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Men Built Religion, and Women Made It Superstitious: Gender
and Superstition in Republican China
Elena Valussi
Journal of Chinese Religions, Volume 48, Number 1, May 2020, pp. 87-125
(Article)
Published by Johns Hopkins University Press
For additional information about this article
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/754049
[ This content has been declared free to read by the pubisher during the COVID-19 pandemic. ]MEN BUILT RELIGION, AND
WOMEN MADE IT SUPERSTITIOUS:
GENDER AND SUPERSTITION
IN REPUBLICAN CHINA
Elena Valussi
Loyola University Chicago
Chicago, Illinois, USA
Religion in twentieth-century China was reorganized according to new, modern, and sci-
entific paradigms; in this novel definition, which excluded many communal experiences
deemed superstitious, religion came to be identified more with personal practice and
individual beliefs, understood as self-strengthening and self-improvement, and was to be
one of the responses against Western Imperialism and Japanese occupation. Women had
always been seen as closely involved with religious practices, but at this time they were
identified as intrinsically and powerfully superstitious, and their religiosity was used as
a necessary site of symbolic transformation for the nation. Numerous examples of the
deleterious effect of superstition on women, their children, the family, and society were
described, and modern and scientific education was seen as the antidote to this seemingly
intractable problem.
Keywords: women, gender, religion, superstition, Republican period, China, May Fourth
“男子建了宗教而女子去迷信它,” “Men built religion, and women made it superstitious.”
Xu Dishan 許地山, “宗教底婦女觀”1
A note on terminology: The Oxford English Dictionary defines “superstition” in this way: “Reli-
gious belief or practice considered to be irrational, unfounded, or based on fear or ignorance; excessively
credulous belief in and reverence for the supernatural.” OED Online, December 2019, Oxford University
Press. https://www-oed-com.flagship.luc.edu/view/Entry/194517?redirectedFrom=superstition (accessed
January 10, 2020). This article discusses how women’s religious beliefs and practices were defined in
such a negative manner by writers and intellectuals of the time. While I am aware of the derogatory way
in which the term is used in the sources I discuss, since I use the words “superstition” and “superstitious”
extensively, I have decided to avoid using scare quotes throughout the article, unless they appear in the
original, in order to help with legibility.
1
Xu Dishan 許地山, “Zongjiao di funüguan 宗教底婦女觀,” in Guoxue yu guocui 國學與國粹
(Shanghai: Shangwu yinshuguan, 1947; repr. Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2014), 29.
Journal of Chinese Religions 48, no. 1, 87–125, May 2020
© 2020 Johns Hopkins University Press and the Society for the Study of Chinese Religions88 Elena Valussi
Introduction
Until quite recently, histories of the May Fourth movement (1919) and of the Republican
period (1912–1949) generally did not include women/gender issues. More recent histories
which include a gender perspective do not discuss religion.2 There has been substantial
research on the birth of feminism in China,3 on the rise of a female collective conscious-
ness (nüjie 女界)4 and of the “new woman” (xin nüxing 新女性),5 and discussion of the
methodological hurdles in integrating a gender perspective into the study of the Republican
period.6 However, scholarship about women and modernity does not generally include
the powerful connection between women and religion, and certainly not the connection
between women and superstition.7 When they discuss women and religion, scholars often
discuss Christian educational efforts towards women, or the anti-Christian movement
fueled by anti-Imperialist tendencies.8 At the same time, recent research on Republican-
period religion (and the dichotomy between religion and superstition) generally does not
include discussion of women or of gender. Kang Xiaofei is one of the few scholars who
has discussed this issue at length and highlighted the double blindness that exists between
women’s studies and religious studies.9 Central issues to the May Fourth Movement and
2
See for example Christina K. Gilmartin, Engendering the Chinese Revolution: Radical Women,
Communist Politics, and Mass Movements in the 1920s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995),
and “Gender, Political Culture and Women’s Mobilization in the Chinese Nationalist Revolution,” in
Engendering China: Women Culture and the State, ed. Christina K. Gilmartin, Gail Hershatter, Lisa
Rofel, and Tyrene Whyte (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), 195–225. See also John
Fitzgerald, “Equality, Modernity and Gender in Chinese Nationalism,” in Performing Nation: Gender
Politics, Theatre and the Visual Arts of China and Japan, 1880–1940, ed. Doris Croissant, Catherine
Vance Yeh, and Joshua S. Moscow (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 19–54; Wang Zheng, Women in the Chinese
Enlightenment (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).
3
Tani Barlow, The Question of Women in Chinese Feminism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University
Press, 2004); Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca E. Karl, and Dorothy Ko, eds., The Birth of Chinese Feminism:
Essential Texts in Transnational Theory (New York: Columbia University Press, 2013).
4
The first well known use of this term is in Jin Tianhe’s 金天翮 Nüjie zhong 女界鐘 [The Woman’s
Bell] (Shanghai: Datong Shuju, 1903). This term is discussed in Zhang Yun, “Nationalism and Beyond:
Writings on nüjie and the Emergence of a New Gendered Collective Identity in Modern China,” Nannü
17 (2015): 245–275.
5
Among the various newspapers for women which emerged at this time, an influential one was
Xin nüxing 新女性 (New Woman), published in Shanghai between 1926 and 1929, and intermittently
later. About the emergence of new literary genres written by and featuring “new women,” see Amy D.
Dooling, Women’s Literary Feminism in Twentieth-Century China (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2005), especially chapter 2, “The New Woman’s Women.” See also Jin Feng, The New Woman in Early
Twentieth-Century Chinese Fiction (West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 2004).
6
Mechthild Leutner, “Women, Gender and Mainstream Studies on Republican China: Problems
in Theory and Research,” Jindai Zhongguo funü yanjiu 10 (2002): 117–145.
7
For instance, Wang Zheng, in Women in the Chinese Enlightenment, aims at “engendering” the
May Fourth movement, “using a feminist perspective and viewing women as important and necessary
subjects of historical research” (Wang Zheng, Women, 5–7), and discusses the construction of the “new
woman”; however, no mention at all of women’s religious practices is made.
8
Gilmartin, Engendering, 126.
9
See Xiaofei Kang, “Women and the Religious Question in Modern China,” in Modern Chinese
Religion II: 1850–2015, ed. Vincent Goossaert, Jan Kiely, and John Lagerwey (Leiden: Brill, 2015),MEN BUILT RELIGION, AND WOMEN MADE IT SUPERSTITIOUS 89
to the Republican period in general, like modernity, education, equality, human rights,
the emergence of collective identities, science, democracy, class disparities, the urban/
rural divide, can and should all be gendered. Many of these topics have been incorpo-
rated in discussions of religion in Republican China, and especially in the discussion of
the growing dichotomy between religion and superstition. Religious leaders attempted
to reform their institutions according to the Protestant secular model, and practices that
did not fit into that model were deemed superstitious. Even though in official documents
about this important transition gender is not a prominent element, it emerges powerfully
on the pages of newspapers, magazines, gazetteers, novels. It is in the popular culture
documents that religious practices deemed superstitious are indicated as contemptible and
often connected strongly and deeply with women, for cultural, social, and physiological
reasons. Thus, it is here that we need to pay attention to the discourses on gender and
religion and to the specific connections between the discourses of superstition and gender.
