which was renovated with the fund of
her family in Hui’an County. Zongren (an ordained Buddhist nun now but a vegetarian nun by
the end of 1990s in Huiren Nunnery ), interview by the author, April, 17, 2005. Most
vegetarian nuns were forced to leave convents or nunneries and to get married during the Cultural
Revolution; some insisting on celibacy went to factories to support themselves. Yet many of them
returned to convents after the Cultural Revolution. Interviews with Wu Songbo, July 24, 2004 and
January 15, 2005; Chen Qingbaigu (a vegetarian nun in Erlang Qingtong Convent ), interview by the author, January 23, 2005; Chen Zhenzhen, interview, January 28, 2005.

344
B. Chastity Honored by Families and Communities
Whether they had marriage experiences or not, chastity was the most
valuable cultural capital that vegetarian nuns had to win the support from their
families and social as well as religious communities. Both Republican and modern
vegetarian nuns subjectively believed that being a vegetarian nun would allow them
to have a more meaningful life and endow them with high social status.
573
The goals
of the vegetarian nuns were to seek purity and assurance of a favorable reincarnation
through celibacy. Such goals were also clearly reflected when people addressed
them. Out of respect, Quanzhou people, including Buddhist novices and local people,
called unmarried elderly vegetarian nuns “Maidens” (gunian ) and referred to
them as “Clean Maidens” (qinggu ). Others who had marriage experience
before entering convents could only be called “Old Maidens” (laogu ) or
“Maiden-Aunts” (gupo ). Local people’s respect for vegetarian nuns is well
illustrated in the following case that defends the reputation of a vegetarian nun,
Huang Xifan. In 1941 there was a public announcement published in The Quanzhu
Daily by four persons all surnamed Huang to fight against the gossip
concerning Huang Xifan’s pregnancy. These four notice-makers who posted the
notice included the head of the local Security Group (bao ), the Tithing (jia )
head, and another two Huang family members. They stated that Huang Xifan had

573
Chen Zhenzhen, “‘Fanxing qingxin nu,;’” Zhou Minghui , “Yicun yu jiuge: Hui’an
Chongwu de caigu yu caitang — ,” (Master thesis, Taiwan:
Qinghua Univeristy, 1998).

345
suffered an illness which caused her belly to bloat, hence the misunderstanding.
574

Whether this was indeed the case or not, the content of this public announcement
shows that the four Huang family members, including two low-level local
government workers, spoke up for Huang Xifan to defend her chastity. When they
signed up and published this announcement to ensure her virtue to the reading public,
they used their surname as a guarantee for Huang Xifan’s behavior because her
chastity and the family reputation were closely connected and both were at stake.
Family and community relations played a significant part in the lives and
religious lineages of vegetarian nuns, as well as what kind of representation these
religious lineages would receive. The establishment process of some vegetarian
convents or nunneries can offer us a further understanding of the importance of
community relations. Within the modern Quanzhou City six nunneries were
established exclusively by and for vegetarian nuns during the late Qing and
Republican periods in addition to numerous family-like small convents.
575
These six
nunneries were Suyan Nunnery , Jinsu Nunnery , Qinglian Nunnery
, Duolian Nunnery 㛝 , Tonglian Nunnery , and Haiyin Nunnery

574
“Huang Yongyu et al.’s announcement of clarification for the grievance of vegetarian nun Huang
Xifan in Dingbao nunnery 湫湫 ┇ ,” The Quanzhou Daily,
page 2. This public notice also states that Huang Xifan entered this Dingbao Convent in 1936
because of the invitation of the original manager Chen Dajiu. Although Chen Dajiu regretted to share
her power with Huang Xifan and both had arguments all the time, elders of local security group have
mediated them. This part of the announcement, moreover, points out the engagement of both family
and community in convent affairs.
575
There are more nunneries and convents in all coastal counties of the whole Quanzhou area.
Because Quanzhou City was and is the center of the whole area, I selected this limited area as a
representation of other nunneries or convents. Basically, the practices of all vegetarian nunneries in
the Greater Quanzhou area are the same and their religious lineages intersect. In other words, the
religious lineages of vegetarian nuns are family-like and the whole community of vegetarian nuns is a
lineage-like organization while each nunnery or convent is a family. I will come back to this issue
later with more evidence.

346
. Other big nunneries with resident vegetarian nuns, but established much
earlier, included Sakya Nunnery , Chongfu Monastery , and Tongfo
nunnery . As for small convents, the famous Republican ones include Fangde
Convent , Fangyuan Convent , Shanyuan Convent 䶋 , Erlang
Qingtong Convent , and so on. While all big nunneries still exist in
modern China, the family-like small convents are declining.
576
Erlang Qingtong
Convent was and still is a tutelary temple of Renfeng Neighborhood .
According to a temple inscription posted in 2000 and oral history passed down
through its abbesses, this convent was first built in the late Ming period by a
Buddhist nun named Wuzhu , who was devoted to the worship of Bodhisattva
Guanyin. After the tutelary temple of the Erlang God was razed, the local people
asked Wuzhu and her succeeding abbesses to perform incense-offerings to the Erlang
God. The characteristics of the Erlang Qingtong Covent as a tutelary temple have
partly clouded those of vegetarian convents. Yet it is exactly these characteristics of
the tutelary temples, such as donations, incense money and local people’s support,
that prevent the vegetarian nuns from dispersing or transforming themselves as
ordained Buddhist nuns under the regulations of orthodox Buddhist society.

576
There are only monks living in the Fangde Convent for now; Fangyuan Convent was once a
residence built exclusively for unmarried chaste daughters who vowed to worship Guanyin, but now it
is just an ordinary residence; Shanyuan Convent was established by vegetarian nuns with donations
from overseas Chinese in Malaysia but the incumbent abbess Zongqin has become an orthodox
Buddhist nun by receiving tonsure in 2002. Lay Buddhists still gather here every afternoon for their
sutra-recitation. Nevertheless, Shanyuan Convent has already transformed to a Buddhist Convent and
lost any trace of being a vegetarian convent. Wu Songbo, interview, July 21, 2004. Zongqin ,
interview by the author, July 23, 2004.

347
To take Suyan Nunnery as an example, its establishment and expansion was
based on family relations but under the support of the local gentry in memory of the
chastity of the abbesses. According to the temple records, the founder Yang Jiagu was widowed in her 20s and her in-laws could not support her, so she gave up
her two daughters for adoption as little daughters-in-law and retreated to a cave in a
mountain outside Quanzhou city to worship Guanyin. Her chastity and religious
piety attracted the attention and respect of the local people. Both the gentry and the
common people donated money to help her establish Suyan Nunnery. After being
widowed, Yang Jiagu’s daughter, Lin Yinggu , entered the Suyan Nunnery
with her three-year-old daughter Zhang Wenlian . Raised in this religious
setting, Zhang Wenlian vowed to be a vegetarian nun while still a young child. Yang
Jiagu died in 1937 and her daughter Lin Yinggu took over the abbacy but died two
years later; Zhang Wenlian thus carried on this monastic tradition within the family
and obtained the help of another vegetarian nun, her cousin Huang Jigu 湫 , who
is also Yang Jiagu’s granddaughter. Later, Zhang Wenlian and Huang Jigu
successfully established a new branch of the Suyan Nunnery as well as a charitable
clinic in the Philippines in addition to housing tens of vegetarian nuns as well as
offering free medicine and clinics in Quanzhou during the Republican period.
577

Suyan Nunnery was established and expanded by three generations of a
maternal line—Yang Jiagu, Lin Yinggu, Zhang Wenlian and Huang Jigu. The first
and second generations were widows, and the third generation included two

577
Feilubin suyan si , Feilubin suyan si wenlian shizhen suo jinian kan (The Philippines: Suyan si, 1983).

348
unmarried granddaughters who took vows as vegetarian nuns. In fact, on a
proclamation posted outside the convent in 1906, the Jinjiang magistrate claimed that
Suyan Nunnery was established for highlighting women’s chastity. The
proclamation reads:

You (people) should know that the fund-raising for renovating Suyan
Nunnery is for the sake of preserving Yang’s and Lin’s chastity. All
chaste and meritorious women can be allowed to reside there. Willingness
to do charitable work is indeed a local philanthropic act. All nearby
residents in that area must not look for excuses to go into the convent,
make noise or disturbances, or steal materials such as wood, stone and tile.
If anyone purposely disobeys this rule, I will arrest him immediately
without exception and sentence him to the maximum punishment. I will
never be lenient. I hope you will all seriously follow this proclamation
without violation. This is a special notification.
578

This proclamation shows that, in the eyes of local officials and gentries, Suyan
Nunnery was more like a “Widow’s Home” (qingjie tang ). Its purpose of
housing chaste women is closely linked to the local valuation of chastity and kinship,
particularly when the convent founders formed a family tradition of chastity. This
proclamation is also a representation of the Confucian chastity-production system,
showing the power and engagement of state officials and the local gentry’s
conception of vegetarian nuns. The Qing legal codes did forbid people from
establishing convents in private without approval or registration.
579
Nevertheless,
the example of the Suyan Nunnery proves that such unlawful and unorthodox
religious practices had been tolerated and even accepted by state officials because

578
Ibid, 97.
579
“Laws Relating To The Board of Revenue” (Chapter 1), “Households and Services” [Corvee
Labor], Article 77, “Privately Establishing a Buddhist or Taoist Convent and Ordaining Taoist or
Buddhist.” See Jones trans. The Great Qing Code, 105-106; Shen Zhiqi, Daqinglu jizhu, 194-195;
Xue Yunsheng, Duli cunyi, 243-246.

