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Women in Ancient China (Asian Voices) Paperback – May 10, 2021

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 2 ratings
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This pioneering book provides a comprehensive survey of ancient Chinese women’s history, covering thousands of years from the Neolithic era to China’s unification in 221 BCE. For each period—Neolithic, Shang, Western Zhou, and Eastern Zhou—Bret Hinsch explores central aspects of female life: marriage, family life, politics, ritual, and religious roles. Deeply researched, the book draws on a wide range of Chinese scholarship and primary sources, including transmitted texts, inscriptions, and archaeological evidence. The result is a comprehensive view of women’s history from the beginnings of Chinese civilization up to the beginnings of the imperial era. Clear and readable, the book will be
invaluable for both students and specialists in gender studies.
Previous page
  1. Part of series
    Asian Voices
  2. Print length
    226 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
  5. Publication date
    May 10, 2021
  6. Dimensions
    6.07 x 0.54 x 8.6 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    1538158345
  8. ISBN-13
    978-1538158340
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Bret Hinsch has made a number of contributions to the history of gender and sexuality in China, primarily for the ancient and pre-modern eras. His latest book, Women in Ancient China, details the process of growing sexual inequality as it unfolded. This book is a useful synthesis of English and Chinese sources on positions and statues of women during the formative epochs of Chinese history.

― Asian Perspectives

Women in Ancient China addresses Chinese women’s history from the Neolithic to the Eastern Zhou periods, tackling such aspects of female experience as marriage conventions, divorce, motherhood, religious belief, funerary rites, and modes of political engagement. Hinsch (history, Fo Guang Univ.) deftly employs both textual and material evidence to reconstruct a “simulacrum of the past” that sidesteps anachronistic tendencies such as the “myth of matriarchy,” which the author considers pervasive in the field, as she writes in the introduction. She seeks to illustrate that despite this misplaced emphasis on an imagined, poorly evidenced matriarchy, women nevertheless were dynamic and important figures in early Chinese society. Hinsch makes a major contribution by broadening the body of knowledge about historical figures with newly relevant detail. Most historians are familiar with the royal consort Fu Hao, whose artifact-laden tomb was unearthed in 1976. Hinsch extends the narrative, highlighting Fu Hao's contemporary Fu Jing, a figure whom oracle inscriptions describe as a powerful state administrator. This book is an excellent resource for those in gender and East Asian studies.



Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty; general readers. ― Choice Reviews

With Women in Ancient China, ... Bret Hinsch undertakes the almost impossible task of summarizing for the general reader what is known about the condition of Chinese women from Neolithic times to the unification of China in 221 bce. ... In compressing so much detailed information into a manageable format, in covering so many different aspects of the lives of women in ancient China in an accessible way, Women in Ancient China represents a remarkable scholarly achievement.

― Journal of the American Oriental Society

This is a fine account of the condition of women in ancient China from the emergence of an agricultural way of life to the end of the Bronze Age. Bret Hinsch has assimilated a remarkable amount of information from both archaeological literature and paleographic analyses, incorporating it into a concise and coherent social history of early China. -- Li Feng, Columbia University

With this richly documented volume, Bret Hinsch extends his noted work on women in traditional China all the way back to the Stone Age. His even-handed inquiry and treatment of sources will appeal to readers in many fields and make the book especially suitable for the classroom. -- Paul R. Goldin, University of Pennsylvania

Hinsch fills a huge gap by examining women’s lives in the formative stage of Chinese civilization. His survey is comprehensive, deft, and accessible to undergraduates. Its erudition also makes it an excellent reference work for scholars and graduate students interested in early Chinese women’s history. -- Yiqun Zhou, Stanford University

About the Author

Bret Hinsch is professor of history at Fo Guang University, Yilan, Taiwan. He is the author of Women in Early Medieval China, Women in Early Imperial China, Women in Imperial China, Masculinities in Chinese History,and The Rise of Tea Culture in China.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Rowman & Littlefield Publishers; Bilingual edition (May 10, 2021)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 226 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1538158345
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1538158340
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.07 x 0.54 x 8.6 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 2 ratings

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Bret Hinsch

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4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
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Top review from the United States

Rebecca W
5.0 out of 5 stars The new "gold standard" gender history of ancient China
Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2018
Verified Purchase
Bret Hinsch has written a mind-expanding whirlwind tour of some 8,000 years of women's history in China, from Neolithic times through the Eastern Zhou. Writing in clear prose enjoyable by general interest readers, Dr. Hinsch also provides enough footnotes and documentation for the most exacting scholars to verify sources and draw their own conclusions. Immediately discarding tired myths of "ancient matriarchies" promoted by socialist historians starting with Marx, Hinsch instead follows the fascinating complexities of real women's history, as available in data gathered from burial mounds, oracle bones, bronze inscriptions, and scraps of ancient poetry. Much of this material, painstakingly gathered by Chinese scholars and published previously only in Chinese, is being reviewed here for the first time for English readers. From these ancient and often fragmentary primary sources, women largely or wholly unknown to Western readers spring back to life. Like the Shang consorts Fu Hao and Fu Jing, who led troops into battle on horseback, defeating enemy armies then returning home to lead crucial divination rites. Or the Lady Geng Ying, who traded in cowries and cinnabar with her king and queen. Or the female shamans of Cai, whose ritual drinking and ecstatic dancing sought the aid of powerful ancestors and may have contributed to the cult of the Goddess Nu Wa.

Hinsch is at his best interpreting the ways the fragmentary remnants of ancient primary text sources have been bent and twisted by later generations, inside and outside China, often for politicized ends. He wryly explores the ancient origins of the "Classic of Poetry" as traditional village love songs, then notes how later readers, "when ideas about marriage and chastity had tightened" reacted "to the romantic and sexualized innuendo of ancient poems with frisson and embarrassment." More seriously, in an epilogue on "The Myth of the Evil Woman," Hinsch explores how later writers in the explicitly patriarchal Han and Qin twisted the evidence of powerful Shang and Zhou women into parables for the fall of empires.

This tour de force of women's history has much to say about how gender roles have changed and evolved over time, and deserves a wide readership.
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