4 The Wish for Sons—Woman and Family in Imperial China—Qiu Zi ( Nu jian nan gui ( At this point, we already need to correct an image commonly held by Western observers of the Chinese family: the typical ideal family of pre-modern China is often equated with a large family with many children, several generations combined under one roof. This Confucian ideal, however, only applied to the wealthy elite. The majority of the Chinese population lived in the circle of a core family, on average containing no more than five to six people per household. Confucian regulations regarding the order within the family, the distribution of responsibilities between the sexes, and the relationship between man and woman, were ideals as well, and could only be put into practice by the families of the upper class. An image exists of the oppressed Chinese woman—as we perhaps know it from the novels of American Nobel laureate Pearl S. Buck—married against her will, crippled by bound “lotus feet” and, if failing to produce male offspring, bullied by the evil mother-in-law. This image might have corresponded to reality in individual cases, but cannot be generalized for all Chinese women. If we compared the living conditions of a peasant woman in China and Europe during the Middle Ages, they would be quite similar, except for the fact that the pressure to bear male offspring was most likely greater in China. This pressure has continued until the present day and has even increased as a result of a rigorously practiced “one-child policy.” We read of mobile ultrasound machines, used to determine the sex of the unborn fetus and resulting in intentional abortions of female fetuses. In this context, the following questions arise: Answers to these questions are rooted in Confucian ethics, which provided a set of rules for heaven and earth, for state and family, more than 2000 years ago. Much of this system has been forgotten today, some virtues are considered once again, and plenty has outlasted all changes. Nevertheless, this chapter is by no means meant to become an emancipatory men-defaming pamphlet. Rather, we have attempted to outline the conditions of family life and underlying ideology in imperial China. A certain amount of simplification and generalization is hereby unavoidable—especially in a time span of over 2000 years that was everything but homogeneous. This, of course, contradicts the common impression in the West that Qin Shi Huangdi united and standardized the country in the 3rd century BCE, and that China remained a stable empire without great changes up to the year 1911. Like the social shape of the family, the character and role of women are not given by nature either, but are a product of socially dominant ideas. Women and family symbolize order and peace—as is beautifully illustrated, for example, by the character an ( Many researchers now believe that the existence of a matriarchal society in ancient China is a fact that can no longer be doubted.1 What is still disputed, though, if we accept the existence of a matriarchy, is the time when this matriarchy transformed into a patriarchy; speculations range from 4500–1000 BCE.21 The terms “matriarchy” and “patriarchy,” often defined as “mothers’ rule” and “fathers’ rule” or as “mother-right” and “father-right,” can be problematic in their usage. Most importantly, they should never be used as a pair of direct opposites because “matriarchies are social organizations that are created, shaped, and supported in all their features by women,” while patriarchy also includes a certain ruling structure, social hierarchy, authority of a minority, etc.15 That is, people knew their mother but not their father because the relationship between sexual intercourse and reproduction was not realized for a long time. Evidence for this is provided by the oldest clan names, which include the character for woman, as does the character for “family name” xing ( With the evolution of patriarchy, women lost their pre-eminent position in society. A drastic and far-reaching step in this process was the abolishment of “matrifiliation” in favor of “patrifiliation,” that is, the fact that children were no longer assigned socially and legally to the family of the mother but to that of the father. At the same time, women lost their economic and social supremacy, a change to which Confucianism contributed substantially from the middle of the first millennium BCE. In this context, the concept of the two eternal cosmic powers yin ( Yang as the positive element stands for: Significantly, the female element yin always preceded the male yang. This cosmic world order was transferred onto the state and society, as a result of which the spheres of activity for men and women were clearly separated: women in the dark, in the concealment and isolation of the house, on the inside, and men in brightness, in public, on the outside. Hereby, the role of women also came to be sanctioned by the cosmic world order. Eventually, a hierarchical order was established for the state and family that incorporated the Confucian system of superiority and inferiority in the “five relationships”: Already in the 6th century BCE, Mencius formulated the rules of the “three obediences” (san cong In the Confucian classic Liji ( As such, it was not only the society, but also the family in China that were subject to strict order: “Wishing to let virtue shine on earth, the ancient [rulers] first brought order to the state. Wishing to bring order to the state, they first regulated the family” ( Rules regarding the conduct of women towards men were numerous, but rules of