Concubines in public : the rise of the social wife in Republican China / Xia Shi.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Shi, Xia, 1979- Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Concubinage--China.

Concubinage.

Women--China--Social conditions.

Women.

Sex role--China.

Sex role.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (x, 217 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, United Kingdom ; New York, NY, USA : Cambridge University Press, 2026.

Summary:

Moving beyond familiar narratives of abolition, Xia Shi introduces the contentious public presence of concubines in Republican China. Drawing on a rich variety of historical sources, Shi highlights the shifting social and educational backgrounds of concubines, showing how some served as public companions of elite men in China and on the international stage from the late nineteenth to the mid twentieth century. Shi also demonstrates how concubines' membership in progressive women's institutions was fiercely contested by China's early feminists, keen to liberate women from oppression, but uneasy about associating with women with such degraded social status. Bringing the largely forgotten stories of these women's lives to light, Shi argues for recognition of the pioneering roles concubines played as social wives and their impact on the development of gender politics and on the changing relationship between the domestic and the public for women during a transformative period of modern Chinese history.

Contents:

The emergence of the social wife in late Qing diplomacy

From courtesan to social wife

From "female student" to concubine

Excluding concubines: the politics of virtue and contamination.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 26 Mar 2026).

ISBN:

1-009-72432-0

1-009-72433-9

1-009-72431-2