Although most nonacademic people in English-speaking or other non-Asian areas frequently mistake Taiwan for Thailand, what Taiwan is is discussed in various English-language academic books by numerous scholars, such as William Campbell’s Formosa under the Dutch, Andrew Ljungstedt’s A Historical Sketch of the Portuguese Settlements in China and of the Roman Catholic Church and Mission in China, Tonio Andrade’s How Taiwan Became Chinese, Melissa Brown’s Is Taiwan Chinese?, Alan M. Watchman’s Taiwan: National Identity and Democratization, Denny Roy’s Taiwan: A Political History, Bruce Herschensohn’s Taiwan: The Threatened Democracy, John Franklin Copper’s Taiwan: Nation-State or Province?, or Murray A. Rubinstein’s Taiwan: A New History. However, English-language academic books focusing on Taiwanese gender issues could probably be counted on one’s fingers. The most influential reason lies in most English-speaking feminists or gender scholars, though not mistaking Taiwanese gender issues as Thai gender issues, frequently place Taiwanese gender issues under the huge umbrella of Mainland Chinese, Communist Chinese, or P.R.C. women’s and gender studies. This inadvertent “big China bias” 1 indirectly hinders a more complete understanding of how Taiwanese gender issues were in the past, what Taiwanese gender issues are now, and which sort of future Taiwanese gender issues will be facing. Although limited exceptions in Harvard University’s library online catalogues include Cal Clark and Janet Clark’s cooperation with Chou Bih-er (周碧娥) to publish Women in Taiwan Politics, Catherine Farris and Murray A. Rubinstein’s collaboration with Lee Anru (李安如) to publish Women in the New Taiwan, Chen Pei-ying’s “Acting Otherwise,” Doris T. Chang’s Women’s Movements in Twentieth-Century Taiwan, Lydia Kung’s Factory Women in Taiwan, Hans Tao-ming Huang’s Queer Politics and Sexuality Modernity in Taiwan, and some of Chen Ya-chen’s (陳雅湞) books, most English-language academic books which touch upon Taiwanese gender issues because they unconsciously regard Taiwanese aspects as nothing but a tiny byproduct when talking about the giant vista of Mainland Chinese, Communist Chinese, or P.R.C. women’s, gender, and queer studies—not because Taiwanese gender issues are their only key-points.

If P.R.C. feminism, Communist Chinese gender issues, or Mainland Chinese women’s liberation were only a part of feminism in the whole Chinese-heritage women’s cultural realm, why is the P.R.C. version presented as if it were the entirety of Chinese-heritage people’s gender concerns? This book aims to highlight the diversity and rich-ness of non-Mainland and Taiwan-oriented gender issues in order to replace the above-mentioned “one-ness” with the many dimensions or “not-one-ness” of Chinese-heritage people’s gender concerns. Although Chinese-heritage people share similar traditions, different gender problems have been taking places in and challenging various local conditions of Chinese-speaking areas. Taiwan’s gender issues have been reflecting Taiwan’s unique historical, sociocultural, economic, political, (post)colonial (including not merely Japanese but also Dutch, Portuguese, British, and Spanish aspects), military, and diplomatic backgrounds, which Chinese mainlanders, Chinese Communists, P.R.C. governmental official, Hong Kongers, Mongols, Tibetans, overseas Chinese, and other kinds of Chinese-heritage people are probably unfamiliar with and inexperienced in. Needless to say, Taiwanese gender issues should not be misrepresented by P.R.C. communist feminism or Mainland Chinese gender practice, therefore. To counter-react to the inadvertent misrepresentation of “big China bias,” Taiwanese gender issues are the only focus of this English-language academic book. How Taiwanese gender issues differ from all the other Chinese-speaking people’s gender concerns can enrich the bird’s-eye view of feminism or gender studies in the overall Chinese-speaking cultural realm.

The English-language word, “gender,” indicates not only sexual or gender issues but also the birth or creation of a new life. If the past, present, future, and overall history of Taiwanese feminism and gender practice can be academically taken seriously and not oversimplified by Mainland Chinese, Communist Chinese, or P.R.C. misrepresentation (though it is undeniable that Taiwan does share Confucian backgrounds and some other Chinese-heritage people’s traditions with Mainland China, Communist China, or P.R.C.), the title of this book, “(En)Gendering Taiwan,” 2 can probably be a convincing starting point to call for follow-up scholarly attention to the uniqueness of Taiwanese gender issues as well as Taiwanese dimensions of Chinese-heritage people’s feminism.

