An American Scholar’s Research on Chinese Women in the Twentieth Century:An Interview with Distinguished Professor Gail Hershatter*

LI Weirong

Gail Hershatter University of California, Santa Cruz

Abstract:Gail Hershatter has devoted her entire scholarly career to research on Chinese women in the twentieth century.In order to better understand the details of her research,the author conducted an interview with her via e-mail.The interview centers around six topics:her introduction to the Chinese language and China;her time studying Chinese language and conducting research in China;the application of archival documents and oral history narratives;the paradigms of objectivity,big history,and the gender of memory;the aspects of personal voices,gendered division of labor,and gender equality;and curricula of Chinese history and beyond.

Keywords:Research on Chinese Women;oral history narratives;the Big History;the gender of memory;gendered division of labor

Gail Hershatter’ s lifelong research into Chinese womanhood is always fascinating and

inspiring.In order to have a more detailed understanding of her research,Weirong Li invited

Professor Hershatter to be interviewed.Due to the pandemic in 2020,the interview was conducted via e-mail from September 2020 to November 2020.

I.Introduction to the Chinese Language and China

LI Weirong(hereafter referred to as LI):

Prof.Hershatter,you’re a well-known expert in the history of modern China,the labor history of China,and gender and sexuality of China.I know that you have excellent command of Chinese which has been quite helpful for your research on Chinese studies.Could you tell us when you began to know China and what helped you to make up your mind to learn Chinese socially and personally?

Gail Hershatter(hereafter referred to as Hershatter):

I first became seriously interested in China when I was in college,in the very early 1970s.Before that,aside from reading Pearl Buck’s novel

The Good Earth

and reading various Cold War stories in US publications about how terrible life was in China,I had not given China,or Asia as a whole,much serious thought.At the time,elementary and high school curricula in the US were much more Eurocentric than they are now,although they are still not where they need to be for a truly global curriculum.

I became interested in China when first the US ping-pong team went to visit China,and then the following year President Nixon followed.All of a sudden there was an explosion of coverage about conditions in China,much of it favorable.Like many people of my generation,I was critical of the US role in the Vietnam War,and aware that much of the justification for that war had to do with preventing the spread of communism in Asia—a so-called“domino effect”that was said to emanate from China.So it was a shock in the wake of Nixon’s visit to open almost any popular magazine in the United States and see detailed and favorable coverage of China,accompanied by big glossy pictures.Clearly,something more was going on there than I had been told,and I wanted to find out more.I was also very interested in socialism,and of course at that time China regarded itself as the world center of socialist revolution.So all of those factors encouraged me to start taking courses about China,and during my third year in college,I also began to study the Chinese language.

LI:

When you began to study Chinese,were there many people who wanted to learn Chinese?Did you take the Chinese course at school?Was it difficult for you to learn Chinese in the very beginning?Were the Chinese teachers good?Was the environment at the time good enough for you to learn Chinese?

Hershatter:

My first serious study of the Chinese language was an intensive second-year Chinese course at Middlebury College in Vermont.Middlebury hosted a number of intensive foreignlanguage classes during those years,and people from all over the United States,Canada,and Europe came to study with some of the best Chinese language teachers in the United States.Most of them had originally come from the mainland or Taiwan or both.In order to study at Middlebury,you had to sign a language pledge that you would speak only the language you were studying.I am very grateful to my teachers at Middlebury,especially the late indomitable Helen T.LinHelen T.Lin(1928–1986),whose Chinese name is DAI Zhushe 戴祝畬,born in Hangzhou,Zhejiang Province,graduated from National Taiwan University with a bachelor’s degree in agricultural economics in 1950,married Andrew W.Lin(whose Chinese name is LIN Wen-chan)in 1953.Before she became Professor of Chinese Language and Literature at Wellesley College in 1966,she worked at Yale University.She was the third daughter of DAI Junren 戴君仁,a famous philologist and writer in modern China.Helen was an internationally renowned expert on Chinese teaching overseas.She taught Chinese at Yale University,Wesleyan College and other universities.From 1972 to 1976,she was hired as a Chinese teacher of the summer school at Middlebury College.This is where Gail Hershatter studied Chinese with Helen Lin.The Chinese textbooks she edited include (Yale University Press,1967;co-edited with Henry C.Fenn,etc.),and (China Books &Periodicals,1985;co-edited with DU Rong);she was also the author of (Cheng &Tsui,2005)and (China Books&Periodicals,1988).,affectionately known as“mother tiger.”Ms.Lin not only gave me a good foundation in Chinese,but also suggested to me what became my senior undergraduate project:the translation of 1930s street theater plays used to mobilize people in China,performed by non-professional actors during the early years of the War of Resistance against Japan.This was my first experience doing research in Chinese,and also my first experience with the difficulties of translation,with which all scholars wrestle.