My work indicates that the intersection between the secularist and Westernized ideology
of the May Fourth movement and the attempts at reforming religion can and should all
also be seen from a gender perspective.
The question of gender equality in the Republican religious milieu has been pre-
viously discussed;10 here, the central issue is the dichotomy of religion/superstition, and
how this too can be viewed from a gendered perspective. Scholars who discuss supersti-
tion do not talk about how superstition is often tightly connected with women’s religious
practices, the home, and family practices.11 Why is there this gap? Is it necessary to fill
it? I will try to answer these questions below. I will try to understand how women’s
religious practice is viewed by Republican-era intellectuals and male and female writers.
My contention is that, in the process of secularization and of reconceptualization of reli-
gion, the dichotomy religion/superstition becomes gendered, and that women’s religious
practices and beliefs are increasingly and pervasively labeled superstitious. I will also
discuss how the development of a new female consciousness might encompass or reject
religious practices and beliefs.
The connection between women and superstition is revealed in a number of areas
dear to the reformers. The discourse on education: women need to be educated in order to
shed irrational superstitious beliefs. The quest for modernity: women’s superstitious prac-
tices keep the nation in a state of backwardness. The use of scientific discourses: women’s
491–559; and “Women, Gender and Religion in Modern China, 1900–1950s: An Introduction,” Nannü
19 (2017): 1–27. See also Elena Valussi, “Gender, Religion, and Nationalism in Republican China,” in
Critical Concepts and Methods for the Study of Chinese Religions III: Key Concepts in Practice, ed.
Stefania Travagnin and Paul R. Katz (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), 133–177. The link between gender and
superstition from the point of view of literary studies is addressed in Gal Gvili, “Gender and Superstition
in Modern Chinese Literature,” Religions 10, no. 10 (2019): https://doi.org/10.3390/rel10100588.
10
Valussi, “Gender.”
11
For example, Rebecca Nedostup, Superstitious Regimes: Religion and the Politics of Chinese
Modernity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). Shuk-wah Poon, Negotiating Religion
in Modern China: State and Common People in Guangzhou, 1900–1937 (Hong Kong: The Chinese
University Press, 2011), discusses the transformation of religious festivals central to women’s lives, like
the Double Seven Festival and the Three Primordials (100–102 and 140–141), but does not specifically
address gender issues.90 Elena Valussi
superstitious beliefs are antithetic to scientific advances. The concept of human rights:
it is by pushing the rights of women that we eliminate their dependence on patriarchy,
oppression, false morality, and we advance human rights for all. The elimination of class
disparity: by elevating the situation of women, especially in the countryside, and by foster-
ing their economic independence, women’s superstitious beliefs would naturally cease.12
The reformers are also aiming at a more radical change, transforming women’s
intrinsic natures (xing 性), which are perceived as inherently superstitious, and thus cre-
ating a new woman. For this reason, they not only target women themselves, but also the
spaces they inhabit (the home) and where they congregate (the temple). This is because,
until women are educated and their natures transformed, the spaces where they congregate
eliminated or put to different uses, then even the claim of gender equality between men
and women, which is a fundamental discourse at this point in time, cannot be sustained.
Many of the examples I have researched for this article come from the popular
press, in order to understand how women’s involvement in religion was portrayed in that
arena. I also consulted treatises and pronouncements of well-known intellectuals, in order
to understand how discussions in the popular culture inserted themselves into intellectual
discourses or, vice-versa, how intellectual discourses influenced popular opinions. Below,
I will first set the context of the general intellectual discourse on gender and religion in
Republican China, and of how gender engages with the then-forming dichotomy between
religion and superstition. I will also describe the shifting boundaries of what the term
superstition meant when applied to women’s practices, in different contexts, intellectual
and popular. I will then provide extensive examples of how women’s religious practices
were described (mainly negatively) in the popular press, of which categories of women
were included, and of which spaces were singled out as particularly superstitious. The fact
that the women described in the articles I analyze are often from rural and impoverished
12
I will provide primary sources on these different discourses, and how they connect to superstition,
throughout the paper. As for secondary sources tackling these discourses in general, but not always in
relation to superstition, the discourse on the education of women, initiated by Liang Qichao 梁啟超, has
been tackled in Paul Bailey, Gender and Education in China: Gender Discourses and Women’s Schooling
in the Early Twentieth Century (London and New York: Routledge, 2007); the quest for modernity and
the backwardness of women have been discussed in Gail Hershatter, Women in China’s Long Twentieth
Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), 79–88; the importance of the elimination of
power structures to liberate women is discussed in Peter Zarrow, “He Zhen and Anarcho-Feminism in
China,” Journal of Asian Studies 47, no. 4 (1998): 796–813; the discussion of women’s rights as human
rights is also found in He Yin Zhen’s writings, for example in her 1907–08 series of essays discussing
gender equality (translated and discussed in Liu, Ko, and Karl, The Birth, 53–184). On this, see also
Valussi, “Gender.” Louise Edwards discusses at length issues of women’s rights and the quest for female
suffrage: Louise Edwards, “Chin Sung-Tsen’s A Tocsin for Women: The Dextrous Radicalism and Conser-
vatism in Feminism of the Early Twentieth Century,” Jindai Zhongguo funüshi yanjiu 近代中國婦女史
研究 2 (1994): 117–140, and “Women’s Suffrage in China: Challenging Scholarly Conventions,” Pacific
Historical Review 69, no. 4 (2000): 617–638. The discourse on how superstitious women’s practices are
antithetical to science has not been tackled in secondary sources yet. The discourse on class disparities
and women’s economic dependence on men was discussed more generally by Liang Qichao, and it is
present in many newspaper articles: for example, Jun Mian 君勉, “Zenyang jiuji shixue de funü? Cong
zongjiao xinlishang jiuji shixue de nüzi 怎樣救濟失學的婦女?從宗教心理上救濟失學的女子,” Funü
zazhi 婦女雜誌 8, no. 3 (1922): 24–26, and “Funü jingji 婦女經濟,” Shenbao 申報 16.17045 (3/08/1920).MEN BUILT RELIGION, AND WOMEN MADE IT SUPERSTITIOUS 91
backgrounds might have left them open to easy finger-pointing. Interestingly, several
authors are educated young women, who feel strongly about “educating” and “liberating”
older rural women. The passion emerging from these journal articles, especially those
by young educated women who wish to arouse their gendered collectivity, is palpable.