Since the word, “gender,” is related to the meanings of the word, “birth,” this edited book also aims to be one of the Taiwan-oriented responses to The Birth of Chinese Feminism coedited by Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca Karl, and Dorothy Ko and published by Columbia University Press in 2013. According to the opening sentence in Columbia University Press’s official website, “He-Yin Zhen (ca. 1884–1920?) was a theorist who figured centrally in the birth of Chinese feminism.” How about Mainland Chinese female TCM (traditional Chinese medicine) doctor Zeng Yi’s (曾懿) publication of Nüxuepian (女學篇 Women’s Education)? Does the three coeditors’ opening sentence indicate that the birth of Taiwanese feminism was included in or excluded from He-Yin Zhen’s stories? If the key-word, “birth,” serves as a metaphor of Chinese feminist genealogy, heritage, or DNA, Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca Karl, and Dorothy Ko are probably playing roles of historians or governmental officers of census data to record the birth and “bildungsroman” (or life story) of Chinese feminism and to issue the “birth certificate” to this Chinese feminism. If He-Yin Zhen included Taiwanese feminism in her life story about this birth of Chinese feminism, did Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca Karl, and Dorothy Ko touch upon how He-Yin Zhen involved in not merely Mainland Chinese feminism but also Taiwanese feminism, the birth of Taiwanese feminism, and the ‘bildungsrom” (or life story) of Taiwanese feminism in the “birth certificate” which they issued? For example, He-Yin Zhen was born in 1886, but her contemporary Taiwanese feminist activists, such as Xie Xuehong (謝雪紅1901–1970), Cai Axin (蔡阿信1899–1990), Qiu Yuanyang (邱鴛鴦 1903–1995), Ye Tao (葉陶 1905–1970), Yang Qianhe (楊千鶴), Zhagn Yulan (張玉蘭), and Jian E (簡娥), were never mentioned in The Birth of Chinese Feminism. How about recent Taiwanese male and female legislators’ efforts to draft the bill of diverse family formation (草擬多元成家法案) and the well-known controversy to legalize same-sex partnership (同性戀婚姻合法化)? Would Taiwanese non-heterosexual parts of Chinese feminism be counted? 3

Except for The Birth of Chinese Feminism, the title of this book “(En)gendering Taiwan” might remind readers of at least two more books: Engendering China published by Harvard University Press in 1994 and Engendering the Chinese Revolution published by the University of California Press in 1995. Neither Engendering China nor Engendering the Chinese Revolution strongly highlighted Taiwanese feminist elements; therefore, this book can serve as their Taiwanese counterpart. This book’s inclusion of Xie Xuehong’s Taiwanese communist feminist activism may remind readers of the fact that Christina Kelly Gilmartin’s Engendering the Chinese Revolution did not stress Xie Xuehong’s communist feminism even when it aimed to emphasize Chinese communist feminism and thus contained chapters about Xie Xuehong’s contemporary communist feminists, such as Wang Huiwu (王會悟1898–1993) 4 and Xiang Jingyu (向警予1895–1928). 5 The chapter about Xie Xuehong (謝雪紅) in this book can certainly help complete readers’ understanding of different Chinese feminist activists and how they collaboratively “(en)gendered” China and the Chinese revolution.

1.1 Multidisciplinary Perspectives

In this book, multidisciplinary diversity is inevitable because of the insistence on multiple people’s collaborative work to “(en)gender” Taiwanese feminist progress and gender studies. This interdisciplinary book offers the blueprint of multiple scholars’ collaborative work in anthropology, religious studies, history, political science, literature, cinema studies, media studies, education, drama, performing art, sociology, cultural studies, and so on. 6

1.2 Blueprint of Book Contents and Contributors’ Perspectives

If feminism can really be personified and can be born like a newborn in a gynecological clinic, when was Chinese feminism born? When was Taiwanese feminism born? Was the birth time of Chinese feminism the same as or overlapping with the birth time of Taiwanese feminism? Was there truly an accurate time to give birth to Chinese feminism or Taiwanese feminism? Which time, which day, which month, and which year? Did the birth of Chinese feminism fully include the birth of Taiwanese feminism? The beginning chapter of this book is written by Chen Ya-chen (陳雅湞). This chapter and this book aim to problematize the above-mentioned questions and reexamine them in diverse contributors’ multidisciplinary viewpoints. This chapter derives from Chen Ya-chen’s book review of The Birth of Chinese Feminism, yet Chen Ya-chen’s ultimate goal is a broader viewpoint to highlight the fact that feminism and gender issues in Taiwan deserve worldwide readers’ understanding or attention without being misrepresented by, oversimplified as, or mistaken for something synonymous as Mainland Chinese counterparts.

