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the authentic voices of historical women, I came to study women's periodicals from the first half of the twentieth century. Turning over those dust-covered, yellowing, fragile pages produced by women journalists gave me enormous satisfaction in my research; this led me into the rich and dynamic intellectual world of Chinese women in the early twentieth century.
Women's journals were an important marker of civilization which demonstrated women's independence and reflected the great social change in modern China which made it possible for women to have public voices. Editing journals provided women opportunities to break down the gender segregation in the public space and to produce historical accounts of the social change around them and in their own lives. It has been more than a century since Chinese women edited the first women's periodical in 1898. The abundance of women's journals in the first half of the twentieth century demonstrates Chinese women's consciousness of creating history.
Nothing says more about the changes in Chinese women's lives in the first half of the twentieth century than the evolution of women journalists from reform-minded Confucian gentry in 1898 to powerful, modern professionals who enjoyed reputations and public personae and were active in feminist and political movements. They criticized social prejudices, male chauvinism, and a legal system that violated women's rights and interests. They participated in national politics and in creating public opinion and new gender norms. The vibrant, diverse, and animated public writings of Chinese women journalists in the first half of the twentieth century have remained a treasure less studied.
Since defending my dissertation in 2003, I have spent some of the summers of 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 at the libraries of the University of Hawaii, Columbia University, Stanford University, and the University of California at Berkeley reading current scholarship on modern Chinese women's history, searching for biographical information on women journalists, and uncovering the publication background of women's journals. I have not read all the women's periodicals published in China from 1898 to 1937. Some journals are lost forever, and others have missing issues.