behavior for men towards women were sparse. It was only towards his mother that a man had certain obligations, among them the care of his parents in their old age. In the 1st century CE, the social constraints for women became even stricter when the historian and author Ban Zhao ( In spite of all these rules of conduct, women enjoyed relative freedom up to the Tang period (618–907 CE). Poems and paintings have come down to us that depict women as self-confident, happy, and sensuous. The indispensability of women’s work capacity was also obvious and women hence enjoyed a certain independence, especially in the countryside. Towards the end of the Tang dynasty, though, increasing urbanization reduced the value of women’s labor, and women became more or less economically useless beings, at least in financially better-off families. Servants and maids were in charge of housework and childrearing, and the only functions of “higher” ladies were therefore to satisfy the husband’s sexual desires and to bear children. It was also due to the influence of neo-Confucianism during the Song dynasty (960–1276 CE) and even more so during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644 CE) that the rather liberal Tang ideals were completely replaced. The new puritanism straightened out the alleged immoral habits of women and from then on restricted them exclusively to house and home. A multitude of psychological and moral taboos confined women to the “inside” that had been assigned to them. Thus, women were expected, for example, to take their own life after being raped, because death was considered the lesser evil in comparison with the loss of chastity. Since the 10th century, women’s small feet were regarded as the ideal of beauty. Dainty feet that obtained their unnatural size by tying, binding, and finally breaking the bones were seen as the culmination of female elegance. Unable to move about normally on their deformed feet, women were now tied to the home; unable to carry out productive work, such women became pure objects of prestige for wealthy families. Their bound and thereby crippled feet prevented women from stepping outside the bounds of the domestic horizon. The history of Chinese women’s liberation is hence also the history of “foot-binding” and of the fight against it. Nevertheless, the custom of foot-binding was not practiced in all parts of China. Thus, foot-binding was more widespread in the North than in the South, and in some provinces this bad habit never became common at all; additionally, the poorer classes of society who depended on women’s labor were unable to follow this custom. It is interesting in this context, for example, that the Mongolian conquerors, whose women had not bound their feet previously, regarded Chinese culture in many areas as superior during the time of their rule in China (Yuan dynasty, 1279–1368 CE) and adapted to it—including the habit of foot-binding. Mongolian women hereby lost their freedom of movement. The Manchu conquerors who united China for the last time into an empire during the Qing dynasty (1644–1911 CE) acted similarly. They also originally regarded the custom of foot-binding as foreign and absurd. Without much success, they attempted to prohibit the Han Chinese to bind their feet, with the result that the Han Chinese now held on to the practice precisely as a symbol of rejecting the foreign rule. At the same time, some Manchu women accepted this practice because they were able to thereby demonstrate the wealth of their family. Only a wealthy man, after all, could afford the luxury of having a wife who was disabled for work by her bound feet and could therefore only serve his erotic entertainment. The ideal upbringing of girls from the upper echelons of society (referring to the class of officials, merchants, and big landowners) took place in strict isolation in a particular sequence: at the age of 7, a girl was separated from her brothers and male relatives. From now on, she lived in the inner chambers, surrounded only by her wet nurse, maid servants, and female relatives. After the practice of foot-binding had been introduced, girls began at this age at the latest to have their feet bound. At the age of 10, they were instructed in the various female household tasks, among these in particular sewing, weaving, embroidery, and the supervision of the household. This training ended when they were married at the age of 14–17 years. Marriage occurred so early because on the one hand this allowed families to take full advantage of the whole span of female reproductive capacity, and on the other hand because younger women were not as contradictory but better able to adjust. To give birth to a male descendant was the first and foremost obligation of a young wife after marriage because sons remained in the family, functioned as labor in the household, brought an additional worker into the house in the person of the daughter-in-law, and ultimately contributed to the preservation of the family. Only sons were able to continue the family line, and only they could perform the ancestral sacrifices after the death of the parents; it was only through them that the family lived on. The ritual of ancestor worship is the most important aspect of religious practice in China and has been maintained as long as anyone can remember. According to Chinese beliefs, death was like sleep or unconsciousness, a state from which a person could wake up (even if not as a living human being but as a soul with certain needs). The dead were therefore given articles from everyday life in the grave, and the surviving