349
vegetarian nuns’ entering convents was interpreted as a gesture to preserve personal
purity which was recognized by Quanzhou society as having broader meanings but
primarily foregrounded a high standard of personal chastity.
Republican vegetarian nuns did not actively seek to be identified as Buddhist
nuns, because they had received a lot of respect from Quanzhou society for their
celibacy and subjectively felt content with this unorthodox Buddhist identity within
the scope of their family or community. A special account in The Record in Memory
of Wenlian Free Clinic and the Philippine Suyan Nunnery proves the reluctance that some vegetarian nuns had in wanting to
transform themselves into orthodox Buddhists. According to Zhang Wenlian’s
biography, Zhang never received a fully valid ordination; after years of managing
Suyan Nunnery, she finally received the Bodhisattva Precepts for a female lay
Buddhist (upasika) in the Philippines from her instructor Monk Xingyuan.
580

C. Vegetarian Convents as Families
These women-only religious families created a buffer zone between
Confucian family ethics and Buddhist precepts; by entering convents, vegetarian
nuns had legitimate reasons to reject marriages but obtained family and community
status and religious as well as social identities. In each vegetarian convent one
inevitably saw the establishment of the “Benevolence-Repaying Hall” (bao’en tang

580
Feilubin suyan si, Feilubin suyan si, 95-96. Each vegetarian nun had two religious instructors—
one monk and one vegetarian nun—if she formally received ordination. The monk granted her the
dharma name and the teaching of the Bodhisattva Precepts while the senior vegetarian nun was the
real teacher and master of the lineage. The monk usually did not get involved in the succession issue
of each convent.

350
) or an altar for worshipping the ancestral tablets of birth parents of abbesses
particularly when the abbesses were chaste unmarried daughters. Filiality has been
elevated in Sinologized Buddhism as the supreme virtue of the cosmological value
system and Buddhists have been eager to chant Buddha’s names in order to repay
their parents’ benevolence from the Song dynasty onward.
581
On the other hand, this
is also the reason why Quanzhou people firmly believed that sending a daughter to a
vegetarian convent would help the family, and the daughter herself, accumulate more
good fortune. In my interviews with many Quanzhou Buddhist leaders and
vegetarian nuns, they all adore the chastity of Chen Zhenzhen, the elderly Quanzhou
Buddhist leader, and her resolution to live the life of a vegetarian nun. Although
Chen Zhenzhen encountered the opposition of her elite family to leave the family for
the sake of her bad health, she has always had the honor of her family, neighborhood,
and Buddhist society.
Entering local monastic orders gave many poor or illiterate vegetarian nuns
the opportunities to become opinion leaders or active social workers in their local
communities. Charitable works by vegetarian convents or nunneries hastened the
speed of Quanzhou communities recognizing and appreciating vegetarian nuns. In
addition to the free clinics offered by Suyan Nunnery, Duolian Nunnery opened a
“Nursing Home for Peasants and Workers” (Nonggong yanglaoyuan ) to
care for disabled people, a handcraft workshop for neighborhood women, and a
school offering education to young vegetarian nuns and neighborhood children. Its

581
Wang Yueqing , Zhongguo fojiao lunli yanjiu (Nanjing: Nanjing daxue
chubanse, 1999), 209-17.

351
founder “Grant Aunt Hongzhi” (1874-1968) also went to the Philippines
to raise funds for renovating the Shunji Bridge south of Quanzhou City. The number
of vegetarian nuns in Duolian Nunnery once reached 60. Maiden Jinlian
renovated Haiyin Nunnery and housed more than forty vegetarian nuns. Maiden
Liancang of Qinglian Nunnery opened a “Nursing Home for Disable
People” (Canji yanglayuan ). The Grand Aunt Zuxiang (Zuxiang guma ) of Jinsu Nunnery established another “Quanzhou Nursing Home for
Women” (Quanzhou furen yanglaoyuan ). Other small convents
also devoted themselves to charitable careers.
582

Through “adoption” or by encouraging more family members into vegetarian
convents, vegetarian nuns continue the religious lines inside convents mainly
through family and women’s networks. The aforementioned examples, such as
Suyan Nunnery, Huiren Nunnery, the Gaoshanyan Convent, have practiced (fictive)
matrilineal succession in Republican and modern China.
583
The temple record of
Qinglian Nunnery of Jinjiang County, however, shows that these kinds of family
successions would sometimes pass the property rights and abbacy down to male
offspring who transformed the convent into a Buddhist monastery. Lai Sugu
582
Chen Zhenzhen, “Fanxing qingxin nu,” 13-4; Cai Chang’an ed., Jinjiang fojiao ziliao
zonglan (Fuzhou: Haichao shying yishu chubanshe, 2003), 26, 30, 184-5.
583
Anthropological works in Chongwu Township of Hui’an County find it very common that nieces
continue the religious lines in vegetarian convents and that several sisters entered the same convents.
See Chen Guoqiang , and Cai Yongzhe , Chongwu Jinjiang cun (Fuzhou:
Fujian jiaoyu chubanshe, 1993), 214. I even find examples in my interviews with modern teenage
vegetarian nuns in Hui’an County that they volunteered to enter the monastic order because they
wanted to strengthern the sisterly feelings with their friends and that such decision required the
support from families. Yang Miaohong and Gong Meihong 漼 , interview by the author,
April 30, May 1, in 2005.

352
made a wish in 1901 to renovate Qinglian Nunnery in order to worship Bodhisattva
Guanyin and formally converted to Buddhism as a Buddhist laywoman (upasika) in
Sakya Nunnery. After the renovation work was completed, she left her family and
entered this nunnery as a vegetarian nun. Her religious piety encouraged another
seven family members to enter the monastic order. Her granddaughter, the Chaste
Maiden Li Liancang, succeeded her to be the abbess in 1945, and her grandson
Monk Hongchuan (1907-1990) started another series of renovations between
1986 and 1987 and became the abbot.
584
These kinds of female to male successions
happened in the monasteries and continued from the late Qing, to the Republican and
post-Republican periods, but they all demonstrate that the religious lines of
vegetarian nuns were embedded in family relations to a certain degree.
To sum up, the appearance and continuation of communities of vegetarian
nuns in Quanzhou were closely related to women both conforming and resisting
Confucian family ethics. Just like the Guangdong spinsters, many Quanzhou women
resisted marriage and devoted themselves to the worship of Guanyin, in order to
search for freedom and leave behind women’s socialized gender or reproductive
obligations. Like the legends of the Princess Miaoshan, these vegetarian nuns were
not marginalized daughters or wives being defined and bearing family obligations in
the Chinese family system, but became “androgynous individuals” with a new
religious identity of vegetarian nuns beyond the field of traditional Chinese families.

584
“The Renovation Record of Qinglian Nunnery, Jinjiang,” 1987. This stone inscription is extant in
the nunnery. Also see Cai Chang’an ed., Jinjiang fojiao, 26-7. The incumbent abbot in 2005 is Monk
Xiangyuan. Nevertheless, he was about to be reappointed to the abbacy of Chengtian Monastery
(Chengtian si ), and he would bring all monks with him. The reaction, I learn from Quanzhou
Buddhists such as Wu Songbo, is that the Qinglian Nunnery will finally restore its tradition as a
nunnery exclusively for vegetarian nuns soon. Wu Songbo, interview by the author, May 6, 2005.

