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Preface
It has been eight years since I conducted research for this project at various libraries in Beijing. I returned to China as a newly minted history ABD (all-but-dissertation) doctoral student in the summer of 2001 with a dissertation proposal to study how Chinese women entered the public space in the first half of the twentieth century. For the first few weeks, I diligently pored through existing Chinese books on notable women and women's movements in modern China and became discouraged because most of these books were either about revolutionaries and Communist leaders or about how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) mobilized women to participate in party-led political movements. I did not believe political activism was the only way women came into the public space. Besides, not all politically active women followed the CCP line. I believed that education, career, new cultural values, and changed gender norms all played important roles in bringing Chinese women out of the inner chambers and into the public space.
Where could I find records of career women, Christian women, female reformers, and women of the Nationalist Party (GMD)? In searching for