II.Studying Chinese Language and Conducting Research in China

LI:

In 1975,you visited China for the first time.How did you get the chance?Did you begin to pursue your doctorate degree at that time?In 1979,you had another chance to go to China again.This time,you studied at Nankai University.Why did you choose Nankai University to further your Chinese learning?Did you have other choices?You stayed there for two years:did you enjoy staying there?What did you learn at Nankai University?In retrospect,are you satisfied with your two-year stay at Nankai University?In 1979,you also collaborated with Emily Honig in collecting archival documents and interviewing retired workers in Tianjin.Was this the first time you collaborated with each other in doing academic research?Did you plan the assignments for each other in advance?

Hershatter:

In 1975,I visited China for the first time as part of a delegation of the US-China People’s Friendship Association.It was a three-week tour in which we went to Beijing and many sites in the Northeast,including the Daqing oil fields.Looking back on it now,especially after many years of both living in and visiting China,I am very aware of what a constrained tour it was,with all of us moving around as a group with guides,visiting one work unit after another and watching people give us short explanations of what they were doing,or watching children sing and dance at schools.Nevertheless,I saw a great deal,and I don’t think it was a waste of time.I think people were very serious about wanting to present China’s achievements to a foreign audience,even though looking back,it is clear that it was a time of enormous political strain and not a little popular discontent.

When I visited China in 1975,I had not yet begun graduate school.I studied at Princeton for a year and then did Ph.D.coursework at Stanford until 1979.By the time I was ready to do dissertation fieldwork,I was very lucky that the United States and China had established diplomatic relations and begun to accept graduate students as exchange students.I was in one of the very early cohorts of Ph.D.students to be able to study in a Chinese university.I had been working on the history of the working class in China,and I decided to go to Tianjin because it was North China’s largest industrial city and I wanted to study the history of women industrial workers there.

I stayed at Nankai University for two years,living in a foreign student dorm with a Chinese roommate,attending some university classes but spending most of my days doing research for my dissertation on the making of the working class In Tianjin.At the time,most archives were not open to foreigners,so I did much of my work in the Nankai university library and at various factories and one museum in Tianjin.It was a very slow process,and access to some sources dried up after Ronald Reagan became US president and US-China relations became more tense.

But by far the biggest benefit I experienced by spending two years in China was the chance to have extended contact with my Chinese classmates,some of their families,and other people I got to know in the course of my research.It was a time of great ferment in Chinese universities.The slogans were“liberate thinking”and“seek truth from facts.”Many of my classmates were older than the typical university student in the United States,because they had spent years as sent-down youth working in fields or factories.They were often in their mid- to late 20s.They had a very clear idea of how China worked and what its predominant social problems were,and they were full of critique and the desire to make things better.Many provocative literary and artistic works were beginning to appear,and when something would come out in a literary magazine,one student would get hold of a copy and pass it around to all of his or her classmates,with people signing up for time slots to read it,sometimes in the middle of the night.People were intensely curious about the United States and the rest of the world.It was a wonderful time to be there,and it was also the time when my spoken Chinese and my ability to read were consolidated.

If I had ever had any idealistic notions about how easy it would be to create socialism—and by the time I went to China those notions had already been thoroughly tested by various revelations about internal Chinese politics—they were forever put to rest by my two years in China.I learned just how complex and conflict-ridden the process of social transformation could be.But it was also a moment of profound optimism,and of increasing contacts between Americans and Chinese,and for that reason I cherish the memory of the years I spent there.I am particularly grateful to my teachers in the history department at Nankai,and to my classmates who welcomed me into their families and taught me so much about daily life.