353
This dynamic social process was operated by vegetarian nuns who utilized their
chastity as a form of cultural capital first to prove their loyalty to their marital or
natal families and thus embellish the family reputation; second, to obtain the most
possible support from families and then local communities; and third, to invite in
more family members, build a mother-child relationship between instructors and
disciples, and lead the religious lineages as virgin mothers. By nature, becoming a
vegetarian nun was not intended as a gesture that defied Confucian family ethics in
terms of patriarchy, but rather to highlight both filiality and chastity which were the
core values of Confucian familism in the family-state continuum.
In fact, the practice of vegetarian nuns preserving their hair signifies their
insistence on preserving family ties while adhering to celibacy. Karen Lang argues
that head shaving for Buddhist nuns suggests the “renunciation of family life and
willingness to assume a new orientation,” and “the act of shaving the head once a
month … symbolizes a renewed commitment to the monastic discipline.”
585
The
hair of the vegetarian nuns, under Lang’s logic, represents their being placed in an
intermediate position between the secular family and the religious spheres.
While vegetarian nuns brought in more outsiders from the Chinese patrilineal
system into convents, such women-only and semi-family institutions were beyond
the direct control of family elders or patriarchal ideology. For women, there were no
socialized gender expectations inside the families they built within the vegetarian
convents and no need to fulfill their reproductive functions. The “mother-daughter”

585
Karen Lang, “Shaven Heads and Loose Hair,” 34-5.

354
bonds or religious lines depended on the transformed filialty developed between
instructors and disciples (or aunts and nieces).
586

Therefore, a strong Confucian familism penetrated Quanzhou monastic
orders and resulted in the vegetarian nuns’ prevalence and high social and family
status. Vegetarian nuns were positioned in a bigger field composed of themselves,
and Buddhist and local administrative communities, all of which were engaged to
form their social and religious identity. In other words, family status and identities
were the building blocks for vegetarian nuns to extend religious lines and then to
(re)produce the vegetarian nuns’ unique power in attending to as well as negotiating
family/community affairs.

IV. Families of Mother Goddesses and Ordinary Women in a Patrilineal Society
Regarding Quanzhou women’s religious activities, just as has been shown in
the previous three sections, the two dominant factors are women’s networks,
particularly represented in sworn sisterhood, and family relations in the mundane
world. Quanzhou women in the Qing and Republican periods were not content with
their secondary or marginalized positions in the worldly families but they actively
conformed to the core virtues of Confucian family ethics—filiality and chastity—to
reinterpret their anti-marriage practices and create sworn sisterhoods crossing the
boundaries of the spiritual and mundane worlds in order to share the supernatural
powers with female deities or elevate their social status. For example, the local cult

586
Regarding the “mother-daughter bonds” inside vegetarian convents, Zhou Minghui’s master thesis
has a detailed discussion based on her anthropological fieldwork in modern Chongwu Township of
Hui’an County. See Zhou Minghui, “Hui’an Chongwu de caigu yu caitang.”

355
of the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara (“one who looks down with compassion”) or the
Goddess Guanyin has been mentioned from time to time in the three previous
sections. Because Pure Land Buddhism had strong appeal to both literate and
ordinary Chinese after the Song dynasty, Guanyin as an assistant of Amitabha
Buddha has become the most famous savior figure in Chinese Buddhism. Guanyin’s
savior role was strengthened by the indigenization and feminization of the male
Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara to the princess of Miaoshan and the Goddess of Mercy.
Of all “her”

manifestations recorded in the Lotus Sutra, the Suranggama Sutra, and
local legends, the White-robed Guanyin and the Child-giving Guanyin actually
appear as the image of a virgin mother or a Mother Goddess to give birth to the
world or to be reborn in the Pure Land.
587
Since then, Guanyin was believed by her
followers to be the guardian of women’s chastity on the one hand and efficacious in
responding to women’s prayers particularly for childbirth and childrearing, on the
other. As shown in the cases of vegetarian nuns and worshippers of the Mother
Ladies, many Quanzhou women received neither Buddhist ordination nor Buddhist
doctrine but were devoted to the cult of the Mother Guanyin (Guanyin ma ).
588

Local legends propagate that Lady Su is Guanyin’s sworn sister. A stone relief of
Guanyin’s image behind Lady Su’s Mother temple has been interpreted as Guanyin
offering companionship to Lady Su (to empower Lady Su’s supernatural efficacy).

587
Chun-Fang Yü, Kuan-yin, 127-30. In addition, because of Guanyin’s feminized image and nature,
I will address Guanyin as a female figure to emphasize the aspect of Mother Goddess in relevant
legends.
588
During my several fieldtrips to Quanzhou, I found that many local people do not know the identity
of Guanyin as a Fertility Goddess, or a bodhisattva; many people worship her only because of her
representation as an efficacious and Mother-like deity. Therefore, there is always confusion among
Quanzhou people about who Guanyin is.

356
Hence, the statue of Guanyin appears at all temples of Lady Su.
589
These practices
and anecdotes explain why Quanzhou women worshipped Guanyin, Mother Ladies,
and Lady Su all together. In either the spiritual or the mundane world, Quanzhou
women endeavored to first redefine or produce a religious but women-only family on
the foundation of the Chinese patriarchal family, and second to empower themselves
by engaging with Chinese families and communities.

A. Conflicting Representations of Goddesses
The relationship formation among goddesses signifies secular women’s
efforts in organizing their marginalized forces to elevate the collective power of both
goddesses and living women, even though the worship of goddesses was private as
well as feminine, and local goddesses were unrecognized or unlisted in the celestial
bureaucracy. This cultural process includes two stages: first, the creation of the
family relations among goddesses; and second, the appropriation of the common
features and virtue of these goddesses to legitimize women’s familial and religious
activities.
First of all, Chun-Fang Yu has illustrated that Guanyin shared many
similarities in her legends with those of other deities; other female deities either
claim a “mother-daughter relationship to Guanyin” or to be an “incarnation of
Guanyin.” These examples include the Eternal Mother (Wusheng laomu ),
the Goddess of the Azure Cloud (Bixia Yuanjun ), among others.
590
In

589
My observation; and Su Hu, Chuanqi, 1995.
590
Chun-Fang Yü, “Guanyin: The Chinese Transformation of Avalokiteshvara,” in Latter Days of the

357
Quanzhou people repeated stories like Guanyin granting the birth of the Empress of
Heaven (Mazu ).
591
Followers of Lady Linshui believed that this goddess is a
reincarnation of one drop of Bodhisattva Guanyin’s blood.
592
Therefore, not only
was Guanyin always worshipped in the same tutelary temple of other goddesses, but
also the legends of these tutelary goddesses show that they “recruited” more multi-
leveled female deities, usually called Ladies (furen ), in temples and followed
the principle of the division of labor to protect their worshippers.
593

These popular beliefs, including the legend about the sisterly feelings
between Guanyin and Lady Su, reflect a representation of local women’s creation of
an imagined family for the female deities and for the women themselves. The
concept of family is so powerfully imprinted in women’s minds that Quanzhou
women conceptually applied the “mother-daughter relationship” or sisterhood to
present this spiritual family, which was led by Guanyin and followed by other female
deities to share Guanyin’s divine power. In addition, vegetarian nuns appeared as
worldly virgin mothers to their disciples and the local people. As for the worship of
Mother Ladies, modern worshippers are inclined to create imaginary families with
husbands and sons for their deceased (sworn) sisters, yet this imitation of the worldly
family did not appear during the Republican period. Nevertheless, most of the
Mother Ladies in the Republican period were the spirits of deceased friends of the

Law: Images of Chinese Buddhism, 850-1850, ed. Marsha Weidner (Honolulu: University of Hawaii
Press, 1994), 176; idem, Kuan-yin, 449-86.
591
Chen Guoqiang ed. Mazu xinyang yu zumiao (Fuzhou: Fujian jiaoyu
chubanshe, 1990), 8-9.
592
Lirenheqiu, Mindu bieji, vol.1, 3rd edition, 131-3.
593
For instance, Lady Linshui has a lot of sworn sisters or female attendants helping her in fighting
and granting conception as wished by women. Ibid, particularly the two chapters 65 and 68, 356-59,
367-70.

358
female worshippers but enjoyed the ancestral-sacrifice-like worship. The women’s
family networks constituted the main pillars in these local cults.
Second, the legends of all goddesses and especially Guanyin, particularly her
manifestation as the princess Miaoshan, reminded women of how to deploy their
cultural capital—filiality and chastity—to negotiate within the Chinese family
system. Discussing the legend of Miaoshan, Chun-fang Yu argues:

By refusing to get married and produce an heir, Miao-shan committed the
most unfilial action imaginable in Confucian society. The breach in
familial and cosmic harmony could only be mended by having herself
reincorporated by her father through the latter’s eating of her flesh. This is
an act of redemption. Her rebellion did not lead to a real separation, but
ended with her ‘reincorporation,’ into the family.
594

Yu argues that the production of the legends of Miaoshan created opportunities for
lay women’s participation in religion.
595
In fact, the Miaoshan’s legend shares its
foundation with legends of most goddesses and offers the prototype of a chaste and
filial mother to others.
596
The motifs of all these legends are filiality and chastity