The second chapter of this book is entitled “Indigenous Concepts of Marriage in 17th Century Sincan (Hsin-kang): Impressions Gathered from the Letters of the Dutch Ministers Georgius Candidius and Robertus Junius.” Its author is Natalie Everts in the Netherlands. This chapter explores the transformations that occurred within the sphere of gender relations during the initial phase of contact of Sincandians with Dutch missionary activity (1627–1640). At first the cultural code of traditional Sincandian society, with regard to marriage, sexual relations, etc., will briefly be sketched, followed by a discussion of some of the missionaries’ aspirations and how they propagated the ideal of Christian marriage as part of their effort at conversion. Finally, a closer look will be taken at the cultural outcome of the interaction between the missionaries and their flock.

In a letter to governor Hans Putmans (stationed at Zeelandia Castle at Tayouan (Tainan), the headquarters of the Dutch East India Company on Formosa) written on 25 November 1633, the Rev. Robertus Junius dejectedly reported that Tackareij, an inhabitant of Sincan whom he himself had taught the Christian principles, had yelled at him: “If the Dutch want to bring me back to my wife, I will trample one of them and run away”. The personal correspondence between the Rev. Junius and governor Putmans, of which a few letters have been preserved in a private collection kept in the Dutch National Archives, reveals something of the conversion process at the micro-level. This correspondence bears witness to a contradiction: on the one hand Junius writes about the increasing amount of converts while, at the same time, he frequently complains about what he calls the sin of adultery.

Natalie Everts has sufficient background knowledge about the seventeenth-century Holland to analyze seventeenth-century Dutch colonizers’ gender issues. After Cao Yonghe’s death (曹永和 Tsao Yung-ho 1920–2014), it has been almost impossible to find scholars with enough Dutch language, historical, and cultural background knowledge to analytically decode Dutch ministers’ gender concerns in Taiwan. Even Rudolphus Teeuwen, a Dutch-heritage scholar with Ivy League training from the United States of America in the research field of comparative literature and decades of teaching experience in Taiwan, mentioned the impossibility for him to contribute anything between Holland and Taiwan in this book project. This chapter by Natalie Everts can undoubtedly help compensate this, therefore.

The third chapter features Chen Ya-chen’s analytical reading of Li Ang’s literary portrait of Xie Xuehong as a Taiwanese communist feminist in Taiwan’s pre-1949 feminist activism. According to recent research, the first wave of Taiwanese feminist movements started in the Japanese colonial era and the second wave was the feminist activism that Nationalists’ anti-communist political forces enhanced in Taiwan. This phenomenon seems to match the repetitive patterns that East Asian feminism’s rise occurred under the supervision of male social activists and political-cultural reformers. Seldom, however, do researchers stress Xie Xuehong as the unique feminist part of both waves of Taiwanese feminist activism. This chapter aims to emphasize Li Ang’s literary and artisitic efforts to add Xie Xuehong’s feminist stories to the first two waves of Taiwanese feminist activism.

So far Li Ang’s literary works have not been the only artistic portraits of Xie Xuehong. In addition to Li Ang’s fictions, there were several on-stage shows and even possible plans for movies about Xie Xuehong. For example: in 1994, Tian Qiyuan (田啟元 Tien, Chi-yuan) directed his on-stage drama show entitled “Xieshi A Nü—yincang zai lishi beihou de Taiwan nüran” (謝氏阿女—隱藏在歷史背後的臺灣女人The Girl with the Surname Xie—The Taiwanese Woman Hidden behind the History). In 2004, Xie Xuehong’s life stories were included in an episode of TV show, Taiwan bainian renwuzhi (臺灣百年人物誌Records of People in Taiwan of the 100 Years), at the Public Television Station. This TV episode showed a part of Xie Xuehong’s unpublished autobiography written in Moscow, Russia, in 1925. Wang Qimei (汪其楣 Wang, Chi-mei) created her own on-stage one-person show about Xie Xuehong’s life story. The first show started at the Concert Hall of the National Theater on May 21, 2010. The National Archive of Taiwanese Literature also had her performance together with discussion sessions with Li Ang on May 29, 2010. Han Siqing (韓四清), a producer in China’s Shanxi Province, also tried to accomplish a motion picture about Xie Xuehong’s life story. Although Tian Qiyuan’s artistic achievements became topics of several graduate theses in Taiwanese universities and Wang Qimei mentioned her intention to allow Xie Xuehong to speak her mind by giving the on-stage microphone to Xie Xuehong, Li Ang’s literary works about Xie Xuehong resulted in the greatest amount of impressive reverberation from mass media, public, research projects, and academic publications.

Daniel Palm and Linda H. Chiang’s coauthored chapter about Madame Chiang Kai-shek is the fourth chapter in this book. It is entitled “‘The Only Thing Oriental about Me Is My Face’: The True Picture of Madame Chiang Kai-shek.” It would be no exaggeration to say that the single Chinese image best-known to most Americans during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s was that presented by Soong Mei-ling, popularly known as Madame Chiang Kai-shek. Her elementary, secondary, and college education in the U.S. (to the extent that she declared as a young woman, “the only thing Oriental about me is my face”), her fluency in English, her glamor and carefully crafted appearance, and her familiarity with American manners and customs made her accessible and popular to the American public, and allowed her to play a significant role in her country’s relations with the U.S. Her charisma, her self-identification as a Christian, the softness of her appearance alongside her clear self-confidence all came together to make her a strikingly prominent cross-cultural figure and twentieth-century Chinese icon.

Recent scholarship and well-regarded biographies of Soong Mei-ling and Chiang Kai-shek have brought their lives and public careers to the attention of a new generation of students and scholars. But Soong Mei-ling’s understanding of China’s role in the World War, and her central position in the conflict within China about the nation’s postwar future, remain under-appreciated. Likewise, reactions in the U.S., China, and Taiwan to her roles in wartime and Cold War and during the time when the KMT migrated to Taiwan, their diplomacy and statesmanship deserve further attention. As well, in Soong Mei-ling we have an iconic Chinese female figure, active in public life, with which to gauge perceptions of Chinese women’s role beyond the home. A decade having passed since her death in October 2003, a reassessment of her self-understanding and the perceptions of public figures which interacted with her is timely.

This chapter assesses Soong Mei-ling’s politics, philosophy, and her understanding of China’s role in the twentieth-century world, as set forth in her own speeches and public statements. As well, we consider how she was perceived in the United States, China, and Taiwan by leading political figures, including Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, top military and diplomatic personnel, and members of Congress, and her role as the first lady of the Republic of China in Taiwan focusing on the years 1930–1960. In this Daniel Pal and Linda H. Chiang argue that while Soong Mei-ling retains elements of the Chinese heroine and character in her thought and action, while clearly influenced as well by her Chinese virtue, Western education and Christian faith.

The fifth chapter is Chen Ya-chen’s “Cinematic Metaphors of Autumn Cicadas and Chilling Cicadas: The Way out of Legal Bottlenecks in Sex Appeal.” Wang Weiming enriches his film, Sex Appeal, with cinematic metaphors of cicadas and romantic relations. Cicadas sing courting songs for mates, just like Muhong’s love song for Baibai. The clarinet music replaces Baibai’s taciturnity, which results from the PTSD and Stockholm syndrome, and represents Baibai’s vagina monolog in the vagina-like auditorium and the “chilling effect” in court. Li Renfang points out Baibai’s clarinet music lacks true love and emotions because Baibai is a fatherless daughter, suffers from Electra Complex, adores the image of a powerful father-like middle-age man, and thus has no true romantic love for him. Li Renfang’s purple flowers in Baibai’s glass vase at the hospital, his authoritative existence in the vagina-like auditorium, and Baibai’s first-time bleeding at the dorm stand for the rape victim’s defloration and the insertion of Li Renfang’s penis into Baibai’s vagina. The rape, adultery, and cyber bullies to blame the rape victim take place after the metronome, which represents ethical norms and legal rules, stops working because they are out of legal or moral control. Li Renfang kneels down and kowtows to the purple flowers before his death symbolizes his antemortem apology. Li Renfang’s death releases Baibai from the legal bottleneck in court and allows her to reconsider and accept Muhong’s love; therefore, cicadas’ courtship songs restart, Baibai reunites with Muhong after the hymen-like curtain between them is removed in the hospital, and Baibai’s second-time bleeding scene at the end of this film implies her metaphorical defloration and sexual gratification with Muhong after her “bed-time” contact with him at the emergency room.

