"Concubinage and Motherhood in Qing China (1644–1911): Ritual, Law, and Custodial Rights of Property," Journal of Family History, 42.2 (2017), pp.162-183. (original) (raw)

The Evolution of The Chinese Concubine

“Xiaosan, Ernai, Xiaomi,” these are terms to describe the other woman in modern day China. From the Qing Dynasty concubines to what we now call mistresses, having another woman has always been part of Chinese culture. The role of ‘the other woman’ has adapted throughout Chinese history due to the changes in law and social thinking. This paper will look explore how these revisions in law and social modernity has created a new lifestyle for mistresses in mostly Hong Kong and rural China.

Concubines in Song China: The Overlooked Dilemma of a Period

2020

Song dynasty of China was an era of peace and economic growth despite its weakness in political affairs and diplomacy. Throughout the previous dynasty, Tang China, taste for all sorts of foreign luxuries and wonders 1 gained a significant reputation among not only the court but also town-dwellers due to prosperity in society, and this was followed by the Song. Correspondingly, women were set more free and given several economic rights such as the right to properties of their deceased husbands and the control of bridal dowry land which referred to the property given to a woman at the time of her marriage, usually by her parents. 2 This, however, mostly applied to elite women only, excluding women belonging to peasant families. It is important to note that the economic growth that the Song era offered was not easily accessible for lower class people unlike the elites. Those poor families were in fear of losing their little amount of properties or that if they died their daughters would end up as slave-like women. In times of drought and crop failure, some of them resorted to the sale of their daughters as courtesans and if lucky, as concubines. The usage of term "if lucky" emerges from the fact that the roles of courtesans were diminished compared to concubines who increased the demand as they were seen as "an alternative source of extramarital romance for men" 3 during the Song era. Because the strict line between classes started to blur in Song, the literal slavery of women was abandoned in the meantime, courtesan entertainers becoming concubines as well. Hence, women tried to find a place for themselves through being wives, maids, concubines or prostitutes whether by force or their own will.

Getting an Heir: Adoption and the Construction of Kinship in Late Imperial China

The American Historical Review, 1992

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Husbands and Wives in Qin and Han-Dynasty Bamboo Legal Texts

Journal of Chinese History, 2021

In Qin and Han times, the establishment of a complex legal system that applied to every member of the empire brought about an unprecedented transformation of the husbandwife relationship, changing it from a bond largely determined by custom, ritual, and family concerns to one regulated by law. Laws recorded in the Zhangjiashan bamboo legal texts reveal that women's legal status in Qin and Han times was far higher and allowed for greater autonomy than previously imagined. Their increased legal standing may be traced to reduced household size, a policy set to counteract the mounting death toll and social chaos that followed Qin expansion and the transition from Qin to Han rule. I analyze exemplary cases to demonstrate how the small family system in conjunction with a legal order that empowered women as household heads created a new space for widows and wives to exercise their autonomy.