Mapping the Discursive Landscape of the Chinese Postpartum Practices

• In Event: 3181 - Section on Asia and Asian America Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 100min: Table 05. Health in Asia/ Asian America

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to map the contemporary landscape of expert knowledge on zuoyuezi, the Chinese postpartum tradition that is often translated into English as doing-the-month. Having its roots in imperial China, zuoyuezi often entails a set of prescriptions and proscriptions on women’s postpartum activities and diet, such as confinement and the avoidance of certain food items. From a biomedical perspective, the knowledge on which these postpartum practices are based may not seem ‘scientific’. Yet zuoyuezi has maintained its salience today in Taiwan, China, and among immigrant women in the U.S. Women not only continue to perform zuoyuezi at home, many also rely on emerging forms of commodified zuoyuezi care. Furthermore, a new field has risen where expert knowledge on postpartum zuoyuezi care is produced and disseminated through popular advice books.

This paper focuses on the zuoyuezi knowledge landscape in which women are embedded. Specifically, I use popular advice books on zuoyuezi to represent a site of discourse formation. Using content analysis, I explore the construction of the postpartum body and a woman’s subjectivity in advice books that aim to help women through the zuoyuezi process. I also discuss the strategies deplored in these texts to frame health risks, authorities of knowledge, and a woman’s gender role.

I argue that the definition of zuoyuezi has been made blurry to incorporate dominant forms of knowledge to embolden its legitimacy. Zuoyuezi discourses in these materials also draw from prevalent forms of subjectivity that are tuned to the idea of the entrepreneurial self. At the same time, they continue to highlight a woman’s gendered role within the family.

Author

• Kuan-Yi Chen, College of Staten Island