1. The Intellectual Background:
Gender and Religion in Twentieth-Century China
Women were a predominant presence in religious festivals, both as organizers, economic
supporters, practitioners, and believers, from the late Imperial period onwards. Their
presence was criticized mostly because of the perceived impropriety of women being seen
in public spaces mingling with men. Injunctions were routinely proclaimed, but seemed
not to discourage women’s activities and practices.13 Women were also challenging the
official orthodoxy by organizing in female groups inspired by female religious symbols
like the Bodhisattva Guanyin 觀音 and Wusheng Laomu 無生老母: injunctions against
vegetarian sisterhoods and sisterhoods of weavers were common.14 Women also joined
together in rebel groups like the Red Lanterns, female groups within the White Lotus
rebels, and other secret societies.15 In the Republican period, most of the discourse around
women’s presence and activities in religious spaces is also negative, but it acquires a new
typology: women’s religious activities are labeled superstitious and have to be counter-
acted on those grounds. Superstitious women are dangerous to themselves, to their own
finances, to their families; their practices are antithetical to science and modern educa-
tion.16 Recent scholarly works have highlighted how religion in the twentieth century in
China was reorganized according to new, modern, and scientific paradigms; in this novel
definition, which excluded many communal experiences deemed superstitious, religion
13
Vincent Goossaert, “Irrepressible Female Piety: Late Imperial Bans on Women Visiting Tem-
ples,” Nannü 10, no. 2 (2008): 212–241; Glen Dudbridge, “Women Pilgrims to T’ai Shan: Some Pages
from a Seventeenth-Century Novel,” in Pilgrims and Sacred Sites in China, ed. Susan Naquin and Chün-
fang Yü (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 39–64.
14
See for example Marjorie Topley, “Marriage Resistance in Rural Kwangtung,” in Women in
Chinese Society, ed. Margery Wolf and Roxanne Witke (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975), 67–88;
and Marjorie Topley and James Hayes, “Notes on Some Vegetarian Halls in Hong Kong Belonging to the
Sect of the Hsien-t’ien tao: the Way of Former Heaven,” Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal
Asiatic Society, no. 8 (1968): 135–148.
15
Roxann Prazniak, “Weavers and Sorceresses of Chuansha: The Social Origins of Political
Activism among Rural Chinese Women,” Modern China 12, no. 2 (1986): 209–229. See also Roxann
Prazniak, Of Camel Kings and Other Things: Rural Rebels against Modernity in Late Imperial China
(Boston: Rowman and Littlefield, 1999), especially chapter 4.
16
Dozens of reports in newspapers criticize women for joining temple festivals, and often-time
describe the ill effects of these gatherings. Some examples: “Funü mixin shenquan zhi xiaoguo 婦女迷
信神權之效果” (The results of female superstitious beliefs in the power of Gods), Shenbao 12.13094
(7/19/1909); “Funü zhi mixin keshen 婦女之迷信可哂” (It is possible to sneer at female superstition),
Shuntian shibao 順天時報 4157, (1915): 228; “Funü shaoxiang zhaohuo ji 婦女燒香肇禍記” (A record
of the disaster caused by women burning incense), Shenbao 18.19374 (13/02/1927), all describe the ill
results of female superstition in temples.92 Elena Valussi
came to be identified more with personal practice and individual beliefs, understood as
self-strengthening and self-improvement, and was to be one of the responses against
Western Imperialism and Japanese occupation. Female religiosity was used as a site
of symbolic transformation in twentieth-century China. In “A Women’s Bell,” the late
nineteenth-century male intellectual Jin Tianhe 金天翮 (1874–1947) makes clear that
superstition was a particular problem for women; it grew from their excessive emotional
nature and was to be overcome by education.17 Temples were transformed into schools,
and women were educated in these schools, as a symbol of the real modernization of
China.18 It was also essential for the religious leadership of the time, besieged by calls
for the transformation or total elimination of superstitious activities, and observing the
continuous attack on temple property to advance lay educational activities, to prove that
they wholly embraced the re-education of women into citizens, and at the same time
supported the essential role of women as the pillars of family and society. Supporting this
agenda was important for the very survival of religious communities.19
the zongjiao / mixin dichotomy
In order to understand the way in which the discourse on superstition in China becomes
gendered, it is essential to understand how the dichotomy religion/superstition came to
emerge. Around the world, the colonial encounter meant also the encounter with Protes-
tant Christianity. As Talal Asad notes, communities had little choice but to engage with
it. The question, as he poses it, is: “What kinds of epistemic structures emerged from
the evangelical encounter?”20 In China, Goossaert and Palmer suggest that there was a
“Christian normative model” for religions at this time, and Protestant Christianity was held
as a positive example of what religions could do to advance a society.21 Katz defined the
religion acceptable to the authorities in the Republican period as “Christian inspired reli-
gion -zongjiao- possessing elaborate canons, highly educated and well-trained clergy, and
sophisticated hierarchical structures.” Authorities, at the same time, also did “the utmost
to eliminate religious phenomena belonging to the ‘superstition’ category.”22 Reformers
and intellectuals launched campaigns against religion, considering Buddhism, Daoism,
17
Discussed in Edwards, “Chin Sung-Tsen’s A Tocsin for Women,” 131.
18
An example of this discourse is clearly described in an article by Zhang 璋, where s/he describes
the need to convert all nunneries into schools for women; these school would serve at the same time in
a similar way to nunneries, which, according to him/her, rescued destitute women from a life of poverty
and gave them stability, with the added bonus of educating these women to benefit society and the nation.
It is clear that joining a nunnery for a woman was not seen as an active religious choice, but as a last
resort for “weak women,” eliminating female agency in the process. See Zhang 璋, “Zhengshou nigu’an
gaishe funü jiaoyangyuan 征收尼姑庵改設婦女教養院,” Funü gongming 婦女共鳴 12 (1943): 7–8.
19
For a thorough discussion of Daoist and Buddhist attitudes to gender equality in the twentieth
century, see Valussi, “Gender.”
20
Talal Asad, “Comments on Conversion,” in Conversion to Modernities: The Globalization of
Christianity, ed. Peter van der Veer (New York: Routledge, 1996), 263–273.
21
Vincent Goossaert and David A. Palmer, The Religious Question in Modern China (Chicago:
The University of Chicago Press, 2011), 73–79.
