The early 1990s witnessed the rise of two major academic trends in China studies, namely, a new focus on late imperial women and gender studies, and on literary evolution from the late Qing to early Republican China. Ellen Widmer was one of the initiators of both trends, and Hu Ying quickly emerged as a young leader in these fields. Therefore, their most recent books, under review here, represent and mark the fruition of these two approaches in a dynamic conversation.

In Fiction's Family, Widmer studies family and fiction side by side. For Widmer, “family” refers first of all to the Zhan family located in late Qing Quzhou, western Zhejiang, consisting of the late Qing female writer Wang Qindi (1828–1902), her scholar husband Zhan Sizeng (1832–c.1894), and their two sons Zhan Xi (1850–1927) and Zhan Kai (1861?–1911?) who both published reformist novels. Secondly, it refers to the fictional Wei family from a Quzhou-like locale that “lies at the center of Zhan Xi's novel.” Lastly, “family” refers to “genres that helped to shape the reformist novels of Zhan Kai” (Widmer, pp. 7–8). Reading Widmer's book therefore resembles a continuous and adventurous expedition between the human and the fictional world—breaking through walls, walking along corridors, and peeping into rooms built with real bricks as well as sketched on the page, and meeting people made up by flesh and blood as well as by words. The reader feels excited yet also awe-struck by such an impossible-looking mission, and yet Widmer leads him or her to a safe landing where, miraculously, he or she can simultaneously omnisciently view “the changing literary landscape of the late Qing” in a close-up (Widmer, p. 5).

Hu's book Burying Autumn, on the other hand, joins the ranks of previous monographs on Qiu Jin (1875?–1907), the first female martyr who died for the cause of China's Republican revolution. Unlike any of the other works on this already long list, Burying Autumn reconstructs Qiu Jin's life through her afterlife, that is, commemorations primarily by women, mainly by Qiu's two sworn sisters Wu Zhiying (1868–1934) and Xu Zihua (1875–1935). As such, it subverts the previous hagiographic convention, rendering a reliable image of the human Qiu Jin “in flesh and blood,” free from ideological brands ridden with excessive male politics. Hu instead chooses to chart Qiu's unique path of life and death, with its causes and consequences, as not that different from those of ordinary women who lived through similar social upheavals. As a result, the audience feels that we can share her passion and understand her reason. This highly refined and exemplary scholarly work, furthermore, seamlessly weaves the reading of literary texts with the interpretation of artistic images, and combines historical and literary approaches.

In addition to their focus on women and gender in late Qing and early Republican Chinese literature, the two authors share in their respective books the adoption of the “linked biography” (hezhuan) genre, initiated by the Grand Historian Sima Qian (c. 145–86 BCE). Just like Sima Qian, they both intend to “rescue from oblivion the ephemeral intent of worthy beings” (Hu, p. 8). In Fiction's Family, Widmer explores the intergenerational link between parents and children and the possible influence of Wang Qingdi, a guixiu of the old school, on the reformist novels of her two sons in the rapidly changing landscape of Chinese literature at the turn of the twentieth century. In Burying Autumn, Hu records how, after Qiu Jin's execution on July 15, 1907, Wu Zhiying and Xu Zihua were the first to come to rescue Qiu Jin's bodily and spiritual dignity at the risk of their own. Had it not been for Wu's and Xu's initial efforts of burial and commemoration, Hu points out, “Qiu Jin's name might never have become so well known” (Hu, p. 5).

Structure wise, Fiction's Family follows a chronological order. After the introduction in chapter 1, chapter 2 recounts the life of Wang Qingdi and Zhan Sizheng, the parents of the Zhan brothers. Chapter 3 focuses on Zhan Xi's life, children, and writings. Chapters 4 to 6 are dedicated to Zhan Kai, respectively on his life and courtesan sketches, his novels, and his career as a journalist. Chapter 7 brings the book to its conclusion. Each chapter, at the same time, involves the juxtapositions of these four individuals and their writings, viewed in all of their multidimensional aspects. Woven together, the ensuing result can be perceived, in its dazzling complexity, at once diachronically and synchronically, often involving flashbacks and flash-forwards, especially when Widmer is trying to find traces of the past in the works of the sons, and traces of the future in the parents’ writings. Spatially, each chapter can lead the reader to real places, following the subjects’ life journeys, as well as to the fictional locations for the activities of each character.

