Qiu Jin (秋瑾)
was a Chinese woman born in an era with fervent anti-imperialistic and
anti-feudal sentiments, but in a society with great restrictions on the role
of women and on what they could or should do.
She was torn between living the life of a woman
expected by her society and the life of a woman to participate in the great
revolutionary cause of her time and to lead the breakage of shackles that
limited the contributions of women.
At great sacrifices to her marriage, her
motherhood, and ultimately her life, Qiu Jin chose the latter lifestyle and
became
Modern China’s
first feminist (in
this article, the period “Modern China” is defined to begin around 1840 when
China and the West began to interact extensively).
Qiu Jin was born in 1875 in
Fujian Province
in China,
and grew up in
Shaoxing,
Zhejiang
Province.
As a child of a fairly well-off family, she was very
well educated, much more than other girls of her time.
She was very good in literature and writing,
both prose and poetry.
Unlike most other girls, she was also very much
interested in the outdoor and physical activities, such as riding horses and
martial arts.
Although her feet were bound[1]
starting from about five years old as was the norm at that time for Chinese
girls from reasonably well-off families, she was quite good in martial arts
and other physical activities, an indication of her determination,
commitment, and drive.
Later as she grew older and started advocating
equality for women, she stopped binding her feet.
In the latter part of the 19th
century and beginning of the 20th
century, the Chinese government was extremely weak, with imperialist powers
carving up parts of
China,
and the Chinese were often treated by the foreign powers as second-class
citizens in their own country.
There was strong anger among the Chinese people
at their weak Qing Dynasty government and at the naked aggression of the
foreign powers.
This resulted in the establishment of
revolutionary groups with the objective of overthrowing the Qing Dynasty and
replacing it with a modern republic form of government.
That was the political atmosphere in which Qiu
Jin grew up.
In 1896 at the age of 21, through
an arranged marriage by her parents, Qiu Jin married a wealthy, but
conventional man.
She gave birth to two children, one boy and one
girl, and lived a genteel life.
But Qiu Jin was not content with being just a
mother and house lady.
She found the traditional role for women not
satisfying and too suffocating.
Her interest in new ideas, social and political
changes, and in the outside world appealed to her greatly.
This longing became even greater when in 1903
her family moved to
Beijing
which provided many more opportunities for Qiu Jin to meet the wives of
government officials and other like-minded women who shared her concerns.
She became fearful for China’s
future unless China
underwent great changes.
Finally in 1904, she decided to leave her
husband and her children.
She pawned her jewelry to help finance her trip
to Japan
to study, as
Japan at that time was
considered relatively speaking far more open and modern than China.
Although there might not have been much, if
any, love between her and her husband, it must have been difficult for Qiu
Jin as a mother to leave her two young children.
While in
Japan,
she advocated women’s rights including equal education, abolition of bind
feet, and arranged marriages.
She wrote extensively about such topics,
including publishing her own newsletters.
She was a prolific writer, leaving behind vast
amount of prose and poetry.
While in
Japan,
she also met Dr. Sun Yat-sen, the leader of the most prominent Chinese
revolutionary group and who ultimately led the successful overthrow of the
Qing Dynasty and established the Republic of China in 1911.
Qiu Jin returned to
China
in 1906.
She continued to write many articles.
Together with one of her like-minded female
friends, Xu Zihua, she founded “Chinese Women’s Journal,” a radical women’s
journal in
Shanghai,
again advocating women’s rights.
She encouraged women to get educated and be
trained in various professions so that they could gain financial
independence.
She encouraged women to resist oppression by
their families, society, and the government, including the practice of
binding feet and arranged marriages.
She thought that fighting for women’s rights
was a key to solving
China’s
problems.
She also taught at a girls’ school, the Xunxi Girls’
School in Nanxun, northern Zhejiang
Province,
which was headed by Xu Zihua.
Qiu Jin soon realized that social
changes as advocated by her were not going to happen without political
changes to China’s
central government. Thus she left the Xunxi Girls’ School and taught and
also became the principal at the Datung
School,
in Shaoxing, Zhejiing, which was founded by her male cousin Xu Xilin and
other members of the Restoration Society.
The Restoration Society was one of the larger
revolutionary armed movements whose membership grew to 50,000 people.
One
cell of the Restoration Society was led by her cousin Xu Xilin.
On the surface, the Datung
School
was a school, but it was a front for a base for military training of
revolutionaries.
Qiu Jin also wanted to recruit more female
students to the
Datung
School
and more female members to the Restoration Society.
The Restoration Society was
planning on a nationwide armed uprising around the latter part of July 1907.