22
Paul R. Katz, “ ‘Superstition’ and Its Discontents: On the Impact of Temple Destruction Cam-
paigns in China, 1898–1948,” in Di sijie guoji hanxue huiyi lunwenji—xinyang, shijian yu wenhua tiaoshiMEN BUILT RELIGION, AND WOMEN MADE IT SUPERSTITIOUS 93
and Confucianism as remnants of an old feudal society. While the rural gentry was gener-
ally also opposed to Christianity, many in the urban elites, who became government and
military officials, were educated in Protestant schools; some of them, most famously Sun
Yat-sen 孫中山 (1866–1925) and Chiang Kai-shek 蔣介石 (1887–1975), converted to
Protestant Christianity. They were the ones who launched the anti-superstition campaigns,
helped develop the separation between zongjiao and mixin, and spur the widespread cat-
egorization and condemnation of practices deemed superstitious.23 Thus, if religion were
to be acceptable, it had to leave behind activities like incense burning, fortune telling,
incantations, temple rituals, and idolatry, all elements that Christian missionaries in China
had also criticized and, importantly for our discussion, all elements closely associated
with female religiosity.
Much has been said about the emerging dichotomy between religion (zongjiao)
and superstition (mixin) in China during the Republican period. Rebecca Nedostup has
discussed the move towards secularism in Republican China as “the division of religion
from the political, social, and economic realms of public activities, as well as an inherent
intellectual division between the numinous and the intellectual.”24 The progress towards
modernity was seen as a progress towards the secular, and the only religion allowed to
continue to operate was a “rationalized” religion. Thus, a dichotomy between religion and
superstition was created, with superstition being attacked, and religion being re-created in
an acceptable “secularized” form. Superstition was seen as an impediment to the creation
of a modern nation. Both zongjiao and mixin were not new terms in China, but they were
re-introduced via Japan, after which they acquired new meanings. Zongjiao emerged from
the need to acknowledge the importance and distinctiveness of Christianity in Japan right
after the Meiji restoration (1866–1869) and the Japanese encounter with the West. It was
then re-imported into China and retained this distinctiveness and relatedness to Christi-
anity. Mixin, while traditionally it indicated beliefs differing from traditional rituals and
Confucian tenets, came to have a meaning of anything opposed to science and reason.
Zongjiao increasingly acquired a positive meaning as against mixin, which acquired a
negative connotation.25 Nedostup asserts that “ ‘superstition’ served as the useful referent
for all that was bad, and thus the modern definition of religion could not proceed without
the definition of superstition as well.”26 Huang Ko-wu posits that, after the May Fourth
Movement, Chinese intellectuals launched a “crusade” using science to oppose religion
and “mysticism.” He asserts that, after the thorough rethinking of conceptual categories
like science, religion, and philosophy, mediated by Western knowledge, May Fourth
第四屆國際漢學會議論文集—信仰、實踐與文化調適, ed. Kang Bao 康豹 (Paul R. Katz) and Liu
Shu-fen 劉淑芬 (Taipei: Academia Sinica, Lianjing chuban gongsi, 2013), 617.
23
These issues are taken up at length in Paul R. Katz, Religion in China and Its Modern Fate
(Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2014); Goossaert and Palmer, The Religious Question; and
Nedostup, Superstitious Regimes.
24
Nedostup, Superstitious Regimes, 3.
25
Huang Ko-wu, “The Origin and Evolution of the Concept of mixin (Superstition): A Review of
May Fourth Scientific Views,” Chinese Studies in History 49, no. 2 (2016): 54–79, esp. 64–65.
26
Rebecca Nedostup, “Civic Faith and Hybrid Ritual in Nationalist China,” in Converting Cul-
tures: Religion, Ideology, and Transformations of Modernity. ed. Dennis Washburn and Kevin Reinhart
(Leiden: Brill, 2007), 32.94 Elena Valussi
intellectuals facilitated the rise of a new modern discipline, “superstitious studies.” While
some intellectuals, such as self-proclaimed atheists like Hu Shih 胡適 (1891–1962), Cai
Yuanpei 蔡元培 (1868–1940), and Chen Duxiu 陳獨秀 (1879–1942), distanced them-
selves completely from any kind of religion, others simply labeled anything at odds with
science as superstitious.27 In practice, this resulted in violent anti-superstition campaigns,
the destruction of ancestral temples and historic sites of religious relevance, the conver-
sion of temples into schools, and the generic “reformation of customs.”28 In 1929, Zhong
Xuan 中宣 (a pseudonym) wrote an anti-superstition manifesto, the “Pochu mixin zhi
yiyi he banfa 破除迷信之意義和辦法,” where he detailed the origins of superstition,
the variety of superstitious behaviors, as well as the many ways to eliminate them.29
However, intellectual discussions, government policies, and actual beliefs and practices
did not always go hand in hand, and there were shifts and inconsistencies that allowed
superstitious practices to remain rooted and to re-emerge again and again. Many of them
were practiced by women.
political , intellectual , literary , and religious discourses
Several prominent male intellectuals in the early twentieth century addressed the question
of female superstition, and it is important to discuss their point of view here, before delv-
ing into the opinions expressed in the popular press. An important example of someone
who addressed the question of women’s superstition early, quite openly, and at length
is that of Jin Tianhe, a writer, educator, and political figure born in a wealthy family in
Anhui and educated in a traditional manner. Jin failed an attempt to pass the imperial
examination and started writing for newspapers such as Nüzi shijie 女子世界 (Women’s
Realm) and Duli zhoubao 獨立週報 (The Independent Weekly). He helped Zou Rong 鄒容
(1885–1905) fund the publication of Geming jun 革命軍 (The Revolutionary Army), a
tract on the overthrowing of the Qing dynasty. After 1911, he worked in education-related
government posts.30
Nüjie zhong 女界鐘 (The Woman’s Bell) was published in Shanghai in 1903 by
Datong Shuju, and was quickly reprinted in China and Japan. It has been described as
a “Feminist Manifesto,” and analyzed by several scholars of gender studies in terms of
its support of women, women’s education, and its criticism of the burden of traditional
Confucian morality on women.31 In the third chapter of Nüjie zhong, “Nüzi zhi pinxing”
女子之品性 (Women’s character), Jin discusses what he believes to be the four great
27
Huang, “The Origin and Evolution,” 55.
28
On this, see for example Vincent Goossaert, “Détruire les temples pour construire les écoles:
reconstitution d’un objet historique,” Extrême-Orient, Extrême-Occident 33 (2011): 35–51.
29
Zhong Xuan 中宣, “Pochu mixin zhi yiyi he banfa 破除迷信之意義和辦法,” Shidai 時代
(上海) 1, no. 3 (1929): 13–17. Quoted in Katz, “‘Superstition’ and Its Discontents,” 612.
30
Liu, Ko, and Karl, The Birth, 205.