594
Chun-fang Yü, Kuan-yin, 341.
595
Ibid, 25.
596
Dubridge’s earliest source about Miaoshan’s legend comes from the Xiangshan Monastery
Inscription of 1100, and he argues that the year 1100 is the starting-point in time for the legend to
spread out. See Dubridge, The Legend of Miaoshan, 3-19. On the other hand, the earliest official
record about the Empress of Heaven appears in 1156 when she received the official title of “Divine
Kindly Lady” (Linhui furen ), yet the legends of the Empress of Heaven were spread and
developed mainly in accord with emigration along the Chinese and Southeast Asian coast during the
Ming and Qing times. It is not until the compilation of the 1778 book—the Monograph of the Official
Appointments of the Empress of Heaven (Chifeng Tianhou )—that her legends were
completely recorded in the text and forewords written by various authors. See James Watson,
“Standardizing the Gods: The Promotion of T’ien Hou (the Empress of Heaven) along the South
China Coast, 960-1960,” in Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, eds. David Johnson, Andrew J.
Nathan, and Evelyn S. Rawski (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985), 292-324; Lin
Qingchang , Mazu zhenji (Guangzhou: Zhongshan daxue chubanshe, 2003). As for
the Lady Linshui, the earliest record appears in the 1491 Gazetteer of the Ba Min Area (Ba Min
tongzhi 救 ), and her legends were mainly developed in the Qing works such as the 1669 Spring

359
because the Empress of Heaven (or Mazu), Lady Linshui and Lady Su all rejected
marriage in order to devote themselves to religious activities but looked for
forgiveness from the Chinese family system in their legends. While local people
arranged the statues of Guanyin next to Lady Linshui and Lady Su to highlight their
fictive sisterhood or family ties, the real intention of local people was to use
orthodox deities to legitimzie less reputable or unorthodox goddess, according to
Michael Szonyi,
597
and to incorporate heteroprax religious practices into accepted or
orthoprax practices. Vegetarian nuns were the best worldly manifestation of
Miaoshan or Guanyin in the late Qing and Republican periods. While the late Qing
magistrate stressed in the proclamation of the Suyan Nunnery that its establishment
was to encourage widow chastity and he seemed to neglect the religious nature of
Suyan Nunnery, vegetarian nuns were honored and protected by him and the local
community under the broad definition of chastity and familism. The virtue of
chastity was preserved and underscored by vegetarian nuns. In short, the imitation
and spread of similar legends about the goddesses in Quanzhou not only constituted
a cultural process of producing Mother Goddesses, but also encouraged women to
interchangeably deploy their filiality and chastity to increase their power in the
family system.

and Autumn Annals of the Ten Kingdoms (Shiguo chunqiu ), and the Informal Records of the
Capital of Min (Mindu bieji). See Vivienne Lo, “The Lady of Linshui,” 69-96. Owing to the fact that
the legends of all above goddesses cite Guanyin’s supernatural power and relationships to them as
affirmation of their efficacy, the possibility that Miaoshan’s legend becomes the prototype of others
does exist but it needs more research.
597
Szonyi, “Making Claims about Standardization and Orthopraxy,” 56.

360
B. The Chastity Cult in Republican Quanzhou Society
As Michael Szonyi points out, chastity was a virtue particularly highlighted
in emigrant communities such as Quanzhou.
598
Previous scholarship has presented
the hostility against women in the Chinese family system, which is comprised of
female infanticide and abandonment, domestic violence, and married women’s
tension with their in-laws, particularly when their husbands had emigrated and were
absent, etc.
599
Hui’an women developed the custom of “extended natal residence
marriage,” to avoid interaction with their husbands and remain personally pure or
chaste, because of the local valuation of chastity, the discriminatory practices of
female infanticide, and heavy labor in fields and construction sites.
600
Siumi Maria
Tam also records her Quanzhou informant’s complaint and voice—“Minnan
[Southern Fujian] women’s life is very bitter” (Minnan nuren hao ku de 救 )—as the theme to narrate the “hard-working, no-complaints, family-oriented”

598
Szonyi, “Mothers, Sons and Lovers,” 58-61.
599
Ann Waltner has a historical and more complete discussion of infanticide which discusses the
concerns of dowries and the marriage market in family politics. See Ann Waltner, “Infanticide and
Dowry in Ming and Early Qing China,”in Chinese Views of Childhood, ed. Anne Behnke Kinney
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1995), 193-217. James Lee et al., on the other hand, utilize
statistics of demographic figures to explain the rapid rise of the Qing population. In general, while
dowries became a burden to many families and girls were considered luxuries and could only survive
when their parents were able to support them, thus infanticide happened. James Lee, Cameron
Campbell, and Guofu Tan, “Infanticide and Family Planning in Late Imperial China: The Price and
Population History of Rural Liaoning, 1774-1873,”in Chinese History in Economic Perspective, eds.
Thomas G.. Rawski and Lillian M. Li (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1992), 145-176.
On the other hand, the late imperial and early Republican practices of minor marriages and of
adopting little daughters-in-law resulted from similar concerns and became a representation of
women’s destiny to suffer. See Margery Wolf, Women and the Family in Rural Taiwan, 171-90;
Arthur Wolf and Chieh-shan Huang eds., Marriage and Adoption in China, 1845-1945 (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1980), 82-93, 230-41; Szonyi, “Mothers, Sons and Lovers,” 58-61.
600
Chen Guoqiang, Ye Wencheng, and Wang Feng, Mintai huidong ren, 132-55; Chen Guoqiang,
“How Marriage Customs Differ within and without Chongwu Town, Huian County,” in Urban
Anthropology in China, eds. Greg Guild & Aidan Southall (Studies in Human Society, E. J. Brill,
1993), 381-386; QiaoJian , Chen Guqiang , Zhou Lifang eds., Huidongren yanjiu (Fuzhou: Fujian jiaoyu chubanshe, 1992); Sara Lizbeth Friedman, “Reluctant Brides and
Prosperity’s Daughters: Marriage, Labor, and Cultural Change in Southeastern China’s Hui’an
County” (Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 2000).

361
characteristic of Quanzhou women living under a “chauvinistic” culture.
601
All
demonstrate Quanzhou women’s inferior status in marriage and in local society. Yet
Tam argues that Quanzhou women “reproduced a male-centered culture” because
they responded to this patriarchal culture with more devotion to their families and a
work ethic that supported a patriarchal culture.
602
The emphasis of chastity in
Republican Quanzhou seemed to be the source of oppression inflicted upon women.
The fact that chastity was valued by emigrant communities can be attested to
by still more documents about chaste Fujian women kept in the Second Archives of
Chinese Historical Documents in Nanjing. For instance, Mrs. Liu died in 1912 but
the Hui’an gentry reported her receiving emblems and honors in 1925. According to
the records submitted for her honor, Mrs. Liu was a good manager of her
impoverished marital family and a good companion to her husband in regards to his
moral cultivation. She even supported her widowed daughter-in-law to raise the
grandchildren.
603
Mrs. Zheng was honored in 1927 by the government for her
having preserved her chastity for thirty-six years. She was widowed at 24 sui when
she was three-months pregnant, yet she raised her son and attended to her in-laws to
fulfill her wifely duty. The comment in the end of the document calls her “pure and
meritorious” (jielie ).
604
Both Republican accounts were endorsed and narrated

601
See Tam, “Engendering Minnan Mobility,” 156-7.
602
Ibid, 145-6.
603
“Chen Yangguang’s submission for praising Mrs. Liu nee Wang ,” in
“Relevant Documents of Praise Virtuous Women in Fujian ,” classified
number (quanzong hao ) 1001, juan (an’juan hao ) 05124, June 29, 1914, archived in
the Second Archives of Chinese Historical Documents.
604
“Huang Huanzu’s submission for praising Mrs. Zheng nee Zhuang 湫 ,” in
“Relevant Documents in Praise of Chaste Women in Fujian ,” classified
number (quanzong hao ) 1001, juan (an’juan hao) 5130, archived in the Second Archives of

362
by local gentry with the traditional writing style and moral standard to depict their
virtuous behaviors. Even after the May Fourth intellectuals had criticized and
challenged the Chinese patriarchal culture and then advocated for women’s
emancipation from family oppression, the honor of chastity still mattered so much to
the local community that the Zheng family and the local gentry even wanted to
embellish the family and community’s reputation by highlighting a woman’s chastity
fourteen years after her death. Evidence such as these give us a picture of the moral
atmosphere surrounding both elite and ordinary women and explains the family
burdens and moral requirements placed upon Quanzhou women, and bridedaughters
and vegetarian nuns in particular.
Nevertheless, remaining chaste was also a means to and a form of capital to
help Quanzhou women negotiate from their position of inferior status within the
Chinese family system. Vegetarian nuns were the best examples of women who
were able to empower themselves in a religious family, build fictive family relations
within it, and obtain individual social identities and earn respect which was beyond
the constraints of the “single unit of husband and wife” under the patriarchal
ideology. Research on Buddhist nuns in contemporary Taiwan demonstrates that the
nuns voluntarily enter the monastic order to search for the meaning of their lives and
construct their self-identity within modern Buddhist education and institutions.
605

Although Quanzhou vegetarian nuns in the Republican period did not benefit from
higher education or feminist thought as modern Buddhist nuns do, they had chastity

Chinese Historical Documents.
605
Crane, “Resisting Marriage and Renouncing Womanhood,” 265-284.