Wang Qingdi, as a writing woman, is the representative of the older generation. Wang held high ambitions throughout her life, yet had to reconcile the “clash between her sense of her own great natural endowment and the duties she was expected to perform” (Widmer, pp. 27–28). She was also troubled by her overall disappointment in her marriage to Zhan Sizeng, who was constantly absent from home. This disappointment, Widmer speculates, may have led to Wang's rather surprising foray into new print media. Wang published poems in literary supplements to Shenbao in 1875 and 1876, and was among the first Chinese women—about three dozen or so that Widmer has located—who published with the news media in Shanghai. Even though “the ways she submitted writings [with the help of Zhan Xi] and the kinds of writing she submitted do not come across as new” (Widmer, p. 36), being a member of the Shanghai Journal–based community of writers and readers separates her as a new woman from the traditional guixiu. In addition, the entry on Wang Qingdi in the Quzhou gazetteers would record her as calling for “male-female equality” (Widmer, p. 51).

With the backdrop of the older generation, as we move to explore the sons’ lives and writings in the following chapters, we can see how Wang Qingdi's disillusion in her own life and her advanced views on women and gender “may have conditioned the sons to take up women's causes in some aspects of their work” (Widmer, p. 7). Zhan Xi's reformist novel, Love among the Courtesans (1897), reflects, to a point, the experiences of the Zhan family. Its chief interest is in “how related people of a somewhat less than modern mindset learn to abandon entrenched practices that were holding them back” (Widmer, p. 66). Using the heroine, the Wei family daughter Alian, as a test case for what to do with gentlewomen in the new order, Zhan Xi envisions the high-class woman of the future. Alian improves her life by unbinding her feet, and, once she frees herself of her encumbrance she can start to draw on her natural energies and training and contribute to society (Widmer, pp. 75–76).

Zhan Kai's reform-minded heroines in his novels, China's New Heroines (1907) and Women's Power (1907), resemble those portrayed by Zhan Xi. Writing ten years apart, however, the way they take up women's issues is rather different. Zhan Xi's Love among the Courtesans, a highly schematic meditation on the evils of opium, bound feet, and the eight-legged essay, was written in response to John Fryer (1839–1928), an English missionary and educator in Shanghai, and presents mainly a departure from the past. In contrast, Zhan Kai's reformist novels show much clearer signs of connection to Liang Qichao's (1873–1929) work, including their setting in the future (Widmer, pp. 11–12). Yet in his generally more radical portrayal of progressive women, “[t]here turns out to be a split among progressive women between those who believe that women should operate independently of male help and those who want to cooperate with men” (Widmer, p. 142). The split was possibly caused, Widmer speculates, by the arrest and execution of Qiu Jin soon after the publication of Zhan Kai's first novel, which featured an assassination theme. Zhan's sensitive retreat from his tacit support for radical women like Qiu in his second novel evidenced the severe situation faced by the people under study in Burying Autumn.

Burying Autumn, too, follows a chronological order, according to the lives of Wu Zhiying (chapter 1), Xu Zihua (chapter 2), and Qiu Jin (chapter 3). This seemingly effortless structure results from Hu's meticulous arrangements of materials found through extensive research of the archives of their friendship. Beginning with Wu Zhiying, the most broadly connected among the three, both vertically and horizontally, Hu maps out the sociopolitical and cultural backdrop of China. Born into the scholarly Wu family that continued one of the major classical prose styles of Qing dynasty, the prestigious Tongcheng School, Wu braved traditional Chinese patriarchy by claiming herself the “Heir of Tongcheng.” Thus, in public appearances, Wu invoked “this larger definition of family learning again and again to lend authority and legitimacy to her role as a public intellectual and an accomplished writer of an esteemed prose style” (Hu, p. 17). Using this claim, Wu associated herself closely to the tradition and also reached out to the diversified historical players—men and women, and Chinese (the Han and the Manchus) and foreigners—during China's transitional time from tradition to modernity. Through this venue, Wu entered a sworn sisterhood with Qiu Jin.

