An overall assessment of the concept of feminism and femininity in the literature of Chinese writers from the Ming and Qing periods to the twentieth century can be gleaned from the examination of the interdisciplinary studies carried out by the scholars in this remarkable collection. While Kang-i Sun Chang provides a valuable assessment of the dramatic rise in the number and reputation of women poets during the Ming and Qing dynasties, Li Xiaojiang’s essay deals with contemporary Chinese women’s literature, particularly its historical and political origins. Peng Hsiao-yen provides an indepth examination of the appropriation of western sexual and pyschological theories in a single Chinese text, while Li Ziyun offers a broad perspective on the disappearance and revival of feminist discourse in China in the twentieth century. Kuei-fen Chiu discusses the works of three major female authors in Taiwan to demonstrate the role of women writers in shaping the Taiwanese intellectual and political culture of the 1990s, and Margaret Hillenbrand offers a necessary examination of the male perspective on marriage and divorce in recent Chinese fiction.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that while the Ming-Qing male literati became more and more absorbed in feminine culture, many women poets began to develop a lifestyle typical of the educated male. Like the male literati, these women poets constructed a poetic world of self-contentment and devoted themselves to painting, calligraphy, and other arts. In other words, these “liberated women’ attempted to cultivate a “literary” style that was both creative and self-fulfilling. Traditionally, such activities belonged to the male domain, but now they were largely integrated into the female sphere, eventually creating a kind of “cultural androgyny” that was meant to erase gender opposition in the cultural realm.

Here the discussion of contemporary women writers’ works in Taiwan is situated with regard to the “geopolitics of center”: Taiwanese women’s literature is marginalized within the wider topos or discourse of Chinese women’s literature, just as China may be marginalized in relation to the West, and women’s writing in relation to men’s. But all readings of cultural products need to be contextualized, and Taiwan’s own productions are indeed best seen as “made in Taiwan.” Taiwan’s unique history and culture—on the “margins” of Chinese history and culture—is a powerful and necessary force within recent women’s fiction on the island. Based on a reading of several recent Taiwanese women’s novels, the argument here is that, as also in other Third World countries, in Taiwan the construction of women’s gender identity is often tied up with questions about the (re)construction of national narrative. Thus an exclusive preoccupation with gender cannot help us to understand the complexity of gender politics in contemporary women writers’ texts.

Li Ziyun offers an in-depth analysis of the issue of women's literary voice in China in “The Disappearance and Revival of Feminine Discourse.” In this essay, Li discusses the development of feminine discourse in China in the twentieth century, from the seeds of the May Fourth movement, through nearly fifty years of repression, to the post-1978 revival of a unique feminine literary voice. Chinese feminine discourse had a promising beginning with May Fourth writer Lu Xun and Ding Ling’s fiction of the 1920’s and 1930's; however, Li Ziyun documents that from the 1930’s to 1978, female discourse was largely neglected in the literary circles of China. Due to the Japanese threat to national survival, women’s consciousness was stifled by the force of pressing social and political movements. Following the fall of the Gang of Four, the proliferation of women’s writing in China became remarkable, rich and diverse, as demonstrated by the diversity of women’s voices, including contemporary women writers in mainland China who wished to distance themselves from the women’s movement in their desire to compete with male writers on equal terms including Zhang Kangkang, Zhang Jie, and Wang Anyi. Also noteworthy are authors Wang Anyi and Tie Ning, whose writing focuses on sexual awakening and sexual experience. A final development discussed by Li Ziyun is in direct correlation with the growing economic boom in China—that is the proliferation of women’s fiction related to the social changes instigated by economic development.

During the May Fourth period Zhang Jingsheng, nicknamed “Dr. Sex,” aroused great controversy because of his publications on female sexuality. Although he had achieved fame as a utopian thinker for his two previous books An Outlook of a Life of Beauty (Mei de renshengguan, 1925) and The Organization of a Society of Beauty (Mei de shehui zuzhifa, 1925), his reputation was seriously damaged by Sex Histories, which was and still is considered pornography by many people. However, I argue in my paper that Sex Histories, with seven “case histories” in autobiographical form and Zhang's editorial commentaries studded with sexological jargon, should be considered an imitation of the “case studies” found in Havelock Ellis’s Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1905). I compare ferninist Marie Stopes, whose Married Love: A New Contribution to the Solution of Sex Difficulties (1918) was a source of influence on Zhang. My conclusion is that Zhang Jingsheng was deliberately starting a sexual revolution, which, in his mind, was necessary to effect a new society in which man and woman are truly equal. In order to help clarify his serious sexological purposes, I compare Zhang’s Sex Histories with one of the false “sequels” that made his name notorious. Near the end of this paper I compare Zhang’s sexual revolution with the “sexual revolution” launched by Taiwan feminists during the late eighties and early nineties, with a view to showing how Zhang systematically taught people to understand the nature of female orgasm, whereas, unfortunately, the Taiwan feminists nowadays give the impression that they are demanding female orgasm on the street.

The following essay presents a brief survey of the historical conditions and political origins of contemporary Chinese’ women’s literature. Author Li Xiaojiang denies that the: May Fourth Movement of 1919 produced the kind of sexual equality promised by socialism, and instead argues that true women’s liberation in China was begun only after 1949. Li argues that this post-1949 period was the time in which socialism marked a legitimate change in.the status of women—women entered the workforce alongside men, women were entitled to legal rights, etc. Li's essay deals primarily with two main periods in recent Chinese literary history: the late seventies to mid-eighties, in which works such as Zhang Jie’s Love Must Not Be Forgotten (1979) highlighted the awakening of a women’s consciousness, and a second period, beginning from the late eighties—which coincided with certain urban reforms in 1986—in which were featured new images of women with a sense of Seif. After presenting the struggles for independence documented by writers in the New Period of Chinese literary history, Li advocates a greater tolerance for conventional relationships and moderation in changing values.

The social order in China has changed in the last two decades as seen in the fictional depiction of love and courtship, and marriage and divorce with notable frequency and candor. This article examines the subject of divorce from a literary perspective, using Li Rui’s “Sham Marriage,” Ah Cheng’s “Northeasterners,” Liu Heng’s “Dogshit Food,” and Zhang Xianliang’s Half of Man is Women. The first three short stories are expositions of marital gender conflict in which male disempowerment results from mismanagement of male patriarchal birthright; females step into the gap that the males leave when confusing machismo for. authority thereby gain the upper hand. In Zhang's novel, the husband realizes authority rests upon the exercise of successful strategies of power and not upon the bravado of machismo. In the end he bests his wife.