363
as their cultural capital. Entering vegetarian convents was an understood and
honored alternative for widows and unmarried daughters to leave their families.

C. Finding a Collective Identity in Spiritual and Living Families
To sum up, the theme of chastity goes through all legends about female
deities and accounts of vegetarian nuns. Divorce and “leaving the family for a
nunnery” (chujia ) led to the gate of another “family.” Quanzhou people
tolerated women’s anti-marriage practices only if it was in the name of chastity. On
the one hand, orthodox Confucians valued chastity to curtail women’s will and
capability to enter into remarriage when they were widowed or build their social
connections beyond the confines of family. On the other hand, ordinary people
deemed chastity the cultural capital owned by illiterate or semi-literate women, like
vegetarian nuns, to obtain support and recognition from local communities.
Chinese familism had its dominant influence in organizing and redirecting
these religious practices. First of all, the local names of female deities in Quanzhou
were representative of the effort that they were creating a family which crossed the
boundaries of marital families, natal ties, communities, and spiritual realms.
Quanzhou people usually added a suffix of “Mother” or “Aunt” to the titles of these
female deities to denote a close and strong kinship relationship. The Chinese titles of
the Mother Ladies are furenma or “Maiden Aunts” (furengu ); they
were also referred to by their worshippers as “Aunty” (guzai ) to show the
intimacy between the worshipped and the worshippers. Lady Su was formally called

364
“Maiden Lady Su” (Su furen gu ) and she was always proudly referred to
by the Su lineage members and followers as “our Aunt” (wo men de a-gu ). The Su lineage members often stressed that “our Aunt is very efficacious.”
Other examples include “Mother Guanyin” (Guanyin ma ), the “Ancestress or
Mother Ancestor” (Mazu ) whose local name is the Empress of Heaven, and
numerous female deities accompanying these goddesses in temples. The suffixes of
Mother and Aunt to the titles of female deities demonstrate the “domestic and
family-based” nature of their worship. In Steven Sangren’s words, these female
deities are “Chinese family-relationship goddesses;” they are the mediators of
disorder and order.
606
Quanzhou women’s expanding female networks challenged
the physical and religious boundaries of the living and the dead. The aforementioned
cults and legends were built on family relationships, such as the emotional bonds
between married women and Mother Ladies, the family relations among vegetarian
nuns, and between Lady Su and the Su lineage, and the so-called sisterhood between
Mother Guanyin and Lady Su.
Second, the blessings of female deities as well as their followers’ devotion to
social work are also the reasons for empowering themselves and their worshippers in
Quanzhou society. Sangren also argues in his studies of Miaoshan that:

[T]he structures of social production of Chinese families—the whole
constellation of gender, generational, and conjugal roles as they develop
and reproduce through time—are the constitutive frame within which
Chinese subjectivities are produced… Miaoshan may reject the roles of

606
Sangren, History and Magical Power, 149-54; and “Myths, Gods, and Family Relations,” 150-1.

365
son and of wife, but the essential, given, transcendental nature of such
roles is not really questioned.
607

Sangren further points out that Miaoshan can only become a goddess in order to
complete her escape and avoid being blamed as an improper person who rejects her
reproductive duty.
608
Fortunately, examples of Quanzhou female deities and their
followers found a loophole for themselves. Although married women neglected the
Chinese patrilineal principle in ancestral worship and prayed to the figurines or
tablets of the Mother Ladies which were brought from outside the marital families,
this worship was supposed to ostensibly protect the worshippers’ families and create
a broader women’s network based on sworn sisterhood at the same time. Local
legends of the Lady Su, moreover, suggest that her death was a gesture of resisting
marriage but her efficacy lay in her repayment of blessing and protection to her
family and community. Vegetarian nuns imitated Guanyin or the princess
Miaoshan’s chaste behavior and became the worldly followers and representatives of
this Goddess to repay their parents’ love and serve the community in convents or
tutelary temples. Because of chastity, a Quanzhou woman can extend her filiality to
express her fidelity to her natal family and to the community by offering religious
and charitable services; a female deity like Lady Su can apply her divine motherhood
to protect her family and community from danger. Appropriating the concepts of
chastity and redefining the parameters of family and community in the family-state
continuum, Quanzhou “family-relationship” goddesses and their followers
empowered the living women to mediate their social roles in the family and

607
Sangren, “Myths, Gods, and Family Relations,” 166-68.
608
Ibid, 167-8.

366
community, but by delicately utilizing the concept of motherhood they avoided the
blame of violating patrilineal principles or escaping from marriages.
The creation of this imagined family for women is a representation of the
cultural capital of chastity and motherhood owned and utilized by Quanzhou women
in negotiating their places in their patriarchal kin groups. It is a cliché that in the
mind of Chinese people all deities constitute a big “Spirit Family” to refer to the
celestial hierarchy. Yet unconsciously, Quanzhou women successfully avoided
directly confronting the Chinese male-centered family system but used the same
patriarchal values—chastity, filiaty, and motherhood, to create for themselves the
imagined family relations among goddesses and the living and find their identities
within them.

367
Conclusion:
Family Matters

The previous chapters in discussing property contracts, public notices, and
religious practices suggest that women during the Qing and Republican periods
chose to retain their family membership and manifest female virtue in the hopes of
converting their moral qualities and social connections into female power in property
management and parental authority within and beyond the parameters of the family.
Daily economic and ritual practices gave Chinese women opportunity and space to
expand their legal rights and wield power in their families (Chapter 1). As seen in
women’s involvement in the long contractual tradition, Quanzhou women used their
legal powers and parental authority in the mechanisms of family and community to
guarantee and maximize the interests of their families (Chapters 2 and 3). Family
was the source of their female identity and power. During the 1930s and 1940s, the
concept of family changed. Although the 1931 Family Law instituted gender
equality and women’s independent property rights, most Quanzhou women adhered
to traditional, moral appeals in dealing with family disputes but nevertheless
confronted their agnates (Chapter 4). These women embraced the new concepts of
conjugal family and companionate marriage, but they reproduced a new patriarchy in
their conjugal or stem families. Even when Quanzhou women left their families and
entered nunneries to become vegetarian nuns, they still relied on traditional family
discourses of chastity and filiality to enhance their status and identity. Both the
vegetarian nuns and the local gentry supporters promoted family virtues such as
chastity and filiality as well as the nuns’ religious piety and their contribution to the

368
local community (Chapter 5). This fact proves that even women who were outside
the parameters of the family needed the preconditions of family-based moral
qualities in order to gain female identity and accrue power within the religious
community and local society. The basis of female power was usually female virtue
(cultural capital) and family and social connections (social capital) in addition to
family property rights (economic capital).

I. Women and Conjugal Units in the Quanzhou Family System
I argue that within their nuclear or stem families, widowed women could
invite witnesses and mediators from natal families and the wider local community
into the family dynamic in order to counterbalance any challenges from agnates in
the other branches.
All the Quanzhou documents and materials I present in this dissertation show
that the most common form of late imperial and Republican Quanzhou families was
the individual “conjugal or stem family,” which had close ties with its joint family or
the wife’s natal families.
609
Even the fictive family created in vegetarian convents
centered on the instructor-disciple relation, which was based on the “mother-
daughter” bond or “aunt-niece” kinship. The ideal of “communal living, common

609
Scholarship on family organization in Southern China usually emphasizes the functions of
lineages and joint families in reclaiming the land, engaging in feuds for local resources, and
participating in overseas emigration. In the Greater Quanzhou area, households also lived close to
each other, compiled genealogies, and had a set of social norms or family rituals basically conforming
to Confucian family ethics. Yet a Chinese scholar Su Liming notes in his recent book The Family
Culture in Quanzhou that the family structure in traditional Quanzhou was that of a “small family
embedded in a large lineage” (da jiazu xiao jiating zhi ). Su Liming does not provide
examples to explain how these conjugal families interacted with others in their lineages; instead, he
uses lineage genealogy to exemplify the collective functions and patriarchal power of lineages. See
Su Liming , Quanzhou jiazu wenhua, 80-4.

