pitelka's presentation on women in east asia

[clay dube]

For reasons of space, not all the readings Morgan would like you to have were included in the reader. The full readings and a couple not included at all are available to you as .pdf downloads.

You need Adobe's free Acrobat reader to see and print these. You probably already have a copy on your computer. If not, you can get a copy at:

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

Go to this page to download the articles:

http://international.ucla.edu/asia/ncta/utla/readings/pitelka_index.asp

Please note that these are provided for your educational use only.

This is not a public webpage and sshould not be circulated.

[Anonymous]

Following Dr. Le's presentation, I wonder if anyone else caught the fact that Avalokitesvara is a Bodhisattva thought of in East Asia to be a female! This (while presenting interesting connotations given the Confucian framework within society) indicates that the powers of the many faced, many, many, many, armed Avalokitesvara are often manifested into the female form in East Asia, particularly Tibet. Following the feministic perspectives expressed during our previous session, I thought that many of the distaff members of our group would celebrate this Bodhisattva.

Additionally, I wonder if the title of Tripitaka (Chinese: Sānzàng; Japanese: Sanzo) sparked the same curiosity in others that it did in me. In our readings of Buddhism, the division of Hinayana and Mahayana, as well as the influence of Nagarjuna are paramount to the development of Buddhism within East Asia. That a ruler assumed the title of a Sanskrit name for the "three baskets" (vinaya, sutra, and Abidharma) within the Pali canon is fascinating.

I wonder if there is a correlation to the desire for a return to the "original teachings of Buddha" that propelled the Mahayanist tradition in Asia?

Little things like this fascinate me.

[clay dube]

The Chinese practice of footbinding is one of those things that capture people's attention. This can lead to a distorted picture of the social position of women. Let's discuss it in the Asia in My Classroom forum. Here I wanted to remind you of the Pitelka readings (see above) and to provide some additional resources:

Footbinding is one of the topics that every teacher needs to discuss when looking at the varying experiences of Chinese women. It emerges about a thousand years ago and survived into the last century.

Not all women had their feet bound. Many non-Han ethnic groups such as the Hakka and Manchus did not bind their women's feet and it was much less common among ordinary people in the South than it was in the North, probably because women in the South usually joined in agricultural labor.

How are we to understand this custom and role men and women played in perpetuating it? How should we raise the topic with children? Is it enough to note that our own culture imposes standards of beauty that cause some to endure suffering, surgery, or psychological damage?

Below are some web resources on footbinding that you may find interesting.

California resident Beverly Jackson is a longtime collector of the shoes worn by Chinese women with bound feet. She traveled to China and interviewed women who had their feet bound and produced a lavishly illustrated volume Splendid Slippers. Her website offers short excerpts from the book, reviews of it, and -- of course -- a link to buy the volume. Combined with works by Howard Levy and Dorothy Ko, this is a good resource to draw upon in introducing the practice to students.

http://www.silcom.com/~bevjack/

Levy, Howard S. Chinese Footbinding: The History of a Curious Erotic Custom, Foreword by Arthur Waley. Introd. by Wolfram Eberhard. New York, W. Rawls, 1966.

Ko, Dorothy. Every Step a Lotus : Shoes for Bound Feet. Berkeley : University of California Press, 2001. Click here to see the UC Press webpage on the book. You can download and read chapter 2. It includes terrific images. Prof. Ko has also written "The Body as Attire: The Shifting Meanings of Footbinding in Seventeenth-Century China," The Journal of Women's History 8.4.
http://iupjournals.org/jwh/jwh8-4.html

Feng Jicai, one of China's most popular writers, authored an interesting novel on the custom and its place in family and social life. Three Inch Golden Lotus. It was translated by David Wakefield and published by the University of Hawaii press. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0824816064/103-0017646-1395814?v=glance

Yue-qing Yang's recent film Footbinding: The Search for the Three-Inch Golden Lotus is available and includes interviews with Chinese about the custom. In the film, Dorothy Ko argues that footbinding is routinely misunderstood. http://www.movingimages.bc.ca/catalogue/Cultdiverse/footbinding.html

[clay dube]

Hi Folks,

Morgan's provided us with his annotated bibliography on women in East Asian history. You can download it by clicking on the icon below.

[Anonymous]

I have been thinking a great deal about our class last Tuesday. I was a Women's Studies minor but it has been a long time since I have had a chance to stretch the feminist part of my brain.

One thing that really stuck with me was Morgan's comment that many of us have very negative thoughts when it comes to women in Asia. He used the example of foot-binding and wife burning. I immediately thought of the McDougal World History book that we use in 10th grade and the small blurb on India's Ram Mohun Roy. Although the book only devotes 3 short paragraphs to this man, twice it included references to "wife suicide" and that he watched his sister-in-law burned alive.

As a feminist and a history teacher I think that these issues are important -- too important to be causally mentioned in a textbook. I never really stopped and thought about it but I am really concerned that this is leaving students with an unduly negative and incomplete view of women in these cultures.

And once again I am left feeling overwhelmed with responsibility and still with a lack of time. I keep telling myself that I can’t fix all this in a year and that it will take time. But it is easy to feel down about not doing enough and thinking that my students of 2006 are going to be shortchanged compared to my students of 2016.

[Anonymous]

Whenever this conversation comes up I think about a class I had in college regarding communication as it relates to intercultural relations. In the U.S. we're very good at deploring all cultures that don't do as we do and think as we think. Although I agree with you that bound feet and wife suicides are awful, I also think that having to live my life behind a veil would be primitive and an assault against my personal rights. However, many Middle Eastern women embrace the veil as being not only part of their culture and religion, but also part of their own unique personailties and wouldn't think about going without it. This includes doctors and Ph.D's. Now I know that bound feet and the veil are two very different things, but think about suicide bombers and Japanese ritual suicides (seppuku, isn't it?) -- we hear about that every so often and obviously people still stand behind whatever virtues their cultures affix to them. We need to understand the places these things have in their different cultures first and then discuss them with that in mind. I still say...bound feet? How about 4 inch heels and what they do to the feet, back, internal organs, etc. If Madison Avenue is right, most men would rather see their women on these than on sensible (and maybe, ugly) shoes.

[Author]

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