relatives “provided for them” with food and drink on the home altar. The souls were supplied with qi and jing, so to speak, and could thereby outlast death. In this context, we should also mention one of the oldest notions of the “soul” (hun More sons at the same time also meant better financial security for the family since the highest obligation of filial piety was to provide for one’s parents in old age (duo nan duo fu Originally, Chinese law of inheritance was designed to divide inheritances equally among all sons, without privileging the firstborn. In practice, though, this was not feasible because the increasing division of landed property would have made it impossible for any of the heirs to farm the land profitably. The land was therefore in practice passed on to the oldest, while the younger sons looked for work outside the family. The parents (or the widowed mother) stayed with one of the sons and his family. Ideally, this was the eldest son who thereby continued the ancestral line (but it was also often the youngest son because he was particularly close to his mother). For these reasons, it is not surprising that women could only raise their status in the family and in society by giving birth to many sons. A daughter-in-law who became pregnant shortly after marriage and then gave birth to a healthy son henceforth became a respected member of her new family and was accepted with kindness by her parents-in-law into the family unit. The birth of a daughter, on the other hand, was only greeted with joy when healthy sons already existed. In times of famines, girls were often the first to be sacrificed, abandoned, or sold as household slaves or into prostitution. In poorer families, it was not uncommon to kill newborn girls because the family could not afford another “useless mouth to feed.” Especially when the firstborn was a girl and the family did not want to deter the mother from a second pregnancy and debilitate her by prolonged breastfeeding, they often got rid of the child. For this reason, the position of the (still) childless daughter-in-law was very low; under the most unfavorable conditions she was treated worse than a maid. It was only as mother of a son that she was able to improve her status in the patriarchal family structure and become a full member of the family. To have no male descendants or to be childless altogether signified a tragedy for the husband’s family, but for the woman herself it meant that her exclusion from the family and unprotected status continued. The daughter-in-law had failed to fulfill the expectations and elementary obligations of a wife. For the childless woman, this was the beginning of an endless time of humiliation. When we take this centuries-old social pressure into consideration, the modern Chinese practice of aborting female fetuses in the context of the “one-child policy” becomes easier to understand. Until now, no social reforms—especially in rural areas—have been able to lessen this unconditional desire for male descendants effectively. Wealthy men had the option in such cases to take one or more mistresses to ensure the continuation of the family and increase their chances for a son. In addition, families had the option to adopt a son (guo ji The man possessed an additional freedom: the right to divorce, or in other words, he could expel his wife if she was found guilty of any of the “seven reasons for dismissal” (qi chu There were only three exceptions (san bu chu For the woman, there was no possibility, even under the most obvious circumstances possible, to leave an unhappy marriage; suicide was therefore often the last and only resort of a desperate wife. In addition, chastity was promoted as a key ideal virtue for women. Included in this was virginity before marriage, unconditional fidelity during marriage, and lastly a life as a virtuous widow after the husband’s death. Even if the husband died early or even already during the engagement period—and this could begin in infancy or childhood—remarriage was frowned upon for women. All these proscriptions and restrictions were, of course, only feasible in the narrow circle of official and other wealthy families, but nevertheless served as model for all classes. Still, the more the woman had to help her husband in making a living outside the home, the less she was able to approximate the female ideal. The wife was often in charge of small business enterprises or within the family, but the husband’s authority had to be maintained towards the outside. Still, a woman was not able to gain public prestige by her own efforts, but only by means of an honorary title that she received in accordance with the husband’s or son’s rank. The only exception were honorary stone arches that were erected in particular for chaste widows, that is, when they did not remarry or chose suicide after the death of a husband or even of a fiancé at a young age. This recognition was connected with tax relief for her family and in theory applied to all levels of the population. People in China looked for the causes of childlessness in the magico-religious, the medical, and the personal realms. The only thing people could change was their behavior and, if they were lucky and had a good doctor, their physical inadequacies. The influence of the gods, on the other hand, was not calculable. The early religions but also today’s popular religions start out from the fact that there are beings who are fundamentally more powerful than humans. In addition to deities, spirits, and demons, these are the manifestations of powers that are active in nature (lightning, thunder, earthquakes, floods). They also influence people’s lives directly (children, wealth, illness, etc.).20 It is practically impossible to give a generally valid definition of “religion.” The Danish ethnologist Birket-Smith, for example, coined as a working definition for religion the “belief in a dependency on higher powers.” It is this dependency in particular, which he derived from the Latin religio whose root appears to mean “binding,” that is of great significance for the context of Chinese religion.2 This state of being bound, or in other words dependency, does not always have to be interpreted only as a one-sided subjugation of humans to higher powers, but can also mean the possibility that humans influence these higher powers. The foundations of religion in China, such as ancestor worship, oracle and divination, and conceptions of deities and sacrifices to them, can already be found in the state religion of the Shang dynasty (2nd millennium BCE). It would however, be wrong to speak of one religion in China; Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism all coexist, so to speak, on equal terms. The individual does not have to profess one direction exclusively either, a pragmatic approach that we can see, for example, in the attitude towards death: “The Confucian ancestral cult requires that the deceased are included in the life of the living descendants; you are responsible for your actions to your ancestors and can expect protection and blessings from them in return. A key goal of Daoist practices is the lengthening of life, in the ideal case immortality. And for the actual death, it is comforting to know that Buddhism promises rebirth and a future paradise.”20 Suiting the need of any given situation in their life, people could appropriate the opportune teaching and sacrifice to the particular gods. In this way, nobody took offense when a childless Confucian scholar family of the elite prayed at the home altar for children to Guanyin, strictly speaking a Buddhist goddess, and when the husband attempted to increase his jing with Daoist sexual practices. If all these efforts proved in vain though, people sought the cause of fertility among the following: Occasionally, the attribution of blame even went as far as regarding the birth of healthy sons as a reward for the mother’s virtuous behavior (in the Confucian, but also in the Buddhist sense of the doctrine of karma). And parallel to this, childlessness, the birth of girls only or of deformed children, or the premature death of children were then seen as proof of the mother’s lack of virtue and as her punishment. Prayers and sacrifices to Guanyin, the Goddess of Compassion, were supposed to function as remedies. Even today, clay figures of children, children’s shoes made of red silk, or red eggs are still given to Guanyin as expressions of gratitude for a successful pregnancy. Women who wish for a child then take these symbols of fertility, to make use of this positive blessing.17 In light of this social background, we can understand why physicians and midwives were greatly concerned with conception, pregnancy, and childbirth. The medical literature on this subject area is old and extensive. Especially in the context of conception, we find not only advice on how to become pregnant but also how to best produce a son. For this purpose, the exact timing of sexual intercourse was decisive: “Only the relation between husband and wife is appropriate. Under no circumstances can it be compared to illegitimate love. Even though we speak of ‘heavenly union,’ the reason for sexual intercourse is the continuation of the family line, not pleasure. The couple should control their sexual passion. Only when sexual passion is restrained will it be ‘auspicious.’ Without restraint, sex is pure debauchery. In such cases, the ‘taboo days’ are violated and the gods and spirits become angry. The following ‘taboo days’ (days on which no intercourse should take place) must be observed: In addition, there are: Of course you should also observe: In addition: Furthermore, intercourse should not take place in the vicinity of: Likewise not when intoxicated or after eating too much or when the person was: Nor when returning from traveling or exhausted, when one hasn’t bathed yet after a trip, or soon after an illness. All these proscriptions are intended to preserve the body, and the first proscription for a filial son is to keep his body intact. Whoever fails to observe these taboos, shortens the length of his life.”4 In the course of time, the prohibitions grew more and more numerous and became so confusing to the lay person that you could buy lists on the street for learning the “permitted” days. If a couple observed all these prohibitions related to time, location, and climate, there were maybe 100 days left in the year for sexual activity. Since this reduces the number of fertile days enormously, it is really a miracle that China did not suffer from permanent underpopulation. It is precisely the disappearance of these limitations in the 20th century with the rejection of tradition and superstition, and, of course, medical progress that has made the enormous increase in births possible. When the woman at last became pregnant, a new, often frightening period of time began. The woman was responsible for her smooth pregnancy and the optimal growth of the embryo. The great number of proscriptions and rules for virtuous behavior during this time illustrates the great responsibility placed on the pregnant woman. Again, it was the woman who was held responsible for a potential miscarriage as well