Author ORCID Identifier
https://orcid.org/0009-0003-9912-5435
Abstract
In this ethnographic study, the author interviewed Chinese women aged 85 and older to explore their childhood and adolescent experiences of exile and military violence in the context of World War II and Chinese Civil War. Throughout the years of China’s revolution and interparty conflicts, ordinary Chinese women suffered from war-related violence—not only on the frontlines, but especially in domestic spaces, where the head of the household (e.g., father,husband, or son) engaged in a variety of violent and misogynistic performances associated with culturally-rooted Chinese patriarchy and masculinity. The author argues that in our current political discourse, the Chinese revolution and its related wars—along with the masculine culture that shaped China’s collective memory of the revolution and wars—do not adequately reflect the reality of what the majority of the Chinese people went through or endured in the long-term armed struggles. The Chinese women interviewed in this study who lived through the Chinese Civil War revealed that women frequently suffered political and sex-based violence, abuse, and oppression at the hands of those in authority during social upheavals due to women’s unrecognized citizenship status and their uncertain membership in military, in the workplace, and in government bureaucracy The social roles of girls and women were often deemed less important, more easily neglected, or even considered weaker and inferior, thereby hindering the development of the nation-state. Despite the rapid disappearance of the historical participants who witnessed and remember this significant historical period, there are a growing number of marginalized voices in today’s China and pan-Chinese societies who continue to share their personal and collective memories and try to pass on their knowledge to subsequent generations. Therefore, it is crucial for the public and scholars to acknowledge the memories and stories of less represented groups who directly participated in these social traumas and historical events, as these memories and stories serve as a basis for engaging in debates with the data and biases present in propaganda and official narratives.
Recommended Citation
Chou, Szu-Nuo
(2025)
"War, Violence, and Womanhood: (Re)membering Women’s Military Narratives in China’s Revolution and Civil War,"
Kritika Kultura:
No.
46, Article 16.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.13185/1656-152X.2165
Available at:
https://archium.ateneo.edu/kk/vol1/iss46/16