The sixth chapter, authored by Chen Yeong-Ruy (陳勇瑞), focuses on the spectatorship in Huangmei Opera films, especially on the issues related to the audience’s perception of Ling Po’s practice of male impersonation. It employs Laura Mulvey’s psychoanalytic theory from her famous essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” to discuss the unconscious pleasure experience of the audience of Huangmei Opera films. However, it challenges Mulvey’s theory about male gaze and identification in cinematic apparatus by the case of Ling Po’s male impersonation, while men perceive him as a woman and women perceive her as a man. This essay considers that the spectator’s identifications of Ling Po’s impersonation rely on the fantasy proposing links among cultural, societal and psychological modes. It suggests that Ling Po’s images on and off screen represent a sexual ambivalence and enables polymorphous identification.

Cal Clark and Janet Clark, in the seventh chapter, collaboratively analyze factors promoting women’s participation in Taiwan’s politics. As the postwar era commenced in the late 1940s, the status of women in Taiwan could probably best be described as dismal. Half a century later, both Taiwan itself and most women on the island had made very considerable progress. In the political realm, for example, women occupied about a fifth of the seats in the country’s legislatures and assemblies at the turn of the century. While this certainly falls far short of equal representation, it is fairly good for a developing country and significantly better than the United States.

Taiwan obviously has gone through dramatic socioeconomic and political change that has produced a much more prosperous and democratic society. How women in Taiwan would benefit from such change is somewhat problematic, however, since both industrialization and democratization have had countervailing implications for the status of women in other developing societies. These countervailing effects that economic and political development had upon the status of women during the twentieth century suggest two divergent perspectives upon women’s progress in Taiwan. First, Taiwanese women must have been able to take advantage of important opportunities that political and economic change opened up. Second, we need to be careful not to overlook groups or types of women who have not benefited from rapid change on the island over the past half century. This chapter argues that many women in Taiwan were able to utilize resources made available during the country’s development but that significant groups of women were excluded from this process as well and then uses these findings to illustrate a theoretical model of how socioeconomic change affects the status of women in developing societies.

In the eighth chapter, Chou Bih-er (周碧娥) details how Taiwanese higher education systemized women’s studies and gender studies from 1985 to 2005. The establishment and institutionalization of women’s studies program in the higher education was once viewed as “the academic wing of the women’s liberation movement.” It has led to the curriculum reform in higher education which became a major women’s movement itself. The paths and ways by which women studies developed as an institution had been various and diverse. In general, two major models of institutionalization may be identified as practiced in the West, especially in the US. They were referred to as the integrated and separated models. This chapter analyzes how women’s and gender studies developed in higher education as a reflection of women’s movements in Taiwan.

Using the information collected from media, educational statistics and roasters of courses listed in Women’s Studies Bulletins, this chapter attempts to delineate the development of women’s movements as reflected in the process of feminist transformation of knowledge in higher education in Taiwan. Three dimensions of the transformation process, namely, institutionalization of women’s studies, mainstreaming of gender curriculum, and feminist insurrection of knowledge were examined. Analysis of the data shows that women’s movements have achieved a fair level of success in gendering the liberal arts education of university and mainstreaming feminist pedagogy. Women’s and gender studies courses became available in more than half of the institutions of Taiwan’s higher education in the 15 years period since 1988. Gendering of curriculum was achieved not only among traditional departments and disciplines, there was also significant progress in general education curricula and interdisciplinary programs. This reflects the vitality and versatility of feminist scholars and women’s movement in Taiwan. However, in terms of the acceptance and prevalence of gender studies as an independent academic institute or discipline, especially in prestigious public research universities, there remains much to be desired by feminist ideals.

