Zaoyu Jiefang: 1890–1930 Niandai de Zhongguo Nüxing (Encountering Liberation: Chinese Women from 1890–1930). By Liu Huiying. Beijing: Zhongyang Bianze Chubanshe, 2004. Pp. 331. ISBN: 7-80211-023-8/G

• Published in: International Journal of Asian Studies 2006, Vol.3 (2), p.284-286
• Main Author: Grove, Linda
• Format: Review
• Language: English
• Subjects: Chinese languages; Civilization; Colonialism; Culture; Families & family life; Gender relations; History; Households; Land grants; Politics; Shamanism; Studies; Wives; Women
• ISSN: 1479-5914; 1479-5922
• DOI: 10.1017/S1479591406240075

According to this contradictory view, Indian women, especially haram inmates, were enslaved by men and at the same time they ruled their effeminate menfolk.2 This controversy alone discloses the peculiar and prejudiced attitude of the West to various social institutions and relations in Asia. [...]based on his wide reading in Ottoman, Russian, European and other fields, Perdue has helped integrate the Qing more firmly within Eurasian and world historical discourses. Might the friars sexual partner in fact have been superior to the virgin? [...]we do not know how the alleged hegemonic tools worked: even if in Europe the efficacy of these tools had been demonstrated, a huge cultural and cosmogonic divide (acknowledged explicitly on p. 111) had to be overcome for these Catholic practices to be truly hegemonic in the contact societies of the Philippines. The textual evidence parlayed by Brewer shows that the minimum prerequisite for male entry into the ranks of shamanism was that he dress in womens clothes for ritual purposes (p. 133). [...]there were cases of male and female shamans married to each other.