During the two years I was in China,I was in contact with other American classmates studying at other universities.Among them was my close friend Emily Honig,who was at Fudan University and Shanghai.We were working on separate dissertation projects,but we were also reading the local newspapers every day and a number of popular magazines,and we noticed an explosion of public discussion about gender differences,dating,adornment,sex,marriage,divorce,and women at work,all topics that had been much less discussed in China up until that point.We started clipping articles from newspapers and magazines,as well as interviewing our friends and other people we met.Eventually the material we collected became the basis for a book,

Personal Voices:Chinese Women in the 1980s

,which tries to capture the shape of emergent conversations about gender in the early 1980s.At the time it was published in 1988,it was a contemporary report,but now,with the passage of more than 30 years,it has become a history book.

LI:

In 1986,you finished a book named

The Workers of Tianjin,1900–1949

.What inspired you to conduct research on the workers of Tianjin?In the introduction,you cited the British historian E.P.Thompson’s

The Making of the English Working Class

:did this book have any relationship with your book

The Workers of Tianjin,1900–1949

?You also stated the following:“As in other areas of women’s history,scholars have had to do more than simply apply standard questions to the female experience.They have had to revise old concepts and develop new ones.”(pp.3-4);and that“when I began this study in the spring of 1979,I expected to devote most of my time to the female textile workers of Tianjin.”(p.7)It could be inferred that you originally intended to investigate issues related to female textile workers of Tianjin,but it turned out that you eventually covered the workers of Tianjin as a whole.What caused such a big change as this?What kinds of old concepts had to be revised and what kinds of new ones had to be developed?In what way has it contributed to the labor history of China,or even of the world?

Hershatter:

My first book,based on my dissertation research and published in 1986,was a history of the working class in Tianjin.Originally,I had thought that I would focus my attention on women industrial workers in Tianjin,since I had done some early research on women workers in Shanghai and knew that they had played a very important role in the cotton,silk,and match industries there.But I found very early on in my research that women entered the Tianjin workforce in much smaller numbers,only beginning to resemble the Shanghai demographic profile in the late 1940s.The first thing I learned from this is that the history of workers,and the history of women,vary a great deal from place to place,and that asking about the differences can help alert us to regional specificities and local experiences.I hope that

The Workers of Tianjin

,which was translated into Chinese many years later,in 2016,can help to start a conversation among scholars working in China about the research that still needs to be done to understand the history of the working class.

III.Archival Documents and Oral History Narratives

LI:

You and Emily Honig stated that“most of our time was spent poring over archival documents and interviewing retired workers.”(

Personal Voices:Chinese Women in 1980’s

,1988:v)When did you begin to do research with the application of archival documents and interviewing?What kind of role do you think they play in your research?

Hershatter:

At the time I was doing dissertation research,most archives were not open to foreigners,or perhaps even to most Chinese researchers,.I did have a wonderful opportunity to work in the archives of the Santiaoshi museum,which was then still open.I was also able to interview retired factory workers from a number of cotton mills and other workplaces.Of course,archival documents and oral histories are very different types of sources,but in my opinion they can be used to complement one another and to help fill in the silences in the written historical record.

LI:

In your research about Chinese studies,Gao Xiaoxian 高小贤 is a very important figure.How did you get to know her?How did the two of you cooperate with each other?When you conducted research in Shaanxi Province,what was originally on your mind?Why did you choose Shaanxi Province to do your field research?

Hershatter:

I met Gao Xiaoxian at a conference at Peking University in the early 1990s,and we quickly discovered that we shared an interest in what had happened in the Chinese countryside in the 1950s,and in particular how the changes of collectivization had affected rural women.Over more than a decade we talked to one another,did several interviewing trips in the countryside,and tried to puzzle out how the policies of socialist construction had affected women.I was able to do this work in Shaanxi province because that was where she lived and she had worked with many rural villages in the course of her work with the Women’s Federation and later with an NGO.She is an amazing researcher with a profound understanding of the Chinese countryside and a true commitment to trying to improve the lives of rural people,and rural women in particular,through intelligently designed,gender-sensitive projects and policies.I have learned an enormous amount from her.