369
property” in imperial Confucian family ethics, therefore, was not often practiced in
Quanzhou. Although many Quanzhou households in the same joint family lived
close to each other in a small region or even inside big multiple -courtyard houses,
they did not share the same stove (tongzao䀞 ).
In Quanzhou, male emigration as a family strategy for accumulating family
wealth and reputation further drained males away from the Confucian family system
and broke the “father-son” and “husband-wife” units, which Shiga Shuzo sees as the
two most important family relationships in terms of family responsibilities.
610
As
both Madeline Hsu and Michael Szonyi emphasize, “migration inadvertently
weakened their [male migrants’] authority as heads of households, giving other
family members rights and responsibilities and the power to make important
decisions themselves;”
611
and “migration… could threaten the very institution it was
designed to serve.”
612
The ideal of the “companionate marriage,” particularly in the
Republican urban area, was not easily practiced, either.
Male emigration thus played an important role in the formation of gender
relations and the conjugal-unit-centered family organization in Quanzhou.
According to Shiga Shuzo’s concept of “one unit,” a traditional woman was subject
to the gender hierarchy and male relatives but acted on behalf of her husband in his
absnece. Two Chinese sayings in rural society further note this replacement relation
in gender dynamics—“Do not mention the son when his father is alive; do not

610
Shiga Shuzo, Zhongguo jiazufa yuanli, 104-10.
611
Madeline Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home: Transnationalism and Migration between
the United States and South China, 1882-1943 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), cited
in Szonyi, “Mothers, Sons and Lovers,” 46.
612
Szonyi, “Mothers, Sons and Lovers,” 45.

370
mention the woman when the man is around” (you fu bu yan zi, you nan bu yan nu , ); “a son inherits the property of his father; a wife inherits the
property of her husband” (zi cheng fu ye, fu cheng fu cai , ).
613

The first impact of male emigration on gender relations in Quanzhou was that the
patriline was broken, and the emigrant’s patriarchal authority was taken over by his
wife or agnates. It resulted in confrontation between women and in-laws over family
authority. The second impact of male emigration is that each nuclear/stem family
had to develop its individual property in order to supply the living support of each
unit and the demands from sojourning husbands for overseas investment. In a
reversal of gender hierarchy, a woman could become the placeholder for her husband
after she was widowed or when her absent husband had stayed overseas for years.
Owing to the conflicting interests between women and their in-laws, early household
division, property transactions, and disputes over family property were thus common
as we have seen in the property contracts and public notices.
Most Quanzhou women, then, had economic security as their first and foremost
concern in their nuclear or stem families (discussed in Chapter 4). This concern was
particularly strong when their husbands were dead or had remained abroad for
decades, married native Southeast Asian women (fanfu ), or created the
transnational “divided family” (discussed in Chapters 2, 3).
614
Quanzhou women
had to do agricultural work or became household servants if the remittances from
their husbands or relatives were small or cut off. They were breadwinners creating a

613
Shiga Shuzo, Zhongguo jiazufa yuanli, 110.
614
Ta Chen, Emigrant Communities in South China, 129-30; Szonyi, “Mothers, Sons, and Lovers,” 45.

371
regular income. They also needed to collect funds in order to adopt a son and
continue the family line, thereby ensuring their status and property rights in their
marital families.
Quanzhou women tried to retain their control over the family property and the
younger generation even after family division. Their management could aim to
support themselves or maximize their own interests rather than the interests of the
emigrant husbands or the larger family. On the one hand, widowed women or
women whose husbands were away (“living widows,” huo guafu ) witnessed
the transfer of family property between their sons or with other branches. On the
other hand, many younger widowed women claimed in public notices that they were
forced by in-laws to leave their marital families and give up their property rights.
Younger daughters-in-law argued that they should receive property on behalf of their
sons or adopted sons, in accordance with the Confucian principle of patrilineal
succession. Nevertheless, parents-in-law could eject widowed women from the
household and therefore exclude them from financial support and property rights.
The joint matrimonial property regime (Articles 1016-1030) in the new Family Law
denied a married woman’s individual property rights to any property under her name
if she could not offer evidence of her own financial ability to purchase it after
marriage. Therefore, parents-in-law could further demand shares in property
division after their son died and they could use this chance to deprive a sonless
widowed daughter-in-law of property rights. The accounts of public notices
demonstrate that different generations of women were anxious about economic

372
security and wished to have or retain individual control over the family property, and
that both sides appealed to traditional family values in pursuit of these aims.

II. Family Virtue as Cultural Capital
In an emigrant society like Quanzhou, female virtues, such as filiality,
chastity, and social motherhood, would endow women with moral qualifications to
elevate their family status and increase female power. Although married women’s
economic activities in marital families often received criticism from their husbands
and t their agnates, women, their husbands, and agnates all gradually learned to use
community connections to mediate their possible conflicts of interests (discussed in
Chapters 3 and 4). An individual woman’s virtue usually became the focus
examined and evaluated by all participants in this process of mediation between the
interests of different individual agents.
Female virtue can be seen as the “embodied state of cultural capital” in Pierre
Bourdieu’s words. Recognition of the virtues of chastity, filiality, and motherhood
represented the “embodied state” of cultural capital,
615
that gave women enhanced
status and authority. As Betting Birge shows, beginning in the Song-Yuan period
many widows remained chaste and devoted to childrearing under the protection of
government rewards and the cult of chastity. Their practical reward from the family,
society, and government was the authority to act on behalf of their sons to manage
the property of the marital family, i.e. possesing property rights.
616
Their chastity
and motherhood also increased their parental authority in disposing of family

615
Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” 244.
616
Birge, Women, Property, and Confucian Reaction, particularly chapter 4.

373
property or adopting heirs.
617
Not only could a widowed Quanzhou woman decide
whether to give her consent to her adult son’s property transactions, her widowhood
could bring more social support from the local community in the transaction process
to obtain extra profit. The socio-economic activities of Quanzhou women embody
Bourdieu’s argument, because female virtue constituted a potential capacity, a force,
and the disposition of an individual agent, to increase the opportunity for a woman to
obtain prestige and enhance her position and social recognition in the family and
community.
618

The cultural landscape in Quanzhou enhanced the significance of female
virtue. The state highlighted female loyalty toward their marital families via
awarding “testimonials of merit” (jingbiao ) and “chastity arches” (zhenjie
paifang ). This governmental qualification was actually what Pierre
Bourdieu calls the “institutionalized state of cultural capital” and thereby conferred
its recognition on women’s chastity and filiality.
619
In addition, Quanzhou society
conferred institutional recognition of spiritual status and efficacy (ling ) on female
deities, because these female deities served as the moral exemplars of female virtue.
Quanzhou society also conferred legitimacy on unordained vegetarian nuns like that
of orthodox Buddhist nuns, because they possessed chastity and filiality, and
practiced social motherhood by adopting orphaned girls and building benevolent
institutions such as Widow Homes and Childcare Halls.

617
Birge, “Women and Confucianism from Song to Ming,” 226-30.
618
Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” 241-6.
619
Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” 248.

374
Furthermore, agnates of coastal emigrant communities, as Michael Szonyi
notes, supervised the investment and behavior of married women for their absent
male relatives in order to give solace to male emigrants, who had strong male anxiety
about women’s fidelity and management of wealth in emigrant communities.
620

While Huizhou merchants were away developing businesses, lineage gentry also
promoted the chastity cult and supervised the behavior of women for these itinerant
relatives through constructing female shrines, erecting chastity arches, and compiling
family genealogy and moral handbooks.
621
Similarly, agnates of widowed women in
Quanzhou acted on behalf of their absent relatives to warn against inappropriate
behavior by widowed women and witnessed the transactions of the patrimony. A
returning husband could blame his wife for being “foolish” and “extravagant,” or
“behaving beyond the restraints of propriety,” because she had consumed luxury
foreign goods (yanghuo or fanwu ), had their house remodeled, or even sold
the property to support herself when he was gone (discussed in Chapter 4).
622
A
husband and his agnates expected his wife to be frugal and properly behaved.
Quanzhou women therefore nurtured their female virtue, and expected to
transform these moral qualities into parental authority to guarantee their economic
security through family recognition and broad social connections in local
communities. Nevertheless, Quanzhou men saw the female virtue of their wives as
their cultural asset at home to embellish the family reputation in local communities.

620
Szonyi, “Mothers, Sons and Lovers,” 45-53.
621
Qitao Guo, Ritual Opera and Mercantile Lineage, 167-74.
622
Szonyi, “Mothers, Sons, and Lovers,” 45-56; Lai Baolin , “Jinjiangxian feilubin qiaohuishi
chutan” , Jinjiang wenshi ziliao 2 (June 1982), 15-6.

375
Quanzhou men did not expect the conversion of such female virtue into female
power.
Whereas local communities valued patriarchy and the patrilineal principle
and highlighted these values in the chastity cult, Quanzhou as an emigrant society
provided room for women to negotiate with these principles and to maximize their
interests within the scope of Confucian family ethics. For older generations of
women, the maintenance of family lines took priority over preservation of patrimony
like sacrificial land for ancestral worship, and over their subordination to the other
agnates’ patriarchal power. Widowed women used the strategy of selling family
property in order to collect funds to adopt heirs, whereby they could consolidate their
marital status (Chapter 3). Women revealed through the public notices in the late
Republican period and through their practices of goddess worship and the vegetarian
cult that they wished to leave unhappy marriages or incomplete husband-wife
relationships and sometimes defied the parental authority of their in-laws (Chapters 4
and 5). Yet Quanzhou women always emphasized their womanly virtue or claimed
to conform to Confucian family virtue. They also showed high expectations of
entering into another marriage or entering a monastic order that created a new,
fictive family for these women. Quanzhou women used their recognized female
virtue to create their moral impression and shape favorable public opinion among the
populace. Their purpose was to attain more female power and to explore the
limitation of such power under Confucian family ethics, but in the end they used this
female power to help maintain patriarchy or create a new male-centered culture in
the emigrant Quanzhou community.