31
Zhang Yun, “Nationalism and Beyond,” 246, asserts that Jin Tianhe’s was one of the first writers
to use nüjie understood as a “gendered collectivity,” “collective womanhood,” “a new public identity for
women.” On the emergence of nüjie in the late Qing, see also Yun Zhu, Imagining Sisterhood in Modern
Chinese Texts, 1890–1937 (London: Lexington Books, 2017), especially chapter 1, “The Emergence of
the Women’s Sphere and the Promotion of Sisterhood in the Late Qing.”MEN BUILT RELIGION, AND WOMEN MADE IT SUPERSTITIOUS 95
obstructions for women: chanzu 纏足 (foot-binding), zhuangshi 裝飾 (decorative cloth-
ing), mixin 迷信 (superstition), and jushu 拘束 (restrictions on movement), all elements
that keep women tied to the old customs (jiufengqi 舊風氣). Jin’s belief is that women’s
liberation will arise from the elimination of these obstructions.32 Note that most of these
“impediments” have to do with the female body, its modifications or restrictions. The
overall introduction to “Nüzi zhi pinxing” already indicates the specific superstitious
nature of women:
In the morning, women look for fortune tellers; and at night they chant spells to ward off evil.
On the first and fifteenth of every month, they abstain from meat in gratitude to their parents.
On the Lantern Festival, they turn to fortune telling to predict whether their husband will
succeed in the civil service examination.
朝尋賣卜之人，夕念消災之咒。朔望茹齋，報雙親之豢養。元宵聽鏡，佔良人之登科。33
Jin is singling out these very superstitious female behaviors (fortune telling, chanting
spells, revering ancestors), which are used in a variety of contexts, inside and outside the
home, in relation to family and fortune, as responsible for keeping China in a deplorable
state. These behaviors are specifically connected to women, thus women are primarily
responsible for contributing to China’s backwardness. Jin then provides some suggestions
for eliminating them: becoming active citizens, eliminating superstition and oppres-
sion, and embracing education. Women are responsible for the re-building of Chinese
citizenship:
. . . today women in China should take the following to be the most important parts of char-
acter: liveliness, perceptiveness, charisma, the destruction of superstition, and escape from
oppression. Second to these are study and learning. If they accomplish this, then the creation
of a new citizenry will be halfway complete.
故今日女子以活潑機警、英爽邁往、破除迷信、擺脫壓制為品性可貴之第一義，而學
問次之。夫能如是也，則半部分之新國民成矣.34
In the third section of the chapter, simply titled mixin, Jin explains the roots of superstition:
How does superstition develop? It starts from human feelings and hopes, and women are
factories of feelings and hopes.
迷信何以起？起於人之感情希望也。而女子者，感情希望之出產地也.35
32
Jin Tianhe, Nüjie zhong 女界鐘 (Shanghai: Datong shuju, 1903). Repr. Jin Tianhe, Nüjie zhong,
ed. Chen Yan 陳雁 (Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2003), “Mixin 迷信” section, 18–21.
33
Liu, Ko, and Karl, The Birth, 220. Original in Jin Tianhe, Nüjie zhong, ed. Chen Yan 陳雁
(Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 2003), 13.
34
Liu, Ko, and Karl, The Birth, 220. Original in Jin, Nüjie zhong (2003 reprint), 13–14.
35
Liu, Ko, and Karl, The Birth, 225. Original in Jin, Nüjie zhong (2003 reprint), 18.96 Elena Valussi
Jin directly blames women’s emotions and their continued dependence on men for the
development of superstitious behaviors. However, he suggests that the younger genera-
tions, if educated, might be able to escape this predicament:
Children are not as superstitious as adults, and adults are not as superstitious as the elderly.
An elderly person’s mind has been habituated; no wonder her superstition becomes more
entrenched as she lives it day after day.
夫幼者之迷信不如壯者之迷信，壯者之迷信不如老者之迷信。其靈魂日有規則，則迷
信日遵守而益堅.36
Another sure cause of superstitious behaviors are people who benefit from the gullibility
of women, and the evilness of female and male religious practitioners:
Superstition is an inauspicious thing. Nuns, witches, geomancers, and astrologers are inaus-
picious people.
迷信者，不祥之物一也；僧尼巫替地卜星相者，不祥之人也。37
Finally, Jin states that if female superstition is not eliminated, society and the country
will not survive and develop, and he thus directly calls into question women’s patriotism:
Can we say that women have no sense of patriotism or concern for the world? . . .
When superstition holds on, nothing can be accomplished, not even the smallest steps can be
taken, and in three hundred years China will be the same as today.
謂女子無愛國救世之心乎？ . . .
而有此迷信之根膠粘纏縛，則一事不能做，寸步不可行，更三百年中國猶今日也。38
I want to destroy superstition in women, reverse its course, and use their talents and apply
them to a sense of patriotism and concern for the world.
吾今欲破女子之迷信，則欲反其道而因其材，以實行夫愛國與救世之心也。39
At the same time that Jin Tianhe was writing The Woman’s Bell, the relationship between
women, superstition, and the oppression of a patriarchal society were already discussed
in politically charged articles in the radical anarchist newspaper Xin Shiji 新世紀, pub-
lished in Paris as an offshoot of the first Chinese anarchist organization, the World Society
(世界社 Shijie she). One of the major leaders of this group was Li Shizeng 李石曾 (1881–
1973), an anarchist who had spent time in Paris, and a supporter of San Yat-sen’s policies.
Li discussed women’s superstition and the revolution of the female realm (nüjie geming
女界革命) in several articles in Xin Shiji. In “The Revolution of the Female Realm,” Li
36
Liu, Ko, and Karl, The Birth, 225. Original in Jin, Nüjie zhong (2003 reprint), 18.
37
Liu, Ko, and Karl, The Birth, 226. Original in Jin, Nüjie zhong (2003 reprint), 19.
38
Liu, Ko, and Karl, The Birth, 227. Original in Jin, Nüjie zhong (2003 reprint), 20.
39
Liu, Ko, and Karl, The Birth, 227. Original in Jin, Nüjie zhong (2003 reprint), 20.MEN BUILT RELIGION, AND WOMEN MADE IT SUPERSTITIOUS 97
asserted that in order to eliminate superstition you need to eliminate male power over
women; superstition is the false morality that oppresses women and is perpetuated by male
power, and once that inequality is eliminated, there will be nothing that women will not
be allowed to do and nothing that women will not be able to do.40 Li Shizeng connected
the revolution of the female realm with the destruction of traditional Confucian power
structures that were so detrimental to women in particular, therefore with the destruction
of superstition. In his reading, eliminating this kind of superstition would free the women’s
realm. Women were an instrument of the revolution, and the goal of the revolution against
Confucian structures was to be achieved also through the bodies of women.