LI:

Your book

Dangerous Pleasures:Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth-Century Shanghai

has been resonant and quite popular among the related researchers.Under what circumstances and with what purposes did you undertake such a project?In

The Workers of Tianjin,1900–1949

,you focused on the story of workers in Tianjin,North China’s most important industrial city in the first half of the twentieth century;in

Dangerous Pleasures:Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth-Century Shanghai

you focused on prostitution in twentieth-century Shanghai.Did you write these two books in different ways?The phrase“dangerous pleasures”in the book’s title seems to imply that prostitution gave people pleasures even though it was dangerous.How can we understand it?

Hershatter:

I began to do the research for what eventually became the book

Dangerous Pleasures

in the mid-1980s.When I was first doing research in Tianjin,I remember having seen a government survey about prostitutes in the 1920s,and it made a deep impression on me that they had counted more prostitutes at that time than women cotton mill workers.That was not because the prostitution sector in Tianjin was especially large;there were very few women in the factory workforce in Tianjin at that time,as I mentioned earlier.But the discrepancy in the numbers alerted me to the fact that for women coming from the countryside and looking for work in an urban environment,depending upon their networks and how they came to the city,might have been as likely to end up working in a brothel as in a factory.I wanted to understand prostitution as a form of livelihood available to women at that time.

As I continued with this project,I noticed something else:reformers,revolutionaries,government officials,intellectuals,tabloid journalists,and many others all used prostitution as a way to talk about the kinds of social problems that they felt China needed to address.At the same time,particularly in Shanghai tabloid newspapers,there was also a kind of minor celebrity culture where the most famous high-class courtesans in Shanghai garnered coverage much like movie stars might have in popular magazines today.It became evident to me that by investigating prostitution,I was able to map a whole range of social attitudes and government initiatives.

One difference between this research and the research I did for

The Workers of Tianjin

is that I was not able to conduct oral history interviews with prostitutes,although I did interview a number of Shanghai officials and social workers who had been involved in the reform of prostitutes in the 1950s.The title,

Dangerous Pleasures

,is meant to imply that although prostitution was considered a form of entertainment for men,and often gave men social occasions to meet with each other in the company of high-class courtesans,it was also considered a danger.People who were concerned to transform China into a modern nation felt that the existence of prostitution,and the poor women who worked in that sector in order to support their families,were an indication that China as a nation needed to reform its economy and society.So the title is less about the sexual pleasure that might be involved in visiting prostitutes,which was in fact not talked about it much in the sources,and more about the ambivalence with which a range of people regarded prostitution in Shanghai society at that time.

LI:

In

Dangerous Pleasures

,you write about the ethnic,regional,professional,and political diversity of Shanghai from the mid-nineteenth to the early-twentieth century.Was it convenient and easy for you to investigate the archival materials you needed for this book?Do you have any interesting stories from doing field research in Shanghai?

Hershatter:

Shanghai was an extremely complicated city,as you suggest,and its urban history was very fragmented.I was able to draw on a wide range of materials,including tabloid newspapers,popular magazines,mainstream newspapers,reform treatises,and archival records in the Shanghai Municipal Archives.One of my most interesting oral history interviews was with someone who had been in charge of the prostitution reform campaign in the early 1950s.He recounted going to the place where prostitutes had been rounded up.He prepared to address them about how important reform was and how good care the government intended to take of them,but when they saw him they staged a cry-in,and all started sobbing at once.Then when they were served lunch,they turned over their plates and dumped their food on the floor.He was a wonderful storyteller who gave a very clear sense of how complex the process of reform can be.

LI:

It is interesting to notice that you speak of“modernity”in

Dangerous Pleasures

.Nowadays,prostitution is regarded as the practice of engaging in relatively indiscriminate sexual activity,and it’s illegal in most modern countries.Thus,it seems that prostitution is not related to modernity.In what way,in your opinion,did prostitution in twentieth-century Shanghai have an influence on modernity?

Hershatter:

The relationship of prostitution to modernity is,of course,complex and historically contingent.The subtitle of this book refers to the fact that so many social commentators who spoke about prostitution from the 1920s to the 1940s in Shanghai did so explicitly in the context of how Shanghai in particular and China more broadly could and should build a modern society.It was not so much about whether prostitution itself was modern;it was about what a modern society should look like and what the place of prostitution and the status of women in that society should be.There were many different takes on that question.At the same time,it is clear that the portrayal of courtesans as celebrities with a public presence was considered part of a modern urban set of pleasures,and that reading about them in the tabloid press brought those pleasures to a much broader reading public who might not ever have had firsthand contact with prostitutes themselves.