376
III. Female Power in Local Moral/Religious Communities
A virtuous woman’s morality could make her the paragon of the local moral
community; in return, the community would give her and her family recognition and
support. This social process shows a process of exchange and interconversion of
cultural capital and social capital. According to the concept of “a single unit of
husband and wife,” the status of a Chinese woman in her natal family was unstable
because she had no part in the patriline. It should be her marital family that offered
her the most significant social capital because her identity and property rights were
tied to her husband and the marital family. Her reputation and privileges hinged on
her membership in this family. However, women could use female virtue as cultural
capital and seek support from local moral/religious communities in order to expand
their social capital and gain broader social recognition and family reputation. The
interconversion between cultural capital and social capital is evidenced by chastity
arches erected in Quanzhou and Huizhou, where individual female chastity not only
could be transformed into community and family fame but also create a sense of an
institutionalized moral/religious community to maintain and transmit the chastity
cult.
623
The worship of Lady Su (discussed in Chapter 5) provides another
Quanzhou example that illustrates how female virtue and the contributions of female
deities were transformed into widespread worship and social recognition on the one
hand, and increased the family reputation and social status of the Su lineage in local
society on the other.

623
Qitao Guo, Ritual Opera and Mercantile Lineage, 167-74; T’ien, Male Anxiety and Female
Chastity.

377
A wife could promote her female virtue to justify her moral grounds within
the family and avoid her in-laws’ economic and moral intervention. While
Confucian family ethics always allowed flexibility in practicing sets of codified
beliefs, a precondition or basic requirement for an ordinary woman to gain her moral
standing in the community was to practice filiality, chastity and motherhood.
Quanzhou women considered it in their best interest to use family identity to develop
broad social connections and affirm their moral qualities. The affirmation of moral
qualities likewise helped create social connections and family prestige. Therefore,
although Quanzhou women were under the constant supervision of their agnates, it is
rare to see examples where Quanzhou agnates could exercise absolute supervisory
power over the women of other branches or conjugal units if these women
conformed to the aforementioned three kinds of female virtue.
At times both widowed women and agnates welcomed mediators and public
opinion in local communities to help negotiate the terms of transactions and resolve
disputes. In the process, these mediators could enhance the fame of the family and
community she belonged to, which is also “doing the face work” (you mianzi or zuo mianz ). Agnates used moral pressure from local communities to urge
women’s conformation to patrilineal principles or their consideration of the
collective interests of the marital family. This applied to the old system when
widowed women were the placeholders of their absent husbands in accordance with
late imperial law. It also applied to the new system after the promulgation of the
new Family Law in 1931, when women started to enjoy individual property rights.
Women also asked for the participation of local gentry, natal families, or the

378
imagined public of newspapers as middlemen or witnesses in disputes or transactions
to affirm their womanly virtue and social relationships. The purpose was to have a
firm ground from which to argue about human feelings (renqing ) and gain
economic power when they confronted their agnates or another party of a contract or
dispute. Each party in this bargaining process was conducting an “undeclared
calculation,” meaning that he or she disguised the play of economic interest but
valued the welfare and reputation he or she could gain through strengthening social
relations. If each party had “good faith” in social relations or was bound by kinship
or social connection with the other, it was easier for the negotiation to reach a win-
win resolution.
624
As I discussed in Chapters 2, 3, and 4, all parties in disputes or
transactions would thus have “face” (you mianzi ), meaning that their
family/social status would be either elevated or re-emphasized.
To cope with the absence of their husbands, many Quanzhou women chose to
strengthen the emotional bonds and economic ties with their children to consolidate
individual nuclear or stem families. They also reinforced their sisterhood with sworn
sisters and blood ties with natal kin to obtain more moral and economic support.
They rarely relied on economic assistance or emotional support from the joint family
or lineage. They adopted sons with different surnames, sold to natal kin the property
of the marital family, worshipped deceased sworn sisters who died unmarried and
had no family identity (the Mother Ladies), and left their own natal or marital
families to form other fictive families in vegetarian convents (both discussed in

624
Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 1990 [1980]), 112-6.

379
Chapter 5). Quanzhou women thus transformed their exploitation under patrilineal
and patriarchal principles into the talisman of their family identity and interest.
Without the strong religious and ethical atmosphere in Quanzhou society, Quanzhou
women would have encountered more difficulties in accumulating their social capital
and converting it into authority in their families and communities as elders or
opinion leaders.
To conclude, no matter how many disputes might have happened in this
process of negotiating with Confucian family ethics, most Quanzhou women chose
firmly to stay within the family system (both patrilineal and fictive) and to maximize
their individual interests within it. Quanzhou women during the Qing and
Republican periods still made a living by finding a husband or entering a fictive
family in a local monastic order. They emphasized their female virtue and the
ultimate duty of continuing the family line, preserving the patrimony, and bringing
spiritual protection to the whole family. This process of negotiation thus presents an
interconversion of their female virtue, family status, property rights, and social
reputation. Pierre Bourdieu argues, “economic and symbolic [social] capital are so
inextricably intertwined.”
625
And we can see the truth of this statement in the
historical fact that as Qing and Republican women in Quanzhou faced historical
change from the late imperial to the Republican period and gained more protection
from the Republican Civil Code, they neverthelesss continued to adhere to family
ethics and act as the protectresses of Confucian patrilineality and patriarchy.

625
Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, 119. Bourdieu suggests that symbolic capital and social capital
basically overlap. According to him, “it goes without saying that social capital is so totally governed
by the logic of knowledge and acknowledgement that it always functions as symbolic capital.” See
Bourdieu, “The Forms of Capital,” note 17, 257.

380
Glossary
“A Brief Account of the Rites of Offering Sacrifices in the Official Family Shrine”
(Jiamiao jixiang li lue)

Academy (xueyuan)

Administrative Office (Lushi si) 抬

Admonitions for Women (Nujie)

Adopted Son of different surnames (minglingzi)

Affinal adoption (waisheng jiantiao) 䤏

Airing a grievance (ming yuan)

Alimony (shanyangfei)

All walks of life (gejie)

Altar of the Soil (she)
Analects (Lunyu)
Ancestress Aunt (zugu)
Analects for Women (Nu Lunyu)
Annotation of the Three Rites (Sanli shuyi)
Arch of an Outstanding Man (qinanzi fang)
Aunt (a-gu)
Auntie (guzai)
Aunt Lady (furengu)
Avoid local bandits and escaped from the conscription (zou tufei, tao zhuangding)
,

381
Baiqi
Ban Gu
Ban Zhao
Baoqin Chongshou Monastery
Barbarian Precint (fanfang)
Barbarian wife (fanfu)
Bed Mother (chuangmu)
Benevolence-Repaying Hall (bao’en tang)
Benevolent Institution (shan tang)
Benevolent Society (shan hui)
Benevolent wisdom (renzhi)
Bitter Sea (kuhai , i.e. prostitution)
Bodhisattva Precepts (Bodhisattva-samvara, in Sanskrit)
Bodily price (shenjia)
Book of Min (Minshu) 救
Book of Rites (Liji)
Branch head of a lineage (fangzhang)
Branch Secretariat (xing zhongshusheng)
“Briefly on the Rites and Sacrifices of the Temple of the First Ancestor” (Shizu ciji li
lue)

“Bringing in more precious younger brothers” (lian zhao gui di)

382
British silver (renyang)
Buddha Guanyin (Guanyin fozu)
Buddhists and Daoists (fangwai)
Burning incense burner (falu)
Cesspool (fenku) ♛
Changchun
Changle
Chanting (nianfo)
Chaste cultivation (zhenxiu)
Chaste Maiden (zhengu)
Chaste and Meritorious (zhenlie)
Chastity (zhen)
chastity arches” (zhenjie paifang)
Chastity and righteousness (jieyi)
Chen Hongmou
Chen Jing’gu
Chen Qingyong
Chen Zhenzhen
Cheng Yi
Chengtian Monastery (Chengtian si)

383
Chiang Kai-shek
Chief of the Township (xiangzhang) 悱
Childcare Hall (yuying tang)
Chongfu Monastery
Chongwu
Citizen Daily (Guoming ribao)
Classics of Filiality (Xiaojing)
Classics of Filiality for Women (Nu Xiaojing)
Classic of Mountains and Seas (Sanhai jing)
Classic of Regions within the Sea: South (hainei nan jing) ℏ
Clean cultivation (qingxiu)
Clean Maiden (qinggu)
Clear discrimination (lian)
Collected Life Stories of Women (Lienu zhuan)
Collection of Criticism against Quanzhou Customs (Quansu jici pian)
Collection of Decisions by Famous Judges to Clarify and Enlighten (Minggong
shupan qingming ji)