However, information about their plan was
leaked, so in early July 1907 Xu Xilin moved up the armed actions of his
cell by assassinating the governor of Anhui
Province.
Although the assassination was successful, it
was basically a suicide act because Xu and his collaborators were vastly
outnumbered by the governor’s troops.
Xu was arrested and subsequently executed.
Xu’s connection to Qiu Jin was somehow
discovered.
Upon hearing the pending arrival of soldiers to
her school to arrest her, she told her colleagues to leave, but she decided
to stay behind.
Knowing perfectly well that she will be killed,
she probably thought that every great cause has its martyrs, and her death
might generate more attention and support for women’s rights and
overthrowing the Qing Dynasty.
She was arrested, and tortured to try to obtain
more secrets of the revolutionary group, but she did not succumb to the
torture.
Two days later on July 15, 1907 she was beheaded at
the age of 32.
Qiu Jin’s death, that a woman was
willing to sacrifice herself, did generate widespread publicity.
She became a symbol of the new women:
educated, independent, and active in public
affairs.
Qiu Jin was immortalized as a modern revolutionary
heroine as well as a feminist.
After the Qing Dynasty was overthrown under the
leadership of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, Dr. Sun in 1912 presided over a formal
funeral for Qiu Jin in
Shaoxing,
Zhejiang,
recognizing her as the first woman martyr of the revolution and a symbol of
women’s independence.
Later a statue and a museum dedicated to her
were also located there.
------------------------------
New Film
about Qiu Jin:
A new, full-length documentary-drama on Qiu Jin has just been released.
The film is titled “Autumn Gem,” and is produced by a talented young couple from California:
Rae Chang and Adam Tow.
Believing that the story of Qiu Jin should be more widely known, they
dedicated one and a half years of their lives doing the research
(including original research in China and interviewing some of Qiu Jin’s
relatives), writing the screen play, recruiting the actresses/actors and
a project team, directing the filming, and editing the film.
They used more than $60,000 of their own money to finance the film,
while at the same time Rae quit her professional job.
This is definitely a project of passion.
“Autumn Gem” is also under the sponsorship of the
San Francisco Film Society, a 501(c)(3)
non-profit organization.
Click on the above picture to get
a larger-size view of this film's poster. More information about “Autumn
Gem,” as well as a trailer of the film, can be found in:
http://autumn-gem.com/.
Main Actresses:
The main actress in the role of
Qiu Jin is Li Jing.
Li Jing (from the above website) is a former
professional athlete for the China National Wushu Team and trained under Wu
Bin, the coach of Jet Li. She has twenty years of martial arts experience
and expertise in a variety of styles and weapons, as well as special skills
in fight choreography and wire work. She achieved Junior and Senior China
National Champion titles over thirty times and was ranked one of the top six
female Wushu athletes in China.
She has worked as a stunt actor for several
film, television, and commercial projects in Hollywood,
including Rush Hour 3, The Fast and the Furious 3, Twins Effect, Desperate
Housewives, and All My Children.
The person playing the role of
the young Qiu Jin is Melissa Chin.
Melissa started to learn
Chinese Martial Arts (Wushu) when she was four-and-a-half years old.
She won the Gold medal at 2005, 2006 and 2007
UC Berkeley Chinese Martial Arts Tournament. She was the 2007 All around
Champion at the Overseas Chinese American Athletic Tournament Wushu
Competition, as well as the Gold medal at the 2007 11th World Cup
International Martial Arts Championship in Kaohsiung,
Taiwan.
Melissa is now an 11 year old, 6th grader GATE
Honor Roll student at
Fremont Chadbourne
Elementary School
in
California.
New
Jersey Screening of “Autumn Gem”:
In October 2009 Rae Chang and
Adam Tow will tour the
Midwest and the Northeast on a
screening tour of their film.
They will screen the film in more than a dozen
locations (most are at universities).
The most convenient location for people in NJ
is the screening on Saturday, 10/17/09, 8:00-10:00 PM, at the NJ Chinese
Community Center at 17 Schoolhouse Road,
Somerset,
NJ 08873 (732-271-9000).
Rae and Adam will also give a short
presentation on their experiences in making this film.
Admission to this event is $10.
Advance tickets will be available for purchase
around mid-September.
I hope that you will come to enjoy a fine and meaningful
film, and at the same time support this young film-making couple.
For full disclosure, I want to
mention that Adam Tow is my nephew.
[1]
Bind feet was a symbol of wealth, indicating that the girl/woman did
not have to work to make a living.
But the process starts at about five years old with the
breaking of the bones in the foot and tightly binding the different
parts of the foot together.
This creates excruciating pains, and the process takes about
10-15 years, with the objective of limiting the size of the foot to
no more than three inches long.
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