• “A Doll’s House”: Written by the Norwegian playwright Henrik IBSEN in 1879, it was translated into Chinese by HU Shi and printed in a 1918 issue of New Youth. At the end of the play, Nora, the main character who feels trapped by her family life, leaves her husband and family with the intention to live an independent life. In China, Nora became a symbol of individualism. The example of Nora was used to address problems that faced modern Chinese women whose position in Chinese society was radically changing.

• Ancestor Worship: Refers to the practice of venerating familial ancestors and the belief that the ancestors could intercede on the behalf of their descendants and help bring prosperity to the family. Living members of a family were accountable to both their ancestors and their descendants, making the family an entity that spanned generations in a corporate manner. After marriage a woman would venerate the ancestors of her husband’s family. Ancestor worship reinforced and was reinforced by the patriarchal, patrilineal, and patrilocal nature of the Chinese family system.

• Beijing (Peking) University: One of the most influential educational institutions in China, the university became a center of progressive intellectual life during the New Culture Movement and May Fourth Movement of the 1910s and 1920s. The first female students were admitted to Beijing University in 1920.

• CHEN Duxiu (1879-1942): An influential figure in the May Fourth Movement, Chen founded the journal New Youth in 1915. He was dean of Beijing University from 1917 until his resignation in March 1919. Chen was one of the original founders of the Chinese Communist Party (1921) and served as the party’s secretary-general until 1927.

• Chinese Communist Party ( CCP): Founded in 1921 by CHEN Duxiu and LI Dazhao, the CCP joined forces in its early years with the Guomindang (GMD) in a united front against Western imperialism; this tactic ended in disaster for the CCP when the Guomindang turned its forces on the CCP in 1927 during the Northern Expedition. Initially the CCP, under the guidance of the Comintern, adopted an urban strategy; this proved unsuccessful, especially in light of the GMD purge of radical labor and the CCP in 1927. The CCP recovered by focusing on the peasantry rather than urban workers and by distancing itself from Comintern influence during the Long March. Committed to expelling the Japanese, the CCP fought the Japanese during the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945). Subsequently, it defeated the Guomindang during the Chinese Civil War. Since its victory against the GMD in 1949, it has been the governing party of the People’s Republic of China.

• Concubinage: A system that allowed for polygamy in traditional China. Only the first wife was considered the principal or legal wife at any given time, but concubines could be brought into the household as secondary wives. The position of a concubine within a household was tenuous, especially until she produced a male heir. All children born in wedlock were legitimate, with their seniority in the household based solely on birth order and gender. The moral justification for concubinage was the perpetuation of the male line of descent and the need for the birth of many sons (female children were not considered heirs).

• Confucianism: A philosophical school with the writings of Confucius (ca. 551- ca. 479 BCE) at its core that provided the ideological framework for imperial China. The Confucian Classics and commentary written about them throughout the centuries served as the basis of traditional China’s family and governing systems. Confucianism stresses social harmony and morality. The family system serves as the core unit of society, and the relationships within the family are the building blocks of society outside of the family. Five bonds frame Confucian behavior: father-son, elder brother-younger brother, husband-wife, ruler-minister, friend-friend. With the exception of the last, all are hierarchical, and all imply mutual obligations. The imperial governing system, with the emperor at its apex, can be seen as the Confucian family system writ large; that is to say, the ruler was to act as the benevolent father to the people, with his rule based on Confucian morality. Thus, the family and governing systems reinforced each other. For both, an understanding of righteousness and ritual (li) were imperative for achieving moral behavior. A strong family system, sincere ancestor worship, filial piety, and correct Confucian education were all necessary to achieve societal harmony based on morality and the Way. The hierarchical nature of Confucianism and its emphasis on the family system reinforced women’s place in traditional society; thus, when women were called upon to serve the nation in the early 20 th century, Confucianism was perceived as a barrier to their active participation in state-building, because of the prescribed roles for women. Confucianism came to be identified with traditional China and one of the root causes of China’s troubles.

• DING Ling (1904-86): A female writer, DING Ling embraced feminist issues in her works. Her most famous piece, “Miss Sophia’s Diary,” (1927) portrays a young woman of the 1920s who explores her sexuality and in doing so, questions the social mores of the day. DING Ling joined the Chinese Communist Party(CCP) in 1932, was arrested by the Guomindang in 1933, and traveled to Mao’s stronghold of Yan’an in 1936. She expressed her concern over women’s treatment in the CCP in her “Thoughts on March 8,” leading to her becoming a target in the Yan’an Forum on Art and Literature in 1942.