With Xu Zihua, Hu adds another dimension as to how women of talents (cainü) transformed themselves in the early 1900s. Widowed young, Xu's life “features two themes familiar to traditional cainü: her self-conception as a talented poet and her frequent reflections on the demands of feminine virtue” (Hu, p. 60)—and here we see the similarity between Xu and Wang Qingdi. Not unlike Wang, who found comfort and visibility in publishing with the news media, Xu chose to stay with her own parents after the death of her husband, and was thus much more independent, physically and psychologically, than if she were living with her in-laws. Furthermore, the growing of schools for women beginning during the 1898 reform movement offered Xu the opportunity to acquire the new identity of a professional teacher in 1906. All this “unconventionality” in Xu's life prepared her to become a republican revolutionary through her future connection with Qiu Jin (Hu, pp. 88–91).

With Wu and Xu as Qiu's social and cultural foils, Hu uses the poetic and prose correspondence among the three women, as well as Wu and Xu's remembrances of Qiu, to present us a Qiu Jin unlike that of previous hagiographic versions. In Burying Autumn, Qiu is utterly disappointed “that her talents are unappreciated, her aspirations unrealized” (Hu, p. 106), as a result of a mismatched marriage into a merchant family, which leads her to develop a kind of Xie Daoyun complex, “the fourth-century poet with her dual features of precocious talent and disappointment in marriage” (Hu, p. 117). Qiu Jin's intense disillusionment in the failure to find a soulmate in her husband led her to look for female friends, and to her sworn sisterhood first with Wu Zhiying in Beijing (1904), and later with Xu Zihua in Nanxun, Zhejiang Province (1906). This two-year rift also marks the difference between Wu and Xu in their relationship with Qiu Jin.

Wu and Qiu are acquainted with each other because of their shared interest in women's learning. Their bond is more like a sworn brotherhood, in which two daughters from scholarly families formed an alliance as legitimate sons to continue their family's learning and appointed themselves the heirs to the cultural legacy of their fathers. As for Xu, she admired Qiu Jin's lofty striving for higher good and donated to her revolutionary campaigns. Their friendship mixed with romantic attraction and heroism.

Burying Autumn showcases their relationship as an enduring friendship exemplary of traditional Chinese intellectual women. Wu, Xu, and Qiu thereupon form the “three great feats,” exemplified by the black stone stele in front of Qiu Jin's grave, erected about a month after her first proper burial on January 25, 1908. This stele features Qiu Jin's “unique life,” summarized in an epitaph by Xu Zihua, an “inimitable composition,” in turn executed in Wu Zhiying's “unmatched calligraphy.” These three elements—memorial, text, and calligraphy—harmoniously yet dynamically coexist in a beautiful art piece, and a powerful symbol of public protest against the brutal imperial persecution, just like the three female friends. As such, the stele serves as a central image in Burying Autumn, reflecting the different life paths of the three subjects: Qiu the revolutionary martyr, Xu the self-assigned chief mourner of Qiu Jin, and Wu the independent artist.

Consequently, these two books point us in a few important directions for future study. First and foremost, both Widmer and Hu are writing about the lives of ordinary people—women in particular—who did not hold actual political sway in their lifetimes, and may not have played ostensive leadership roles in making social and/or cultural changes. Yet, a look at their lives may help us to see a much fuller and more diversified picture of their times. In Fiction's Family, Widmer shows that the works of the Zhan brothers lend unusual insight into authorial hopes and dreams. By the same token, Hu proves that, even if Wu Zhiying and Xu Zihua remain largely unknown to modern Chinese history, it was their relentless efforts in preserving the remains of Qiu Jin that added some indispensable information to our understanding of a time in turbulence.

Second, Widmer and Hu show the efficacy of the genre of “linked biography” to engage in the study of the lives of common people. In explaining her writing scheme, Widmer notes:

Similarly, the juxtaposition of the lives of Wu Zhiying and Xu Zihua with Qiu Jin allows Hu to excavate the untold stories of the three in unison. Thus Hu not only rescues from oblivion the deeds of Wu and Xu, but also offers a more authentic Qiu Jin—at least from the female perspective. Moreover, in sharp contrast to Wu and Xu's lofty, nonpragmatic motivation, later commemorations of Qiu Jin (recounted in chapter 5 about Qiu Jin's afterlife intertwined with modern Chinese history) made competing claims to her legacy and created the instability of the meanings associated with her name, as can be seen clearly “in the repeated burial and reburials in the first decade after her death, which included three interments and two instances of storage about ground” (Hu, pp. 307–9).