as for a deformed or sickly child. In addition to all these obligations, pregnant women, who were considered impure, had to observe many prohibitions, such as participating in weddings, funerals, sacrifices, or temple visits. Pregnant women supposedly had a certain power with which they could “suck” the life force of other people and places dry, so to speak, in order to use it for the benefit of their growing child.17 Today, people often ask why Chinese women did not rebel against these constraints and rules but seem to have submitted willingly to male authority. Were these constraints really that great or were women simply too lethargic? Thus, people have discussed, for example, why women did not react with a “refusal to give birth.” Tradition shows that women in matriarchal societies knew means and methods for contraception and abortion. Nevertheless, it is likely that childless women were outcast from society, which was equivalent to a death sentence because it was almost impossible to survive without the protection of society. Bearing children was hence presumably the lesser of two evils. People have often criticized the passivity of women, or even sometimes implied that women should be blamed for their own situation. Nevertheless, as we have already mentioned repeatedly, these prescriptions, misogynistic from our modern perspective, were only put into practice by a very small part of the population. The majority of women was integrated into the processes of agricultural production and therefore certainly no less content with their fate than women anywhere else in the world. There were also some Chinese women from the educated elite who resisted their lot; nevertheless, they remained exceptions and were not always judged positively by Chinese historians. The concubine Wu (624–705 CE) may serve as an example: after getting rid of the emperor, she proclaimed herself empress in the year 655 CE and ruled long past the death of the prince (683 CE) until shortly before her death. As such, she was the first and only empress in Chinese history. In the two decades of her reign, she consolidated the empire, for example by instituting an entrance examination system for prospective officials (destroying the influence of the ruling families and surviving as an essential part of imperial power until 1905), and led the empire into a time of cultural flourishing. In spite of these achievements, Empress Wu Zetian is today mostly mentioned negatively in the context of her extravagance and bigoted favoritism of the Buddhist religion. It is doubtful that a male ruler would have received this much criticism. Additional examples are the Empress Dowager Cixi who ruled China from behind the scenes during the entire second half of the 19th century, or Mao Zedong’s wife, Jiang Qing, who played an infamous key role in the Cultural Revolution. In Chinese historiography and literature, women appeared, if at all, always as stereotypes. As positive model of the filial daughter (xiao nu 
)
Dagmar Hemm
The Status of Women
)—“Women areworthless, men are valuable”—a typical statement that was not taken as an insult in ancient China but merely reflected the social position of women. While it is true, as we well know, that half of humanity is female in China, women were apparently quite replaceable in the economic, social, and political realms. This very contrast, between on the one hand being needed for the continuation of society but on the other being redundant in other areas, became a dilemma for women in general but especially so for Chinese women. The only way in which they were able to legitimize their position in the male world was as mothers. And hence, they fell back on the world accessible to them, the one that could not exist without them: the family.
The Family
) for “peaceful,” “content,” “safe”: a woman under a roof (of a house) meant peace, even though the actual condition of women in imperial China was often characterized more by violence and oppression.
), a combination of “woman” and “to give birth.” In ancient religion as well, female shamans wu (
) played a key role, and mother worship was the earliest form of Chinese ancestor worship. Hence, female deities like the “Queen Mother of the West” Xi Wang Mu (
), the “Goddess of Compassion” Guanyin (
), or the “Goddess of the Sea” Ma Zu (
) are still of primary importance in popular religion.
Transition to Patriarchy
) and yang (
) was fundamental in framing the relationship between man and woman. The pair of opposites yin and yang originally did not include any value judgment, it merely represented two opposites that always complemented each other. Yin as the negative element stands for:
Legitimization by the Philosophers
). These state that a woman must revere and obey her father and older brothers in her youth, her husband during marriage, and her sons when she is widowed. In practice, however, the mother-son relationship turned out to mean that mothers commonly spoiled and pampered their sons during childhood, as a result of which the son remained more attached to his mother than to his wife for the rest of his life. Mothers were thereby often able to exert great influence in politics and society through their sons.
), the Book of Rites, which was probably composed around the 2nd century BCE, we find the following statement: “Women shall not participate in public affairs, their words shall not penetrate past the threshold, and their sphere of influence shall be limited to the home.” In addition, simplicity and lack of education was regarded as a female virtue and ideal (wu cai jiu shi de 
).