The ninth chapter is entitled “From Women in Taiwan’s History of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to Recent Case Studies of Gender Practice under the Academic Glass Ceiling.” In this chapter, Lin Jaung-gong (林昭庚), Tsai Liang-wen (蔡良文), and Chen Ya-chen (陳雅湞) unveil Taiwan’s first female TCM professor and problems of gender egalitarianism in terms of male professors and female professors’ promotion, ranking, and professional ups and downs in Taiwan’s TCM educational system. The glass ceiling that women encountered in Taiwan’s traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) has remained chiefly unchallenged, with only a few individual women’s exceptional success in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Even in the twenty-first century, most of Taiwan’s prominent TCM experts and scholars of Taiwanese history are ignorant of or resistant to the significant value of women in Taiwan’s TCM history as well as in women’s studies, gender studies, and sexology. This chapter aims to compensate for this failure to highlight women in Taiwan’s TCM history, and to unveil statistical data from CMU (China Medical University, the first medical school to feature TCM in Taiwanese history) about gender practice. In addition, the chapter shares anonymous female interviewees’ personal experiences of gender practices under the academic glass ceiling of Taiwan’s twenty-first-century administrative politics.

Notes

  1. 1.

    In August 2017 international publishers admitted pressure of censorship from the PRC government and Chinese Communist Party. The “authorities govern the distribution of the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) that companies need for their books to be sold in China… You don’t mention the three ‘Ts’: Tiananmen, Tibet and Taiwan.” For details, please consult the news report entitled “International Publishers Admit Self-Censorship” in Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP) on August 24, 2017.

  2. 2.

    Authors in this book use their favorite Romanization systems. Some of them prefer the pinyin system, but some of them prefer the Wade-Giles system of Romanization.

  3. 3.

    This introductory chapter derived from Chen Ya-chen’s review of Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca E. Karl, and Dorothy Ko’s The Birth of Chinese Feminism: Essential Texts in Transnational Theory. This is an invited book review in the 11 (April 2015): 111-116 issue of Monumenta Taiwanica (台灣學誌) (published by National Taiwan Normal University). Monumenta Taiwanica (台灣學誌) (published by National Taiwan Normal University) officially agreed the book review to be turned into a book chapter.

    Is there any “devil’s defense” to explain why Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca Karl, and Dorothy Ko inadvertently or purposefully excluded Taiwanese gender issues from their coedited book at the moment when they decided to have “the birth of Chinese feminism” as their coedited book title? Yes, some people might find the following defense: Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca Karl, Dorothy Ko, or even He-Yin Zhen might not think of Taiwan at all at the moment when the phrase “the birth of Chinese feminism” became a significant representative of their publications about Chinese feminism. Because Taiwan has been playing an extremely marginalized role in mainstream China-centered viewpoints that many Mainland Chinese, American Chinese, American, or non-Western feminists might not feel Taiwanese gender issues as an tremendously important representative of Chinese gender issues. Numerous Mainland Chinese, American Chinese, American, or non-Western feminists might not be strongly aware of the value of Taiwanese feminist or gender studies among all types of Chinese-heritage women’s and gender studies. If they have a chance to rank all the Chinese-heritage people’s gender problems, Taiwanese women’s and gender problems might be ranked so low according to their value system that Taiwan looked inexistent in or expelled from their book entitled “The Birth of Chinese Feminism” and other academic publications about Chinese-heritage people’s gender concerns. This is probably one of the reasons why Taiwan might not look like a stereotypical representative part of the Chinese research subjects, which they paid special attention to and cordially focused on, regardless of whether Chinese-heritage people’s political parties or the Ming and Qing Dynasties defined Taiwan “to be or not to be” a part of China.