Third, both authors apply a series of transboundary approaches to their works—intergenerational, intergender, transracial, transcultural, transgenre, and crossing between fiction and reality. Fiction's Family presents a number of these practices. Wang Qingdi's life experiences were among the precedents her sons relied on for the creation of female characters featured in their novels. Perhaps, Widmer speculates, the mother's DNA survives in the reformist writings of her sons (Widmer, p. 7). Within the Zhan family lineage, Wang Qingdi and her granddaughter Zhan Yanlai were worlds apart in most details of their lives and accomplishments, but “their interest in women's learning was a shared concern” (Widmer, p. 62). We see also that John Fryer inspired Zhan Xi to write a reformist novel, and Zhan Kai had his heroines travel abroad to India and England.

Similar intergenerational and intergender approaches occur in Burying Autumn. Wu Zhiying claimed that she was the legitimate heir of the male-dominated Tongcheng School, and Qiu Jin longed to go back to her literati natal family in Shanyin, Zhejiang, where the free-wheeling Wei-Jin (220–420) spirit nurtured her forerunner Xie Daoyun. Xu Zihua chose to stay with her natal family after she was widowed. Living such a lifestyle divergent from a “normal path,” she found support from her bon vivant father. There was also the Japanese female scholar Hattori Shigeko (1872–1952), who helped Qiu Jin during her sojourn in Japan, but who paints a somewhat unflattering picture in her later memoir of Qiu Jin as mother and wife vis-à-vis the contemporary Japanese nationalistic ideal of “good wife/wise mother” (Hu, pp. 39–40).

Last but not least, we see interclass communications and influence, especially as demonstrated in Fiction's Family. In his reformist novel Love among the Courtesans, Zhan Xi cast the bondmaid Xuehua as the lead. With her natural feet, lower-class Xuehua is able to help her bound-foot mistress Wei Alian to escape the Taipings. Later she also pulls the dysfunctional Wei family together by turning the household into a self-sufficient farm and persuades women to unbind their feet (Widmer, p. 74). Zhan Xi even suggests that the upper classes can learn from servants like Xuehua (Widmer, p. 89). Zhan Kai claims that his two History of Flowers collections—in which he portrays a new kind of courtesan who is more public-spirited, more patriotic, and better educated—target privileged women as readers (Widmer, p. 132). He expresses the hope that the travails of courtesans might inspire gentlewomen to learn something about hardship and perhaps improve themselves in the process (Widmer, p. 114). With the hope that gentlewomen would take courtesans seriously as models, Zhan Kai even portrays his gentry heroines in his reformist novels as bearing “a surprising resemblance to the more heroic and civic-minded among the courtesans” (Widmer, p. 151). Widmer believes that Zhan Kai may have built his hope on some real or perceived common denominators, and aligns Zhan Kai's sketches of the Shanghai courtesan Zhang Baobao with none other than Qiu Jin.

’Could Qiu Jin possibly have patterned herself after Zhang Baobao, or vice versa? Would photographers of the day have tried to make such women look more similar than they really were? Answering these hard questions requires more research, but we find a similar, albeit subtler, transclass twist in Burying Autumn. After the end of the Cultural Revolution, a new tomb for Qiu Jin was erected once again by the West Lake in 1981, with a full-length white marble sculpture of Qiu Jin standing in front of it. The design followed one of Qiu Jin's cross-dressing photographs, though her masculine attire had been replaced with an elegant, feminine dress. “Two themes became prominent in this final round of commemoration: shoring up the legitimacy of the Communist Party [in promoting Qiu Jin's patriotism] and, more implicitly, increasing the economic well-being of the region [in making Qiu Jin a beautiful attraction]” (Hu, p. 326). In a way, this commercialization of Qiu Jin's memory amounts to a transclass practice, in which a gentlewoman poet disappointed with her marriage into a merchant family becomes a local tourist attraction, and her image is feminized in spite of her original preference for a masculine look.

In conclusion, studies on history and literature from late Qing to early Republican China are both fascinating and daunting: most research has to go through often unarchived news media prints, with not many guidelines to follow. Widmer and Hu have distilled, in their own and unique ways, two decades of individual and collective efforts, their original investigations, and their innovative approaches in these two exemplary works, which have become must-reads for undergraduate and graduate students, as they offer indispensable references, guiding methodologies, and new directions for scholars. I am looking forward to more scholarship of this quality.