qiu jin — V
To understand what motivated Ch'iu Chin (Qiu JIn) and her work we need to remember the time period in which she lived. China had just been internationally disgraced by the invasion of the Eight-Nation Alliance (Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) which sought to put down the Boxer Rebellion in North China in 1900. The Boxers were anti-foreigners, especially anti-missionaries, whom they saw as attempting to corrupt their civilization with non-traditional ideas. From this defeat young intellectuals like Ch'iu Chin began to develop ideas for a revolution that would topple the Qing Emperor, who they saw as weak and corrupt, and by extension, to topple many of the more repressive aspects of traditional Chinese culture In Wolf and Witke's anthology, Women in Chinese Society, they have this to say about the motives and philosophy that drove Ch'iu's writing:
Despite some attention to specific grievances and their remedies, the main theme of Ch'iu Chin's writing was intense, total rejection of the traditional woman's role. Specific problems combined to create in her eyes an evil atmosphere of oppression, blackness, numbing confinement, degrading ignorance. In the 'black prison' created by 'darkness and ignorance,' most women did not even realize the danger inherent in being divorced from the reality of the world, and even those who did wish to save themselves and others were robbed of the will and capacity to act. The darkness pervading the world of women appeared to Ch'iu to be a particularly painful manifestation of that greater blackness which enveloped the whole Chinese nation. This perception did not lead her to a comprehensive theory of social revolution, but rather to a tremendous emphasis on breaking out of and eradicating the stifling prisons of traditional Chinese society — an analogous, but less specific and more romantic, approach. Buddhist-inspired visions of heaven and hell and the Bodhisattva's redemptive role suggested the way. Ch'iu clearly differed from those reformers who believed women's problems could be solved by correcting the specific abuses that they (and she) condemned. Feminism was not an isolated matter for Ch'iu, but an integral part of the political problems to which she sought solutions (57).
Many of Ch'iu's earlier poems set the mood for this rejection. Themes of isolation from female friends, loneliness of her marriage and being cut off from the rest of the intellectual world by traditional male values and ideas predominate much of her early work. Indeed, one might argue that her marriage to Wang Zifang was one of the main forces that drove her to her revolutionary convictions. In the anthology Women writers of traditional China the editors state:
In September 1903, after Wang had bought a post in the imperial bureaucracy, Ch'iu and their children joined him in Beijing. Two events soon altered Ch'iu's life and art: Wang's declared intention of taking in a concubine and Ch'iu's friendship with members of Beijing's progressive elite. Wang's disloyalty liberated and emboldened Ch'iu, while her new friends introduced her to patriotic and feminist causes. Her shi and ci [types of poetry] of this period, including the twenty-five dealing with her estrangement from Wang and twenty-two zengda (literally, "presentations and replies") addressed to friends and men and women of achievement, are rich in theme, tone and emotional complexity (632-33).
This poem I present here, I think, captures that beauty and frustration:
秋瑾〈秋日獨坐〉
小坐臨窗把卷哦，湘簾不捲靜垂波。
室因地僻知音少，人到無聊感慨多。
半壁綠苔蛩語響，一庭黃葉雨聲和。
劇憐北地秋風早，已覺涼浸翠袖羅。
Here is my translation. I had trouble with the concept in line 2 of "bamboo/ refusing to curl" (I think I went so far as to wonder what sort of weak bamboo would curl up like a leaf?) until it was pointed out to me I had mistranslated the line and it should really read, "bamboo curtain," or a curtain made out of bamboo. That helped me a lot.
I rest briefly by a window to open
and read a book, the bamboo curtain
refuses to curl but hangs silently
in waves. Since my isolated home
is a secret, I have few friends;
but my emotions become endless
when boredom finds me. Listen
to those locusts cry; half the walls
are wrapped in green moss.
The rain and yellow leaves
in the courtyard are each
other’s accompaniment. Early
autumn wind, pity these northern
lands; even now I feel your chill
pierce my silken jade sleeves.
Here is a different translation from Chang and Saussy's anthology:
Sitting Along on an Autumn Day
Sitting for a moment by the window, I read aloud,
Unfurled bamboo curtains hanging silently, wave-like.
My residency remote, hidden, friends are few;
When boredom overtakes me, emotions many.
The wall half draped in green moss, cricket cries resound;
The courtyard full of yellow leaves, raindrops provide accompaniment.
Oh, pitiable northland, where autumn wind comes early;
Already I feel the chill penetrate my green silk sleeves. (640)
Work Cited:
Sun Chang, Kang-i and Haun Saussy (eds) Women writers of traditional China: an anthology of poetry and criticism. Charles Kwong, associate editor; Anthony C. Yu and Yu-kung Kao, consulting editors. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. (1999)
Wolf, Margery and Roxane Witke (eds) Women in Chinese Society. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. (1975)