IV.Objectivity,Big History,and the Gender of Memory

LI:

In the same book,you write:

Many of these men were themselves writing about their own recent past—were lovingly,poignantly,nostalgically recalling the courtesans of twenty years before their own time.What we are reading,then,is not a transparent recording of the ‘facts’ of a particular woman’s native place,work history,physical charms,major liaisons,poetic talents,and so forth,but rather a story already rendered nostalgically.(p.11)

Here I notice the word“nostalgically.”We know the academic research is supposed to be objective,but“nostalgically”has some subjective bearing in it.How was it possible to be objective when analyzing these seemingly subjective materials?It is also true of your statement that“the narrativized traces that form the historical record of courtesans and lower-class prostitutes are also a set of congealed relations of power.”(p.11)Power usually means authority.How,again,was it possible to be objective when analyzing these“authoritative”materials?

Hershatter:

You are asking an interesting question about objectivity,but one of the things I learned very early on working on this book is that it was not going to be possible for me to retrieve a great deal of direct evidence about the lives of prostitutes.That society was already long gone by the time I was doing research in the 1980s and 1990s,and what was left was a paper trail where people were celebrating,worrying about,denigrating,or otherwise commenting on sex work as an institution and individual prostitutes who had minor celebrity status.So the problem for me was less whether they were recalling things accurately,and more what their attitudes could tell us about perceptions of prostitution at that time.I was trying to capture the sense of a conversation,an argument,and a set of urban preoccupations by listening to as many different voices as I could:performers,revolutionaries,police,tabloid writers,and so forth.Because the women did not speak for themselves,but many different kinds of men felt entitled and authorized to speak for them,the sources that remain for historians to work with are most useful in trying to figure out the relationships of power:between urban governments and prostitutes,between male customers and prostitutes,between reformers and the foreign powers that also controlled parts of Shanghai governance,and so forth.

LI:

Just now we discussed narrative.As a historian,you have to narrate what happened in the past.What kind of stance do you take when you narrate in your papers and books?A completely objective one?You have said that“my work is really looking at the connections between ‘Big History’ and the daily life and local consciousness of these rural women.”From the 72 interviewees,you composed the book

The Gender of Memory:Rural Women and China’ s Collective Past

(2011),in which you focus on oral narrative instead of“big history”or a“grand narrative.”Why did you prefer oral narratives?

Hershatter:

I don’t think you can understand oral narratives without reference to“Big History.”For instance,in the research for

The Gender of Memory

,unless you knew the specifics of land reform,lower producer cooperatives,advanced producer cooperatives,people’s communes,and so forth,you could not figure out what was happening to the rural women we interviewed.Big History shaped their world.On the other hand,and this is also important:without the perspective of these rural women,we cannot fully understand how successful,effective,uniform,or widespread those various Big History policies were.It is the interaction between top-level political events and policies on the one hand,and local everyday life on the other,that interests me as a historian.Interviewing rural women was a very good way to get at that interaction.But oral narratives were not the only sources for the book;much archival research and investigation of published material went into it as well.

LI:

From the book’s title,we find two key words:“memory”and“gender.”We know that,when we remember,the past might be magnified or reduced,and it’s difficult for us to keep it as it is.That is to say,it’s really hard for us to be objective.How were you able to best use the memory of the peasants so that you could be objective in your discussion?It’s interesting to notice that the memory had its gender.How could you determine whether the memory was masculine or feminine?

Hershatter:

Whenever we narrate something that happened us in the past,even something that happened a week ago,we are not narrating it exactly as we apprehended at the time.That is how memory works:we select,rearrange,highlight,and above all narrativize.In the process of telling a story,we are always changing the elements of the story.That does not mean that anyone is lying.It means that memory is a dynamic and complex process.One of the interesting features of memory,as we understand it,is that when people remember,they do so in the present moment,and so memory is also partly shaped by a dynamic relationship between the present and the past.