Chen Duxiu also criticized Confucianism as having a particularly negative impact
on women. Compared to Chinese women, Western women had more freedoms, especially
in the realm of marriage and sexuality, and thus a modern China needed to discard these
remnants of morals and rituals from a feudal age. Chinese women’s behaviors are seen as
especially “feudal,” backwards, thus superstitious.41 Similarly, while addressing students
at Beijing Normal University 北京師範大學 in 1918, Hu Shi depicted the “New Woman”
in opposition to traditional women:
“New Woman” is a new term, and it designates a new kind of woman, whose speech is very
intense, whose actions tend towards the extreme, who does not believe in religion, who does
not adhere to rules of conduct, but whose intellect is highly developed, and whose moral
standards are also very high.
“新婦女”是一個新名詞，所指的是一種新派的婦女，言論非常激烈，行為往往趨於
極端，不信宗教，不依禮法，卻又思想極高，道德極高。42
In the literary world as well, we see an attack on women’s superstitious behaviors.
Short stories about the oppression of women by traditional customs rooted in superstitious
beliefs reveal the desire to clearly identify and eliminate what is wrong with society. “The
Virgin” (zhennü 貞女), a short story by Yang Zhensheng 楊振聲 (1890–1956), published
in New Tide (Xinchao 新朝), describes how a nineteen-year old girl was forced to marry
a clay statue of her fiancé, because he had died before they could be married. She hangs
herself rather than going along with the marriage.43 In Lu Xun’s modern novella “Zhufu
40
Li Shizeng 李石曾, “Nüjie geming 女界革命,” Xin Shiji 5 (1907): 2. One further article discusses
the four main ways to put into effect female revolution, one of which is the elimination of “wei daode
zhi mixin 偽道德之迷信” (the superstition of false morality). Li Shizeng, “Nannü zhi geming 男女之
革命,” Xin Shiji 7 (1907): 3; and Li Shizeng, “Xu nannü geming 續男女革命,” Xin Shiji 8 (1907): 1.
41
Chen Duxiu, “Kongzi zhi dao yu xiandai shenghuo 孔子之道與現代生活,” Xin Qingnian
新青年 2, no. 4 (1916): 6–12.
42
Hu Shi, “Meiguo de furen 美國的婦人,” Xin Qingnian 5, no. 3 (1918): 222. This passage is
also translated in Hu Ying, Tales of Translation: Composing the New Woman in China, 1899–1918 (Stan-
ford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 208 n.11; in Joshua Adam Hubbard, “‘Troubling the New
Woman’: Feminism and Femininity in the Ladies Journal (Funü zazhi), 1915–1931,” MA thesis, Ohio
State University, 2012; and in Edwards, “Policing the Modern Woman in Republican China,” Modern
China 26, no. 2 (2000): 124.
43
Yang Zhensheng 楊振聲, “Zhennü 貞女,” Xinchao 新潮 2, no. 5 (June 1920): 104–108. Quoted
in Vera Schwarcz, The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement
of 1919 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), 115.98 Elena Valussi
祝福” (Blessing, 1926), a poor woman, never named herself but referred to as Xianglin’s
wife, was married twice and was twice widowed. She is haunted by the widely held belief
that her body would be divided in half and distributed to her two husbands once she dies
and reaches the underworld. She is also seen as extremely polluting, and forbidden to touch
any objects that will be used for the New Year’s sacrifices to the ancestors. The underly-
ing message of the novella is that the destitute are only further oppressed by traditional
religious customs and beliefs, and women are particularly vulnerable to these beliefs.44
Xianglin’s wife, burdened by her own beliefs about the afterlife, and by the superstitious
ostracism she faces in her village, becomes the trope “of ‘the traditional Chinese woman’
in the 20th century public imagination.”45 Young male intellectuals were using these tools
“to sharpen their own awareness of the problem of self-emancipation.”46
In this reading of women’s societal situation, education becomes a powerful tool
that intellectuals are interested in using in order to eliminate traditional power structures
and oppressive behaviors, as well as the blind acceptance of harmful traditions. Liang
Qichao 梁啟超 (1873–1929), in the “Education of Women,” does not discuss overtly the
connection between superstition, ignorance, and weakness in women; however, he does
discuss how women’s ignorance leads to unhealthy habits in the home, and to a failure
to properly educate children. Liang supports education as a tool for women to become
productive members of society and stop being dependent on men.47 Women were holding
China back and women’s education would ultimately strengthen China.48
It is eminently clear from the few examples above that young intellectuals identified
what was wrong with society by focusing on the superstitious behavior oppressing women,
and on the superstitious behaviors adopted by women as a result of their oppression;
reforming women’s religion would result in reforming China. The revolution, whether
political, social, or cultural, had to eliminate women’s superstitious behaviors.
Within religious organizations too, leaders were trying to distinguish religious from
superstitious behaviors, an important move for the very survival of all religious commu-
nities, Daoist, Buddhist, and for redemptive societies as well. One example comes from
a Daodeshe 道德社 pamphlet:
Today’s women, they go to the East temple to burn incense, to the West temple to pray to gods,
foolishly believing in the gods’ protection. Isn’t this just a kind of superstition? . . . I hope
that all women will offer sacrifices to the Earth God and to the Gods of the four directions,
and also will conscientiously work on these two important skills: refining the self and saving
others. This is the true essence of believing in Gods.
44
Lu Xun, “Zhufu 祝福,” in Panghuang 彷徨 (Wanderings), 1926 (written between 1924 and
1925).
Kang, “Women and the Religious Question in Modern China,” 507.
45
Schwarcz, The Chinese Enlightenment, 115–116. On the use of the concept of “new woman”
46
to symbolize the creation of a new China, see also Tani Barlow, “Gender, Writing, Feminism, China,”
Modern Chinese Literature 4, no. 1/2 (1988): 7–17.
47
Liang Qichao 梁啟超, “Lun nüxue 論女學,” Shiwubao 時務報 23 (11/3/1897): 1a–4a, and
Shiwubao 25 (11/4/1897): 2b–4a. Liang wrote about a similar subject in a subsequent article: Liang
Qichao, “Changshe nüxuetang qi 倡設女學堂啓,” Shiwubao 45 (1897): 3–4.
48
Zarrow, “He Zhen,” 798.MEN BUILT RELIGION, AND WOMEN MADE IT SUPERSTITIOUS 99
如今的婦女們，若昧乎福善禍淫的公理。徒知西廟去燒香，東廟去上供，妄冀神靈之
保佑。只不是一種迷信罷了 . . . 吾諸女社方總要把這修己度人的兩種功夫，切實
的做去。那是信神的真精神。49
Mainstream religions like Buddhism and Daoism were also attacked as remnants of a
feudal society, and following Liang Qichao’s initial indictment of them, Buddhists and
Daoists were often described as swindlers, non-productive and unpatriotic members of
society.50 Buddhism in particular, as the main competitor to Christianity, was seen as an
impediment to China’s modernization. Religious leaders reacted by reorganizing their faith
according to a “Christian-secular normative model”; they had to re-define and re-invent
themselves, forming national religious associations with a centralized structure, chang-
ing the ways believers acted, and decrying superstitious beliefs.51 KMT organizers, for
example, were calling for the reform of Buddhist nuns.52 As a response, both Buddhist
and Daoist leaders clearly embraced ideas of gender equality in their writings, in order
to prove that their traditions were truly modern.53
Further, many intellectuals believed that all religions treat women as inferior, thus
the practice of religion was particularly detrimental to women and to their position in soci-
ety. This is evident in the writings of Xu Dishan, but also in popular articles in the press.54
Of course, it is not the case that all practices seen as superstitious were performed by
women. However, even though many involved men, (mostly male) writers and intellectuals
made it very clear that women, because of their lack of education, their confinement in
the home, their passivity and oppression, resorted to them more than men, and were more
prone to being fooled by religious quacks, because religion was women’s only opportunity
to find some realization, consolation, and agency in life.