). This famous quotation from the Confucian text Daxue (
Great Learning) illustrates how important order was already in the small things, that is, in one’s own family, with nothing being worse than chaos (luan 
). The head of the family made all decisions including the choice of spouses, for which financial and political considerations were primary and the partners were generally not consulted.
Rules for Women
) (45–116 CE) in her book Nu Jie (
Precepts for Women) set down in writing the perfect female attributes. Furthermore, the rules of the “four virtues” (si de 
) applied to women within the family, which required the following:
Physically Tied by Bound Feet
The Life of a Girl
Continuation of the Family in the Afterlife
), which leaves its physical cover after death but continues to remain with it in the grave and leaves the grave only during the performance of sacrifices. During sacrificial rituals, the soul settles temporarily in a “representative,” usually a grandchild of the deceased. This belief formed the basis for the ideal of an uninterrupted line of descendants that was not to be broken under any circumstances by the lack of a male descendant in the family to “bring sacrifices.” Such a prospect evoked the horrible possibility that an ancestor who was not worshiped would wander about as a “hungry ghost” (e gui 
) and bring misfortune on the entire family. Without sufficient “nourishment,” that is, qi, an ancestor was forced to lead a life of deprivation in the netherworld, to gradually fade into insignificance and die in agony. As such, he was unable to request assistance from the gods for his descendants and to ward off otherworldly curses and attacks.19 Dutifully performing sacrifices and worship, on the other hand, brought great benefits for the family. The reason for this is that a person who had been powerful alive became a powerful ancestor after death, protector of his family and clan. As such, we can say that ancestor worship ultimately benefited the descendants because they received the protection and support of their deceased ancestors.
The Economic Aspect
). Girls, on the other hand, were unable to fulfill these tasks because daughters left their family of origin with marriage (chu jia 
) and became members of the husband’s family. To marry their daughter, moreover, cost the parents a dowry as well as the girl’s labor in the house and on the farm. Girls were therefore more expensive but less valuable in economic terms; they were moreover not entitled to any inheritance and generally did not possess any property other than their jewelry and clothing. Hence, they were neither able to sustain their own parents nor to assist them in old age, and could not continue the family tradition of ancestor worship in their own family either. The only exceptions were particularly attractive daughters because as imperial concubines or mistresses of rich men, they were able to gain prestige and special favors for their parents.
Who Would Want Girls?
Men’s Special Privileges
, literally “continuing the past”). If parents who lacked a son of their own did not want to do without ancestor rituals, they had to adopt a youth or adult (usually coming from relatives) in their child’s place. According to traditional law, there was no difference between adopted and natural sons, especially with regard to inheritance law. By the same token, the adopted son assumed responsibility for the same drawn-out and lavish mourning rituals as a natural son.
):
), under which the wife could not be expelled from the husband’s family:
No Escape for the Woman
Causes of Childlessness
). People feared that their own originally benevolent ancestors, the “good spirits” (shen 
) would transform into vengeful ones if, for example, the grave site was unfavorable or if the funeral or the periodic sacrifices and care were insufficient. The revenge of the deceased could express itself as illness, impoverishment, or even childlessness.
Conception and Sexuality
Couldn’t It Have Been Different?
) and as “virtuous mother and good wife” (xian mu liang qi 
), or as a deterrent example, such as the ruinous lover (e. g., Yang Guifei) or the female ruler (such as the above-mentioned Empress Wu Zetian or the Empress Dowager Cixi). The fact that it was extremely rare for women to gain fame as scholars or poets (Ban Zhao and Li Qingzhao are the most famous) supposedly proved women’s inadequacy in the fields of literature and science. In addition, we find the model of the female warrior (e. g., Mulan), situated between history and myth. The most frequently encountered female image in literature, though, is that of the evil mother-in-law, the oppressed daughter-inlaw, the tyrannical wife on the one hand, and the fox fairy transforming into a lover or a female spirit in fairytales and legends. In this way, the acknowledgement of women and their achievements was constantly neglected in the male-dominated world of Chinese officials. It was only as the mother of many sons or by means of her exceptional virtue and chastity that a woman could achieve honor and recognition; literary or intellectual achievements, on the other hand, were neither expected nor recognized.
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