For example,older people may remember their youth as an idyllic time when their physical capabilities or sense of ideals were stronger,and may talk about the past in a way that contrasts unfavorably with the present.Sometimes,people are also working out their grievances when they narrate the past.That is,they may feel that they have accomplished things that are not sufficiently recognized or respected by younger generations.They tell about the past partly as a means to instruct,to reprove,or to inform actual or imagined listeners of their accomplishments.This is also a case of narrating the past in a way that is shaped by the present moment.

So when you as a historian ask somebody to recount their past,of course the hope is to learn something about past events.But you also want to understand what stands out in memory,and why.In this specific case,I was interested in what rural women remembered the revolution and the process of building socialism as having been,what they thought it had accomplished,and how they understood their own participation in it and their own effect on the world around them.These are,necessarily,questions to which there are no simple or objective answers.But they are important questions for understanding the course of social change in the countryside.

As for whether memories have a gender,I don’t think there is anything intrinsically predetermined about how memories are formed.But there was a gendered division of labor in the countryside throughout the period we were investigating,even though the content of that division of labor kept changing as women moved into the fields.Women remained primarily responsible for domestic work,which was not remunerated and which was conducted in the interstices of a workday in the fields.They went to some political meetings,but in general fewer than men did,because of those domestic responsibilities.And they slept less,because they stayed up late at night spinning and weaving to try to provide clothing for their growing families.Given all of that,it is not surprising that their memories of that time are different from those of the men we were able to interview or different from the list of events that typically show up in textbooks.In particular,women often did not have clear memories of the order of political campaigns,although they could talk eloquently about the effects of those campaigns on their families,and could usually,when prompted,put them in chronological order by relating the campaigns to how old their children were at the time.The gender of memory thus is not meant to be a predetermined explanation.It is something to ask about and to map with respect to people’s locally specific experiences.But as long as gender remains an organizing principle of society and of social labor,it will continue to be a valuable clue to history and an axis of differentiation of memory.

V.Personal Voices,Gendered Division of Labor,and Gender Equality

LI:

The voice of a person indicates their identity.You and Emily Honig co-authored the book

Personal Voices:Chinese Women in the 1980’s

(1988).Before 1981,few Chinese women thought about gender discrimination,and the women usually insisted that“men and women are equal”;but after 1981,there was increased attention to gender discrimination,the appearance of“feminist outcries,”and the emergence of women’s organizations.Therefore,though gender discrimination was by no means a new phenomenon in post-Liberation China,urban women in the mid-1980s had reason to be more conscious of their unequal status than ever before(cf.pp.308–9).How do you conceive of female voices in twentieth-century China?Were they different from those in the US?

Hershatter:

In China at the very beginning of the reform era,a generation of women had grown up in an environment where they frequently heard slogans such as Mao Zedong’ s 毛泽东(1893–1976)statement that“Times have changed.Whatever men comrades can do,women comrades can do,too.”Statements that men and women are equal were considered uncontroversial.This commitment to women’s equality built on a long series of social changes and political programs across the 20th century in the course of China’s long revolution.

The meaning of this declaration of equality,however,was somewhat circumscribed.It was centered on recognizing women’s political rights,but most importantly on mobilizing women for the work of socialist construction.And so even as it affirmed women’s worth,it was often invoked to establish that women could operate tractors and repair high-voltage lines.Although sometimes there were discussions in the Chinese press about the need to try to socialize some domestic tasks in order to free women up for this important work of building socialism outside the home,in general the domestic realm remained primarily women’s responsibility.Adjusting the gendered division of labor in the home was not a state priority.The idea was that any problems of gender inequity would be gradually solved as society advanced,and as what the state called“feudal remnants”faded from the marriage system.

So although there was a great deal of attention to ending what were called buy-and-sell marriages,there was not a thoroughgoing critique or discussion about what to do with the fact that women were now regularly working a double day—one shift for socialism and one for a family that was mostly unchanged in its gendered division of labor.

