“Perm hair and strange clothes are not allowed”: Women in Canton during the early years of the War (1937-circa 1939)

• In Event: Hoping for Some Better Days: Twentieth-Century Chinese Women under Clouds of War, Marriage Strains, Social change and Behind Bars

Abstract

Our knowledge of how Chinese women reacted to the outbreak of the Second Sino-Japanese War is heavily influenced by the writings of contemporary patriotic women and party officials in charge of “women’s affairs” or “women movement”. In those narratives, Chinese/Cantonese women are depicted as dedicated patriots who successfully mobilized women into a formidable force of resistance. Female students were praised for organizing themselves into nursing corps, propaganda teams, etc. which helped mobilize apathetic masses to the noble cause of resistance. This is, however, a much simplified picture of Cantonese women’s war-time experiences. What else were women in Canton concerned or worried about in this unsettling time? Women in Canton were so diverse that their responses towards the coming of the war were equally divided and variegated. Did most women participate enthusiastically in the war preparatory efforts? How did the approach of war affect (or un-affect) ordinary women’s work, love, marriage, sex, personal safety, worries about their family? By studying contemporary newspapers, women’s magazines, and reminiscences of this period, it is hoped the impact of the war on people’s lives in general, and women’s in particular, would be better revealed. Government reports on women mobilization also provide us with important clues to the various problems that officials were facing when mobilizing women in the city (and the countryside), and it is through a study of those difficulties that we may understand more about the concerns and worries of women in this part of China in the early phase of the war.

Author

• Virgil Kit Yiu Ho, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology