"There is absolutely nothing remotely like this book in the history of late imperial women. [An] immensely important book."--Gail Hershatter, author of Women in China's Long Twentieth Century "A masterful work."--Lynn Hunt, coeditor of Beyond the Cultural Turn

"There is absolutely nothing remotely like this book in the history of late imperial women. [An] immensely important book."—Gail Hershatter, author of Women in China's Long Twentieth Century "A masterful work."—Lynn Hunt, coeditor of Beyond the Cultural Turn

"Opening up questions about women's lives, about gender, about why we read history at all and how we write it, Patricia Buckley Ebrey has made The Inner Quarters a place we need to enter."—from the Foreword

Gender and sexuality have been neglected topics in the history of Chinese civilization, despite the fact that there is a massive amount of historical evidence on the subject. China's late imperial government was arguably more concerned about gender and sexuality among its subjects than any other pre-modern state. How did these and other late imperial legacies shape twentieth-century notions of gender and sexuality in modern China? Susan Mann answers this by focusing on state policy, ideas about the physical body and notions of sexuality and difference in China's recent history, from medicine to the theater to the gay bars; from law to art and sports. More broadly, the book shows how changes in attitudes toward sex and gender in China during the twentieth century have cast a new light on the process of becoming modern, while simultaneously challenging the universalizing assumptions of Western modernity.

What can we learn about the Chinese revolution by placing a doubly marginalized group—rural women—at the center of the inquiry? In this book, Gail Hershatter explores changes in the lives of seventy-two elderly women in rural Shaanxi province during the revolutionary decades of the 1950s and 1960s. Interweaving these women’s life histories with insightful analysis, Hershatter shows how Party-state policy became local and personal, and how it affected women’s agricultural work, domestic routines, activism, marriage, childbirth, and parenting—even their notions of virtue and respectability. The women narrate their pasts from the vantage point of the present and highlight their enduring virtues, important achievements, and most deeply harbored grievances. In showing what memories can tell us about gender as an axis of power, difference, and collectivity in 1950s rural China and the present, Hershatter powerfully examines the nature of socialism and how gender figured in its creation.

The thirteen essays in this volume, all by experts in the field of Chinese studies, reflect the diversity of approaches scholars follow in the study of China's past. Together they reveal the depth and vitality of Chinese civilization and demonstrate how an understanding of traditional China can enrich and broaden our own contemporary worldview.

“By learning more not only about China, but from China, America is more likely to sustain a constructive relationship with the rising China. Lampton insightfully provides us with the much-needed guidance.”–Zbigniew Brzezinski, Center for Strategic and International Studies "Professor Lampton's stimulating and well-researched book provides a comprehensive framework for intelligent thinking about the implications for the United States and the world of the rapid expansion of China's economic and military power. Serious students of world affairs and non-specialists concerned about the outlook for U.S.-China relations will all benefit from the historically-based insights and judgments that fill the pages of this thought-provoking volume."—J. Stapleton Roy, former United States ambassador to China