Women Revolutionaries

Stories of Women Who Helped End the Qing Dynasty

In recent posts, the most famous figures of China’s 1911 Revolution and the early years of the Republic of China have been discussed.  But so far, men have been highlighted.

What about women?  Were women involved in ending the Qing Dynasty and creating the Republic of China?  Oh yes, they were.

Qiu Jin, also known as the Woman Knight of Mirror Lake, was born in Fujian province in China in November 1875.  She was part of a wealthy family. Her grandfather oversaw defence in the port city of Xiamen.  Like most other Han Chinese women, her feet were bound as a child.  This usually happened to girls around age 5 or 6.  This broke their bones, deformed their feet and made it difficult to walk.  That made females less mobile and more dependent.  Qiu’s family did support her pursuing less feminine activities like sword use, wine drinking and horse riding.  She was educated in Zhejiang province a bit further north.  Her father was an official and her mother was also from a literati / official family.  During her education in China, she came across political ideas that her inspired her to become a feminist and revolutionary.

She entered an arranged marriage at age 21, which was late for that time and place. It was unhappy and she believed her husband, the youngest son of a wealthy merchant, cared only for himself.

When the Empress Dowager, after the Sino-Japanese War, opened international education options, Qiu had the chance to study at a women’s school in Japan. She was already married and had two children and would leave them behind in China.

Before moving to Japan, she already exhibited non-conforming behaviour.  In Beijing, she dressed in male, western clothing. Her black hair was trimmed.  She had a blue hunting cap turned sideways.  She wore a second-hand blue business suit that did not fit her well.  The sleeves were too long.  She wore baggie trousers and a green necktie loosely over her chest. 

Why? She was asked and answered: “In China, men are strong, and women are oppressed because they are supposed to be weak.  I want somehow to have a mind as strong as a man’s.  If I first take the form of a man, then I think my mind will eventually become that of a man.  My hair is cut in a foreigner’s style, something Chinese aren’t supposed to do, and I’m wearing western clothes.”

Qiu was already speaking of revolution before her further studies in Japan.

In Japan, she helped to found the Encompassing Love Society, which promoted women’s education and opposed Russian expansion in Manchuria.  She enjoyed martial arts and continued to wear male western clothing, like suits.  She was a Chinese nationalist and anti-Manchu.  She joined an anti-Qing society that then joined Sun Yat-sen’s Revolutionary Alliance.  She talked about “tossing aside the brush to join the military ranks”. 

And while she believed direct action was more important than poetry, she was a prolific writer and speaker.

She wrote in common Chinese in the Vernacular Journal.  That choice of language was modern and revolutionary in itself.  It meant writing in Chinese letters in the way that people spoke, rather than the old classical style of writing associated with traditional education, but that had no connection to everyday Chinese.  This would perhaps be like living in a time when everyone spoke today’s English but all writing was in Shakespearean English.  She made the decision to write in modern Chinese, rather than ancient, classical Chinese. 

She was one of the early adopters of changing written Chinese to match spoken Chinese.  That use of written modern Standard Chinese continued with the New Culture Movement which started around 1915 and 1916.  She was at least 10 years ahead.  This change would help improve literacy in China as it made reading and writing more understandable to common people and not just the elite who could spend years doing special studies in the classics.

Qiu wrote about the need to end foot binding of girls and women, as well as about oppressive marriages.  She gave specific advice to different people.  Grandmothers, don’t believe you’re useless because of age. Don’t hinder progress.  Mothers, by any means, ensure your children get schooling.  Girls, never have your feet bound.  Young women, go for education if you can.  But if not, then read at home and study your characters.  China needs you.  “Our nation is on the verge of collapse.  Men can no longer protect it, so how can we depend on them? If we fail to rouse ourselves, it will be too late after the nation perishes.”

By writing about foot binding and oppressive marriages and telling her own story, she received a lot of favourable messages from women.  She argued that a western style government would be better for Chinese women, who had things particularly bad in the Qing dynasty. 

She also wrote classical poetry that combined mythology and revolutionary subjects.

More so than just writing in the common and classical languages, she believed in speech making.  It had many advantages, she said.  It could be done anywhere and anytime.  Anyone could listen at no cost.  Even those who could not read, including women and children, could understand.  You could move people and build an army.  And anything under the sun could be explained.  Qiu was remembered as an exciting speaker.

Around 1905, the Chinese state became concerned with the opinions being expressed by the Chinese students in Japan.  The Japanese, wanting to keep good relations with the Chinese government, gave them a choice.  Tone it down and stay in Japan, or leave.  Qui was associated with the Zhejiang province part of the Revolutionary Alliance.  When the students debated whether to stay in Japan or to travel to China, she advocated for returning to China. She added “If I ... surrender to the Manchu barbarians, and deceive the Han people, stab me with this dagger!”

When she returned, she pursued revolution her way.  She called herself “Female Knight-Errant of Jian Lake.  Knights-errant were understood to be men known for swordsmanship, bravery, faithfulness and self-sacrifice from the Han dynasty.  She made this a female virtue and built her heroic reputation. 

She was working on a novel about five wealthy women who left their marriages for study and revolutionary activities.  It included them working towards overthrowing the Qing for a republic.

In 1906, she co-founded the Chinese Women’s News which published two issues before being shut down by the authorities.

In 1907, she became head of a school for sports teachers, but it was really a revolutionary training academy.  That year, the founder of the school was arrested for attempting to assassinate a Manchu superior.  Qiu was then arrested and tortured. She refused to admit anything, but her writings were used against her and she was beheaded in her home village, aged 31. 

At least eight plays were made about Qiu Jin in the 4 years after her death and before the end of the Qing dynasty. 

Both the Republic of China and the People’s Republic have remembered her and there is a museum to her.  Qiu Jin has been the subject of films.  One of them was released in 2011, on the 100^th anniversary of the 1911 revolution.  Its title translates as The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake and features her story.  Also, the same year, a Jackie Chan directed film, 1911, begins with a scene showing her being led to the execution ground.

Qiu is memorable, but not alone as a Chinese woman revolutionary.

Chen Xiefen was a writer for one of China’s first women’s magazines.  In her opinion piece “On Independence” she argued that women first had to be independent.  Although some men argued for women’s education and women’s rights, they were unreliable.  They could only argue for women’s rights that were convenient for men.  Women had to fight for women’s rights and women’s education. She went so far as to say that women should not cooperate or negotiate with men at all.

Wu Shuqing was another Chinese feminist and revolutionary.  She was born in Hubei in 1892.  At the start of the 1911 Revolution, when she was about 19 years old, she wrote to Li Yuanhong, leader of the revolutionary government that had just taken Wuchang, the first city for the revolutionaries. She asked him to let her form a Women’s Revolutionary Army.  He disagreed.  She wrote him a second letter.  It argued that it was women’s duty to support the revolution.  Based on the letters and some support from other women, Li finally relented. 

The Women’s Revolutionary Army gained more than 100 members and she trained the recruits over 10 days and then she led the unit in combat in Hankou and Nanjing.  At Nanjing, Wu planned and led an attack on the Shizishen fort.

When Yuan Shikai became provisional president of China in February 1916, the unit was disbanded.  It is not clear what happened to her after that.  I wish I could share more about her.

Today, Chinese women have been the leaders in Hong Kong’s Special Administrative Region and in Taiwan.  Taiwan’s current President is Tsai Ing-wen and she has been President since 2016.  Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor was Chief Executive of Hong Kong from 2017 to 2022.  However, her powers were somewhat limited because of Beijing’s control over Hong Kong.  Mainland control over Hong Kong has increased in recent years, especially after changes to Hong Kong’s laws around 2019, which included National Security legislation which has been used to punish free expression and leaders of peaceful protests.  These decreased Lam’s popularity and she did not run for a second term. 

On the mainland, female leadership is harder to find near the top.  The Chinese Communist Party has never had a woman Chair.  No woman has ever even been on the 7-person Politburo Standing Committee.  That means, no woman has ever been in the innermost circle of Communist Party power in China.  Since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, only six women have ever served in the Politburo, which has 24 members and is China’s executive leadership body.  Three of those six women were wives of party founders.  Currently, no women are in the 24-member Politburo and it is entirely male run.

While both the Republic of China and the People’s Republic of China have celebrated Qiu Jin, if we look at leadership at the top in Beijing, we can only imagine that Qiu would be disappointed.  Of course, women’s rights and women’s education have improved tremendously in all those places since Qiu was executed by the Qing.  Some progress has been made.

Thanks for your interest in the Chinese Revolution.  Please join us again.