When women began to voice dissatisfaction with their situation in the early 1980s,some of them pointed to inequalities having to do with marriage,housework,and divorce.Others,however,objected to the fact that gender difference itself had been elided by Mao-era slogans.After all,no one ever said,“Times have changed.Whatever women comrades can do,men comrades can do,too.”The aspirations voiced by the state were all about women attaining a male standard of work performance.In the early years of the reform era,some people thought that the best idea was not only to recognize gender difference but to have women return to the home and let men earn the income.A variety of people held versions of this position:economists who thought that the labor force could not absorb women,authorities who thought women were not as capable as men,and also women critics who felt that previous arrangements had paid insufficient attention to gender.These people did not speak with one unified voice.But it is important to note that they were engaged in a different conversation from the arguments about women’s status in the US at that time,because they were grappling with the legacy of a different set of historical events.One thing we can say is that the 1980s was a time of intensified discussion about gender difference and how it should be addressed,some from voices we would call feminist and some decidedly not.And because the criticism of gender arrangements arose in the context of a more general critique of many aspects of Maoism,including those that had contributed to raising the status of women,this was a period with a lot of local complexities.

LI:

In

Personal Voices

,we can read the following:

The Chinese Communist Party,almost from its inception,endorsed women’s equality.After the 1950 Constitution guaranteed equality between men and women,and after sweeping attacks were made in the 1950’s on the abuses and injustices suffered by women in the ‘old society,’ Chinese government publications generally asserted that the task of liberating women had been accomplished.(p.309)

What do you think of such an assertion?

Hershatter:

I have already discussed this question a bit just now.No,I do not think that the liberation of women has been accomplished(in China or anywhere else),although there were certainly many positive changes for women in the early years of the PRC.Some of those changes had a much longer history and had been developing since the late Qing dynasty,and some were specific to the project of socialist construction.Addressing gender inequality in all of its dimensions is a difficult task that no society has accomplished with complete success,and China is not an exception to that.

LI:

In your book

Women in China’s Long Twentieth Century

(2007),you discussed Chinese women in the context of marriage,family,sexuality,labor,and national modernity.This book is fascinating and thought-provocative in many ways.It is the thinnest one of your books in form,but it is the thickest one in depth;it discusses the recurring themes of your academic research,and it also opens up many possibilities for the future research of Chinese women;it doesn’t depend on archival documents and oral narratives as your former research did,but rather depends on the grand narrative.Frankly speaking,I like this book.Had you been thinking of writing this book for a long time?Did you intend to evoke some change in paradigm?

Hershatter:

The 2007 book

Women in China’s Long Twentieth Century

is,as you say,“the thinnest one of my books,”but that is because it was originally meant to be an article.I had published an article in the

Journal of Asian Studies

in which I was asked to assess the state of the field of scholarship written by anglophone scholars about women in China.In an article format I could not cover that entire literature,which was rich and multifaceted,so it became this book.And by the time the book was published,there was already a lot of additional scholarship,so the book was already out of date.But it does provide a snapshot of the scholarship at a particular moment in time,and the many conversations that have been opened up about women’s status.Scholars all over the world have contributed to this conversation,including people working in China,and people born and partly educated in China who went abroad for graduate study and have become scholars in North America and Europe.Some of the most interesting discussions and arguments have taken place between scholars working in China and scholars of Chinese origin working abroad.It is probably time for someone to update this state of the field snapshot,but I leave that to the next generation of scholars!

LI:

Your new book

Women and China’s Revolutions

(2019)is different from your former books in many ways.The most striking difference is that you intended to write a longer history of Chinese women(covering more than two hundred years)in this book,while your former books dealt with Chinese women over a shorter period,or some specific group of Chinese women—for example,workers in Tianjin,peasants in Shaanxi,and prostitutes in Shanghai.As stated in the preface:“

Women and China’s Revolutions

takes a close look at the places where the Big History of recognizable events intersects with the daily lives of ordinary people,using gender as its analytic lens.”(p.xiv)It is interesting to notice that in this book you employed“Big History,”which is quite different from your other books.Have you changed your view on“Big History”?Why was“Big History”employed in this book?

Hershatter:

Women and China’s Revolutions

was written to be used in the classroom.I wanted to take all of the specialized historical writing on gender in modern China that has emerged over the last few decades,or at least at least as much of it as I could,and distill the most important lessons that scholars have learned and the controversies and silences that remain.When we teach history classes,we still tend to organize them around recognizable political events,or what I am calling here Big History.So I wanted to try to answer the question of what would happen to our picture of Big History if we talked about the daily lives of ordinary people,and particularly the gendered practices of daily life and the gendered division of labor.So it is not that I suddenly fell in love with the idea of Big History.I just wanted to try to answer the question of how that history might be told differently.Although many courses on modern China now talk about women’s history,and about gender as an important analytic lens,we often still tend to do it in one week on the syllabus,and then go back to telling the rest of the story as though gender were not central to it.So this book tries to keep gender central throughout,while not losing sight of familiar historical events.