Collection of Southern Fujian Contracts and Documents (Minnan qiyue wenshu
zonglu) 救抬

Combined succession (jiantia) 䤏
Commandery (jun)
Common property regime (gongtong caichan zhi) 䓊

384
Communal living, common property (tongju gongcai)
Community (li)
Community Compact (xiangyue) 悱
Compilation of the Rites of Master Zhu (Zhuzi li zuan)
Complete Annotation of the Classic of Filiality (Xiajing quanzhu)
Conditional sale (dian) , (dianmai) , (huomai)
Confucius (kongzi)
Conjugal or small family (xiao jiating)
Consort Qing’an (Qing’an fei)
Conspectus of Penal Cases (Xing’an huilan)
“Consulting with each other” (gongtong xiangyi)
Correct Beginnings: Women’s Poetry of Our August Dynasty (Guochao guixiu
zhengshi ji)

Contract for supplemental payment and irrevocable sale (xitie jinjue maiqi) 䳽 , (maijin duangen bing xitie zaojue qi) 䳽

Copper coin (wen)
“Could not help but” (budeyi)
Cutting-off or final money (jue) 䳽 , (jin) , (zhaotie) , (xitie) , (xijin)

Daughterly virtue (nude)
Dawn News (Chenxi bao)
Deity who is originally yin (yin zhuan shen)

385
Delayed transfer marriage (bu luo fujia)
Deng Maoqi
Descent-line system (zongfa zhidu)
Differentiation [of function] between husband and wife (fufu zhibie)
Discussion in the White Tiger Hall (Baihutong)
“Disgraceful family matters should never be raised to outsiders.” (jiachou buke
waiyang)

District (yu)

Divine Kindly Lady (Linhui furen)
Divine Sister (shenjie)
Division of incense” (fenxiang)
“Do not mention the son when his father is alive; do not mention the woman when
the man is around.” (you fu bu yan zi, you nan bu yan nu) ,

Doing the face work (you mianzi) , (zuo mianz)
Domestic Regulations (Neize) ℏ
Dong Zhongshu
Draft (caoqi)
Drafters or officials of low rank (sheren)
Dragon dollar (longyang)
Dongshi
Dual family system (shuangbian jiating)

386
Duolian Nunnery 㛝
“Each one has his or her freedom of behavior.” (gezi ziyou xingdong)

Earth God (Tudigong)
Eastern Times (Shibao)
Efficacy (ling)
Empress (niangniang)
Empress of Heaven (Mazu) , (Tianhou)
Empress Di (Di niangniang)
Equal division among brothers (xiongdi junfen)
Equality between men and women (nannu pingdeng)
Erlang Qingtong Convent
Established adoption (liji)
Established regulations (dingli)
Established precedents and regulations (dingli guize)
Establishing the Self” (lishen)
Establishing separate household registration and dividing the family property” (bieji
yicai)

Eternal Mother (Wusheng laomu)
Evening Times (Shidai wanbao) 㘂
Evolution of Rites (Liyun)

387
Examining the facts with justice (junjian)
Extended natal residence marriage (changzhu niangjia)
Face (lian) , (mianzi)
Family head (jiazhang)
Family of ritual teachings (lijiao zhi jia)
Familial reputation (jiafeng)
Fangde Convent
Fangyuan Convent
Fascicles (juan)
Favor (en)
Female Exemplars (Guifan)
Female family head in Turfan (danu)
Female Immortals (nuxian)
Fengshan
Feng Youlan
Fields and Houses (tianzhai)
Filial and disinterested (xiaolien)
Filiality (xiao)
Filial deeds (xiao xing)
Five Precepts (pancasila, in Sanskrit)

388
First-Rank Lady (yiping ma)
Flowery World (huajie, i.e. life of prostitution)
“Following the mother’s order” (feng mu ming )
“Following my mother’s and grandmother’s order.” (feng mamuming)
Foreign goods (yanghuo) , or (fanwu)
Four Books for Women (Nu sishu)
Four Womanly Attributes (side)
Fujian Daily (Fujian ribao)
“Fujian is in the sea.” (Min zai hai zhong) 救
Fujian’s Voice Daily (Mingsheng ribao)
Gao Qizuo
Gaoshanyan Convent
General History of Institutions and Critical Examination of Documents and Studies
(Wenxian tongkao)

Ghost marriages (minghun)
God of War (Guandi)
Goddess of the Azure Cloud (Bixia Yuanjun)
Gongde Temple
Good strategy (daji )
Graveyards (mudi) , (fengshui)
Grand Commonality (datong)

389
Grand Aunt Zuxiang (Zuxiang guma)
Grand Instructors (shizu)
Great family (da jiating)
Great Ming Code (Da Ming lu)
Great Ming Commandment (Da Ming huidian)
Great Qing Code (Da Qing lu)
Great Way of Former Heaven (Xiantian dadao)
Green Mountain Temple (Qingshan gong)
Guangzhou
Guanyin
Guanyin ma
Guarantor and scribe (zhong bao daishu ren)
Maiden’s temples (guniang miao)
Guo Zeng Jichun
Gushi County (Gushi xian)
Haiyin Nunnery
He Qiaoyuan
Heel-following husband (jiejiao fu) 儛
Heavenly Principle (tianli)
History of Former Han (Han Shu)

390
Hongchuan
Hongyi
Grant Aunt Hongzhi
Household division document (fenjiadan)
Huainanzi
Hu Shibi
Huang Gan 湫
Huang Jigu 湫
Hui’an County (Hui’an xian)
Hui’an People’s News (Hui’an minbao)
Huiquan
Huiren Nunnery
Huizhou
Human feelings (renqing)
Humanly Way (rendao)
Humanesss (jen)
Humbly asking for (fuqi)
“An ignorant woman is a good woman.” (nuzi wucai bian shi de)
“Inferior or younger family members making use of family property without
authorization” (beiyou sishan yongcai)

Immortal Lady Yin (Yin xiangu) 惆

391
Informal Records of the Capital of Min (Mingdu bieji) 救
Inner (nei) ℏ
Instructions for the Inner Quarters (Neixun) ℏ
Inquiry Announcement (lizhang piwen)
Instruction of family genealogy (puxun)
Interpersonal ethics (renlun)
Irrevocable sale (mai) , (juemai) 䳽 , or (maidun)
“It is up to individual freedom that the man and woman may marry.” (nanhun nujia
geting ziyou)

Jade Emperor (Yudi ) , or (Tiangong)
Jiangsheng News (Jiangsheng bao)
Jianyang
Jinjiang County (Jinjiang xian)
Jin River
Jinjing Township (Jinjing zhen)
Jinmen Island (Jinmen dao)
Jinsu Nunnery
Joint matrimonial property regime (lianhe caichan zhi) 䓊
Keeping the face (liu mianzi)
Keeping a vegetarian diet and chant the name of Buddha (chizhai nianfo)
Lady (furen)

392
Lady Hu (Hu furen)
Lady Linshui (Linshui furen)
Lady Su (Su furengu)
Lady Tiger (Hu furen)
Lady Wan (Wanshi ma) , (Wan xiangu)
Lady Who Protects the State and the Living (Huguo weisheng furen)
Lady Who Spreads Sagehood and Exalts Bliss (Yansheng chongfu furen)

Lady Xiefeng (Xiefeng furen)
Lai Sugu
Large family (da jiating)
Lasciviously wandering in all four directions (sifang langyou)
lay women (upasika in Sanskrit)
Lay woman who practices Buddhist doctrines (fanxin qingxin nu) , or
(Brahmacarya upsikas in Sanskrit)

Learning of Zhu Xi” (Zhuzi xue)
Leaving the (mundane) family (chujia)
Legend of Lady Su of Mt. Dui (Duishan Su Furengu Chuanqi)
Lesser descent lines (xiaozong)
Li Guangpo
Li Guangdi

393
Li Wenjie
Liang Shuming
Licentiate (shengyuan)
Licentious wife (yinfu)
Life energy (qi)
Lin Yinggu
Lineal nephew (yisun)
Literary supplements (fukan)
Little daughter-in-law (tongyangxi) ⩛
Liu An
Liu Xiang
Living widow (huo guafu)
Local Gentry (-she) , (-shi)
Local Gentry (-guan) ,
Longxi
Looking for another decent man [for marriage] to complete her life (miliang ziquan)

Lord of Protecting Lives (Baosheng dadi )
Low-rank deity of a stranger family (waijia shezai)
Loyalty (zhong)
Luoyang River

394
Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn (Chunqiu fanlu)