Gendered Memories is a study of China’s 20th century, investigated through the making and unmaking of its female revolutionaries, female writers and literary heroines. At the core of the study is a biography of Ding Ling (1904–1986, pen name of Jiang Bingzhi). Xian Wang analyses Ding Ling’s life and literature by situating her within a framework of three female revolutionary martyrs who died during Ding Ling’s lifetime: the 31-year-old Qiu Jin (1875–1907), who was decapitated by the Qing government in her ancestral home of Shaoxing; the 33-year-old Xiang Jingyu (1895–1928), who was executed by firing squad by the Kuomintang (KMT) in Wuhan; and the 15-year-old Liu Hulan (1932–1947), who was decapitated by the KMT with a hay cutter in her hometown in Shanxi Province. Wang presents the life of Ding Ling, who had the audacity to live a long life, in conjunction with the posthumous making of these three female martyrs.
Methodologically, Wang highlights the discrepancy between official accounts – from internal Party investigations to rehabilitation requests – and personal accounts, including personal letters, essays and memoirs often published long after the events, reading them with and against the grain of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) history, offering “plural memories that challenge a singular historical narrative” (p. 8). She investigates the afterlives of the three revolutionaries and the ways in which they were turned into martyrs in fascinating detail, considering works of art and literature, memorial sites, newspaper reports and political discourse. Wang’s analysis convincingly shows how, over the course of the century, the three were used to embody varying political, social and, most of all, gendered virtues. The fact that they were women enabled such virtues to be conveyed, whilst also sometimes creating problems. The makers of CCP orthodox narratives were flustered by Qiu Jin’s divorce and rejection of motherhood, Xiang Jingyu’s extramarital affair with one CCP leader during her high-profile marriage to another (the two men on opposing sides within the CCP), and the underaged Liu Hulan’s relationship with a PLA commander. By revealing various acts, how artists added blood-spotted snow to a painting and playwrights removed filial tears, she traces the subtle and not-so-subtle changes in the various adaptations and reproductions of their life stories, revealing that the gendered virtues they were to embody were particularly tenacious. The CCP presents itself as a key force in the liberation of women, but “gender hierarchy prevail[ed] within the Party” (p. 81), female chastity was perpetuated, and women were denied the literary and political recognition that Wang argues they deserved.
In this monograph, the deaths of the three martyrs accentuate the fact that Ding Ling herself was spared their fate. Not only was her husband and father of her son executed by the KMT in 1931, becoming one of the five martyrs of the League of Left-Wing Writers, but she too was kidnapped by the KMT in 1933 in Shanghai and spent three years in captivity in Nanjing. While she was missing, Lu Xun supported the publication of Ding Ling’s serialized novel to heighten awareness of her disappearance and published a mourning poem dedicated to her in 1933. She escaped with the help of the CCP in 1936 and later went to Yan’an, becoming one of the most renowned socialist writers, praised by Mao Zedong in his poetry in 1936, and receiving the Stalin Prize in 1951. Yet being spared martyrdom came at a price.
Wang convincingly argues that female revolutionaries had a double burden to carry – women had to be both chaste and politically loyal to the Communist Party. After escaping captivity, Ding Ling was accused of two misdeeds: first, writing a note to the KMT during captivity, stating among other things that she would refrain from engaging in political activities after her release. Second, she was accused of continuing a sexual relationship with a man with whom she had a daughter during captivity, and who was deemed a “traitor” by the CCP because he later worked as a translator for the KMT and provided the KMT with the location of Ding Ling’s and his apartment, a secret CCP meeting site. Ding Ling was investigated by the CCP, and while a first conclusion in 1940 absolved her, she admitted guilt during the Rectification Movement in 1943, leading to another CCP investigation in 1945 that produced mixed results. While she gained national recognition as a writer, her downfall came during the Anti-Rightist Movement, when she was expelled from the CCP and Zhou Yang criticized her in 1958. Ding Ling vanished for two decades, and for a second time she was assumed dead yet not mourned by the CCP; instead, she was downgraded to a “traitor” during the Cultural Revolution. Her return to public life in 1979 in Beijing, when she applied for rehabilitation, caused a literary and political sensation. Her rehabilitation was granted, if gradually, and in Zhou Yang’s case grudgingly. Ding Ling died in 1986, the year that she was fully rehabilitated.
Wang ties her textual, visual and material sources together in a unique arrangement that “disrupts the conventional linear presentation” (p. 8) we might encounter in memorial museums. Wang pays comparatively little attention to how the four women are curated in such orthodox spaces and instead chooses to curate her own “imaginary exhibitions.” The book consists of five chapters, named “exhibitions.” The first is dedicated to Ding Ling, the second to Qiu Jin and the third to Xiang Jingyu. There is also a fourth chapter dedicated to Zhenzhen, one of Ding Ling’s literary characters from a short story she published in Yan’an in 1941, showing that the reception of this literary heroine followed a similar trajectory to Ding Ling’s making and unmaking. She then discusses the final of the three martyrs, Liu Hulan. Since Ding Ling is at the centre of two chapters and both the introduction and epilogue, she is the main protagonist.
The book greatly benefits from Wang’s inclusion of the supporting characters of Ding Ling’s mother, who was good friends with the martyr Xiang Jingyu, creating elegant intertwinements between chapters, and one of her fellow female writers introduced in the book’s epilogue who, like Ding Ling, rose to fame before the founding of the PRC. This friend was imprisoned in the 1950s and for most of the Cultural Revolution, only to commit suicide shortly after being rehabilitated by the CCP in 1982. Wang contrasts this woman’s ignored suicide to the nationally celebrated martyrdom, which provided useful villains for national narratives: the corrupt Qing official or, alternatively, the feudal system for Qiu Jin, the Kuomintang for Xiang Jingyu and Liu Hulan, and the Japanese for Zhenzhen’s stories.
Wang’s Gendered Memories contributes significantly to the field of Chinese studies, in particular Chinese literature and history. It also provides valuable insights for anyone interested in gender, memory or literature studies who hopes to gain a Chinese perspective that informs them about the power “the CCP” had over cultural production and historiography while allowing that women like Ding Ling were also “the CCP.” During her long life, Ding Ling was tenacious about wanting to be heard by the Party, and ultimately her tenaciousness proved more powerful than the gendered prejudices she faced.
