Women in Song and Yuan China by Bret Hinsch (review)

Reviewed by: Women in Song and Yuan China by Bret Hinsch Bettine Birge Bret Hinsch. Women in Song and Yuan China. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021. Pp. 226. $36 (paper); $120 (cloth). ISBN 978-1538171165 (paper); 978-1538144916 (cloth). This work is the most recent in Bret Hinsch’s admirable series on women in Chinese history, whose volumes now cover women from ancient times to the late imperial era. Similar to the others, it is a synthesis of an impressive body of secondary literature, much of it in Chinese, and it presents a wealth of detail and valuable information. Overall, it does a good job of summarizing the state of the field. The extensive bibliography by itself provides a valuable source for further reading or for students wanting to explore issues in more depth, and even specialists may find something they had previously overlooked. Hinsch’s writing is lively and accessible, making the book particularly attractive for general readers and use in the classroom. [End Page 222] After an introduction in Chapter 1, which provides historical context and a nice explanation of the Tang-Song transition, Chapters 2 to 7 address different aspects of women’s lives. These are titled: Family, Government, Wealth, Religion, Learning, Virtue, and Image. They mainly address conditions in the Song, though some chapters have short sections at the end on the conquest dynasties of the Liao, Jin, and Yuan. Chapter 8, “The Conquest Dynasties,” which Hinsch describes as a “coda,” deals with these on their own. Hinsch frames the narrative of the whole book with the question of when the widely recognized transition in gender relations in Chinese history took place, during the Song or during the Yuan. Throughout the chapters, he presents evidence from authors on different sides of this debate, but in Chapter 8 and in the book’s conclusion, he emphatically answers that the change came about during the Yuan. I thoroughly concur with this conclusion, which Hinsch supports with a large body of research cited in his notes. I particularly like Hinsch’s foregrounding of conclusions from legal sources, whether codified law or records of courtroom adjudication. I agree with his implicit recognition that evidence from lawsuits and judicial verdicts tells us more about the lives of ordinary people than do the disquisitions of elite male writing, though Hinsch does not neglect discussion of the latter (e.g., 117–18, on loyalty). And he rightly uses law texts as well to demonstrate elite values and concerns. In these discussions and throughout the book, Hinsch is for the most part sensitive to differences between women of different social classes. Hinsch also presents good evidence from epitaphs or funerary inscriptions (muzhiming 墓誌銘) throughout the chapters. For instance, a table on p. 21 illustrates his discussion of the rise in marriage age of women over the period of the Tang and Song dynasties, using as its source several studies based on epitaphs. In this and other places, he nicely introduces the sources on which historical conclusions are based. Hinsch is to be commended for the large number of archaeological reports that he references, listed separately in the bibliography on pp. 235–39. And he has a nice sprinkling of poetry throughout the book by women of the time. I have some quibbles about Hinsch’s use of sources. At times he cites works that do not present the main research on a topic, even though more definitive literature that could have been cited appears in his bibliography. More frequent citations overall would also have been welcome. Despite the expansive bibliography, one unfortunate omission is Linda Cook Johnson’s Women of the Conquest Dynasties: Gender and Identity in Liao and Jin [End Page 223] China.1 And Hinsch makes questionable use of Riasanovsky’s Fundamental Principles of Mongol Law, which was first published in 1937 and is now outdated in several respects.2 I would recommend cross-listing references to the eminent scholar of Song women Lau Nap-yin/Liu Liyan 柳立言, who publishes respectively in English and Chinese under these names, to make clear to readers that they are the same person. The book provides a cautionary tale for why it is preferred to give the full

Ancient history · Art · China · CONQUEST · Context (archaeology · Government (linguistics · Linguistics · Literature · Narrative · Political science · Reading (process · Transition (genetics · Chinese history and philosophy · History · Law · Philosophy