49
Xie Guanneng 謝冠能, ed., Daode jinghua lu xubian 道德精華錄續編 (Nanjing: Daoyuan,
1933), 7:105. Also quoted in Li Guangwei 李光偉 and Guo Dasong 郭大松, “Minguo nü daodeshe ji
shijie funü Hongwanzi hui shishi kao 民國女道德社暨世界婦女紅卍字會史事考,” Minguo dang’an
民國檔案 2 (2009): 74.
50
See for example Zhu Xinyong 朱信庸 and Jian Yun 劍雲, “Heshang daoshi he nigu deng feichu
wenti 和尙道士和尼姑等廢除問題,” Jiefang huabao 解放畫報 7 (1921): 8–22.
51
A great introduction to this transformation is given in Goossaert and Palmer, The Religious
Question, 73–79.
52
Nedostup, Superstitious Regimes, 222.
53
Valussi, “Gender.”
54
Xu Dishan, “Zongjiao di funüguan.” This issue is also described in a translation of an article
by Russian political activist and writer Maxim Gorki (1868–1936), where Gorki details how all religions
in the world from a very early age belittle women: (Sulian) Gaoerki (蘇聯)高爾基, Li Yi 李誼 (transl.),
“Funü yu zongjiao 婦女與宗教,” Funü zazhi 16, no. 8 (1930): 63–64. Nian Hua 拈華, “Jidujiao yu funü
基督教與婦女,” Laodong yu funü 勞動與婦女 2 (1921): 4–6, discusses the fact that even Christianity
does not support the advancement of women.100 Elena Valussi
2. Gendering the Zongjiao/Mixin Dichotomy
So, what is superstition, especially as it refers to women’s realm and women’s behaviors?
First, gleaning from intellectuals’ writings and newspaper articles, superstition has a range
of meanings.55 Specifically for women, some meanings relate more to traditional culture
and beliefs, Confucian morals, beliefs that reformer intellectuals thought kept women in
a state of oppression and economic dependence; some meanings related to more specific
practices which are not necessary strictly religious, like foot binding and widow chastity;
finally some meanings related to very specific religious practices taking place in the home
or at temples and altars, like burning incense, reciting scriptures of repentance, consorting
with female shamans, seeking fengshui prognostications, and inviting religious practi-
tioners into the home.56 There is a deep connection and a semantic overlapping between
terms like fengsu 風俗, fengjian 封建, and mixin, in regards to women, and traditional
practices like foot binding and female chastity are seen on a continuum moving towards
more overtly religious practices. Kang Xiaofei, quoting Chinese historians of the time,
has discussed how female chastity was starting to be perceived as a “‘religious’ practice,”
“something that had become increasingly ‘rigid, superstitious, and religious’.”57 Zhang
Yangchen 章鍚琛, a female writer who often engaged with questions about the role
of women in society, asks whether chastity should be respected, and if “new women”
accept it or find it superstitious.58 An article in the journal Nongmin 農民 describes how
superstitious behaviors infiltrate different kinds of practices commonly associated with
women and the family, such as curing illnesses, preparing food, marriage preparations,
giving birth, and attending to funerary rites.59
Gender is also clearly utilized to differentiate the beliefs and practices of men and
women. It is in newspapers that we most clearly perceive how, in the dichotomy between
religion and superstition, religion (zongjiao) is often gendered male and superstition
(mixin) is gendered female. Women are categorized using the compound mixin funü
迷信婦女, and their beliefs described as funü mixin 婦女迷信, as if these two terms, mixin
and funü, were inseparable. The term “Women’s religious nature” (funü de zongjiao xing
婦女的宗教性) surfaces often too, and indicates that women’s inherent nature is religious.
Women’s zongjiao is construed of superstitious beliefs and practices, not of canons,
55
On this subject, see Huang, “The Origin and Evolution,” a very clear discussion of the different
and changing opinions of various May Fourth intellectuals.
56
See for example an exhaustive list in a discussion of the superstition of the women of Taicang;
Qian Huilan 錢蕙蘭, “Taicang funü mixin tan 太倉婦女迷信談,” Funü shibao 婦女時報 6 (1912): 47–49.
57
Kang, “Women and the Religious Question in Modern China,” 506.
58
Zhang Yangchen, “Xin sixiang jiu daode de xin nüzi 新思想舊道德的新女子,” Xin nüxing
3, no. 6 (1928): 4–7. Zhang also discusses the question of abortion and infanticide in “Yige shiji wenti
de taolun一個實際問題的討論,” Xin nüxing 1, no. 4 (1926): 4–8, as well as the meaninglessness of
Confucian ethics, especially as it relates to women, in “Lijiao yu siyu 禮教與私慾,” Xin nüxing 1, no. 5
(1926): 4–13.