LI

:You mentioned in this book that“ two themes recur throughout Women and China’ s Revolutions.The first theme is the importance of women’s labor,both visible and invisible...The second theme of this book is the symbolic work performed by gender itself,work that intersected with women’s lives and interests but was not identical to them.”Are there some similarities between women’s invisible labor and their symbolic work?How can we distinguish them?

Hershatter:

When I talk about women’s invisible labor in this book,I am talking about labor that is fundamental to historical change and sometimes to big political and economic projects,but that tends not to be recognized.I have already spoken about this in my comments just now about women’s agricultural labor under socialism.Because women came out to the fields to work,while continuing to do everything they have done in the household before they participated in socialist construction,you can say that their social reproductive labor remained at least partially hidden and was less completely recognized by political leaders and policymakers than their labor in the fields.I wanted to pay attention to the full range of women’s labor.The second theme,about symbolic work,deals with another issue:when people argue about the fate of China,or its likely future,or ways to develop it,these discussions often invoke the figure of Woman as a heroine,or as a victim,or as a feature of modernity.If you look at debates about what women should be doing and how they should be behaving — everything from how they dressed,to how they were educated,to what kind of work they did,to what sorts of amusements attracted them — you often find that what was being debated was a large vision of social order to which women were central.When the PRC government announced that women would now have the same political rights as men,they were using particular gender arrangements as a sign of social progress.Gender is never just about gender.It impinges upon how personalities are formed,how social relations evolve,how nations develop,even how political struggle and political change are understood.So even while trying to enlarge our understanding of the daily lives of both ordinary and extraordinary women,I was also trying to figure out all of the ways that gender was invoked to talk about the past,present,and future of Chinese society.

VI.Curricula of Chinese History and Beyond

LI:

From your articles,books,and life experience,it is clear that Emily Honig is your life-long friend.You went to China together on the field research trip in Tianjin and Shanghai,you work together,and you have co-authored books.At the same time,I also observe that some other friends contributed much to your research—for example,Gao Xiaoxian,Wang Zheng,etc.—and that some of your students helped you as well—for example,Melissa Brzycki,Stephanie Montgomery,Gao Xiaofei,etc.I was wondering if you feel you are part of an academic community from which you have benefited.

Hershatter:

Across my career I have been very lucky to have terrific teachers,colleagues,and students.The people you name,as well as many others,have taught me an enormous amount,and many of my ideas over the years have been developed in conversation with them.

LI:

The final question is about your teaching and curriculum at UC Santa Cruz.You have taught the following courses:“Revolutionary China 1895–1960,”“Recent Chinese History,”“Women in China’s Long Twentieth Century,”“China Since the Cultural Revolution:Histories of the Present,”“Gender,Family,and State in China:1600–Present,”“Engendering China,”“Research Methods:China,”and“Readings in Modern Chinese History.”Obviously,all of them are closely related to your academic research.Did you design them gradually?Or did you plan them in advance systematically?

Hershatter:

These courses that you name evolved across the years that I have been teaching.Some of them are iterations of the field I was trained to teach,which was the history of East Asia since 1600.Some of them,as you can see from the titles,grew out of my involvement in the burgeoning field of women’s studies and gender studies in China.I definitely did not plan them in advance systematically,and I never teach the same content twice,even if I am teaching a course with the same name and some of the same readings.There is always great new research being published,and new teaching challenges to be confronted,most recently the challenge of teaching remotely in a situation none of us would have chosen.Every time I teach a class,I learn something new from my students.

LI:

I took part in your graduate course“Research Methods:China”over roughly a year when I stayed at UC Santa Cruz as a visiting scholar.From the course I learned a lot and did some archival trips to Standford and UC Berkeley with you and your PhD.candidates,which is still helpful for my research now.Thank you very much for that! And thank you very much for accepting my interview!

Hershatter:

I’m really happy to do this interview with you,although of course I would rather do it in person! I hope that it is useful to your readers.