Emancipation, a defining feature of twentieth-century China
society, is explored in detail in this compelling study. Angelina
Chin expands the definition of women's emancipation by examining
what this rhetoric meant to lower-class women, especially those who
were engaged in stigmatized sexualized labor who were treated by
urban elites as uncivilized, rural, threatening, and immoral.
Beginning in the early twentieth century, as a result of growing
employment opportunities in the urban areas and the decline of
rural industries, large numbers of young single lower-class women
from rural south China moved to Guangzhou and Hong Kong, forming a
crucial component of the service labor force as shops and
restaurants for the new middle class started to develop. Some of
these women worked as prostitutes, teahouse waitresses, singers,
and bonded household laborers. At the time, the concept of "women's
emancipation" was high on the nationalist and modernizing agenda of
progressive intellectuals, missionaries, and political activists.
The metaphor of freeing an enslaved or bound woman's body was
ubiquitous in local discussions and social campaigns in both cities
as a way of empowering women to free their bodies and to seek
marriage and work opportunities. Nevertheless, the highly visible
presence of sexualized lower-class women in the urban space raised
disturbing questions in the two modernizing cities about morality
and the criteria for urban citizenship. Examining various efforts
by the Guangzhou and Hong Kong political participants to regulate
women's occupations and public behaviors, Bound to Emancipate shows
how the increased visibility of lower-class women and their casual
interactions with men in urban South China triggered new concerns
about identity, consumption, governance, and mobility in the 1920s
and 1930s. Shedding new light on the significance of South China in
modern Chinese history, Chin also contributes to our understanding
of gender and women's history in China.
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