• Dynastic System: Prior to the February 1912 abdication of the last Qing emperor and the subsequent founding of the Republic of China, China had been ruled by a succession of dynasties since approximately the mid-16 th century BCE. At the head of the dynastic government sat the emperor, a position passed down from one generation to the next through the male lineage, meaning that each dynasty represented a single line of imperial descent.

• Footbinding: This custom involved the reshaping of the female foot through a long and painful process of tightly binding a young girl’s feet to inhibit growth. The extremely small size (an ideal of three inches) and deformed shape of feet produced by this process was considered both beautiful and erotically pleasing and greatly contributed to a woman’s marriage prospects. No one knows the exact origins of the practice, but it dates back to the Song dynasty (960-1279) and slowly moved from elite circles to most, if not all, socio-economic groups. Although some minority groups did not practice footbinding (notably the Qing dynasty’s ruling Manchus), the majority of the population did by the Qing dynasty (1644-1912). The practice was formally banned in 1911, but it continued to be commonly practiced until at least the 1920s and into the 1930s. Efforts to modernize China and change the status of women in Chinese society generated a powerful anti-footbinding movement, beginning in the late 19 th century.

• HU Shi (1891-1962): One of the most important Chinese intellectuals of the twentieth century, HU Shi was a professor at Beijing University and an active participant in the New Culture and May Fourth Movements. A proponent of the vernacular movement (an effort to move the written Chinese language away from classical forms and towards a vernacular form that mirrored spoken Chinese), Hu founded a number of magazines to promote his reformist agenda. Although he was not a radical like his colleague CHEN Duxiu, Hu was a contributor to Chen’s influential New Youth magazine in its early years. Hu advocated building a new China through educational and cultural reform, tackling China’s problems one at a time, rather than through overarching political revolution.

• Imperialism in China: Starting with the Opium War (1839-42), first Western powers and then Japan gained rights in China at the expense of Chinese sovereignty. England, France, and the United States were the main Western powers that asserted their interests in China both economically and culturally. The Treaties of Nanjing (1842), Tianjin (1858), and Shimonseki (1895) collectively form the main pillars of what came to be called the unequal treaty system. Through this system, the Chinese government lost the right to set its own tariffs, had to extend extraterritoriality to foreign residents of China, paid large indemnities, and granted the most-favored-nation clause to all treaty signatories. This last treaty right made it impossible for China to negotiate individual terms with individual countries: the clause demanded any right gained by one signatory be extended to all treaty signatories; consequently, China found it could not escape the weight of the unequal treaty system. While the brunt of the treaties was in the economic realm, they also affected the social realm; the treaties established missionary rights, setting the stage for cultural imperialism. China was not able to escape semi-colonial status until the mid-20 th century. Economic and cultural imperialism brought gains to treaty signatories but fueled hostility toward foreigners and stoked nationalist sentiment on the part of the Chinese population.

• Guomindang (GMD) (also written Kuomintang or KMT): Also known as the Nationalist Party, the Guomindang was led by SUN Yat-sen until his death in 1925. In 1928, CHIANG Kai-shek (JIANG Jieshi), who had taken over leadership of the party, became President of the Republic of China. Although the Guomindang was officially the governing party of the Republic of China from 1927 until 1949, its actual power during this period was limited due to the Japanese invasion and occupation of China (1937-1945), as well as because of the civil war brewing between the GMD and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). After the CCP defeat of Guomindang forces in 1949, the GMD fled to Taiwan, hoping to one day again reclaim Mainland China. To this day, Taiwan’s official name is the Republic of China.

• LU Xun (Lu Hsün)(1881-1936): One of modern China’s most famous and influential authors and the most important author of the May Fourth Period, if not the 20 th century. LU Xun wrote short stories, poetry, and essays that critiqued traditional Chinese culture and addressed problems faced by modern Chinese society and government. His works mocked the traditional order and the ineptitude of the Chinese people and promoted the cause of revolutionary change.