    If the word, “birth,” is such an unavoidable metaphorical keyword in The Birth of Chinese Feminism, there must be parents, grandparents, ancestors, and relatives who share similar or the same DNA with He-Yin Zhen or the Chinese feminist newborn. Who are the father and mother? Who are the grandparents? Who are the ancestors and relatives? Were Lu Zhi (呂雉), Wu Zetian (武則天), Liu E (劉娥), Empress Dowager (慈禧太后) considered as this Chinese feminist baby’s aunts in ancient dynasties? Were prehistorical Chinese matriarchal leaders regarded as this Chinese feminist baby’s ancestors? Who created the newborn of Chinese feminism? Who gave birth to this Chinese feminist baby? Which medical doctor, midwife, anesthesiologists or nurse delivered this Chinese feminist baby at which Chinese hospital or clinic in which part of Chinese territory? Was this a vaginal delivery or a cesarean delivery? What time on which day, which month, which year, and how long was the delivery? Did this Chinese feminist baby grow up, get married to a man (without showing any lesbian interest in women), and give birth to any Chinese feminist offspring, such as Xie Xuehong (謝雪紅), Soong Mei-ling (宋美齡), Jiang Qing (江青), Li Yuanzhen (李元貞), Lu Xiulian (呂秀蓮), Zheng Wang (王政), or even Lydia H. Liu (劉禾) and Dorothy Ko (高彥頤)--the two Chinese-heritage coeditors of The Birth of Chinese Feminism? Which roles did female feminists’ soul mates, such as Xie Xuehong’s lovers, Soong Mei-ling’s husband Chiang Kai-shek, or the men whom Jiang Qing married, play in this genealogical network of Chinese feminist kinship? How about the roles played by other male supporters of gender egalitarianism, such as the Guangxu Emperor who banned women’s foot-binding in 1901, China’s “Dr. Sex” Zhang Jingshen (張競生1888–1970), and Liu Dalin (劉達臨 b. 1932) who established Mainland China’s first museum of sexology, in this Chinese feminist “family tree” before or after the “birth of Chinese feminism” which Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca Karl, and Dorothy Ko highlighted?

    If it is impossible for a person to independently give birth to any newborns according to the medical technology or moral ethics in the He-Yin Zhen’s life time (1886–1920) and even nowadays in the twenty-first century, the “birth” may result from multiple people’s collaboration-- just like the cooperation of medical doctors, nurses, midwives, and anesthesiologists in either a vaginal delivery or cesarean delivery. Chen Fangming (陳芳明) entitled his book “Commentary Biography of Xie Xuehong (謝雪紅評傳),” instead of “the Birth of Taiwanese Communist Feminism.” His decision of this book title coincidentally matched the above-mentioned concerns about Taiwanese communist feminism’s birth. Miu Boying (謬伯英 1899–1929), Wang Huiwu (王會悟 1898–1993), Liu Qingyang (劉清揚1894–1977), and Xiang Jingyu (向警予 1895–1928) were Mainland China’s earliest female communist members, but nobody entitled their life stories “the Birth of Mainland Chinese Communist Feminism.” This also happened to echo the above-mentioned concerns. This book argues that numerous people made collaborative efforts to engender Taiwanese feminist progress and gender studies. The delivery may be a long-time and difficult task. The time of the delivery may be not yet certain now because current and future researchers may dig out older and earlier historical facts about Taiwanese feminism. This book purposefully leaves an open ending in terms of the “birth certificate” of Taiwanese feminism and replaces the certificate with the key-words, “(en)gendering Taiwan,” in order to everlastingly welcome and embrace new findings of historical facts about Taiwanese feminism. After Chapter 1, the diverse themes of all the other chapters include portraits of famous feminists, gender issues in institutions, and various gender concerns collaboratively create an “orchestra of feminist heteroglosia” to coherently sing Taiwan’s own celebration song (if not the “Happy Birthday” song) to the initiation, rise and advancement of all the gender studies and activism in Taiwan.

    In addition to the physiological indication which Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca Karl, and Dorothy Ko’s keyword, “birth,” shows to their readers, the word, “(en)gender,” enables this book to have different attitudes toward the frequently seen critique of essentialism in feminist, queer, or other types of gender studies. Of course, the word, “(en)gender,” probably reminds readers of the borderline between “sex” and “gender.” To some readers, it may denote that the production, initiation, growth, developments, or “ups and downs” of Taiwanese feminism include not merely aspects of physiology/essentialism but also facets of sociocultural construction.

  4. 4.

    Wang Huiwu’s father is Wang Yanchen (王彥臣), and her husband is Li Da (李達).

  5. 5.

    Xiang Jingyu’s original name was Xiang Junxian (向俊賢). She married Cai Hesen (蔡和森) in France in 1920, but they were divorced in Moscow in 1926.

  6. 6.

    This unique Taiwan-oriented dialogue with Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca Karl, and Dorothy Ko’s The Birth of Chinese Feminism is what other academic books cannot compete with. According to the research of library collections in Harvard University Yen-Ching East Asian library, no past or current academic books make efforts to ask above-mentioned questions about various metaphorical details of the “birth” and stage such a follow-up dialogue. If instructors in educational institutions or researchers at academic organizations use The Birth of Chinese Feminism, this book should be also used at the same time in order to balance different dimensions of standpoints.