59
Xiao Xia 筱俠, “Xiangcun funüjie: mixin 鄉村婦女界：迷信” (The world of women in the
countryside: superstition), Nongmin 農民 3, no. 22 (1928): 8; Zhong Pu 仲朴, “Beijing yidai xiangcun
funü mixin de exi 北京一帶鄉村婦女迷信的惡習,” Nongmin 4, no. 2 (1928): 9, and Nongmin 4, no. 3
(1928): 11.MEN BUILT RELIGION, AND WOMEN MADE IT SUPERSTITIOUS 101
clergy, and hierarchy, the stuff of the new modern “religion.”60 Articles with titles linking
women and superstition surface widely throughout this period: “Funü mixin zhi nanchu
婦女迷信之難除” (The difficulties of eliminating female superstition); “Beijing yidai
xiangcun funü mixin de exi 北京一帶鄉村婦女迷信的惡習” (The bad habits of female
superstition in the countryside regions surrounding Beijing); “Funü mixin zhi hai 婦女迷
信之害” (The harm of female superstition); “Shanghai jinü guinu de mixin 上海妓女龜
奴的迷信” (The superstition of Shanghai prostitutes and brothel servants); “Guangzhou
funü mixin zaxie 廣州婦女迷信雜寫” (Miscellaneous writings on the superstition of the
women of Guangzhou).61 A 1934 article discusses how the religious nature of uneducated
women makes it easier for them to be oppressed by traditional “feudal” customs, as well
as swindled by the attempts at conversion by Christian missionaries.62
All of these articles list behaviors that women perform in temples, in the home, in the
brothel, in the city, and even more in the countryside, throughout China, and often describe
the harm these practices cause to women’s families and finances. We hear about the super-
stitious behavior prostitutes apply to their encounters with customers; the superstitious
behaviors wives reserve for their husbands if they fall ill; the power of groups of women
attending superstitious gatherings together; the chaos and dangers that these gatherings
elicit, sometimes with deadly results. Women are described as resorting to unacceptable
practices whenever they encounter difficulties in their lives, such as illnesses, extreme
poverty, family woes, while men are often described as willing to solve life challenges
through different means.63 Why? Because “religion’s magic power is deeply embedded
in average women’s psychology (宗教的魔力深中一般婦女的心理).”64 For women, it
is supposedly harder to leave behind tradition: “Those who most strongly believe in tra-
ditional conventions are women (極端崇奉因襲主義的, 常常是女子).”65 Superstition is
seen as part and parcel of women’s inner nature and psychological makeup, they possess
a “zongjiao xing 宗教性.”66 Here the term religion (zongjiao) is clearly perceived and
used in the negative, and indicates that superstition is part of women’s intrinsic nature.67
60
See for example Yan Yutan 嚴玉潭, “Xiangcun funü de zongjiao xing 鄉村婦女的宗教性,” Nü
qingnian yuekan 女青年月刊 11, no. 8 (1932): 29–34, which connects female religiosity to the countryside
and to backward behaviors.
61
“Funü mixin zhi nanchu 婦女迷信之難除,” Shenbao 7.14251 (10/24/1912); Zhong Pu, “Beijing
yidai”; “Funü mixin zhi hai 婦女迷信之害,” Zhuxiuyuan yuebao 竹秀園月報 8 (1921): 10; Fan Yin 樊縯
and Jiang Shaoyuan 江紹原, “Shanghai jinü guinu de mixin 上海妓女龜奴的迷信” Xin nüxing 3, no.
10 (1928): 31–36; Xia Bo 夏伯, “Guangzhou funü mixin zaxie 廣州婦女迷信雜寫,” Linglong 玲瓏 5,
no. 15 (1935): 844–845.
62
Hua 華, “Fengjian shili yapo xia de Sichuan funü 封建勢力壓迫下的四川婦女” (The oppression
of feudal power on the women of Sichuan), Linglong 玲瓏 4, no. 34 (1934): 2167–2169.
63
Yan Yutan, “Xiangcun funü,” 30.
64
Jun Mian, “Zenyang.”
65
Zhang Yangchen, “Xin sixiang.”
66
Hua, “Fengjian.”
67
On the same note, an article in Women’s World (Nüzi shijie) describes how, in China, all religions
are superstitious (Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism), compared to religions in the West. It continues:
“just like peasants and workers were more superstitious than scholars and merchants, and the north more
superstitious than the south, so women were more superstitious than men.” Nüzi shijie 2 (1904): 1–6.
Quoted in Kang, “Women and the Religious Question in Modern China,” 505.102 Elena Valussi
An article on the Shanghai daily Shenbao, titled “Funü mixin zhi nanchu 婦女迷信之
難除” (The difficulties of eliminating female superstition), reveals the tension between
modernizing tendencies and women’s superstitious nature: women from the newly set up
Zhonghua aiguo funü hui 中華愛國婦女會 (Chinese Women’s Patriotic Association) in
Shanghai are asking the highest Daoist priest to lead a five-day ceremony to mourn the
deaths of martyrs of war. “Even though this is done in order not to forget the martyrs who
died for justice, there is the suspicion that, for these women, it is psychologically difficult
to eliminate superstition (雖屬不忘死義諸烈士究嫌婦女心理終難破除迷信).”68 Thus,
even for women who are clearly embracing a new, patriotic, and non-religious movement,
it is challenging to fight against their internal nature.69 Based on her close study of anti-
superstition campaigns, Nedostup suggests that “the campaign against superstition had
lent particular force to the age-old idea that women were more susceptible to both piety
and heterodoxy.”70
which women ? the “female realm” and class differences
A new language to describe the female collective identity emerges in the Republican
period. Recurring in several articles, women are addressed with newly coined terminol-
ogies: the more common is nüjie 女界 (female realm), and was used by both male and
female intellectuals to identify and at the same time arouse and liberate the gendered
collectivity of women.71 Other terms like woguo nüjie 我國女界 (the female realm in
China), wo nüjie 我女界 (my female realm), funü 婦女 (women), wo zhu jiemei 我諸姐妹
(all of my sisters), and nü tongbao 女同胞 (female compatriots) are also used. Qiu Jin
秋瑾 (1875–1907), the famous early Chinese feminist, in her seminal article “Jinggao
zimeimen 敬告姊妹們,” published in 1907 in the first issue of Chinese Women’s Journal
中國女報, uses zimei as a call to arms for all Chinese women. In another article, “Jinggao
Zhongguo erwanwan nü tongbao 敬告中國二萬萬女同胞,” she uses the term nü tongbao
to indicate a new collectivity of all Chinese women.72 As Yun Zhu deftly points out, these
terms and others, while not completely unheard of in traditional China, here assume new
meanings of advancement and freedoms for all women and, as an important corollary, for
China itself.73 This new use of zimei, and later jiemei, lifts the personal relations between
sisters and friends, generally part of the inner world of women, to a larger, more public
space and stage. The term wo nüjie in particular, indicates the strong personal attachment
68
“Funü mixin,” Shenbao 7.14251 (10/24/1912).
69
According to Chinese authors, this is supported by foreign scholarship: Hua 華, “Nannü mixin
xinli de bijiao 男女迷信心理的比較” (A psychological comparison of male and female superstition),
Dongfang zazhi 東方雜誌 30, no. 13 (1933): 24, describes the efforts of a British organization, the com-
mittee for psychological experimentation (Shiyan xinlixue weiyuanhui 試驗心理學委員會), in the late
nineteenth century, to confirm that women were more superstitious than men.
70
Nedostup, Superstitious Regimes, 222.
71
See Zhang Yun, “Nationalism and Beyond.”
72
See for example: Qiu Jin, “Jinggao Zhongguo erwanwan nü tongbao 敬告中國二萬萬女同胞,”
Baihua 白話 2 (1904) (repr., Qiu Jin 秋瑾, Qiu Jin ji 秋瑾集, Shanghai: Shanghai guji chubanshe, 1991,
4–7).
73
Yun Zhu, Imagining Sisterhood, ix–x.You can also read