• May Fourth Movement/Period: Refers both to the protests on May 4, 1919, as well as the cultural and political developments that followed. The actual protest was sparked by anger over the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Roughly 3,000 students amassed in Tiananmen Square to voice displeasure over the Chinese government’s (the warlord government of DUAN Qirui, then ruling Beijing) plan to sign the Treaty. The Beijing students’ actions resulted in sympathy demonstrations around the country and the call for a general strike. As the activism spread to other sectors of society and a strike threatened to economically paralyze Shanghai, the Beijing government met the students’ demands and did not sign the Treaty of Versailles. The successful political activism inspired students, intellectuals, and many concerned with China’s future to pursue cultural and political change through activism. The goals of the New Culture Movement remained, but they were now more directly politicized and directed toward building the nation. The May Fourth Movement continued to advocate New Culture goals of removing the shackles of traditional China, but did so for more nationalistic reasons and in more nationalistic ways. The May Fourth Movement included the tackling of the question of women and their place in the nation, the radicalization of labor, and mobilization of students to the nation’s cause.

• New Culture Movement: An intellectual movement during the 1910s that challenged China’s traditional social system. In response to the incomplete nature of the 1911 Revolution, intellectuals and activists determined political revolution was not enough to change China; cultural revolution had to precede political revolution for a new political system to benefit China meaningfully. The period saw the proliferation of newspapers, journals, and associations that proposed different visions and values for China’s modern future, all based on the development of a new culture and a rejection of Confucianism and systems based on it. CHEN Duxiu, LU Xun, and HU Shih played important roles in this movement. The movement shifted towards political mobilization after the protests of May 4, 1919 and the May Fourth Movement held sway.

• New Youth: CHEN Duxiu founded this influential journal of the New Culture and May Fourth movements in 1915. From 1917 on, it was published in the vernacular instead of classical Chinese, which allowed it to reach a much wider audience and become one of the main tools of the New Culture Movement. LU Xun, Hu Shih, and other prominent intellectuals contributed articles, essays, and translations of Western works to the journal.

• Opium War (1839-42): Fought between China and Britain, the war was triggered in 1839 by the Chinese confiscation of British opium in Canton. Britain defeated China, and China signed the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842 to end the war. The treaty effectively ended the old Canton cohong system of trade and established the treaty port system, thereby ushering in the age of imperialism and the unequal treaty system. The Treaty of Nanjing served as the cornerstone of the unequal treaty system, which grew in scope over the course of the next hundred years. With the establishment of the unequal treaty system, Western signatories (and later Japan) had access to treaty ports, extraterritoriality, most-favored-nation status (which granted any treaty signatory the rights gained by any other treaty signatory), control of tariffs, and various indemnity and reparation payments. The initial treaty, The Treaty of Nanjing, ceded Hong Kong to the British. Thus, the more tangible effects of the unequal treaty system lasted until Hong Kong’s retrocession in 1997.

• Patrilineal: Refers to a family system in which ancestry is traced through the male line.

• Patriarchal: Refers to a family system in which the oldest male is recognized by the state as the head of the family, and property belongs to the males of the family.

• Patrilocal: Refers to the custom of a woman leaving her own family’s home and moving to the home of her husband’s family after marriage.

• Social Darwinism: The application Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection to the actions and motives of human society. Often associated with Herbert Spencer’s phrase “survival of the fittest,” Social Darwinism proposed that in the struggle for societies to survive, stronger cultures would thrive and dominate weaker cultures. During the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries, this theory was often employed to justify imperialist aspirations. Fear that China was not one of the “fit” motivated Chinese reformers to search for ways to strengthen and modernize China so as to avoid cultural extinction.

• Treaty of Versailles (1919): This treaty to end WWI allowed Japan to take over the special rights that Germany had formerly held in Shandong Province. This, along with the decision not to include a racial equality clause, greatly disappointed and angered the Chinese public and triggered the May 4, 1919 protests.

• Warlord Period: One of the most chaotic periods in China’s modern history, the warlord period came about with the death of YUAN Shikai (the Republic of China’s first president) in 1916. With Yuan’s death, the promise of national unity following the 1911 Revolution, which overthrew the dynastic system, quickly dissipated. Regional military leaders all scrambled to control their own areas and compete with one another for control over Beijing, which brought nominal recognition as China’s central government. China dissolved into semi-autonomous zones, roughly the size of one or two provinces, run by these military leaders or warlords, who issued their own currencies and maintained their own militaries. Although Beijing remained the nominal center, the country became increasingly decentralized from 1916 until 1928. The period officially ended when CHIANG Kai-shek, the leader of the Guomindang , unified China during the Northern Expedition.